Julian Comstock: A Story of 22-nd Century America

1

I will not exhaust the reader by narrating every incident that attended on our dispatch to Labrador , prior to the triumphant and tragic events surrounding the Thanksgiving season of 2174.

Our departure, that is, and not just Julian’s; because the recalled-to-battle order proclaimed by Deklan Conqueror also included Sam Godwin and myself.

In short I was compelled to leave my wife of a few months, and my brief career as a New York City writer, and to sail off to Labrador as part of the staff of Major General Julian Comstock—and not to one of the pleasanter sections of Labrador, such as the Saguenay River, but to an even more inhospitable and unwelcoming region of that disputed State, on a mission the true purpose of which was to turn Julian from an awkward potential heir into a silent and untroublesome martyr.

In mid-October we left New York Harbor on a Navy clipper and sailed north. This was a weathery time of year in the Atlantic, and we survived a ferocious storm in which our vessel was tossed about like a flea on the rump of an irritable stallion, before we rendezvoused with a fleet of ships under Admiral Fairfield off the port of Belle Isle (now in American hands).

The Union Navy is not as powerful a political entity as the nation’s two great Armies, to which it is attached as a nautical wing; but just lately it had harassed the Mitteleuropans more effectively than had our land-based forces. Deklan Comstock, in one of his few genuinely useful strategic initiatives, had declared a comprehensive blockade of European shipping in the waters off Newfoundland and Labrador. This had been attempted before, with disappointing results. But today’s Navy was larger that it used to be, and better equipped to conduct such an ambitious project.

I was aboard the flag-ship of the armada, the Basilisk, during the famous Battle of Hamilton Inlet. The Dutch had been aware of our movements, for an enormous battle-fleet is a difficult thing to disguise; but they had mistakenly assumed that we meant to attack them near Voisey Bay, from which they export the nickel, copper, and cobalt ores that are mined so abundantly in Labrador. (The many small islands and waterways in that region make Voisey Bay a haven for blockade runners even when it’s under heavy surveillance.) But we had been given a bolder objective than that. We put in for Hamilton Inlet instead; and while the Dutch were hunting us farther north our guns silenced their fortress at the Narrows, and we quickly reduced their artillery emplacements at Rigolet and Eskimo Island. Because the Dutch defenses weren’t braced for us, we suffered relatively minor casualties. Of the twenty gunships in our flotilla only one, the Griffin , was altogether lost. Five others suffered damage the ship’s carpenters were able to repair; and our ship was altogether untouched, even though we had been in the vanguard of the battle.

A detachment of the First Northern Division was sent ashore to occupy and restore the captured forts. It was a grand day (and sunny, though chill) when we saw the Sixty Stars and Thirteen Stripes rise above the Narrows, signifying our command of all shipping through that mile-wide bottleneck.

Ahead of us lay the immense body of water called Lake Melville , which was fed by the Naskaupi and Churchill River watersheds. To the south rose the gray, blunt-toothed Mealy Mountains—a daunting sight when not obscured by cloud. Invisibly distant were our true objectives: the Dutch-held towns of Shesh and Striver, and the all-important railhead at Goose Bay.

Julian and Sam were occupied during much of this time with military planning and consultations with Admiral Fairfield. But on this particular afternoon Julian came up to where I was “planking the deck” and joined me. [I had made it a point to befriend some of the sailors, and I picked up a little of their “salt slang,” which I thought would lend verisimilitude to the novels I planned to write.]

It was the antique explorer Jacques Cartier, Julian said, who had called Labrador “the land God gave to Cain.” [“And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, to dwell in the Land of Nod , in the eastern part of Eden.” Genesis 4:16—it doesn’t mention anything about Lake Melville or Goose Bay.]

“Though it was colder then, of course,” he added. “It’s not as barren as all that nowadays—though I would dislike to be a farmer here.”

“No wonder Cain was so sullen,” I said, pulling my duffle coat more snugly around me, for the wind was harsh and cutting, and the sailors on watch had hunkered down among the rope coils where they could swear freely and smoke pipes. In fact the land was not literally barren: it produced rich crops of black spruce and white birch, balsam fir and trembling aspen; and in the chilly shadows of those trees lived caribou, and such hardy creatures as that. Waterfowl were plentiful, I had heard, in the warmer months. But Labrador’s forests were bleak, and the land in general was not a welcoming place for the Race of Man. “At least we’ve cut back the Dutch, and lived to tell about it,” I said.

The three of us—Sam, Julian, and I—understood that this expedition wasn’t meant to be survived, at least not by Major General Comstock. But Julian argued that any campaign, even the most apparently hopeless, might turn on a small contingency and produce unexpected results. Usually this observation worked to buoy my spirits. But today, despite our recent naval victory, a little of November had crept into my soul. I was a long way from home, and apprehensive.

If I expected Julian to repeat his reassurances, on this occasion he did not. “The worst is ahead of us,” he admitted. “Admiral Fairfield has orders to land the infantry at Striver for an attack on Goose Bay—and Goose Bay won’t be easy pickings. They’ll know we’re coming—their telegraphs must already be chattering.”

I looked out across the windy gray waters abaft of us. “It’s not myself I’m afraid for so much as Calyxa. She’s alone in New York City , she’s already earned the enmity of Deacon Hollingshead, and for all I know she may have offended other authorities in the meantime.”

“She has my mother to defend her,” Julian said.

“I thank your mother, but I wish I could do the job myself.”

“You’ll be back at Calyxa’s side soon enough, if I have anything to do with it.”

Deklan Conqueror had banked on Julian’s youth and lack of experience to make him an easy target for the Dutch. But the President had almost certainly underestimated his nephew. Julian was young, and many of the troops he commanded had initially balked at taking orders from a yellow-bearded boy. But Julian had covertly arranged for copies of my pamphlet to circulate among the literate soldiers, who read it aloud or summarized its contents for the non-readers, and his reputation had grown accordingly. Nor was Julian as ignorant as Deklan Comstock might have hoped. Under Sam’s tutelage he had long studied war in the abstract, and during the Saguenay Campaign he had been able to compare theory with practice. “Perhaps we’ll return to Manhattan in triumph,” I said.

“Yes, and force my uncle to find a more prosaic way of killing me.”

“We’ll outlast old Deklan Conqueror,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Sam believes we will.”

“I hope he’s right. In the meantime, Adam, look at you, you’re shivering—shouldn’t you be in your cabin recording the heroism of the hour?”

My cabin was close enough to the bilge that fresh air was often desirable, no matter how cold it might be. But Julian was right. I had agreed to keep a narrative of events for publication in the Spark.

The Fall of Eskimo Island would make an exciting episode, with little need for dramatic exaggeration. “I will,” I said. I had already produced many thousands of words. I hoped they would be in some sense useful. But none of them would float the Basilisk if she were holed below the waterline, or deflect for a moment the enemy’s missiles.

I left Julian on deck. He continued to stand at the taffrail, gazing back toward the Narrows as if lost in his thoughts. His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his Major General’s hat, and his blue and yellow jacket flapped in the chill wind off the Mealy Mountains.

Once the Narrows had been secured we sailed for Striver, a town on the north shore of Lake Melville.

We found a handful of Dutch warships anchored there. They were formidable craft, heavily armored and heavily armed; but we came hard at them in the first light of dawn, and before their anchors were well up we had already sheered their masts with cannonfire and put a few dents in their armored flanks.

The Basilisk took heavy fire that day. I sheltered with the infantrymen belowdecks, while the sailors fought above; and I was present when a solid shot struck us amidships. Such a projectile could not penetrate the plating that protected the Basilisk’s engine room and boilers, but it could and did pierce the wooden hull just where we sat. I wasn’t injured in the explosion, but huge splinters speared several men who were situated near the bulkhead, and a freshly-drafted Kentucky lease-boy suffered a crushed skull, which spilled his brains out on the deck, and was fatal.

After that I could hear nothing but the sound of the artillery battle and the screaming of the wounded. The Basilisk fired one cannonade after another, both shot and shell, from its big guns. At one point I risked a look through the newly-created “window” in the side of the ship, but I could see nothing save the hull of a Dutch vessel very close by—and I ducked back hastily when the business end of a Dutch cannon, still smoking, hove into view. Several times our vessel shook in the water like a palsied dog, until I was certain we must have lost our engines; and I fully expected the deadly waters of Lake Melville to rush over us in an icy flood at any moment.

But that was only the stink of the blood and the gunpowder making me giddy. Eventually the battle ended. Then Julian himself came down to the hold where the infantrymen were huddled, to tell us that we had conquered the enemy and taken control of the harbor.

I went up with him to survey the results.

Smoke still hovered over the lake, for there was no wind to dispel it. The sky was overcast. One of the Basilisk’s masts was down, and a gang of sailors was busy casting the remnants of it overboard. The damage we had sustained was not critical, but other ships in our small armada had been more severely hurt. The Christabel was burning steadily, and the Beatrice rode perilously low in the water.

The Dutch had had the worst of it, however. Of the eight ships defending the town of Striver fully six had sunk, with only fractions of them showing where their hulls rested on the stony lake-bottom. The two still afloat were mastless and gouting black smoke. We sent out boats to pick up survivors.

Basilisk and her sister vessels had also placed a few strategic shots among the buildings and warehouses at the foot the town’s main thoroughfare, an action that caused white flags to be sent up where the defiant Mitteleuropan banner had lately flown, signifying a wholesale surrender. “We’ve reclaimed a little piece of America , Adam,” Julian said. “The homeland is enlarged by a few square miles.”

“I don’t know how you can be cynical, after winning such a battle.”

“I’m not cynical. The victory was tremendous, but it’s Admiral Fairfield’s, not mine. I’ve done nothing useful on this expedition except drill my men on the quarterdeck. But that’s about to change. This is where we land the infantry.”

He explained that all the footsoldiers in our flotilla would go ashore this day. Two entire divisions would soon follow, if the troop-ships were on schedule and our garrisons continued to hold the Narrows. When the army was landed and assembled Julian would lead it to Goose Bay by road, while the Admiral and his flotilla shelled that town from a distance and kept the Dutch defenders busy.

I promised I wouldn’t get in his way, if I could help it.

“You’re not in my way. Don’t you know you’re one of my most trusted advisors?”

“I don’t recall giving any advice , as such.”

“It’s not your advice I value so much as your sensibility.”

“You give me too much credit.”

“And you’re my friend. That’s a scarce commodity in the circles we’ve moved in lately.”

“My friendship at least you can rely on. And my Pittsburgh rifle, when it comes to fighting on solid ground.”

“It’ll come to fighting soon enough,” said Julian, turning his face away as from an ugly truth.

More than two thousand additional infantrymen were landed at Striver over the next several days, ferried in from bases in Newfoundland under the Admiral’s protection. All the Dutch soldiers in Striver were taken captive, and sent back in the emptied troop-ships to the War-Prisoner encampments on the Gaspé Peninsula. Harmless citizens of Striver were advised to stay indoors, if possible, and a strict curfew was imposed. On our part, discipline was stern enough to prevent the sort of large-scale theft, rape, pillage, and arson that local citizens invariably find distressing. We didn’t lack for provisions, since the rail line had been recently extended from Goose Bay , with Striver acting as an alternative off-loading point for European goods bound for the interior of Labrador. The Stadhouders like their luxuries: dockside warehouses yielded slabs of smoked fish, barrels of uninfested wheat flour, huge wheels of odorous cheese, and similar interesting items.

I walked with Julian among the newly-arrived troops a few days after we landed. I had been assigned the rank of Colonel for the duration of my re-enlistment, mainly to justify my presence on Julian’s immediate staff; and I was just another faceless officer to most of these men, though several of them had read my Adventures of Captain Commongold and might have recognized my name had I announced it. Julian himself, of course, was famously recognizable by his rank, his youth, his yellow beard, and his immaculate uniform. Men saluted him or attempted to shake his hand as we walked down a rank of bunks that had been installed in an empty stable. Daylight came through a gap in the roof made by an artillery shell, and Julian stood in that shaft of cold illumination like a saint in a painting. He had mastered the art not only of appearing confident but of generating confidence, as if courage were heat and Julian was a hard-coal stove. It made his men better and more loyal soldiers, because they had come to believe in him as a military prodigy. I expect they would have tugged his beard for luck if that impertinence had been allowed.

I looked about the sea of faces surrounding him, hoping to catch sight of someone from our old Montreal regiment. Lymon Pugh would have been a welcome presence, but I didn’t see him. The only face I did recognize was, perhaps unfortunately, that of the larcenous Private Langers, who had not advanced in rank since our last meeting. When I approached him he turned his cadaverously thin body away and tried to escape; but the crowd was too thick for that maneuver to succeed.

“Private Langers!” I called out.

