Union Forever Page 25

  Kal returned to his desk and sat down.

  "How long would it be for Andrew to get back?"

  "God knows how many miles of track will get torn up," Hans said darkly. "They'll make Sherman hairpins out of 'em."

  "What?"

  "Burn the crossties," O'Donald said. "A grand sight it is, as long as it's the other side's tracks. They'll lay the rails on top of the fire and then bend 'em around the telegraph poles. They'll be useless. The bridge is gone as well. Once he gets back to the Kennebec, he'll have to march two hundred miles to reach our inner frontier."

  "If there's any delaying force ahead of them," Hans interjected, "it could take two weeks, maybe even three, and remember we don't know how long it'll be before he even takes Roum back. Supply will be a nightmare—they've only got twenty-five days' rations with them as is, and if Roum has fallen there'll be nothing in there they can use."

  "Can we send some men up the line to meet him?"

  "We can't," Hans replied. "Don't forget the southern frontier. If I was them Merki, I'd be striking now. Thank God we haven't heard anything from their quarter yet. As it is, we've got a full brigade down there, and only one brigade in the city."

  "What will Andrew do?" Kal asked wearily.

  "I don't know," Hans said dejectedly. "He'll have to figure something out, and damn quick."

  "So we're on our own here."

  "That's it, Mr. President," Hans said, looking straight into Kal's eyes.

  Kal sat back and closed his eyes. It had all seemed like some grand exciting adventure before. Before they had ever come, he was nothing but a bad reciter of verse for Boyar Ivor. Hiding behind a mask of foolishness, living off the table scraps of the boyars, hoping to wheedle an exemption for his family and friends when the Tugars came. "President" had sounded so grand, to be like the legendary saint Lincoln. After all, the war was over. Never had he dreamed that this burden would be placed upon him in such a way.

  "Mr. President," he had just been called, and he could see the cold judgment in Hans's eyes. Looking to see if at this moment he could ever measure up. He opened his eyes, looking over at Kathleen, hoping that she at least would offer support. But he saw none there—it was she who wanted strength from him, some reassurance that her husband was safe, and that he would have a place to come back to.

  If only I could run away from all of this and hide. Take my family up into the forest, find a safe haven for Ludmilla, for Tanya and the three babies. Yet she would not go. He had sent her husband out to Roum. Was he already dead? Had he made his only child a widow before she was even really a woman herself?

  All of them were waiting. Without a word he got up from behind his desk and walked over to the door. He stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the square.

  The air was cool, the scorching heat of the previous week washed away by the storm of yesterday. But the city was subdued, somber, people in the square standing about in small knots, talking with heads lowered, looking toward the government hall. Seeing him on the balcony, several started to move closer. They would expect him to say something. It was always so easy before—he'd trade lighthearted banter and then return to his desk. But seeing them approach, he was filled with dread. They wanted to know, they were looking to him for an answer.

  Finding no solitude, he retreated into his office and faced his three friends.

  He had to do something. It must have been so easy for Lincoln, for after all he was a saint, he thought. I'm only a peasant playing at being a boyar.

  But you outsmarted all of them, he reasoned. Think like a peasant, like the mouse dancing with the fox.

  "I'm declaring a full mobilization of the militia to take place at once," Kal said quietly.

  Hans smiled and nodded his head.

  Somehow he felt reassured by the look now in Hans's eyes. It was such an obvious step—why did he not simply ask for it? Or is it that I have to say it all first?

  "How many muskets do we have?"

  "There are roughly four thousand of the old smoothbores waiting for conversion to rifling in the factory."

  "Distribute them to the militia, but only to Suzdal and Novrod men."

  Hans smile turned to a grin.

  "Only trust the old guard, I say," O'Donald interjected.

  "What about the Senate?" Kathleen said sharply. "For my two cents, Mikhail's in with Cromwell."

  Kal nodded in agreement.

  "I'm leery of disbanding the Senate and declaring martial law," Kal said slowly, as if grasping for each word. "I suspect that would be a bad thing. Your Andrew keeps talking about precedents that I set. If I should do that, then in years to come other presidents will do it lightly, until finally there will be one boyar and nothing else."

