A Band of Brothers Page 3

  “Even slaves reach a breaking point, Ha’ark.”

  “When they do, feed them into the boiling pots. If it costs the life of a cattle for each bullet delivered, we still win. One less human to worry about once the war is over and one more dead on the other side as well.”

  “You still need engines, locomotives,” Jurak continued. “The few we have are already wearing out.”

  He nodded, not replying. The Chin were master craftsmen, but even they could not assemble the machines fast enough. He had wanted fifty locomotives. There were only twenty up here now, and five of those were all but worn out. Replacements could not be had for weeks.

  “I wish this would end,” Jurak sighed. “I’m sick to death of the slaughter.”

  Ha’ark looked at his old companion closely. Something was breaking inside of him. That was why he had been relieved of command after the escape of Keane back in the fall. If only Jurak had pushed harder; one more umen ten miles closer up and the trap would have been complete. The fact that Keane had outmaneuvered him and that the attack had diverted his attention just long enough for the breakthrough to be achieved on another front had not been forgotten, at least to Ha’ark.

  If Jurak had been anyone else he would have ordered his death. But he was educated, had a head for figures, for counting and logistics, and he could not be wasted.

  “The cattle say this is the worst winter in memory. Our warriors are from a warmer climate, Ha’ark. You must consider that. We’re losing more now to frostbite and lung infections than we are to combat.”

  “And so are the cattle,” Ha’ark snarled. “No more complaints from you, dammit!”

  “I am doing my job,” Jurak replied defiantly. “I must tell you the truth of what is. The others think you are a god and are too terrified to do so.”

  “The campaign continues. I go back to the front today. I want this tangle of supplies unsnarled, and I don’t care if it costs a hundred thousand lives. Get this mess taken care of. Then I will need you back at the front. I will be in their city of Roum within the month. We have to take it now, before the spring thaw arrives. The rail lines are but temporary and will sink into the mud. We must cut them from their supplies of oil to the south of Roum—that will ground their airships. And there is the political side. If we can break Roum, I'll offer survival to them if they leave the Republic. That will isolate Suzdal, and then there are the other blows that have yet to fall.”

  Ha’ark nodded toward where the delegation awaited him. Jurak hesitated, then finally lowered his head.

  “As you wish, Ha’ark.”

  He was tempted to order Jurak to address him as “my Qar Qarth” or “my Redeemer,” but they were alone and so he would suffer the breach of etiquette.

  Another gust of wind swirled about them, and he pulled his cloak in tight, trying not to shiver.

  “Come, let us meet our allies.” And he strode through the snow. As he approached, the human lowered his head, but the other, the Merki, looked straight ahead, as if barely willing to concede that a superior approached.

  Ha’ark studied the two carefully. The human was short, stocky, barrel-chested, skin a pale olive color. He looked up at Ha’ark, eyes cautious. The other, the Merki, was thin, drawn, eyes sunken as if he was racked with fever. His left hand was missing, replaced with a silver hook. There was something about him that was troubling. It was obvious he was on the edge of madness, but there was something else as well, a suggestion that perhaps here was the fate awaiting Ha’ark if Keane were not defeated.

  Ha’ark ignored the human.

  “Tamuka of the Merki Horde, I greet you,” Ha’ark announced.

  “Qar Qarth of the Merki Horde,” Tamuka corrected him, his voice barely a whisper.

  Ha’ark wanted to make a sarcastic retort. The Merki Horde was splintered, broken into three bands. The other two had wandered back westward, foraging now a thousand leagues away. Only three umens had stayed loyal to the Qar Qarth Tamuka the Usurper, who had led them to their doom at Hispania. They were a beaten rabble, scavenger raiders on the periphery of what had once been their empire and the empire of the Tugars.

  “Yes, of course, Qar QartH Tamuka,” Ha’ark finally said, realizing there was nothing to be gained by insulting him. “You should have joined us for the feast of the moons last night,” he offered.

  “I was weary from the journey, and I prefer to dine in private.”