He stopped short and turned back. At first he was intimidated by my new rank and station, and tried to pretend I had mistaken him for someone else; but he relented at last and said, “Is that Sam Samson around somewhere? I hope not. You were always decent to me, Adam Hazzard, but that old man had me pummeled for being a crook—he seems to have no faith in me at all.”

“His name is Godwin now, not Samson, and he’s on Julian’s staff; but I doubt you have anything to fear from either one of them. Neither Sam nor Julian are disposed to hold grudges. I expect you’ll do fine, if you keep quiet and don’t shirk from battle. In any case you seem to be in excellent health.” Though his nose sat a little more crookedly than I remembered it. “Are you still selling battlefield trinkets?”

He blushed at the question and said, “None to sell right at the moment… don’t mean to rule anything out, of course…”

“I hope you don’t continue to rob the dead and swindle the living!”

“I’m a reformed man,” Private Langers said. “Not that I’m averse to a dollar here and there, honestly extracted.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “About being reformed, I mean. I’ll pass that on to Sam and Julian.”

“Thank you very kindly, but please don’t bother them on my behalf… I’d just as soon remain anonymous. Tell me, Adam—I mean, Colonel Hazzard—is it true what they say about this expedition?”

“Hard to say, since I don’t know who ‘they’ are, or what it is they’re supposed to be saying.”

“That we have a secret weapon to use against the Dutch—something deadly and Chinese and unexpected.”

I told him I knew nothing about it, if so; but I’m not sure he believed my disclaimers.

Later, in the command quarters we had established in upstairs chambers of the house of the former mayor of Striver, Julian was philosophical when I told him Private Langers was among us. “If Langers is a reformed man then my uncle is a Philosopher. But as long as Langers can carry a rifle he’s as good as the next soldier. I’m more interested in this notion of a secret Chinese weapon.”

“Is there such a thing?” I asked hopefully.

“No. Of course there isn’t. But it might be useful to morale if the army believes there is. Don’t spread that particular rumor, Adam… but don’t discourage it, if you hear it.”

The next day I walked through camp once more. I found Private Langers and a number of other infantrymen gambling at dice in an alley behind a looted tavern. They didn’t notice me, and I didn’t disturb them. Perhaps it didn’t matter if they wasted their money, I reasoned. They might be dead before much longer, and wouldn’t be able to collect their back pay, much less spend it sensibly.

Of course gambling is a sin as well as a vice. But they could make their own reckoning with Heaven. If a man arrived at the Last Judgment with bullet holes in him, acquired in the defense of his country, would he really be dismissed on account of a habit of dice or cards?

I didn’t think so. Julian had made at least that much of an Agnostic of me.

Next morning the troop-ships stopped arriving at Striver.

That was an ominous sign. The ships had been coming down the Narrows like clockwork prior to this time, bringing men and goods and articles of war; but we were still not up to the full strength allotted us in the general military planning. It wasn’t that the army already assembled was insignificant. The Navy had delivered two full divisions of three thousand men apiece, including a detachment of cavalry, along with their mounts; also a fully-equipped field hospital, and an artillery brigade with brand-new field-pieces and ample supplies of ammunition.

On paper it was a formidable force, although several hundred of those men were already suffering from complaints ranging from seasickness to contagious fevers, rendering them unsuited for battle. But we had hoped to face the enemy with ten thousand able-bodied soldiers altogether—because that was roughly the number of Dutch troops believed to be defending Goose Bay , a force that would be reinforced by rail very soon, if it hadn’t been already.

Julian spent most of the day at the docks, peering across the troubled waters of Lake Melville with the intensity of a sailor’s widow. I had gone out to summon him back to a hot dinner and a conference with his sub-commanders when a sail at last hove into view… but it was only the Basilisk, which had been across the lake at the town of Shesh , a smaller locality than Striver, now also in American hands. The Admiral came ashore in one of the Basilisk’s boats and joined us for the evening meal.

I haven’t described Admiral Fairfield before. Suffice to say that he was even older than Sam Godwin, but active and alert, a veteran of many sea battles, and with the political indifference common among Navy men; for the Navy, unlike the two armies, was seldom called upon to settle arguments over the ascension to power of Commanders in Chief. The Navy, in short, never marched to New York City for the purpose of making kings. It simply fought the enemy at sea, and took pride in that tradition; and that was the way Admiral Fairfield liked it.

He wore a gray beard, its great length commensurate with his age and station, and tonight he frowned through his whiskers, even though the beefsteak set before him was excellent, the best the commissary could come up with.

“Where are my men?” was the first thing Julian asked of the Admiral, as soon as we were seated.

“The ships don’t come through the narrows,” the Admiral said bluntly.

“Do we still hold the Dutch forts?”

“Securely. Melville is an American lake now, as far as naval power goes. Something must be interfering with the transit between Newfoundland and Hamilton Inlet. For all I know there might have been an ambuscade at sea, or something of that nature. But the news hasn’t reached Rigolet or Eskimo Island , if so.”

“I’m not sure I can postpone the march to Goose Bay any longer. We lose out advantage, if we have any, with every hour that passes.”

“I understand your concern,” the Admiral said. “I wouldn’t wait, if I were you. March with the thousands you have, is my advice.”

Julian forced a smile, though he clearly didn’t like the way events were trending. “As long as the Navy is there to support us with her guns, I suppose the risk might be acceptable.”

Admiral Fairfield said with all the gravity that was in him, which was very much, “You have my word, Major General Comstock, that the Basilisk will be off-shore when you and your army arrive at Goose Bay. The Dutch might sink every other vessel in the flotilla, but you won’t be abandoned if I have anything to say about it.”

“I thank you,” said Julian.

“This is a bold campaign. Some might say foolish. Certainly the odds are long. But a strike at the Dutch vitals in Labrador is overdue.”

“Then we won’t let it wait any longer.” Julian turned to Sam. “We’ll march in the morning,” he said.

“We’re still low on horses and mules.”

“Don’t short the cavalry if you can help it, but make sure the field-pieces aren’t left behind.”

“Very well. Shall I give the news to the men?”

“No, I’ll do it,” said Julian. “After dinner.”

The news of an imminent march quelled many appetites among the regimental commanders, but Julian ate heartily. Arrangements were made to bed down the Admiral until morning; then Julian and his subordinates set out to communicate orders to the men. I tagged along for journalistic purposes.

We went to each of the buildings that had been set aside as shelters for the infantrymen, and to the cavalry quarters, and finally to the general camp established in the town square. The meetings were mostly uneventful, and the men accepted the news cheerfully, for they were eager for a fight.

We entered one structure, formerly a sports arena, in which five hundred veteran soldiers were sheltering from the cold. Night came early in the northern parts of the world at that time of year, and November in Labrador would pass for January in a more hospitable section of the country. A number of coal stoves had been installed in the building, and the men had gathered around these, and they were singing Piston, Loom, and Anvil in loud and imperfect harmony when we entered. A Colonel named Abijah, who had dined with us, was embarrassed by their behavior, and he shouted out orders to cease singing and stand to attention.

As soon as the men became aware of us they fell silent. [They were perhaps a little slow in their thinking, for among the other luxuries imported by the Dutch had been a few bales of cultivated Indian Hemp, some of which had begun to circulate among the troops, until Sam had the contraband placed under guard.]

Julian stood up on a barrelhead and addressed them.

“Tomorrow the caissons roll for Goose Bay ,” he said simply. “It’s a day’s march, and we may see action by the end of it. Are all of you prepared?”

They shouted “Yes!” in unison, or cried out “Hoo-ah!” or made similar martial exclamations, for their spirits were high.

“Good,” Julian said. He looked hardly more than a child in the lantern light—more like a boy playing soldier than a grizzled general—but that just suited the infantry, who had grown fond of the idea of being led by the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. “I believe you were singing when I came in. Please don’t let me stop you.”

There was some uneasiness over this. These were men who had worked in industry before they were drafted, or had herded horses on rural Estates, or were the living donations of landowners who held them in indenture. For all their loyalty they remained conscious of Julian’s status as an Aristo, and some of them were ashamed of what they had been singing, as if it were an insult to his class (which in a real sense it was). But Julian clapped his hands and began it for them—“By Piston, Loom, and Anvil, boys,” in his reedy but heartfelt tenor. And before the chorus was finished the whole group had joined in; and at the end of a few verses they cheered lustily, and called out “General Julian!” or “Julian Comstock!” or—the first time I had heard this formulation— “Julian Conqueror!”

For reasons I couldn’t fathom, the sound of hundreds of men shouting “Julian Conqueror” caused a melancholy shiver to run up my spine, and the night seemed colder for it. But Julian only smiled, and accepted the men’s regard as if it were his due.

2

The Battle of Goose Bay has been much described elsewhere, and I will not weary the reader with details of our maneuvers, nor tease out the minutiae of those tragic days.

I rode near Julian in the forefront of our army. In the cold, low sunlight of the morning we were by all appearances a formidable body of men. Julian rode a muscular gray-and-white stallion at the very forefront of the troops, with the Campaign Flag carried by a mounted adjutant just behind him. [The flag of the Goose Bay Campaign had been designed by Julian himself. It showed a red boot against a yellow orb on a starry black background, and carried the legend “WE HAVE STEPPED UPON THE MOON.” Most of the troops understood the story of Americans on the Moon as a fable, rather than historical fact; but it was a bracing boast, and implied to the enemy that we were experienced at treading on things, and that they might be next.]

The road from Striver to Goose Bay was a fine one, paved in the Dutch manner, so that our carts and caissons were not bogged down even though the land around us was all icy fens and jagged rock and stands of spruce. Whenever we marched over a slight rise I made a point of looking back at the chain of men, mules, ammunition carts, hospital wagons, etc., strung out behind us. It was a heartening sight; and if we felt invincible that morning perhaps the error was understandable.

The cavalry scouted ahead of us, and every so often a man on horseback would report all-clear ahead. We made good time until the afternoon, when the cavalry began to encounter pickets, and there was some mild skirmishing.

Almost simultaneously we came under attack from small groups of Dutch riders who knew these woods and string bogs intimately and used them to their advantage. None of this amounted to much—a few shots fired from cover, a few horses frightened, a few men nicked with lead. One regiment or another would make quick work of the attackers, or at least chase them away. But if such flea-bites did not damage us materially, they did succeed in slowing us down.

Julian and his subordinate commanders did their best to keep the army in good order. Our objective was a line of low ridges where he believed the bulk of the Dutch army was encamped. Soon enough our scouts confirmed that suspicion. The Dutch entrenchments straddled the road on the outskirts of the town of Goose Bay. Their positions were well-chosen, and dislodging them would not be simple.

We camped for the night just out of range of these enemy emplacements. The infantrymen dug holes where the ground was yielding; and after dark, by subtle moonlight, the artillerymen hauled their guns to forward positions.

Once the moon was down, a tenuous blue aurora shivered in the sky. The temperature dropped, and the breath of sleeping men rose up like luminous smoke. In the morning the battle began.

Julian had studied the way armies maneuver in the field, and he had made sure his regimental commanders were up to the task of understanding and enacting his orders. Although he remained at a command tent in the rear of the action—and Sam and I with him—he pored over maps all the while, and messengers transited in and out of his headquarters as busily as ants at a picnic.

All morning the artillery roared relentlessly, theirs and ours.

We were outnumbered; but the Dutch had not positioned themselves to their best advantage. Not knowing which way Julian would attack, they had reinforced their flanks and neglected their middle. Julian abetted their confusion by feinting left and right, but stored up his big guns for a frontal charge. This began about noon, and was bloody. We lost nearly a thousand men in the battle that came to be called Goose Gap, and five hundred more were trucked away in Dominion wagons with missing limbs or other disabling injuries. By nightfall the battlefield resembled the waste-bin of a remedial school for inept butchers. I will not describe the odors that began to arise from it.

The Mitteleuropans fled their positions as soon as we were close enough to bring our Trench Sweepers to bear. We captured dozens of prisoners, and after some “mopping up” of stray pockets of re sis tance the day was ours. We had taken the low ridge that was the gateway to Goose Bay , and we hastily occupied and strengthened the former Dutch defenses there. The Dutch commander arranged under a flag of truce to remove his dead and injured from the battlefield. That was a mournful sight—foreign soldiers stumbling with carts among the corpses, accompanied by the terrible groans of the dying—and no doubt disappointing to Private Langers, who would be denied the luxury of looting the enemy dead.

Julian relocated his headquarters and the Campaign Flag to an elevated position from which we could see the town and the harbor of Goose Bay, as well as the surviving Dutch forces, who were hastily rolling out cutwire and building abatisses in anticipation of a siege. Julian used this perspective to mark his maps, and he was still examining those maps by lamplight as midnight approached. My typewriter had been brought up in a wagon along with other supplies appropriate to a mobile headquarters, and I sat in a corner of the same huge tent recording the events of that notable day. At last fatigue overcame me; but before I departed for my own cot I told Julian we had won a great victory, and that he ought to rest now that it had been achieved.

