Terrible Swift Sword Read online

  He could remember the sound of their voices, the songs drifting down the marching columns, the laughter floating with the evening air, the triumphant shout as they rushed to victory, the paeans rising to the heavens, the rattle of drums in the distance, the haunting call of the bugle hovering over all when night finally came. Where were they now? Where are we?

  He looked up as he so often did, always thinking that they were somewhere out there, beyond the Great Wheel, obscured now by the driving storm. Was the old country safe? he wondered. Lincoln would be finishing up his term, and the memory of his old hero brought a sad smile. His second term would be ending soon, hopefully over a United States that was whole.

  "The old country," that was how he thought of it now, the same way Hans spoke of Prussia, Pat of Ireland, Emil of Hungary. Yet this was different. He had transplanted something of America here—"the United States of Rus," they called it now. They were molding it into a memory of home. At least in the woods beyond Suzdal it did in a way feel like home, like Maine, especially in the winter when the vast forests were still and draped in a crystalline white mantle. He could let it all drop aside, at least in those rare moments when he would ride north into the woods to be alone. It was so much like the land he'd grown up on—the boulder-strewn woods, the towering pines, the sharpness of the icy wind.

  God, how I miss Maine, he thought sadly. There was a time when he'd been nothing more than a professor of history at Bowdoin, in the quiet, tranquil backwaters of life, giving his lectures, reading in the library, walking the rocky beaches, and yet always dreaming of something beyond. That, he knew, was the lure of being a historian, the dreaming of what had been and the imagining that somehow, someday, one could play such a part. And when the bit part in the vast drama of the war had been offered he'd rushed to it, never realizing all that he'd be leaving behind. Winning his dream, he had lost a dream.

  Of course, I never could have imagined this, he thought with a sad smile: the last trip aboard the Oqunquit, the awakening in this nightmare world. Funny, now he found himself dreaming that somehow it could all come back, that he might awake as if from a dream. But then, he reflected, I would lose everything—Kathleen, the baby, Emil, Pat, Hans, Kal, and the strange pulse of power that this world has given me—as if I alone were shaping the destiny of an entire people. But at least there, before I left, I knew what peace was.

  Peace. He mulled over the word, letting it drift through his mind. Over two years of war against the rebs, and nearly twice that here. It was leaving its mark: Though he was just barely forty, his hair was flecked with gray, his face lined and creased. He thought of himself as he was, the day before Antie-tam, and he seemed now to have been a child then, before the "seeing of the elephant," as the veterans called a recruit's first battle. Could he ever have been so young?

  Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, he silently clicked off the names, Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the Peasant Rebellion, the First Tugar War, the Roum campaign, the naval battles before Suzdal, the incessant skirmishing of the winter campaign in the Shenandoah Hills, and now the next one, whatever its name would be—and in his gut he knew it was coming.

  He turned his back to the rain and looked southward toward the vast open steppe, but there was hardly anything to be seen in the storm-swirled mists of early dawn. But he knew what it looked like, the vast open spaces that he found vaguely disturbing.

  Was it because of the land, the endless, low, rolling hills that seemed to go on forever, so alien to one from New England? Or was it because of the threat that he knew waited out there, coiling up in its power, waiting for the weather to break and for the first grass of spring before it struck?

  He knew they were coming, that was as undeniable as the rising of the bloodred sun. The intelligence that the bitter and near mad Hamilcar had returned with, from his raids down to Cartha, in a desperate bid to save at least some of his people, bore that out. The refugees coming back with him had told of the incessant preparations, the foundries turning out cannon and yet more cannon. Vast sheds were going up just on the other side of the Shenandoah Hills to house the flying machines. The Horde had wintered through at Cartha, nearly three quarter of a million of their people going into the pits as the Horde marshaled its strength, the umens maneuvering through the winter, practicing with their new weapons, freed from fighting against the Bantag, who even now were reported to be moving farther east.

  The refugees also told of the feasting, of the hundreds of thousands who had been led to the slaughter pits. The age-old saying that "but two in ten would die for the tables of their masters" had long since lost any meaning, as if the Merki planned to devour all humans in their path.

  They were coming, he realized, and this time it would be a fight to the death for one or the other, it would be a war of annihilation.

  "You know, if Emil saw you out here like this, he'd die of apoplexy."

  Andrew turned back into the driving rain and saw Hans Schuder standing behind him, a look of reproach in his eyes.

  Andrew said nothing and turned away.

  "How's the fever?" Hans asked, coming up to stand beside him.

  "All right."

  The mention of it made him realize just how sick he still felt. Despite Doctor Weiss's drive for sanitation, which had nearly eradicated the disease in Suzdal, typhoid was still a fact of life in army camps. He fought to suppress a shiver.

  "Son, why don't you get back into your quarters where you belong? The train will be pulling in shortly, and you should be resting."