  Ha’ark said nothing. He had already heard the reports from his envoys. Accustomed to cruelty, even they had been awed by the practices Tamuka engaged in with his human captives on the night of the feast. He pushed the thought away, the memory of the dying colonel still troubling him.

  Ha’ark motioned for Tamuka to join him, leaving their respective entourages behind.

  “I take it you have been properly briefed about our campaign.”

  “It is interesting to hear of,” Tamuka replied coolly. “Keane, I take it, is fighting well.”

  He said “Keane” as if it were a curse, spat out bitterly. Keane, always it was Keane, Ha’ark thought.

  “Yes.”

  “I heard how they escaped your trap. And tell me, how was it that the present I sent you, Sergeant Schuder, how did he so easily escape?” Tamuka looked over at him, a sarcastic glint in his eyes.

  “Such things happen.”

  “I should have kept him for my own entertainment. I’ve perfected such things, you know.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard. Perhaps too well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Letting them observe the funeral of Jubadi Qar Qarth with their airship before launching your offensive. It braced their will rather than terrifying them. It might have made the difference at Hispania, where they fought with desperation.” Ha’ark stared straight into Tamuka’s eyes.

  “Remember, I was not Qar Qarth after Jubadi.”

  “Oh, yes, one more had to die before you took control,” Ha’ark replied smoothly.

  Tamuka smiled.

  “And your own ascension to power—shall we discuss that, oh Redeemer?”

  Ha’ark said nothing for a moment, then finally smiled as well.

  “So why have you summoned me across two thousand leagues?” Tamuka asked, breaking the tension.

  “To coordinate our effort.”

  “Our effort?” Tamuka laughed. “Our effort. I have but three umens. Once I had forty. And you, how many is it? Sixty, though I daresay you’ve lost five or ten since your campaign started.”

  “You are on their western flank. All their efforts are focused on me. Your three umens could tie down ten, maybe twenty thousand. They have to protect that front. Remember, they are a republic, and the Rus side of it will howl if their soldiers are fighting to defend Roum while your raiders harass the border.”

  He could sense that the nuances of the political side of the struggle were beyond Tamuka, who stared at him coldly.

  “You can have Suzdal for your pleasure,” Ha’ark said. “Surely that would please you after the humiliation they gave you.”

  “Humiliation?” Tamuka growled. “You have no concept of the humiliation, as you put it. I would do it with or without you, leader of the Bantag.”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  Tamuka looked at him, eyes flashing with passion at the insult.

  “You had no focus. Their forces held you back, but I tell you now that as this winter campaign continues they will strip their border naked. I am giving you the opportunity for revenge, Tamuka. Now is your chance.”

  “And Keane?”

  “If taken, I give him to you,” Ha’ark lied. If Keane was ever taken alive, the privilege of the kill would be his alone, as prophecy demanded. “That human back there, Hamilcar of the Cartha—can he be trusted to keep this alliance?”

  Tamuka laughed darkly.

  “He has been under my hook for years,” and as he spoke, Tamuka patted the silver hook with his good hand. Ha’ark looked down at it and saw that it was stained wit
h blood and bits of flesh.

  “Now that they are in the war, we will have this Yankee Republic on three fronts, you to the west, the ocean to the south, and I to the east.”

  “And what of the sword pointed at your own underbelly, Schuder holding Tyre?”

  “He will be blockaded by Hamilcar and left to wither. Madness of them to leave three of their umens down there while the main fight will be before Roum.”

  “If they break out, though, they could cut your supplies to here.”

  Ha’ark laughed harshly. “How, three hundred miles, a winter march, limited supplies? If they come out of that city, we’ll cut them apart.”

  Tamuka smiled and said nothing.

  Another gust of wind swirled about them, carrying with it the first flakes of snow driving down out of the west. Ha’ark pulled his cloak in tighter and smiled.

  “By spring it will be over. Schuder starved down in Tyre, Roum in our hands, and you again on the banks of the Neiper before Suzdal. By spring the Republic will be dead and then together we can transform this world.”

  The sight of the Forum still filled Colonel Andrew Lawrence Keane with awe, and for a brief wonderful moment he was diverted from the concerns of a commander and was again a historian who could still be captivated by this wondrous world.