“I can’t afford to rest,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

He looked gaunt and distracted, and I pitied him. It might seem unjust to feel sympathy for a Major General who had not lifted a rifle, on a day when thousands of men had sacrificed lives and limbs on his behalf. But it seemed to me that Julian had lived the struggle of every soldier under his command, at least in his imagination, and suffered each loss as though the bullets had pierced his own body. He identified closely with his men, and always took pains to see that they were fed and rested, and this had helped to make him popular among them; but he paid for it now, in stress and in grief.

“Of course you can afford to rest,” I said gently. “You’ll be a better officer for it.”

He rose from his camp table, stretching, and together we stepped outside. Away from the portable stove the air was very cold, and the fires of the enemy smoldered like coals in the flatlands ahead of us.

“See all that we’ve won,” I said.

“I’m content with what I see,” said Julian. “Apart from the number of the dead. What worries me is what I don’t see.”

“Well, it’s dark, after all… what don’t you see?”

“The cavalry detachment I sent to tear up tracks behind the enemy’s lines, for one. Not a man of them has reported back. If the rail connection to Goose Bay remains intact, reinforcements will begin to arrive, and keep on arriving.”

“It’s no easy job, bending rails and blowing up bridges. Probably the cavalry was just detained in its work.”

“And the harbor at Goose Bay. What do you make out by this light, Adam?”

“It seems peaceful.” There was a glow in the sky—a dusty patch of the Northern Lights, which waxed and waned—and I saw a few masts and ships at anchor—Dutch commercial shipping, I supposed. “They threw all their gunboats against us at Striver, and lost them.”

“I see the same. What I don’t see is any American ship of war. I had hoped Admiral Fairfield would be shelling Goose Bay by now, or at least positioning his vessels.”

That was true… and the absence seemed ominous, now that he pointed it out to me.

“Perhaps they’ll arrive in the morning,” I said.

“Perhaps,” said Julian wearily.

I have not yet said very much about Sam Godwin and his role in these events.

That’s not because his part was insignificant, but because it was performed in intimate consultation with Julian, and I didn’t participate directly in battle-planning. [I had learned all my strategy and tactics from the war narratives of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, in which every attack is fierce and bold, and nearly fails, but finally succeeds by some combination of luck and American ingenuity. These circumstances are more easily arranged on the printed page than on the field of battle.]

But Sam pored over the maps just as intently as did Julian, and brought his greater experience into play. He did not attempt to take command, but made himself sympathetic to Julian’s suggestions, and seldom contradicted them, but only offered nuance in their refinement. I supposed this was the role he had played with Julian’s father Bryce during the successful Isthmian War, and at times, when the two of them put their heads together, I could imagine that twenty years of history had been rolled back, and that this was the command tent of the Army of the Californias… though Julian’s unusual yellow beard belied the daydream, as did the cold November weather.

Julian, in any case, succeeded in maintaining a fragile optimism about the campaign; while Sam, though he tried not to show it, was obviously less hopeful. Ever since we sailed from Manhattan , all humor had fled from him. He didn’t joke, or laugh at jokes. He scowled, instead… and there was a glitter in his eye that might have been fear, sternly suppressed. I expect Sam had concluded that he might not see New York City , or more importantly Emily Baines Comstock, ever again in this earthly life; and it was my fervent wish that Julian might succeed in proving him wrong. But the events of the next day were not encouraging.

The Dutch counter-attacked at dawn.

Perhaps they had done some scouting of their own, and calculated that our army, while intimidating, was not as large as they feared; or perhaps reinforcements had arrived by rail during the night. Whatever the case, their resolve had grown firm and their courage was not lacking.

Though the defenders of Goose Bay lacked a Chinese Cannon, their field artillery outranged ours by several hundred yards. They had figured that difference finely, and used it to their advantage. Shot and shell pummeled our forward ranks and masked their first advance. Our men soon brought their own weapons to bear, including the formidable Trench Sweeper; but the Dutch had come ahead too quickly for our field-pieces to be of much use against them, and an important hill, along with an entire artillery battery, was captured before Julian or his lieutenants could react.

All that morning I heard the unceasing roar of cannonry and the cries of wounded men as they were carried back from the front. Dutch and American regiments went at one another like clashing sabers, shooting off sparks of blood and mayhem. Messengers arrived and departed with desperation in their eyes, and each one seemed more exhausted than the last. An entire battalion collapsed on our right flank, driven back by cannonade, although reinforcements held the position—barely.

Noon passed, and the smoke of the battle continued to rise like a crow-colored obelisk into the wan and windless sky. “Panic is our greatest enemy now,” Sam said grimly.

Julian stepped away from his map-table, throwing down a pencil in frustration. “Where is the Navy? There’s nothing happening here the shelling of Goose Bay wouldn’t correct!”

“Admiral Fairfield promised us his armada,” Sam said, “and I believe he meant it. Whatever keeps him, it must be dire. We can’t count on him arriving.”

“Do you suppose this was my uncle’s plan all along—to plant us here among the Dutch, and then withdraw the Navy?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. The point is that we don’t have the Navy, and we can’t expect to have the Navy. And without the Navy we can’t hold our position much longer.”

“We will hold them,” Julian said flatly.

“If the Dutch flank us and take the road we won’t be able to retreat to Striver—and that’ll be the end of us.”

“We’ll hold,” Julian said, “until we know for a fact that Fairfield isn’t coming. He doesn’t strike me as a man who would abandon a promise.”

“He wouldn’t, though he might be unable to fulfill it, for any number of reasons.”

But Julian refused to be swayed. To the rear of the fighting there was a hill with an old spruce tree on it, and Julian posted an agile man atop this tree as if it were a mizzenmast on an ocean-going vessel, and gave him a sailor’s chore: to watch Lake Melville for ships. Thus any hint of Admiral Fair-field’s tardy arrival would be relayed directly to Julian’s headquarters as soon as it was perceived.

In the meantime he bowed to Sam’s suggestion and gathered his subordinates to plan an orderly retreat, should it become necessary. If we must withdraw, Julian said, then it ought to be a fighting withdrawal, making the enemy pay for every yard of mossy soil he gained. Julian described how troops could be placed along ridges and behind the humped earth of the railway embankment, so that Dutch soldiers in pursuit of a retreating regiment might be drawn into an ambush and killed. Messages were quickly sent out to battalion commanders to coordinate this strategy, and to keep the planned fall-back from turning into a general rout.

The scheme was successful, in so far as it went. Our front buckled—or so it was made to seem—and Mitteleuropan forces poured into the gap. The Dutch infantry were hooting and firing their rifles in triumph just as rows of hidden men turned Trench Sweepers on them and artillery shells began to burst in their midst. Their cross-and-laurel flag, which had been coming ahead at full speed, was suddenly thrown down, along with its bearer and dozens of common soldiers. Dutch troops continued to pour into the line of fire from the rear, but they roiled over their dead comrades uncertainly and were slaughtered in turn.

It was a hideously costly advance for the Dutch… but in the end it was an advance, hard-won or not. Sam argued that we should strike our headquarters immediately and get the wagons rolling back toward Striver, where we could at least supply ourselves in the event of a siege.

Then Julian’s crow’s-nest observer dashed into the tent and told us he had seen smoke across the water.

Julian stepped outside, taking a pair of captured field glasses with him. His position was more exposed than it would have been even an hour ago—Dutch shells burst dismayingly nearby—but he stood unmoved in his bright Major General’s uniform, looking out over the leaden waters of Lake Melville.

“Smoke,” he confirmed, when Sam and I joined him. “A vessel approaching under steam. Burning anthracite, by the look of it, which makes it likely one of ours.” And after a moment’s pause: “A mast. A flag.

Our flag.” He turned to Sam with a kind of fierce satisfaction in his eyes. “Tell the men to hold their positions at all costs.”

“Julian—” Sam said.

“None of your pessimism right now, Sam, please!”

“But we don’t know for certain—”

“We don’t know anything for certain—battle is risk. Give the order!”

And Sam, like a dutiful servant, did so.

Ten minutes later the whole ship was visible, and it was the familiar Basilisk, Admiral Fairfield’s vessel. We expected the rest of the American armada to follow in its wake.

But we were mistaken in that hope.

Soon it became obvious that there was the Basilisk —and there was only the Basilisk.

I cannot describe Julian’s appearance as this unwelcome truth sank home. His skin took on an additional pallor. His eyes grew haggard. His bright blue and yellow garb, which he had worn so boldly, clung to his slumped shoulders like an admonition.

Admiral Fairfield did what he could with his single ship. The Basilisk was one of the finest vessels of the Navy, and he worked it ingeniously. He came in under full steam, all sails reefed, the ship’s stacks gouting smoke as if half the coal in all the world were burning belowdecks. He slid obliquely past the Dutch wharves at Goose Bay , strafing the town with well-placed cannon shots. Then he came up the shoreline and attempted to shell the Mitteleuropan positions where we fought. That bombardment would have helped us enormously, had it succeeded. But the Dutch shore batteries were well-manned and well-entrenched. They raked the Basilisk in return. She withstood the barrage for many minutes, trying to work in close enough to be of some use to us. But the closer she got, the more vulnerable she became. Her masts were nearly chewed away, and flames had broken out on her forecastle by the time she finally gave up the attempt. She could do nothing but limp away while her engines were still capable of turning her screws. She seemed to be headed for Striver, or some other protected place up-lake.

Julian watched until she was nearly out of sight. Then he turned and ordered Sam to call a general retreat. His voice sounded as chill and eerie as if it emanated from a gap in some old hollow log. Sam was glum as well, and walked off speechlessly, shaking his head.

A retreat is not as glamorous a thing as an attack, but it can be accomplished either well or badly, and Julian deserves credit for a careful withdrawal from the disaster Goose Bay had become.

Still it was a costly and humiliating maneuver. By the time we were in acceptable form for a forced march to Striver, the Dutch were swarming at our backs. Julian assigned fresh troops (in so far as we had any) to the rear, and their careful feint-and-fall-back operations helped protect the bulk of the army.

Much of our cavalry had been lost in the futile foray behind the Mitteleuropan lines, so we were vulnerable to sniping from Dutch horsemen. Their detachments came at us from oblique angles, attempting to cut away companies of American troops and “take them in detail.” More than a few infantrymen were scooped up in this fashion. But whenever such a firefight erupted Julian would ride to the place like a human battle-flag, to shore up morale; and we fought these battles with a ferocity that appeared to startle and unnerve our opponents.

By sundown we were within sight of the outskirts of Striver. Messengers had warned the garrison that we would be arriving under Dutch harassment, and a defensive perimeter, with abattises and lunettes and clean lines of fire, had already been established. These were a welcome sight for battered survivors. The Dominion wagons went in ahead of us, so that their cargo of wounded men could be received by the field hospital.

Julian and Sam, and I along with them, helped fight the rear-guard action while the bulk of our men sought the safety of the captive town. This went well enough for a time, for the Dutch had straggled in their pursuit and couldn’t put together a formal assault. But as soon as their artillery came up we were in a ticklish situation.

Explosive shells landing in a tight mass of men, all of whom are within sprinting distance of safety, are a perfect recipe for death and panic. That’s what happened. In terms of actual losses it wasn’t too bad—Striver’s defenders silenced the Dutch cannons as soon they could range in on them—but the mossy ground in front of our entrenchments was quickly watered with a great deal of patriotic blood, and festooned with other patriotic body parts, during that long cold and terrible dusk.

Julian on his horse was a conspicuous target, and I was astonished that he was not picked off immediately by some far-sighted Dutch rifleman. But—as in the Battle of Mascouche outside of Montreal—he seemed wrapped in some cloak of invulnerability, which warded off hot lead.

The miraculous protection didn’t extend to those beside him. Our battle-flag went down when a staff officer’s horse was killed by shrapnel from an exploding shell. Sam dismounted at once and stooped to retrieve the banner. But he had barely raised it again when a Dutch bullet took him, and he toppled to the ground.

I don’t remember exactly the events that followed, except that I rallied two men who helped me carry Sam to a Dominion wagon, where he was stacked with a dozen other wounded soldiers awaiting treatment. The ambulance driver flogged his mules when I told him he had one of Julian’s staff aboard; and I rode along with him to the makeshift hospital in that wide street in Striver called Portage.

Sam’s wound was in his left arm, below the elbow. I couldn’t tell whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that had struck him. Whatever it was, it had broken the narrow bones above the wrist and torn away so much flesh that what remained was little more than tags and tatters. His entire left hand was nearly severed, and kept its association with his body only by the merest hinge of bloody gristle.

He was conscious, though groggy and pale, and he told me to tie a tourniquet about his arm to staunch the prodigious bleeding. I did so. I was glad to be helpful, and did not mind the blood which spattered across my already torn uniform, so much of it that when we arrived at the hospital an attendant looked at me wide-eyed and asked me where I was hurt.