  Hans groaned and pounded the table with his fist.

  "You'll wind up paying for that," he said sharply.

  "Did your Lincoln do it?"

  "He wasn't fighting Merki," Kathleen replied. "They were rebels, but at least they were honorable men we fought against. This is different."

  "I can't make it any other way," Kal stated firmly, and then a smile creased his features.

  "But I also know who the fox is. I am not that much of a fool," he whispered, "nor an idealist. We will take care of Mikhail and his like when the time comes.

  "Can we hold the city?" Kal asked, his tone making it clear that the topic was closed.

  "I doubt it," O'Donald said. "If Andrew and the entire army were here it'd be impossible for them to land. The Ogunquit would do some damage, for certain, but a couple of regiments of good riflemen armed with Springfields could play hell with them every time they opened a gun port out in the river. Without the 35th, though, those big guns will certainly weaken us. It's the one thing we never dreamed of—an ironclad coming up the Neiper to shell us."

  "What's more important?" Hans said his voice cold.

  "I don't understand," Kal replied.

  "The city or what it produces?" Hans continued.

  "The factories, by God," O'Donald cried. "We lose the factories and we're naked. They take the dam, blow it, there go the factories and the north half of the city all over again."

  "We'll have to hold both," Kal said quietly.

  "But sir, I don't think we can. At least the factories are far enough away from the river. He won't be able to hit them from the ship."

  "We hold both," Kal replied. "I've got to think of politics here, my friends. Abandon the city and the merchants will turn—they are unhappy as is. It is that simple. And we pray that somehow Andrew will find a way out of this for us."

  "And pray as well the Merki do not move," Kathleen said quietly.

  "Kalenchka!"

  The door slipped open, and Kal looked up angrily.

  "Dammit, Boris, does everyone feel he can just walk in here?"

  "Your scribe tried to stop me, but it can't wait."

  "Go on, then."

  "Mikhail just announced on the floor of the Senate that Andrew's been killed and the army defeated."

  "So he has already begun his game," Kal said quietly.

  There was something about a good fire that always pleased him. Smiling, Jim Hinsen watched as the last trestle, still licked with flames, tumbled over, collapsing into the river, kicking up a shower of steam. For over a mile in either direction of the bridge a line of fires crackled and burned. Piles of rails were laid on top of the flaming ties, sagging under the heat.

  He had always regretted getting drafted into the Army of the Potomac. Hell, it was Sherman's boys who were having all the fun, with the looting, the burning, and—he licked his lips dryly—the women as well.

  It was his first command, and he loved that as well. Dropped off by Jamie's ships, which had immediately put back to sea, he had waited with his thousand men in concealment for two days, watching the puffs of smoke crossing the far horizon. Finally hours had passed without a sign of activity and he knew the time was right. Darkness was supposed to be their cover; the storm had only helped as
they boarded ship and worked their way upstream.

  The killing had been easy enough. They'd expected only a hundred, and the fact that a full regiment was there had been a surprise. But they'd been even more surprised than he at the sudden onslaught.

  The Carthas still weren't all that good with the musket, but when it came to the bayonet on the end they knew how to use it. Jamie's cutthroats were another matter. More than one of them damn Rus had thrown down his weapon and been pinned screaming to the ground by his boys.

  He even remembered Stover, and he smiled at the recollection and pleasure of seeing him again. The man had cheated him once at cards, and you never did that. It was almost funny how Stover had begged as Jamie's men held him down while he slowly sliced the lousy cheater's throat open.

  Now the trick was not to get squeezed in this little game. They might always have an extra train back in Suzdal. Chances were they'd definitely run one down from Roum. So just keep tearing that old track up and keep a sharp eye out for the fun.

  After all, I am the commander, he thought with a sardonic laugh. I'll have to stay here right in the middle, the others are the ones that'll get shot.

  "Independent fire at will!"