  The vast square was spread out before him. Straight ahead across the broad open plaza was the palace of Marcus Crassus. The symmetry was perfect, a dozen limestone pillars lining the front of the building. The palace had been heavily damaged when the Cartha had briefly occupied the city, and nearly all the pillars were scored by artillery, but from a distance, the damage was barely noticeable. Flanking the palace to the east was the Senate Chamber, its gilded dome catching the frigid morning light, the flag of the Republic fluttering above it. The sides of the dome were ringed with a wall of sandbags, in part to protect the precious structure, but also to provide cover for the command observation platform, since the dome was the highest point in the city.

  Temples to the gods lined the other two sides of the plaza. The fact that the Roum were pagan might have created a problem with the Orthodox Rus. On Earth, Keane remembered. Orthodoxy had a broad streak of xenophobia to it. The saving point, though, was that the Rus here were descendants from nearly a thousand years past, and their brand of Orthodoxy still carried old Slavic paganism in it as well. Long talks with Metropolitan Casmar about the need for unity had defused a potential crisis, with Casmar declaring that the Roum gods were simply saints with other names. As for the Roum, they in turn had displayed the easygoing pragmatism of their ancestors regarding religion; they had simply incorporated Kesus and Perm into their own pantheon, and a small Rus church now shared space on the Forum plaza.

  Market stalls filled the center of the plaza, merchants selling food, trinkets, doves for sacrifice in the temples, amulets, amphorae of wine, jewelry. There were even a few fur merchants from Rus and a lone monk selling sacred relics. As Andrew walked by he saw the relics were small icon portraits of Saint Malady, the old artilleryman from the 44th New York who was now the patron saint of all engineers and had become a special favorite of the land ironclad crews. To his surprise, he also saw an icon of Chuck Ferguson, and he slowed to gaze at it.

  Merchants and customers were bundled up against the cold wind, heads lowered, and as the crowd swirled about them, few noticed the presence of Andrew, President Kal, and Dr. Weiss making their way through the press with two guards discreetly moving behind them. Everyone was intent upon stocking up; word of the extent of the disaster up at Capua was just now reaching the civilians of the city and there were the first hints of panic in the air. In spite of the warnings to stay within the city a steady stream of refugees had been heading north, hoping to find refuge in the woods beyond Hispania. The food stalls in the forum were swamped, but few were buying, since prices on such staples as hard bread, salted pork, and dried fruit had more than doubled within the last week.

  More would buy, he thought, when it was announced later today that official rationing for all civilians within the city would be imposed starting tomorrow. Food had been brought up over the last month from the reserves stored in Suzdal, but the official rations of a pound of hard bread, ten ounces of salted meat, and two ounces of dried fruit a day were barely enough to keep people alive. Fuel was just as much a concern for Andrew. If the city of Roum became the battlefront, wood, charcoal, and coal would run out, except for the hospitals and nurseries, within two to three weeks.

  He thought again of Chuck. One of the by-products of the development of coal mining had been coal-cracking kilns in the new city expanding beyond the walls of Suzdal, which converted the black stone to pure coke for the foundries. Chuck had designed piping to feed from the plants into the factories and a small number of homes to provide lighting from the gas by-product. He had talked about developing it for all the cities of the Republic once the war ended, and work had already started for a gas plant in Roum. Well, that peaceful dream, like all the peaceful dreams of progress, was on hold indefinitely.

  Chuck, God how we miss you and need you, Andrew thought sadly. The inventor’s death from consumption had shattered a confidence that no matter what the Bantag created, humans could trump it with something better. We’re on an equal track now, Andrew realized, and the certainty of technological superiority is gone forever.

  As he continued across the plaza, greatcoat collar pulled up over his neck to block out the bitter cold, he enjoyed the few minutes of distraction, trying to forget the knot in his stomach over the meeting he was about to face.