The hospital was already crowded, and quickly becoming more so as cart-loads of injured men were unloaded at the door. Three medics were in attendance, but two of them were already engaged in operations that couldn’t be interrupted. Luckily there was a kind of triage-by-rank being practiced, and the third doctor came promptly at the announcement of Sam’s high position.

The doctor made a hasty inspection of Sam’s injury and announced that it wanted an amputation. Sam did not like this idea, and began a feeble protest, until the medic doused a cloth with liquid from a brown bottle and held it against Sam’s mouth, which caused the patient’s eyes to close and his struggles to abate. It looked more like murder than mercy; but the physician, rolling up one of Sam’s eyelids to inspect his pupils, seemed satisfied with the result.

“How does inhaling through that rag cure his wound?” I asked.

The doctor took notice of my presence for the first time. “It doesn’t,” he said. “It only makes it easier for me to do my work. What are you to this man?”

“His adjutant,” I said; and added, “His friend.”

“Well, now you’re an assistant surgeon.”

“I beg your pardon, but I’m not.”

“Yes you are. My name is Dr. Linch. You—?”

“Colonel Adam Hazzard.”

He grabbed a cotton smock from a nearby shelf and threw it at me. “Cover yourself with this, Colonel Hazzard. Have you washed your hands lately?”

“Yes, just a couple of days ago.”

“Dip them in that bucket on the table.”

The bucket contained an astringent chemical of some kind, which burned the small cuts I had acquired over the course of the retreat from Goose Bay , but it dissolved away most of the dirt. It had been used for this purpose before me, I deduced, for the liquid was discolored with oily scum and old blood.

“And rinse a bone saw there while you’re at it,” Linch said, pointing at a nasty-looking bladed thing, which I dipped in the same bucket, and dried on the cleanest part of an old towel. “Now steady his arm while I cut.”

Dr. Linch was a brusque man, and didn’t brook debate.

I had never witnessed an amputation before, at least at close range. Linch was not a young man, but his hands were remarkably steady, and I admired his quickness even as I suppressed an urge to flee. I was fascinated (in the least pleasant sense of that word) by the efficiency of his bone-cutting. He was very neat about sealing the blood vessels which extended from the stump of Sam’s forearm once the grisly surgery was complete. Linch kept a number of sewing needles in the lapel of his white jacket, and each needle was fitted with a length of silk thread. At intervals the doctor would pluck one of these needles and use it to stitch a leaking vein, his hands moving with a brisk familiarity that made me think of a fisherman baiting a hook with a pulsing blue worm—leaving a few inches loose so the thread could be pulled out again once the stump had healed. He insisted on explaining these procedures as he worked, even though the thought of it made me queasy; and I resolved that I would never undertake a medical career even if the job of writing fiction failed to pan out. It was as bad as boning beef, it seemed to me—worse, in some ways, since beef carcasses don’t wake up screaming as they’re flensed, and need to be sedated a second time.

I couldn’t watch the surgery too closely without experiencing a degree of nausea; and whenever possible I looked away, though the room was full of beds occupied by men just as badly injured as Sam, if not worse, and the sight of them offered little relief. Amputation was the chief cure being applied by the medics. The grating sound of the bone saws never altogether ceased. A blood-drenched orderly came through the room at intervals to collect severed limbs for disposal. When he took what remained of Sam’s left hand from the floor where Dr. Linch had dropped it, this unusual act brought home the horror of the occasion in a way the surgery itself had not. I wanted to retrieve the hand—carrying it off so casually seemed disrespectful, and I couldn’t silence the thought that Sam might want it again in the future. I had to clench my teeth to steady my nerves.

During one of these unsuccessful attempts to distract myself I caught sight of a face I recognized, in a novel context. A tall, gaunt individual wearing a Dominion hat moved among the wounded and the dying, offering solace and words from the Bible. He recognized me, too, and tried but failed to keep his face averted—this individual was none other than Private Langers!

I was outraged, but said nothing until Sam’s stump had had its skin-flaps sewn together, for fear of distracting Dr. Linch from that important work. As soon as he had wrapped the last bandage, however, I said, “Dr. Linch, there’s an impostor here,” and pointed out Langers to him. “That man is no Dominion officer.”

“I know all about it,” Dr. Linch said indifferently.

“You do! Why don’t you throw him out, then?”

“Because he serves a purpose. There are no genuine Dominion officers to be had. Julian Conqueror barred them from the expedition, and for the most part that’s not a bad thing, since we haven’t had to endure their Sunday scoldings. But a dying soldier generally wants a godly man beside him, and seldom inquires into the Pastor’s pedigree. When I asked for a volunteer among the troops—someone, anyone, even if his only religious office was passing the plate at church—this man Langers raised his hand. The rest were afraid of missing the action, or of appearing cowardly.”

“I’m sure those concerns weren’t foremost in Private Langers’s mind. What religious experience does he claim to have?”

“He says he used to be a colporteur, distributing pamphlets on sacred subjects.”

I explained that Langers’s pamphlets had been little more than pornographic guides to behavior not approved of by Biblical authorities, and that Langers himself was a fraud and a habitual liar.

“Has a Dominion officer ever been disqualified on those grounds? Don’t bother about him, Colonel Hazzard—he may be a cracked vessel, but we don’t own a better one just now.”

I took Dr. Linch’s advice. Perhaps it wasn’t as cynical as it sounded. As I left the surgical ward I overheard Langers giving solace to a man who had suffered a ghastly head injury. The victim’s one good eye was fixed on Langers, while the larcenous Private misquoted what were perhaps the only Bible verses he had ever learned verbatim, from the Song of Solomon, mingled with passages from the banned poet Whitman.

How much better is love than wine! he intoned in a soothing voice, one hand poised in a benediction and a sly, sweet smile on his lips.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from. In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass. Awake, oh north wind, and come thou south, and blow through this garden so that the spice of it might flow out! Deep waters cannot quench love, nor a flood drown it. Set me as a seal on your heart, for love is as strong as death, and jealousy is as cruel as the grave.

These words were not the standard consolation, but they were pleasant to hear at any time; and in the privacy of my thoughts I forgave Private Langers for uttering them under false pretenses, for the tear that formed in the single whole eye of the dying man was unquestionably a grateful and authentic one.

3

Sam was awake the next day, although the doses of watered opium that kept his pain at bay also interfered with his clarity of thought.

Julian didn’t visit him, for he was too busy securing Striver to withstand what might be a long siege. We were well protected—our defensive perimeter was anchored against Lake Melville and the Northwest River, so we could not easily be outflanked; and it would have been outrageously costly for the Dutch to mount a frontal attack. But they could starve us out, given time; and that was probably what they intended to do. This meant that food and medical supplies had to be itemized, guarded, and rationed—and that was some of the business Julian was about.

I sat by Sam’s bed in his place. For the most part Sam was silent, when he was not sleeping; but occasionally he spoke, and I tried to be an encouraging audience. He mentioned his father once or twice—his Judaic rather than his adopted father—and I attempted to draw him out on the subject when he seemed to need distraction.

“What work did your father do?” I asked him.

Sam was very gaunt beneath the blankets that covered him. It was a cold day outside, and a small snow was falling. We had to be chary with coal because of the siege, and the stoves in the hospital did little to dispel the chill. Whenever Sam spoke his words became visible as mist, as if he were emitting his immortal spirit directly from his mortal lungs. “He was a scrapper,” Sam said.

“He fought for a living?”

“No, Adam—a scrap-collector. He prospected in the Houston Ship Canal , down in Texas. That’s the territory where I was born.”

“Is it a good place, Sam?”

“The Canal? The Canal is hell on earth. It’s a poisonous trench as large as a city, rich in copper and aluminum, made not for human beings but for Oil and Machines back in the days of the Secular Ancients. In the Canal a prospector can make good money in a short time, if he’s smart and lucky. But the risks are terrible. The waters are vile and breed disease. When I was very small I saw scrappers come back from the Canal with blood running freely from their noses, or with their skin turned black and shriveled by contamination. My father was always careful to protect himself with boots and gloves and leather aprons. There were days when he carted out copper or aluminum very nearly by the ton, or soil that could be treated to recover arsenic, cobalt, lead, and other valuable elements, which sell for a premium at the Galveston Exchange. By the time he was thirty he had saved enough money to take his family east. But the Canal killed him the way it killed so many others, only more slowly. He died a year later, in Philadelphia , choked on tumors that filled his chest and neck. My mother was already frail and consumptive—she survived him by less than a month.”

“And you were adopted by a Christian family?”

“By a kind but aloof man who was a friend of my father. He and his wife provided for me until I was old enough to be sent for military training, on the stipend my father left for my education.”

“But you had to renounce your religion.”

“Rather to pretend it had never existed. Which had been my father’s strategy all along. In my family, Adam, all we had of piety was the lighting of candles on certain winter days and the pronunciation of a few incomprehensible prayers. The family that adopted me knew nothing of it, nor ever would.”

That was a melancholy confession, and I blushed at the memory of how I had mistaken his prayers for sorcery back in Williams Ford, when I was younger and less worldly. “Would you like me to pray for you, Sam? I can say a Jewish prayer, if you teach me the words.”

“No prayers, please, neither Jewish nor Christian—they won’t do. I’m not one thing or the other.”

I told him I understood his predicament, for I was equally a mixed creature, neither a handler of serpents like my father nor as ecumenically pious as my mother. I was east of Skepticism and north of Faith, with an unsettled compass and variable winds. But I could offer up a prayer as well as the next man, and leave it to Heaven to judge the result.

“I hope I don’t need praying over just yet,” said Sam, his voice losing some of its momentary clarity. “I wish I had my hand back, though. I seem to feel it there still—clenched and burning. Adam!” he called out suddenly, his eyes gone watery and vague. “Where’s Julian? Where’s Admiral Fairfield? We need to repulse the damned Dutchmen!”

“Calm down—you’ll aggravate your wound.”

“Damn my wound! Julian will want to send me away— don’t let him do it!

He needs my advice more than I ever needed my lost left hand! Tell him that, Adam—tell him—!”

Sam’s agitation attracted the attention of Dr. Linch, who forced a preparation of opium down Sam’s throat, and not long after that Sam’s anxiety yielded to silence, and he fell asleep again.

“Is he recovering?” I asked the doctor.

“His fever is increased. That’s not a good sign. There may be some putrefaction in the wound, judging by the smell.”

“He’ll get better soon, though?”

“This is a poor excuse for a hospital, Colonel Hazzard, and bound to deteriorate as supplies run low. Nothing is certain.”

I wanted more reassurance than that, but Dr. Linch was stubborn, and wouldn’t yield it up.

I did not expect that Julian would really send Sam away, but in fact that’s what happened.

Admiral Fairfield’s battered Basilisk anchored a little away from the harbor at Striver, and the Admiral came ashore in a launch. We still controlled the harbor, which was beyond the reach of the Dutch artillery, and we would have welcomed the American fleet had it arrived. But, as at Goose Bay , there was only Admiral Fairfield’s ship. The Basilisk, although a noble craft, looked small and forlorn against the chilly waters of Lake Melville and the distant spine of the Mealy Mountains , as sailors swarmed over her rigging repairing the damage she had taken in battle. The Admiral arrived at the dock in a bitter mood, and he was silent as I accompanied him to Julian’s headquarters.

In the privacy of that building, which had once housed the Dutch Mayor of Striver, in the upstairs bedroom Julian had commandeered for his office, Admiral Fairfield—whose initial skepticism of Julian’s abilities as a commander had yielded to grudging and finally enthusiastic approval—explained that his entire fleet had been ordered out of Lake Melville.

“Ordered out!” Julian exclaimed. “Why?”

“The command came without explanation,” Admiral Fairfield said with patent disgust. “From New York.”

“From my uncle, you mean.”

“I suspect so, though I can’t say for certain.”

“And all obeyed it but you?”

“Officially, the Basilisk is covering our retreat against any Dutch attack. That was my excuse for remaining behind long enough to contribute what I could at Goose Bay—which was little enough—and to come here to consult you.”

“But you’ll have to leave shortly,” Julian surmised. “And, obviously, you can’t deliver reinforcements.”

“I cannot, though it pains me to say so. All I can do is offload what extra provisions the Basilisk is carrying, and take away those of the wounded who need better treatment than a field hospital can supply.”

“Leaving us here,” Julian said, “besieged, until the day comes when we yield to starvation, or surrender ourselves to the Mitteleuropan forces… which is no doubt what my mad uncle intends.”

“My oath of loyalty prevents me from acknowledging the truth of it. In extremis, General Comstock, you might attempt to break out to the east. A road runs through to the Narrows , though it’s unimproved, and the fortifications there ought to remain in American hands long enough to receive you. But it would be a desperate attempt at best.”