  Andrew smiled sadly and looked over at his old mentor. Hans Schuder's dark eyes looked up at him through a face riven with deep-set lines, wreathed in a beard that had gone over to a bushy gray. Hans shifted uneasily, favoring the right leg a bit, the reminder of a rebel sniper before Cold Harbor. They both bore the souvenir of their profession, and for a brief moment he felt as if he could almost flex the fingers of his left hand. "The ghost limb," the old soldiers called it. Even though the arm was gone just above the elbow, there were times when it felt as if it was still there. He would absently reach out to touch the empty sleeve, half expecting that the long-lost limb, buried at Gettysburg, had somehow returned from the dust of another world.

  He felt the compulsion but pushed it aside, little realizing that all those around him knew that when he was lost in thought his right hand would drift over to hold the rounded stump.

  He looked back to Hans and smiled weakly.

  Though Hans was commander of the Suzdalian army, like him the sergeant major still wore the insignia of his old rank on the threadbare blue jacket, hidden now under a cracked and aging poncho. Hans had been with him since the beginning, shepherding him along, teaching him the business of command and killing, and then stepping back to see the man he had created forge a new nation and offer a hope of liberation from the suzerainty of the hordes.

  I just needed some air, Hans," he finally said, breaking the silence. "I'll get back inside in a couple of minutes."

  Hans sniffed the wind, like an old dog trying to pick up a scent.

  Hacking around to southwest, it'll be rain soon, most likely warm up a lot by the end of the day."

  "The last snow of the season, I expect," Andrew replied absently.

  The storm had come on hard the afternoon before, catching everyone by surprise, burying the first pale green hints of spring and blanketing the world with a thick swirl of heavy wet snow. He wished it had gone on forever, covering everything in a blanket so deep that neither man nor horse could move. Every extra day gave them just that much more time to prepare. But it was already what he would have considered to be mid-April back in Maine. This storm would most likely be the last of it. Within the month the steppe would be knee-deep in grass. It was most likely green already on the other side of the Shenandoah Hills fifty miles to the south, which was the forward picket line, beyond which was the realm of the Merki.

  The ice on the Potomac had broken two weeks ago. He could hear the riv
er rushing by, thick and heavy with the muddy runoff of spring. A hundred yards down the slope the water was lapping at the edge of the forward rifle pits, rushing over the rocky bottom of the ford. He could imagine the position— heavens knows, he had spent enough months looking at it. This was the first ford, forty miles up from the sea, the river running broad and deep from he down to the sea.

  Yet all that line had to be held as well, thou thinly manned at the moment. The river was full shoals, which made the maneuvering of ironcla impossible except at the mouth. Leave it empty and they could get across—there were reports they had built hundreds of lightweight boats which could used for pontoon bridges. Forty miles of trench and bastions had to be constructed along that sector straight down to the sea.

  To his right, for another sixty-five miles up in the forest, there were a dozen more fords, each faced with heavy fortifications, in places three lines deep. By midsummer, though, the situation wou change, unless it poured every day, something th he had prayed for nearly every night. When the river dropped, becoming a muddy stream duri the dry summer, the entire line nearly down to t sea could be crossed. But by then there would three more corps ready for action, while at the same time the Horde would be forced to disperse across a wide area to feed their mounts when the summer grasses thinned out.

  We'll still have the rails and they won't, thought, as if seeking an inner reassurance; the rails are our only hope in this. He could draw the line his mind, going out of Suzdal, up to the Neiper Ford, down the west shore of the river and leavil the woods after thirty miles at Wilderness Stati< and coming straight down to here. The line th forked, running parallel to the river down to t sea, and in the opposite direction running northw along the river up to Bastion 110 set nearly ten mi back into the woods. At Bastion 100 another rail line ran straight back east along the edge of the woods for ten miles, and then turned up the broad trail, the path used by the Tugars all the way to the Neiper Ford. It was a vast circle of rail, over three hundred miles of it, hastily laid down during the fall and winter. A strategic gamble that had consumed over fifteen thousand tons of light ten-pound-to-the-foot rails.

  And straight ahead were the Shenandoah Hills.

  O Shenandoah, I long to see you.

  Longingly.

  The snow was most likely even heavier back home, back in Suzdal. He could imagine her by the fire, nursing Maddie—Madison—Madison Bridget O'Reilly Keane, a long name for fifteen pounds of squalling humanity, and the thought of it filled him with a cold aching pain. All he wanted was to lie down by the stove in the parlor, to take an entire day of nothingness, other than his daughter, Kathleen, and quiet solitude.

  He started to shiver.

  "Son, let's get back inside; the train will be coming in shortly."

  Andrew looked over at Hans. He had gone for some time without calling him "son." It was funny, but it felt almost strange now. Hans was still the mentor, the father figure from the beginning. With linns by his side he had carried the crushing responsibility of running first a regiment, and then an entire war effort. He felt far distant from the young professor of history who had gone, wide-eyed like a boy, to see a war. It was now nearly impossible to define himself as someone's son.

  Hans smiled sadly.

  "You know, I never had a son of my own. Married to the army too long, I guess."

  Andrew nodded, saying nothing.

  "I'm getting old, Andrew."

  "We all are."

  "No, it's beyond that. I'm not talking about the rheumatism, the eyes that don't see quite as sharply, the game leg. It's just that I'm tired. Now I know what they mean by 'old soldier.' "

  He hesitated for a moment, looking off into the swirling mist.