  Choking on gunsmoke, Vincent crouched low, peering through the rubble and confusion at the onrushing host. A bone-numbing crash snapped through the building, followed by a shower of debris cascading into the courtyard in front of him.

  "Jesus Christ."

  He dived to the ground, hiding behind a shattered column. The entire east end of the palace had been blasted open by the close-range bombardment; a gaping hole was all that remained of the section facing the forum. Musket balls snicked past, followed by a spray of canister.

  "Fall back to the other side of the courtyard!" Vincent shouted, standing and pointing with his sword to the breastworks that lined the west side.

  Dodging through the wreckage of Marcus's palace, the line of Suzdalian troops pulled back, their retreat signaled by the triumphant shouts of the Cartha infantry, who stormed up the steps and gained the broken wreckage of the outside wall. Running low, Vincent jumped over the breastworks and then cautiously peered up over a pile of shattered rock.

  The enemy now held the outside wall not sixty feet away. A cannon next to him snapped off with a deafening blast, the canister shot disappearing into the smoke, the iron rounds shrieking as they careened off the rubble. It was impossible to see anything in the confusion.

  An explosion filled the courtyard, and a section of wall above him erupted in a shower of dust and stone fragments.

  "The bastard's laying those shots in right over his own men!" Dimitri shouted, crawling up to Vincent's side.

  Another shot screamed in, slashing into the balcony above, sending down a rain of debris.

  "The men upstairs?" Vincent shouted.

  "Barricaded in."

  "I'm going up to look."

  Crouching low, Vincent ran down the length of the courtyard. The enemy were pouring in a stiff fire, shooting blind into the smoke, the bullets smacking into the marble wall behind him, slashing off stone fragments, the lead shot ricocheting. Turning through the doorway into Marcus's public audience room, Vincent came around the portal and, breathing hard, stood up.

  The chamber was a shambles. The wall above had been cut through earlier in the day, the shell bursting inside, spraying the room with debris and killing several men, who still lay where they had been cut down.

  Running across the audience chamber, Vincent hit the back door into the slave quarters, where the far wall faced out into the street. At each window a sniper stood, gun up, scanning for a target.

  "Any pressure here?"

  "They rushed the door again," a sergeant with a blood-streaked face said, pointing to a battered portal, torn apart by shot. Bodies clogged the entryway. "We gave 'em the cold steel."

  Grinning, the sergeant held up a gore-streaked bayonet.

  "Good work, soldier," Vincent growled, slapping him on the shoulder.

  Going down the length of the corridor, he passed a quick word to each man, who looked at him appreciatively.

  He paused for a second at the entryway into the basement. His stomach tightened. He could barely face the hospital, but there was no avoiding it. Bracing himself, he rushed down the stairs. The stench was overpowering, the room a cacophony of sobs and screams of anguish. In the far corner the surgeon was at his bloody craft, saw in hand, the boy on the table mercifully unconscious from the last of the chloroform. Olivia stood next to the surgeon, holding a tray of instruments. She looked up at him, her features pale, and an exhausted smile lit her features as she saw that he was still unhurt.

  "They've gained the outside wall of the palace," Vincent shouted, his voice hoarse and cracking.

  The cries dropped away.

  "Any man that can walk, I need you back upstairs. If you can't shoot you can at least load muskets. I need you."

  "Come on, lads," a gray-bearded private groaned, pressing a bandage to his side as he came to his feet.

  With a shuffling gait, the private started for the door. One by one the men started for the door, several of them crawling. Vincent looked over at the surgeon, who gazed at him as if he had been the creator of this anguish.

  I am the creator of it, Vincent thought. I could have accepted Cromwell's offer of a free passage out. He found himself half wishing the arrow he had saved Marcus from had found its intended target. Without Marcus there would have been no reason to stay and watch the rest of his command get torn to pieces.

  Vincent nodded to the surgeon and raced back up the stairs. Turning the corner of the steps, he continued on up to the second floor and stepped into Marcus's private quarters.