“Desperate indeed, since we’re considerably outnumbered.”

“The decision is yours, of course.” Admiral Fairfield stood up. “Leaving you in these circumstances is inexcusable, but I’ve already stretched my written orders past the limits of interpretation.”

“I understand,” Julian said, taking the Admiral’s gnarled hand in his own with a touching sense of occasion. “I hold no grudge against you, Admiral, and I thank the Navy for everything it’s done on our behalf.”

“I hope the gratitude is not misplaced,” the Admiral said grimly.

Julian and I went down to the docks, where Sam and dozens of other seriously wounded men were carried to boats for removal to the Basilisk.

I delivered several typewritten sheets to that vessel’s Quartermaster—my war dispatches to the Spark, which the Quartermaster promised to post from Newfoundland.

We caught up with Dr. Linch, who was supervising the proceedings, and he led us to Sam, who rested in a litter with a woolly blanket wrapped around him and the fitful snow collecting in his beard. His eyes were closed, and fever-roses flourished on his weathered cheeks. “Sam,” said Julian, laying a gentle hand on his mentor’s shoulder.

Sam’s eyelids peeled back, and he gazed up into the rolling clouds a moment before his gaze fixed on Julian.

“Don’t let them take me,” he said in a shockingly frail voice.

“It’s a question of need, not wish,” said Julian. “Do as the doctor tells you, Sam, and soon you’ll be well enough to resume the fight.”

Sam wasn’t soothed by these homilies, however, and he reached up from the blankets with his good right arm and took Julian by the collar. “You need my advice!”

“I can hardly do without it; but if you have any advice, Sam, give it to me now, for the boats are preparing to cast off.”

“Use it, ” Sam said, cryptically but insistently.

“Use it? Use what? I don’t understand.”

“The weapon! The Chinese weapon.”

Julian’s eyes grew wide and his expression mournful. “Sam… there is no Chinese weapon.”

“I know that, you young fool! Use it anyway.”

Perhaps he was the victim of a febrile delusion. In any case, if he had more to say, we didn’t hear it; for the litter-bearers carried him off, and before long he was tucked aboard the Basilisk and bound for the Naval hospital at St. John’s.

I think I had never felt quite so alone as I did when the Basilisk weighed anchor and sailed east—not even on the snowy plains of Athabaska, with Williams Ford and all my childhood standing behind me like a closed door.

Then, at least, I had been in the familiar company of Sam and Julian. Now Sam was gone… and Julian, in his blue and yellow uniform (slightly tattered), seemed hardly a ghost of the Julian I had once known.

Among the goods Admiral Fairfield left us was a bag of mail. These packages and letters were distributed to the troops the same day. One of Julian’s adjutants brought me an envelope with my name written on it in Calyxa’s hand.

Night had fallen; so I took the letter close to a lamp, and opened it with trembling hands.

Calyxa had never been much of a correspondent—no one would call her wordy. The letter consisted of a salutation and three terse sentences: Dear Adam, The Dominion threatens me. Please come home soon, preferably alive. Also, I am pregnant.

Yrs, Calyxa.

4

Much could be said about the days leading up to Thanksgiving, as I experienced them. But I won’t belabor the reader with trivialities. Those were dark and hungry times. I kept a careful record, sitting down each night with lamp and typewriter before I permitted myself the luxury of sleep. The pages are still in my possession, and in the interest of brevity I’ll confine myself to quoting passages from them, viz : THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2174 It has become necessary to exclude what remains of the civilian population of Striver from the town, in order to conserve supplies.

The residents of Striver were no more or less hostile to us than might be expected of any group of otherwise comfortable men and women subjected to occupation and forced from their homes at gunpoint. Many were relieved to be handed back into Mitteleuropan custody, for that’s their preference, irrational though it might seem to a sane American. [Despite the well-known cruelty and Atheism of Mitteleuropa, that principality nevertheless inspires in its subjects a kind of “patriotism” which resembles in almost every particular the real thing.]

I stood on the roof of our headquarters this afternoon and watched the men, women, and children of Striver trudge across a frosty no-man’s-land between the opposing trenches, protected by nothing more than a flag of truce. Their hunched figures, limned in an early twilight, tumbling now and then by accident into artillery craters, made me feel sympathetic, and I could almost imagine myself among them. Perhaps any man is potentially a mirror of any other—perhaps that’s what Julian means by “cultural relativism,” though the term is reviled by the clergy.

At least in the hands of the Dutch these unfortunates will be guaranteed a daily meal. We are not. Rationing is in effect. Dutch luxuries taken from the dockside warehouses are counted as carefully as the salt beef and cornmeal, and apportioned along with those familiar foods, strange as it seems for American soldiers to be dining on calculated portions of Edam cheese, sturgeon roe, and mashy goose-liver along with their trail-cake and bacon. In any case, these delicacies serve only to postpone the day when our hunger becomes absolute. Given our numbers, and the accounted supplies, Julian calculates that we’ll be tightening our belts by mid-month, and thoroughly starved by December.

The men still speculate about a Chinese weapon, and expect Julian to deploy it soon. He refuses to dispel these rumors, and smiles with a sort of mad recklessness whenever I mention the subject.

My mind, of course, is generally on Calyxa, and her troubles with the Dominion, and the other astonishing news contained in her letter. I am to be a father!— will be a father, assuming Calyxa carries the child to term, even if I’m killed in this desolate corner of Labrador. For even a dead man can be a father. That’s a small but real comfort to me, though I can’t hold back from worrying.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2174

The wind blows steadily from the west, and is very cold, though the sky remains clear. Dusk comes early. We burn few lamps, to conserve fuel. Tonight the Aurora Borealis does a chill and stately dance with the North Star. It’s not, unfortunately, a silent night, for the Dutch have brought up their heavy artillery, and shells fall into the town at irregular intervals. Half the buildings of Striver are already blown up or burned down, it seems. Chimney-stacks stand like upraised fingers along empty, shattered streets.

Julian is moody and strange without Sam to guide and advise him. He insists on compiling a list of goods—not food, but dry goods—contained in the dockside warehouses. Today I assisted at one such inventory, and brought the list to Julian at the mayor’s house.

The Dutch and their luxuries! The Stadhouders are not just gluttons; they insist on all the subtler fineries of life, it seems. Julian carefully perused the lengthy catalog of textiles, tortoise shells, pharmaceutical compounds, cattle horns, musical instruments, horseshoes, ginseng, plumbing supplies, et alia, ours by right of pillage. His expression as he examined the list was thoughtful, even calculating.

“You don’t itemize these bolts of silk,” he remarked.

“There was too much of them,” I told him. “The silk is all crated and stacked high—I expect it had only just arrived when we took the town. But you can’t eat silk, Julian.”

“I don’t propose to eat it. Inspect it again tomorrow, Adam, and report back about the quality of it, especially the closeness of the weave.”

“Surely my time could be better spent than by counting threads?”

“Think of it as following orders, ” Julian said sharply. Then he looked up from his lists, and his expression softened. “I’m sorry, Adam. Humor me in this. But keep quiet about it, please—I don’t want the troops thinking I’ve lost my mind.”

“I’ll knit you a Chinese robe, Julian, if you think it might help us survive the siege.”

“That’s exactly my plan—to survive, I mean—no knitting will be required—though a little sewing, perhaps.”

He wouldn’t discuss it further.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2174 It occurs to me that Thanksgiving is coming. We have not given very much thought to that Universal Christian Holiday, perhaps because we can find so little to be thankful for in our current situation. We’re more likely to pity ourselves than to count our blessings.

But that is shortsighted, my mother would surely say. In fact I’m thankful for many things.

I’m thankful that I have Calyxa’s letter, however terse and brief, folded in my pocket next to my heart.

I’m thankful that I might be blessed with a child, the product of our possibly hasty but blessed and bountiful marriage.

I’m thankful that I’m still alive, and that Julian is still alive, though our condition is provisional and subject to change. (Of course no mortal creature “knows the hour or the day,” but we’re unusual in being surrounded by Dutch infantrymen eager to hasten the unwelcome terminal event.) I’m thankful that despite my absence life goes on much as it always has in Williams Ford and in every other such simple place within the broad borders of the American Union. I’m even grateful for the cynical Philosophers, grimy Tipmen, pale Aesthetes, corrupt Owners, and feckless Eupatridians who throng the streets of the great City of New York—or anyway grateful that I had the chance to see them at close proximity.

I’m thankful for my daily ration, though it shrinks from day to day.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2174

Today our troops overran a Mitteleuropan trench which had been dug too close to our lines. Five captives were taken, and in an act of Christian charity they were allowed to live, though it will diminish our own supplies to feed them. Julian hopes they might be traded for American prisoners already in Dutch hands—he has sent that suggestion by flag-of-truce to the Dutch commander, but as yet no reply has been received.

I went to see the captives as they were being interrogated, in part to satisfy my curiosity about the enemy, whom I know only as faceless combatants and as the authors of incomprehensible letters. Only one of the men spoke English; the other four were questioned by a Lieutenant who has some Dutch and German.

The enemy soldiers are gaunt, stubborn men. They offer little more than their own names, even under duress. The exception to this is the single English-speaker—a former British merchant sailor, conscripted out of a barroom in Brussels while he was insensible with drink. His loyalties are mixed, and he doesn’t mind giving estimates of the enemy’s strength and positions.

He said the Dutchmen were confident that they would prevail in the siege. They were cautious about initiating any attack, however, for rumors of the (unfortunately imaginary) Chinese weapon have reached them. The prisoner said there was no detailed information concerning this weapon, [Nor could there have been.]but speculation about its nature suggested something profoundly deadly and unusual.

I carried that news to Julian tonight.

He greeted it with grim amusement. “Just what I hoped the Dutch were thinking. Good! Maybe we can find a way to deepen their fears.”

Again, he wouldn’t explain what he had in mind. But he has sequestered one of the warehouses by the docks (out of range of enemy artillery), and is converting it into some sort of workshop. Men have been recruited and sworn to secrecy. He has requisitioned countless bolts of black silk; also sewing machines, hooks and eyes, strips of lathing from damaged houses, bottles of caustic soda, and other peculiar items.

“Maybe it’s good for the Dutch to believe in this imaginary weapon,” I said, “but unfortunately our own troops believe in it too. In fact they imagine you’re preparing to activate it.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“There is no Chinese weapon, and you know that as well as I do, Julian, unless hunger has driven you entirely mad.”

“Of course I know it. I’m a firm believer in its non-existence. All it means is that we’re forced back on our ingenuity.”

“You mean to build a weapon out of silk and fish-hooks?”

“Please keep that thought to yourself. The rest will become clear in time.”

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2174

The pace of activity in Julian’s sealed warehouse increases. The “secret weapon” is now so commonly spoken-of that I fear the men will be bitter or even vindictive in their disappointment, when the truth is finally revealed.

More shells fell today, causing heavy casualties among one particular regiment. I volunteered at the field hospital in the afternoon, assisting Dr. Linch in the chopping, paring, and stitching of shattered limbs. The work is almost unbearable for anyone of a sensitive nature (and I count myself among that number), but necessity knows no excuse.

Our gravest enemy, Dr. Linch says, is less shrapnel than dysentery. At least a quarter of our soldiers are down with it, and it spreads with the infectiousness of a fire in a kindling-yard.

Corn-cake and salt cod for dinner, in small servings.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2174

Extraordinary events! I mean to set them down before I sleep, though it is already very late.

After the evening meal Julian summoned me to his quarters and asked me to bring along my typewriter. I carried the machine (no small task, in my weakened and hungry condition) to the upstairs study of the former mayor’s house, and Julian instructed me to keep it ready, for there was a message he wished to dictate.

Then, to my astonishment, he summoned an adjutant and ordered Private Langers to be brought into his presence.

“Langers!” I exclaimed as soon as the adjutant had gone out. “What do you want with Langers? Has he committed some fresh outrage? I saw him at the hospital, perpetrating his clerical fraud; but I don’t suppose that’s what this is all about.”

“It isn’t—or only in part. And please, Adam—you might be startled by some of what I have to say to him; but it’s essential to the success of my plans that you don’t interrupt or correct me while Langers is in the room with us.”

This was a sterner tone than Julian usually took in my presence; but I reminded myself that we were at war, and under siege, and that he was a Major General, and I was not. I promised not to speak out of turn. Of course my curiosity was profoundly aroused.

We shivered for most of half an hour—Julian heated his quarters parsimoniously, to conserve the supply of coal—before Langers arrived. Langers was shivering, too, as he stumbled into the room, perhaps not entirely from the cold. He looked at Julian apprehensively. “Sir?” he said.

Julian put on his most imperial manner. [A skill every Eupatridian of Julian’s class has mastered: it consists of regarding the world and all its inhabitants as if they emitted a faint offensive odor.]