  He had never been to Rome on Earth. That had always been a dream, to walk the Forum, to stand atop the Capitoline Hill, to walk beneath the Trajan Arch and gaze upon two thousand years of history. Yet here it was, still alive, not a half-exhumed relic of the past. The Arch of Hispania, recently dedicated, was straight ahead, and he slowed in his walk to look up at it. Columns of troops carved in bas-relief marched, struggled, and died on the pillars, with piles of Merki dead at the bases. Atop the column, a rocket battery’s salvos arched across the top of the arch, the flame of the rockets carved in stone providing pedestals for the statues of Andrew, O’Donald, Hawthorne, and Marcus in the center. That bit of vanity Andrew smiled at. It was important, of course, to promote local heroes whenever possible. He wondered if historians two thousand years from now would gaze upon the arch in wonder. A darker thought troubled him: would the arch be nothing but ruins, the memory of the Republic dead and buried beneath the hooves of the Horde?

  Andrew looked over at Kal, president of the Republic, who was walking beside him. His features were drawn, somber. His beard, which had once been jet-black, was going increasingly to gray. Under his stovepipe hat the hair was thinning, not even gray any longer but white around the temples. His once chubby features had drawn out, thinned, and a deep lacing of wrinkles etched his face. There was a time when Kal’s adoption of Lincoln’s dress and beard had a certain comic opera quality to it, but now it seemed almost tragically real.

  Lincoln. Was President Lincoln still alive? Andrew wondered. The thought had often come to him. More than ten years now since he had come to this world. The war home had been winding down and Lincoln had been approaching his fifty-sixth year, on the day the 35th Maine left forever. It would be pleasant to think of him home in Springfield, retired, maybe still practicing law. Something in Andrew’s heart, though, told him that might not be true. Of late, there was a dark foreboding that his hero might be gone. Must be 1876 back home.

  The centennial of the Republic, hopefully reunited. Our Republic, less than one-tenth that age—will it ever endure to such a length of time?

  A cold gust of wind swept across the Forum, snow swirling up on the breeze, sticking to Andrew’s glasses, clouding his sight.

  “Give them to me.”

  Andrew looked over and saw Dr. Emil Weiss by his other side, hand extended.

  Both Andrew and Kal chuckled, taking their glasses off. A one-armed man
learned to compensate for many things, but the cleaning of glasses was a difficult task. For Andrew it was the left arm at Gettysburg, for Kal the right at the First Battle of Suzdal. Their common joke was that they could shop together for gloves, and the previous winter they had actually engaged in such a foray. Andrew noticed Kal was still wearing his gloves: Andrew had lost his own the week before up at the front.

  Turning their backs to the wind, both handed their glasses to the doctor, who pulled out a handkerchief and wiped them clean, then handed them back. Approaching the steps of Marcus’s palace they passed through the honor guard, a company of infantry of the 1st Roum. The guard snapped smartly to attention, presenting rifles. Atop the steps, Marcus awaited them, dressed in his strange mixture of the ancient and modem: crested helmet of a consul and golden breastplate, combined with the sky-blue trousers of infantry and black leather belt with eagle plate of the Republic.

  As Kal wearily climbed the stairs, Marcus made a show of saluting, then extending his hand. Andrew looked back over his shoulder and saw that the crowd in the Forum had stilled to watch the brief ritual. Marcus had obviously made a point of welcoming Kal on the steps and saluting where everyone could see. Stepping into the foyer, Andrew was grateful when the bronze door behind them closed, blocking out the wind, though the skylight above them was open to the sky. In the large room to one side of the foyer the warmth of the small stove set into one wall was a blessed relief, even though his glasses immediately steamed over.

  The rest of their staffs were already there, crowded around the table. Present were Pat O’Donald, commander of the Army of the East, thigh-high riding boots still splattered with mud, and Vincent Hawthorne, pale and wasted from the long recovery from his near fatal wound, cane leaning against the wall behind him, and the commanders of the corps at the fronts, all except Schneid of the 1st, who was in nominal command of the front while the others gathered here in Roum. Noticeably absent was Hans Schuder, who was holding the city of Tyre three hundred miles down the eastern coast of the Inland Sea, with three corps of infantry.