  For a moment he paused. The quarters were Spartan in their simplicity, he thought. He found the idea curious. In this world there undoubtedly were Spartans someplace or another—there was damn near everything else. A servant with a musket slung over his shoulder rushed past him, lugging a box of ammunition.

  "Marcus?"

  "Over in the north wing, noble sir," the servant gasped.

  "Keep up the good work, soldier," Vincent shouted.

  The man looked back at him and smiled.

  "I'm a free man—of course I'll fight," he said as he disappeared into the south wing.

  Running across the room, Vincent entered the shattered remnants of the library. Most of the far wall was blown in, exposed to the open courtyard. The racks of scrolls were shattered and in flames; thick acrid smoke was pouring up through holes gaping in the ceiling. Through the light rain and billowing smoke he could see the Senate on the far side of the plaza, several hundred yards away. A snap of smoke burst from the Senate steps. The hell with heroics, he thought, diving to the floor, covering his head.

  A section of the library wall burst in, sending out a deadly spray of stone fragments. A high-pitched scream echoed through the room as a soldier staggered to his feet holding his hands over his stomach, blood pouring out between his fingers.

  Vincent ignored him and crawled up to the line of soldiers manning the wall, firing down into the courtyard below.

  The pressure was building, he could feel it, even as his own strength was ebbing away. Gritting his teeth, he leaped up over a hole in the wall and out onto the balcony. A ragged line of riflemen lined the porch, hiding behind splintered fragments of furniture, barrels dragged up from the basement, piles of marble wrestled loose from the shattered, smoldering building. Crawling down the length of the porch, he scurried into the north wing, which was choked with a thick blinding smoke. A section of the wall opposite him was down, flames licking up hungrily.

  "They've piled up carts of straw along the wall," a company commander shouted. "We can't see a damn thing."

  "Marcus?"

  "Next room."

  Vincent ran through the doorway.

  "Marcus!"

  "Over here."

  Crawling low to see through the smoke, Vincent reached the shattered wal
l where Marcus was crouched down, loading a musket for a Suzdalian private next to him.

  "We're making quite a team," Marcus said, looking over at the soldier.

  The private looked back at Vincent and nodded. "Don't know what the hell he's saying, sir, but he can load 'em as fast as I can shoot 'em."

  The private turned back, looking for a target.

  "How are we?" Marcus asked.

  "Not good. They've gained the outer wall downstairs and the rooms facing it."

  "Well, you never expected to hold them forever. If they rush that courtyard we'll slaughter them."

  "But those damn guns are smashing us to pieces. The fire's hitting the east side of the palace now. By the way, you can bid your library a fond farewell."

  "Damn them," Marcus sighed. "I'll miss my Xenophon. It was my only copy."

  "You had Xenophon's works?"

  "Came from the old world, an original copy sealed in a bronze box. A priceless heirloom. Well, that's the price of war, I guess," Marcus said sadly.

  "God damn it all to hell," Vincent cried, feeling almost as much anger over the priceless work as he did over all the losses of the bitter fight that was now over a day and a half old. He was amazed at the punishment the palace could take. It was a fortress in its own right. Without it his tattered band would have been overrun long ago.

  "So much for the slaves," Marcus said sarcastically. "I haven't seen a one."

  "Well, you certainly didn't give them any time to do anything about it," Vincent said. "The Cartha were already in the city."

  "Did Julius and the others get out?"

  "During the night he slipped out the back entry under the cover of the smoke. He promised to see what he could do. A lot of them volunteered to stay, though, and I put them to work."

  "Surprising," Marcus said evenly. "A slave's loyalty is a strange thing."

  "Free men and women," Vincent replied sharply.

  Marcus looked over at him and smiled. "Well, it looks like your desire to free everybody will get you killed today."

  A desperate shout rose up from the plaza. The sniper next to Marcus rose up, aiming. As he squeezed the trigger the man flipped over backward, a spray of canister slicing the air. Horrified, Vincent looked at what was left of the man's head, even as his body kicked and thrashed on the floor, as if not willing to admit that it was already dead.