“Please sit down, Private.”

Langers inserted himself into a chair by the stove. “You called for me, sir?”

“Obviously I did, and here you are. I’ve received a complaint about you.”

Langers—no doubt recalling what had happened to him when Sam gave out the truth about his Lucky Mug during the Saguenay Campaign—seemed almost to shrivel with dismay, and his expression grew even more furtive and wary. “It’s ungrounded,” he muttered.

“You haven’t heard the charge yet.”

“I know it’s unjustified because my conduct has been above reproach. These past weeks I’ve labored exclusively at the field hospital, sir, consoling the sick and the dying.”

“I know all about that,” said Julian, “and I would commend you for it, but for one thing.”

“What thing ?” Langers demanded, feigning indignation, not very successfully.

“One of my regimental commanders discovered several suspicious items hidden under your bedroll. These included a large number of gold rings and leather billfolds.”

“Well?” Langers said, though he reddened. “A man can harbor a few keepsakes, can’t he?”

“No, he may not, not if the same items have been reported as missing from the mortally wounded. I have a corroborating statement from one of the doctors who saw you at the field hospital, your right hand raised over an injured man in a benediction while the left hand stripped a wallet from the victim’s pocket. As for the rings, ordinarily such ornaments are sent to grieving widows, not squirreled away under the bedrolls of counterfeit Deacons.”

“Well, I—” Langers began, but he faltered. The evidence against him was shocking, and he had lost the opportunity to mount a defense. His naturally long and equine face seemed to grow even longer. “Sir—the hospital is an awful place—it affects a man’s mind, over time—perhaps the circumstances drove me to irrational acts—”

“Perhaps they did, or perhaps it was just your acquisitive nature. But don’t worry, Private. I didn’t call you here to scold you or punish you. I mean to give you an opportunity to redeem yourself.”

Langers was not so naive as to grasp that straw without squinting at it first. “I’m sure I thank you—redeem myself how exactly?”

“Be patient. Before we go on, I need to dictate a letter. Adam, will you write it down on that machine of yours?”

I suppressed my astonishment at these unfolding events and said, “Yes, certainly, Julian—I mean, General Comstock.”

“Good. Are you ready?” (I applied paper to platen, hastily.) “Put in a top line with the date and mark it as from my headquarters, Army of the Laurentians, Northern Division, Town of Striver , Lake Melville , Eastern Labrador, etc.” I clacked away at this task. My typewriting skills had improved since I first acquired the machine, and I was proud of my speed, though it set no records. “Address it to Major Walton, General Headquarters, Newfoundland.”

I did so. Then Julian dictated the body of the text, which I will set down here while it remains fresh in my mind, including the unusual capitalizations which Julian demanded: This is to let you know that, after much solemn deliberation, and in the face of continuing enemy encirclement and bombardment, I have resolved to deploy the MECHANISM we earnestly hoped would never be used in civilized warfare.

I do not take this decision lightly. It is no easy thing to enter into a war as brutal as this one, and to make it yet more inhuman by the employment of such a cruel DEVICE. It is not the prospect of the IMMEDIATE death of countless enemy soldiers which pangs me, for that is the nature of war, so much as the knowledge of the LINGERING EFFECTS, in which death comes only after hours or even days of intolerable suffering. You know that in councils of war I have argued against the deployment of this WEAPON, which is so vicious in its workings that any Christian trembles at the mention of it.

But I find myself in a position that allows no other outcome. My army has been besieged, and we are sent no SUPPLIES or REINFORCEMENTS.

Thousands of loyal men confront starvation, and I dare not surrender them to the mercies of the Mitteleuropan Army. Therefore I have resolved to do everything in my power to deliver the troops, or some fraction of them, to safety, even if the conduct of this war is made that much more HELLISH and SATANIC.

You may pass this information to the General Staff and to the Chief Executive.

God help me for taking this decision. PRAY FOR US, Major Walton! We act within days.

“Add the usual salutations,” Julian said, ignoring my gap-jawed amazement not only at the contents of the letter but at the unusually ecclesiastical tone of it, “and give it to me to sign. Thank you, Adam.”

I did as he asked, though I could hardly contain my questions and anxieties.

“What does this business have to do with me?” Private Langers demanded. “I don’t know anything about these dreadful things!”

“Of course you don’t; but a message, to be useful, has to be delivered. That’s your task, Private Langers. The letter will be sewn into a satchel. You will carry the satchel past the Dutch lines to the American fortifications at the Narrows , and personally hand it to the ranking officer there.”

“Across enemy lines!” The Private’s eyes were as wide as Comstock dollars.

“That’s correct.”

Impossible!” Langers exclaimed; and I was inclined to agree with him, though I kept my silence, as instructed.

“Perhaps it is,” Julian said, “but I need someone to make the attempt. You’re healthy enough, and it seems to me you have a powerful motive for succeeding at it. The choice is stark, Private Langers. You can accept the assignment, or you can stay here and face exposure for robbing wounded men.”

“You wouldn’t tell the infantry about my indiscretion!”

“I would—at the next Sunday meeting! The men don’t like to think of a tract-peddler stealing from them in their most vulnerable moment.”

“But they’ll kill me if they find out—they’re prudish about things like that!”

“I don’t doubt that they’ll be unhappy. The choice is yours.”

“I object! It’s blackmail—face certain death here, or be shot by the enemy!”

“You might not be shot, if luck is with you. You’ll have to be very quiet and move by moonlight. If I thought your capture was a certainty I wouldn’t send you out at all.”

Langers hung his head morosely, an acknowledgment that he could see no way out of the trap Julian had sprung on him.

“Let me add,” Julian said, “that if you do accept the task you must not under any circumstances allow the document to fall into the hands of the Dutch. It would nullify our purpose entirely if they learned of our plans. And the enemy are sly—even if they capture you, even if they attempt to bribe you with promises of protection or great rewards, you must not succumb.”

This was precisely the wrong thing to say to Langers, I thought. It was no use appealing to Langers’s conscience—which, if it existed at all, must be a particularly feeble and anemic specimen—and I longed to correct Julian’s mistake. But I remembered his instructions, and bit my tongue.

Langers seemed to brighten a little after Julian’s admonition. I don’t doubt that he was calculating the angles of the situation in which he suddenly found himself, attempting to discover a geometry more suitable to his goals. He made a few more small objections, just to keep up the seeming of the thing, but finally agreed to expiate “the potential stain on his military record” caused by stealing from the not-quite-dead. Yes, he agreed, he would brave the Mitteleuropan lines and make a run for the Narrows , if that was what duty demanded. “But if I’m killed,” he said, “and if that news reaches you, General Comstock, I ask you to make sure I’m listed among the honorable dead, so as not to bring shame to my family.”

“What family?” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “You always said you were an orphan!”

“Those who are as close to me as family, I mean,” Langers said. (And Julian gave me a poisonous look, which reminded me to keep silent.) “I promise,” Julian said. Incredibly, he extended his hand to the larcenous Private. “Your reputation is safe, Mr. Langers. In my eyes you redeem yourself simply by accepting the commission.”

“I thank you for your confidence. You’re a generous commander, sir, and a Christian gentleman—I have always said so.”

(If this did not cease, I thought, I would soon shred my tongue entirely, from the biting of it.) “It’s essential that you leave at once. One of my adjutants will conduct you to the forward trenches and give you your final instructions. You’ll be provided with an overcoat and a fresh pair of boots, along with a pistol and ammunition.”

Julian summoned a young Lieutenant, who tucked the message into the lining of a leather satchel and escorted Langers away.

I looked at Julian aghast, now that we were alone.

“Well?” he asked, with an insouciant note in his voice. “You have something to say, Adam?”

“I hardly know where to begin, but—Julian! Is there really a Chinese weapon?”

“Can you think of some other reason I might send that note to Major Walton?”

“But that’s just the absurdity of it! Using Langers as a messenger, and then telling him that the Dutch would reward him for betraying us! You accuse me of naïveté from time to time, but this tops it all—you might as well have invited him to defect!”

“Do you really think he might succumb to the temptation?”

“I think he could hardly do anything else!”

“Then we share the same opinion.”

“You mean you expect him to betray us to the enemy?”

“I mean that if my plan is to succeed, it will be better if he does.”

I was naturally confused, and I suppose my expression showed it, for Julian took pity on me, and put an arm about my shoulders. “I’m sorry if I seem to trifle with you, Adam. If I haven’t been entirely frank, it’s only for the purpose of preserving absolute secrecy. Report to me in the morning and I’ll make it all clear.”

That dubious promise was the most I could extract from him, and I left his headquarters in a whirling state of mind.

Now I must stop writing, if I want to sleep at all before reveille.

The air is cold but clear tonight, the wind as sharp as scissors. I find myself thinking of Calyxa, but she is awfully far away.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2174

Julian has explained his plan. Tonight we perform an essential test. I can confide the truth in no one—not even in these Notes, which I keep for myself.

It’s a thin chance, but we have no other.

(Here the Diary concludes, and I resume the narrative in the customary style.)

5

Julian took me into his confidence at last, and during the afternoon of the 21st of November he conducted me on a tour of the warehouse where the “weapon” was being prepared.

It soon became obvious that what I had overlooked about Julian was his persistent and unconquerable love of theater. That aspect of his personality had not been much manifest during his tenure as Major General Comstock… but neither, apparently, had it been wholly suppressed. The interior of the warehouse (illuminated by freshly-scrubbed skylights and a generous number of lanterns) resembled nothing so much as the backstage shambles at some colossal production of Lucia di Lammermoor, [A revival of which had been popular in Manhattan the summer past. I know it only by reputation.]with Julian as the property-master.

Men in uniform had been made into seamstresses, working bolts of black silk at feverish speed, often while cutters slashed at the same cloth. Carpenters had busied themselves sawing wooden poles or lathing into supple strips as tall as a man. Cordage from a wholesale spool the size of a millwheel was carefully measured out, and segments of it rewound onto smaller hubs. This was only a sample of the vigorous business taking place.

The huge room stank of various chemical substances, including caustic soda and what Julian claimed was liquid phosphorous (in several pitted metal barrels). My eyes began to water as soon as the door was closed behind me, and I wondered whether some of what I had mistaken for fatigue in Julian’s countenance was simply the result of long hours spent in this unpleasant atmosphere. I was impressed by the industriousness and scale of the work, which filled the enclosed space with a fearsome noise, but I confessed I could not make sense of it.

“Come on, Adam, can’t you guess?”

“Is it a game, then? I assume you’re assembling some weapon—or at least the seeming of one.”

“A little of each,” said Julian, smiling mischievously.

A soldier came past carrying a wrapped assemblage of lathes and black silk, which Julian briefly inspected. I told Julian the bundle resembled one of the fishing-kites he had got up at Edenvale, though much enlarged.

“Very good!” said Julian. “Well observed.”

“But what is it really?”

“Just what you imagine it is.”

“A kite?” The soldier in question stood the object upright among many others similar to it. Folded, they resembled so many sinister umbrellas, fashioned for the use of a fastidious giant. “But there must be a hundred of them!”

“At least.”

“What use are kites, though, Julian?”

“Any explanation I could give you would be beggared by the truth. Tonight we test the product. When you see the result, perhaps you’ll understand.”

His coyness was aggravating, but I supposed it was another manifestation of the showman in him, not wanting to describe a stage effect for fear of diminishing its impact. He said he wanted me as “an unbiased observer.” I told that I had no bias but impatience; and I went to the field hospital in a mixed humor, and made myself useful there until after dark.

When night had fully fallen, and after our meager evening rations had been doled out, Julian and I once more made our way toward the docks. The warehouse, though still heavily guarded, was less busy at this hour. The men Julian had chosen as his workforce had been sworn to secrecy, and they slept apart from the other soldiers so as not to risk unwise conversation. Most of the recruits, Julian said, knew only the particular task assigned them, and had been kept ignorant of the whole outline of the business. But there were a hundred or so men who had been made to understand our ultimate objective, and this elite group was in the warehouse tonight—or rather on top of the warehouse, for we climbed an iron stairway to the roof of the building, which was securely tiled and only gently sloped. The “Kite Brigade,” as Julian called them, awaited him there.

The night was moonless, the stars obscured by high fast-running clouds. Apart from a few campfires, and lanterns in odd windows, the town of Striver was entirely dark. The huge kites I had seen before had been brought up here. They were still furled, but their bridles had been attached to reels of hempen twine which were nailed to wooden bases and equipped with hand cranks. Each kite also had a bucket tied to its bridle with a short string, and as we arrived a man was just finishing the work of pouring a measured amount of sand into each of these buckets.

“What’s that for?” I asked Julian—quietly, since the eerie atmosphere of the rooftop seemed to discourage anything beyond a hushed whisper.

“I’ve calculated how much weight each parafoil can carry,” Julian said. “To night we discover whether my calculations were correct.”