  "I've got a bad feeling about this one, son," he whispered.

  Hans looked up at Andrew, as if startled by his own admission.

  "It's just that no matter how hard we try, they keep coming at us. Each time they're stronger smarter—it's like it will never end."

  Andrew felt an inner shiver, beyond the cold beyond the weakness of the typhoid. Hans had been the rock upon which he had built his own strength as a leader. And now the rock was shifting away.

  Hans fell silent, as if embarrassed.

  "Go on," Andrew said quietly, "I need to hear this."

  "I haven't said a word for months, but I feel the need now, before the others come up for this final conference. You know I didn't care for this Potomac line idea."

  "I'm sorry we disagreed," Andrew replied.

  The debate had been bitter at times, when they had started planning for this war more than a year ago. The first goal was to build the rail line to Roum—in that they had been in full agreement. Without the link to Roum there was no chance they could stand against the Hordes. But Hans wanted to try to hold onto the Neiper, even though the terrain north of the first ford was a nightmare for the building of a rail line to provide support. They had spent endless nights, pouring over the rough maps their survey teams had worked up. There was no fallback if the Neiper failed, he had argued. The Potomac front is on the steppe, terrain for their cavalry, Hans had replied, a front of a hundred miles far to long for them to hold with strength. In the end he'd had to order it. Hans had cursed soundly, but then saluted and thrown himself into the task. This was the first time in months that the debate had cropped up again.

  "We can't afford to lose even a single battle, while even if they lose the entire war they'll still be back for more," Hans finally replied, saying each word slowly, as if they carried an actual weight and form.

  "We defeated the Tugars, and it damn near destroyed us. Then they send the Cartha and we win it by a hair's breadth. Now we face them again. How many did that Yuri say, forty umens? Four hundred thousand warriors armed, with over four hundred field pieces and maybe twenty thousand muskets. They're capable of flying, while we've yet to get a single powered ship off the ground.

  "The first time it was against bows and lances and they damn near took us, the second time against ironclads, and now, with nearly three times the strength of the Tugars, artillery like ours, and those damn flying machines."

  He shook his head and fell silent.

  The flying machines. At least they wouldn't be up today. At last count there were over twenty of the things. One had been brought down, or rather something had caused its engine to stop. The machine had drifted far out into the steppe between Suzdal and Roum, and finally had crashed when the cigar-shaped bag of hydrogen that supported the engine and the engineers' compartment burst into flames. What they had been able to sift out of the wreckage was the most troubling revelation of the winter.

  The first people to approach the scorched machine had fallen sick within hours and died within days. It was fortunate, Andrew realized, that Ferguson, the engineering genius who had done so much to save all of them, had not been nearby. He would have crawled over the wreckage to learn the mystery of their engine, which apparently could fly for days without fuel. Before he got there Emil had passed up a firm order to keep him back, and to have the machine buried. Half a dozen more had died in carrying out that order.

  Just how they had obtained the mysterious engine was an enigma. It was obviously far in advance of anything they had managed to create. During the winter, when Ferguson and several others had come to his home for an evening visit, they had agreed that any topic related to the forthcoming war was forbidden for the night. It had been an evening of pleasant diversion, of speculation about the world and how it had come about. Ferguson had gone so far as to suggest that perhaps the tunnel of light was a machine, drawing a comparison to electricity traveling through telegraph wires. If his speculation was true, then who had built it?

  If such things were hidden on this world, what else might the Merki have access to?

  "Ferguson will get us in the air," Andrew said quietly.

  "Whistling in the wind will work for the others," Hans replied, a note of irritation in his voice, "but I don't need the reassurance." />
  Andrew leaned against the side of the parapet, Hans joining him. Meditatively, he chewed slowly on a precious piece of tobacco and spat over the side.

  "Just how the hell are we going to get out of this one?" Hans whispered, as if to himself.

  "The flying machines?" Andrew said, realizing that this was but one small part of the issue. "Fergusonis working on this caloric engine idea; we'll be in the air within the month."

  "I mean everything."

  Andrew felt shaken. Hans had always been the one source of strength, the quiet reassurance standing in the background. Like the best of all possible mentors he had first taught and then at least stepped aside, though he was always there when you really needed him, if for nothing more than an approving nod.

  Damn him, Andrew thought quietly, I need him now, and instead he needs me.

  "We'll fight them here on the Potomac line. We've got the beginning of a line back at Wilderness Station, and then if need be on the Neiper River itself."

  "They outnumber us at least six-to-one, Andrew, and they have the mobility of the horse. All of them are mounted, something we don't have."

  "You heard John Mina's assessment," Andrew replied. "That's four hundred thousand horses that have to be fed, at least sixteen million pounds of grass a day. Their forage problem will be a nightmare. Damn them, if they had any sense they would have hit this winter, coming in on foot if need be, but at least in that they're predictable. The Horde lives by the horse."

  "When they hit, it will be a hurricane," Hans said quietly. "Now I know how the rebs felt. No matter how many of us they killed, we kept on coming. We were one of the worst-led armies in history— McClellan, Burnside, Hooker—and yet we kept on coming."