I didn’t ask how one estimated the lifting power of a “parafoil,” or with what kind of arithmetic—no doubt it was something else Julian had learned from one of his antique books. If it depended on the wind, we were in luck; the breeze was brisk; but it was very cold, and I kept my hands in the pockets of my overcoat, and wished I had my old packle hat on top of my head, instead of the thin Army cap I was wearing.

Everything seemed ready for the “test flight,” as Julian called it, except for the darkness. “How can you see whether they fly, when the moon is down and even the Northern Lights aren’t operating?”

Julian didn’t answer, but beckoned to a man nearby. This soldier carried a bin with some liquid in it, and a brush.

The liquid, as it turned out, was a compound of phosphorous which radiated an unearthly green light. [The Dutch use it for military signaling, but it also serves in theatrical effects.]

The soldier employed his brush to splash a little of this on each bucket, until they had all been so marked, and glowed like demonic jack-o’-lanterns in the darkness.

“Stringmen prepare!” Julian called out abruptly.

Dozens of men jumped to their stations at the anchored kite-reels.

“Furlers stand ready!”

An equal number of men, positioned downwind along the rim of the roof, grasped the huge furled kites and held them at present-arms, ready to be unrolled so that their wings might catch the wind.

“Launch!” cried Julian.

The reader should understand that a black silk kite taller than a man, lofted into the Stygian darkness of a Labrador night, while the wind comes skirling from the arctic regions like a madman with a knife in his teeth, is not the same beast as a child’s kite bobbing in the sunlight of a summer day. The immense black kites, though not easily visible, made their presence known as soon as the first one caught the icy breeze and opened with a concussive bang as loud as a gunshot.

Each kite, as the wind filled it, made the same deafening report (which reminded me of the popping of sails aboard the Basilisk when that vessel began to trim for heavy weather), until it sounded as if an artillery duel was under way and we were in the middle of it. Then the kites rose to the limit of the strings which bound them to the buckets they were meant to carry, each with its weighed portion of sand and its glowing green insigne.

Evidently Julian’s calculations had been correct. With only a moment’s hesitation, and an encouraging tug from the Stringmen, the buckets soared aloft. Mere words cannot convey how unusual and strange this looked: all that was visible from any distance was the phosphorescent paint that marked each rising container. These unearthly Lights (as they seemed) rose and bobbed and rose again, like angels or demons sailing in close formation. I was suffused with awe, even though I knew the explanation for what I was seeing. An unenlightened observer might easily have been terrified.

“Not every American soldier in town is asleep,” I said. “Might not someone see this, and alert others?”

“I hope so. It will brace up the men, to think that this is a sample of what we’ve been preparing.”

“They’ll take it for supernatural.”

“Let them take it according to their beliefs—it makes no difference.”

“But—as impressive as this is—a kite isn’t a weapon, Julian, even if it flies at night and glitters like an owl’s eye.”

“Sometimes seeming is as good as being.” Julian busied himself with a sort of sextant, performing an act he called “triangulation.” By this time the kites had come to the end of their measured lengths of tether. The tether-lines were taut; in fact the Stringmen had to struggle to keep the reels in place, so powerful was the force generated by the wind upon the parafoils. The hempen lines strained ferociously, and made a singing noise, eerie in the darkness.

Julian spent some time instructing the Stringmen on how to buck and lax their lines so that the kites could be made to drop and rise again. They performed the task crudely, but Julian reckoned that even a little experience was better than none. Then the Stringmen began the slow and laborious task of reeling the kites back from the sky.

An impressive display, but it wasn’t finished—Julian had one more theatrical effect he wished to test.

“Tubemen ready!” he shouted.

Another group of soldiers, who had previously been huddled at the chimney-brace for warmth, suddenly separated and formed into a row. Each of them carried a length of rubber tubing, perhaps originally intended to transport water in some Dutch governor’s mansion. When they had room enough—much to my amazement—they began to whirl the tubes above their heads, the way a cattle-herder might whirl a rope, though less elegantly. The result was that each tube (and they had been cut to various lengths) began to sing, much the way an organ-pipe sings when wind is blasted through it. What the performance yielded in this circumstance was not music, however, but a kind of unearthly, dissonant hooting—the sound a chorus of loons might make, if they were inflated to the size of elephants.

I had to clap my hands over my ears. “Julian, the whole town will be awake—you’ll wake up the Dutch infantry, though their trenches are miles away!”

“Good!” said Julian; or at least that’s what he appeared to say; the keening of the rubber tubes drowned him out somewhat. But he smiled contentedly, and after a time made a hand signal that caused the Tubemen to cease their whirling. By this time the black kites were almost reeled in, and before long the whole production was over.

No more than an hour had passed.

My astonishment was boundless, but I told Julian I still could not see the point of it. The Dutch troops, if we tried this trick on them, would no doubt be impressed —quite possibly frightened —but it didn’t seem to me they would be materially damaged in any way.

“Wait and find out,” said Julian.

The next day, rather than attack the Mitteleuropan forces, we exchanged prisoners with them.

Julian went to the trenches to oversee the exchange, which took place under a flag of truce, and I went with him. The Dutchmen scurried across noman’sland with their white flag fluttering, and an equal number of our men passed them going the other way. There was no ceremony, only a brief cease-fire; and when the business was complete the Dutch snipers resumed their deadly practice and the Dutch artillery geared up for more pointless volleys.

“The prisoners we returned,” I said to Julian, as we stood shivering in a rear trench, “are they aware of last night’s test?”

“I made sure their quarters faced the right direction. They would have had a fine view.”

“And your objective is to add their narrative to the rumors already circulating among the Dutch—including that note you dictated, assuming Private Langers has yielded to temptation?”

“That’s the goal exactly.”

“Well, this is all fine theater, Julian—”

“Psychological warfare.”

“All right, if that’s the name of it. But sooner or later the psychological has to yield to the actual.”

“It will. I’ve given the order to prepare for battle. We sleep in forward positions tonight. The attack will begin before dawn. We have to strike while the Dutch panic is still fresh.”

I grasped the sleeve of Julian’s tattered blue and yellow jacket, to make sure I had his full attention. It was cold in that trench, and despite the cutting wind the air stank of blood and human waste, and desolation was all that I could see in every direction. “Tell me the truth—will any of this charade make a difference, or is it only a show to bolster the courage of the men?”

Julian hesitated before he answered.

“Morale is also a weapon,” he said. “And I like to think I’ve increased our arsenal at least in that insubstantial way. We have an advantage we lacked before. Any advantage we can take, we sorely need. Are you thinking of home, Adam?”

“I’m thinking of Calyxa,” I admitted. And the child she was carrying, though I had not mentioned that news to Julian.

“I can’t promise anything, of course.”

“But there’s hope?”

“Certainly there is,” Julian said. “Hope, yes—hope, always—hope, if nothing else.”

I wrote another letter to Calyxa that afternoon, and buttoned it into the pocket of my jacket so that it might be found on my person if I died in battle. Perhaps it would eventually reach her, or perhaps it would be buried along with me, or become the souvenir of some Mitteleuropan infantryman—the calculation wasn’t mine to make.

I thought about praying for success, but I wasn’t sure God could be coaxed to intervene in such a remote and desolate land. [If I were Him I might be tempted to suppress My power of omniscience when it came to Labrador , and focus My attention on the world’s warmer and greener places.]

In any case I doubted my prayers would be altogether well-received, given my ambiguous denominational status. I was not in an easy state of mind, and wished I did not have to face death quite so soon.

Because it was almost Thanksgiving Julian ordered extra rations for everyone, including the last of our meat (strips of salt beef, plus whatever we could spare of horse—the mules had already been eaten). It wasn’t a proper Thanksgiving dinner as my mother would have prepared it back in Williams Ford, with a baked goose, perhaps, and cranberries purloined from the Duncan and Crowley kitchen, and raisin pie with stiff cream. But it was more than we had had for many days. The feast depleted our larder: all it left was hardtack, and we would need that for the march if we succeeded in breaking the siege of Striver.

The field hospital was a gloomy place when I visited it that evening. A group of orderlies sang sacred songs, in keeping with the spirit of the season, though somewhat halfheartedly. Many of the wounded men were unable to travel, and Dr. Linch said they might have to be abandoned to the mercies of the Mitteleuropan army. The choice of who would be hauled off and who left behind rested in his hands; and he disliked the obligation, and was in a sour mood about it.

“At least,” Dr. Linch said, “the men are a little warmer tonight—that intolerable cold wind has finally stopped blowing.”

It took a moment for the significance of what he had said to register on my mind. Then I ran outside to see for myself.

Dr. Linch was entirely correct. The wind, which had been keening steadily for almost a month, had suddenly ceased to blow, and the air was as still as ice.

We are becalmed!

I wrote in my journal.

No food but trail food, and we must be parsimonious with that. Julian can’t tell the men why the attack has been delayed, without betraying the secret of the Black Kites (which of course cannot fly without wind). The troops are restive, and grumble constantly. Thanksgiving Day, 2174—bitter and disappointing.

Another cold and windless day. Julian frets over the question, and is constantly scanning the horizon for meteorological clues and auguries.

None are perceived, though tonight the Aurora shimmers like a cloth of gold just north of the zenith.

Dutch shelling increases, and we have had to put out a number of fires in the eastern section of town. Fortunately the fires do not spread—no wind.

No wind.

We are in danger of losing any advantage Julian’s plan might have given us. He suspects the Mitteleuropans have already been reinforced. We’re greatly outnumbered, and the “Chinese Weapon” begins to seem like an empty threat, if it was ever anything more.

Nevertheless Julian has dreamed up another addition to the charade: his “male seamstresses” have hastily produced nearly two hundred protective masks for the men at the vanguard of our envisioned advance on the Dutch. These are essentially black silk sacks, with holes cut for the eyes, large enough to drape over a man’s head. The eyeholes are circled in white paint, and they present a fearful appearance from a distance—up close they seem slightly clownish. But a phalanx of armed men in such garb would surely be intimidating to a wary enemy.

Still the wind does not blow.

No wind, but snow. It falls gently, and softens the gaps and angles of this broken town.

A few gusts today, not sufficient for our advance.

Wind! —but the snow obscures all. We cannot march.

Clear skies this morning. Gusts fitful but freshening as the afternoon wears on. Will it last until dawn?

Julian says it will. He says it must. We advance in the morning, he says, wind or no.

6

At last, after a dark midnight, and much surreptitious preparation, I stood with Julian and the rest of the general staff in an earthen breastwork near the front lines. We sat at a crude table where two lamps burned while Julian read a letter from the Dutch commander—received that afternoon—offering terms of surrender, “given your present unsustainable occupation of a town the jurisdiction of which is bound to pass to us sooner or later.” The Mitteleuropan general, whose name was Vierheller, [Perhaps the Mitteleuropans know how to pronounce this jaw-cracker—I do not.]said that we would all be well-treated, and eventually exchanged back to American territory “at the cessation of hostilities,” so long as our surrender was not conditional. [Hostilities which had not ceased for decades, and showed no sign of doing so now, which weakened the argument somewhat.]

“They grew back their spine,” a regimental commander commented.

Julian had been forced to brief his staff on the nature of the “Chinese weapon,” though he kept some details to himself. They understood that it would terrify the Dutch, but that any weakness or confusion it excited would have to be quickly and efficiently exploited. For most of these commanders the attack would be purely conventional, conducted along traditional military lines.

“They still fear us a little, I think,” said Julian. “Perhaps we can remind them why they should.”

Thus there was a small overture to the drama he had planned. An hour after midnight he sent his crew of Tubemen as close to the front as they could safely go. The Dutch army was encamped on the plain beyond the hills where we had built our defenses. We had seen their fires burning like countless stars in the darkness, and heard the sound of their threatening maneuvers. Tonight they slept; but Julian meant to wake them. He ordered the Tubemen to begin their ruckus, orchestrating them as if they were a musical act. The eerie noise did not commence abruptly, but started with a lone man generating a single hollow note, soon joined by others, and others still, and so on, until the whole blended chorus, which suggested the cries of unquiet souls hired out for temporary labor by entrepreneurial demons, was carried to the ears of the enemy infantry, who no doubt stirred from their sleep in profound consternation. All across the lowlands the Dutch soldiers must have startled awake and grasped their rifles and peered anxiously into the wintry darkness, though there was nothing to see but a few chill stars in a moonless sky.

“Let that keep them for a while,” Julian said with some satisfaction, when the noise at last faded.

“What do you suppose they’ll make of it?”

“Something dire. I mean to play on their imaginations. What do you suppose a Dutch infantryman pictures when he contemplates the rumor of a secret Chinese weapon?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Nor do I; but I expect his imagination will have been shaped by stories of ancient European wars, which were fought with all sorts of fanciful and terrifying weapons, including aircraft and poison gas. I hope the sound of the Tubemen gives some vague inspiration to these nightmares, and that the Black Kites will confirm them. We’ll know soon enough, in any case.”

I cleaned and oiled my Pittsburgh rifle by lamplight while we waited, and I kept a generous supply of ammunition handy, for even the Major General’s staff would not be exempted from the coming battle—every able-bodied American soldier in the vicinity would be pressed into action before the day was done.

Julian could not give orders from the rear echelons. The kites were to be launched from behind a low rill, set about with earthen lunettes and perilously close to the Dutch lines. The effect would be most useful coming in utter darkness, so we had to launch well before dawn, even before the false glow that precedes the rising sun; and our regiments were prepared to advance at first light. Julian stood in our frozen trench, or paced back and forth in it, consulting his Army watch and an almanac for the precise hour of sunrise. He muttered to himself at length; and with the collar of his coat turned up, and his yellow beard flecked with motes of ice, he looked far older than his years.

His adjutants and sub-commanders waited impatiently for Julian to read the auspices. At last he looked up from his watch and gave a pallid smile. “All right,” he said. “Better too early than too late.”

With that he went up to the very edge of the battlements and ordered the Stringmen to stand by their reels and the Furlers to “loft up.”

The effort proceeded much as it had on the rooftop in Striver, though with certain important variations. At the warehouse the kites had been loaded with buckets of sand. Tonight there were heavy skin bags attached to their bridles. I asked Julian what the bags contained.

“Anything noxious we could find,” he said. “Some contain pure caustic soda or industrial solvents. Some are filled with liquid bleach, some with waste from the tannery or the field hospital. Some have lice powder in them, and others are stuffed with ground glass.”

The bags had been broadly daubed with luminous paint, just as the buckets had been. Otherwise there would have been nothing to see, nor any way to judge the kites’ ascent. I had worried about the wind, which was capricious; but just lately it had picked up speed and was blowing gustily. The kites unfurled with loud, crisp bangs. They rose, tested their luggage, hesitated. Then the glowing cargo swept skyward with terrifying speed.

Julian quickly called on the Tubemen to begin their whirling again, to make sure the Dutch were on alert.

I cannot say to what height the kites flew, but their clever design kept them level with one another and stable in flight. They appeared as a hundred and more eerie, bobbing green lights, risen above the crowded Mitteleuropan army camp like rogue stars. To an enemy infantryman it would have been impossible to gauge the true size or proximity of the phenomenon—which was why Julian had worked so hard to fertilize the Dutch imagination with hints and legends.

Certainly the kites didn’t go unnoticed. Almost immediately enemy trumpets began to sound, loudly enough that the howling of the Tubemen did not entirely drown them out. Peeking through an embrasure in the earthen embankment where we sheltered, I saw lanterns flicker in the staff tents of the Mitteleuropan camp. A few stray shots were fired in haste. I cupped my mouth in my hands and leaned toward Julian’s ear. “Won’t they shoot down the kites, Julian?”

“Not yet—they’re too high. And when they do shoot, Adam, they won’t aim at the kites, which are more or less invisible, but at their cargo.”

The chief Stringman called out numbers from his immense twine-reel, which had been calibrated to gauge the amount of line paid out. The other Stringmen presumably kept pace, while Julian worked numbers with a pencil and a paper pad, [To this day I don’t understand how Julian was able to estimate the kites’ position by noting their apparent height above the horizon and the amount of string paid out. It seemed like black magic; though it involved numbers, not spells or toad’s-feet or any such occult contrivances.]and the hempen twine bucked and sang at the anchored reels.

At last Julian reached the conclusion of his figuring and sent out the order to “lax line.” The Stringmen let their cord play out freely a moment longer, then braked the reels with wooden chocks.

The luminous, toxic cargo glided closer to the enemy infantry, and fresh rifle shots rang out.

These increased in volume and intensity. Peering across the flat expanse of darkness where the Dutch were encamped I could see the flash of rifle fire as if it were the play of lightning inside a thundercloud—a vast, wide crackling of rifle fire, shockingly intense.

The Tubemen increased their hooting to a high unholy pitch. I expect all this show intimidated the Mitteleuropans—in fact it was beginning to intimidate me. Those Dutch rifles, though aimed at the kites, were pointed roughly in our direction, and bullets began to drop out of the sky around us, not entirely harmlessly. Hails of them fell against the earthen embankments.

In the sky to the east of us, the luminous floating targets jerked and danced as they were struck and struck again.

I pictured in my mind what must be happening on the field of battle. I reminded myself that the Dutch had intercepted the letter Julian entrusted to Private Langers, and that what they perceived was not a theatrical effect but the actions of (in Julian’s words as I had transcribed them) a HELLISH and SATANIC DEVICE, insidious in its LINGERING EFFECTS. As the skin bags were perforated and finally obliterated by volleys of bullets they released into the night air their unpleasant contents, which descended onto the fearful infantrymen like a ghastly dew.

“Light on the eastern horizon, sir,” an adjutant soon reported to Julian. I looked and detected a brightening there, the air-glow of the coming dawn.

“Reel in!” Julian ordered.

Even such feeble first light soon made the battlefield more visible. A few of the Black Kites had been battered beyond utility, or had their strings cut by rifle fire, and these had fallen like enormous wounded bats among the Dutch. But the Mitteleuropan troops weren’t paying much attention to the fallen kites—in fact they were running aimlessly, many of them.

I tried to put myself in the shoes of one of those soldiers and imagine it from his point of view. Woken from a troubled sleep by an unearthly keening, he’s called out into the darkness and finds a great number of peculiar Flying Lights descending on his encampment. All manner of fears and fancies compete for his attention. He’s grateful when the order to fire freely rings out, and he lifts his Dutch rifle—let’s say he’s a marksman—and discharges round after round at the eerie targets above him. If his aim isn’t accurate, it doesn’t matter; a thousand men like him are doing just the same thing.

The shooting bolsters his courage. But before long he perceives a certain rank scent, unpleasant but unidentifiable, composed (though he doesn’t know it) of all the poisons Julian’s men have sent aloft: powders for killing rats, solvents for paint, lye for soap, offal from the field hospital… A drop of something touches his exposed skin, and tingles or burns there. He squints once more into the night sky; his eyes are doused with caustic agents; he weeps involuntarily, and cannot see.… There was not enough of toxins and poisons in those bags to kill an army of Dutchmen, perhaps not enough to kill even one Dutchman, barring a lucky chance. But our hypothetical soldier chokes, he sweats, he fancies himself murdered or at least mortally tainted. It’s not a threat he can contain or confront. It comes out of the night like a supernatural visitation. All he can do, in the end, is run from it.

He’s not alone in reaching this conclusion.

I looked out on the Dutch encampments and saw chaos. First light could do nothing to dispel the fears Julian had so adroitly conjured. And Julian’s conjuring wasn’t finished. “Fire canister!” he cried, and the order was swiftly conveyed to our artillery emplacements. Evidently Julian had ordered certain canister shells to be filled with (as he later described it to me) a combination of flea powder and red dye. These exploded in huge clouds of amber dust, which the wind carried among the Dutch infantry in swirling clouds—harmlessly; but the Dutch reckoned the shells to be full of potent poison, and they fled from them the way they would never have fled a conventional artillery barrage.

The Mitteleuropan commanders rode among the men on horses, trying to rally their troops; but it was soon clear that the Dutch middle had collapsed, creating an opening for an American advance.

Julian ordered the attack at once. Moments later an entire regiment of American infantry, wearing black silken hoods over their heads, stormed out of our trenches and lunettes, hooting ferociously and wielding Pittsburgh rifles and a few invaluable Trench Sweepers.

The Dutch commander panicked and threw all his forces against us in an attempt to hold the center. Julian had anticipated this, and quickly directed our cavalry to ride against the Dutch flanks. The American cavalry were hungry men on hungry horses, but their charge was effective. More Trench Sweepers were brought to bear. The watery sun, when it finally broached the horizon, peered down on bloody carnage.

Our entire army was poised to break out, the infantry and cavalry in front, supply wagons and the portable wounded behind them, more infantry and cavalry at the rear for protection. “Ride with me, Adam!” Julian cried; and two slat-ribbed stallions were brought up, with saddles and provisions and ammunition bags; and we galloped eastward behind a brave flourish of regimental flags.

I had seen desperate battles before, of course, but there was something especially gaudy and terrible about this one.

We came down behind the advance regiments into a tumbled and ravaged land. The Dutch emplacements, now abandoned, were a hazard to us, and many horses stumbled into trenches or craters and died of their injuries. The aftermath of that first advance, along with the residue of Julian’s Black Kites, had created a charnel-ground abandoned by all but the dead. Dutch troops cut down by Trench Sweepers lay in place, their bodies contorted by their dying exertions. The colored-powder canister barrage had painted the trampled snow with scarlet plumes, and the stink of the various aerial emoluments combined into one acrid, excremental, chemical vapor which even in its dissipated state caused our own eyes to water freely.

Julian rode past companies of foot-soldiers toward the front, pausing at one point to take up the Battle Flag of the Goose Bay Campaign. This was an ennobling sight, in spite of (or because of ) the tattered condition of the flag.

WE HAVE WALKED UPON THE MOON, the banner declared, and we might have been marching on the Moon right now for all the desolation around us; though the Moon, I suppose, is not pockmarked with crude abattises and open latrines. Every infantry company we passed took pleasure in the sight of the banner, and cries of “Julian Conqueror!” were commonplace.

We came into a lightly forested, complex terrain. The wind, for which we had prayed so fervently and which we had so eagerly welcomed, became a nuisance as the day progressed. Low clouds raced across the sky in gusts and gales, scouring old snow into the air and bringing fresh squalls. The Dutch army had fled before us, but we didn’t pursue them; our objective was escape, not confrontation, and for a time the only fighting was sporadic, as we encountered straggling Mitteleuropan infantrymen and overwhelmed them.

But the Mitteleuropan commander was no fool, and as the snow impeded our progress he was busy rallying his troops in their fall-back positions. Our first hint of this was the sound of gunfire in the snowy haze to the east of us—I took it for just another skirmish, though Julian frowned and pressed his mount to greater speed.

In our eagerness to escape Striver we had allowed our forces to disperse somewhat, and now it seemed our vanguard had fallen into a trap. The sound of rifle fire swelled rapidly, and as we galloped toward it we began to see casualties flowing back on us in limping lines. Full battle ahead, one soldier warned us, “and the Dutch aren’t running anymore, sir—they’re standing fast!”

Julian established a rough command headquarters near the fighting and quickly organized his staff. Scouts reported that the American vanguard had marched into a declivity on the road and come under sustained fire from protected positions; before they could entrench or retreat, shells exploded in their midst. They were falling back by companies, in a state of confusion.

Julian did what he could. He ordered his artillery up. He consulted his maps, and tried to anchor his lines securely, though the terrain was flat and unsuitable. Before long one of his adjutants announced that the sparse American right wing had entirely collapsed and the Mitteleuropans were rolling it up.

I could hear the artillery and the rifle fire—it was noticeably closer now. Dutch shells began to fall perilously near to us. We were in danger of being overrun by our own troops, should the battle become a rout.

Julian barked ferociously at the Lieutenant who first counseled retreat. It was not at all certain that we could return to Striver safely—and then we would only be under siege again, with our numbers depleted and our provisions exhausted. Striver was a prison, and our whole purpose had been to break out of it. But more messengers arrived with increasingly bad news, and when a shell knocked down the crude shelter around us Julian finally admitted the impossibility of sustaining the advance. The Dutch had regained all their courage, and had checked us effectively, and there were no more pantomime weapons to throw at them.

The realization that his plan had failed drove Julian to his lowest ebb. He had been fed no more generously than the rest of us, and several times I had to stand beside him as he consulted with his adjutants, and take his arm to support him when his physical weakness crested. There was in Julian a fierce, almost supernatural strength; I had seen it sustain him through terrible battles before this one; but even that strength had its limit, which he seemed to have just about reached. “I’m cold, Adam,” he whispered to me as the day advanced, “and the dead are all around—so many dead!”

“We have to extract all the survivors we can,” I told him.

“So they can have the privilege of dying later rather than sooner, ” he muttered; but the admonition worked to brace him. He reached down into the deepest part of himself, as it seemed, and discovered there a last reserve of courage.

“Bring me the campaign flag,” he told the nearest adjutant, “and my horse, and sound a general retreat.”

I wish I could paint a word-picture vivid enough to convey the nightmare of our Retreat to Striver. I have neither the skill or the stomach for it, however. It isn’t that these images are lost to me, for they return, on a regular basis in my sleep, and I often awake sweating or shouting from their thrall. But I cannot bear to set them down on the page with minute fidelity.

Suffice to say that we rode through Tartarus with the Devil at our backs, fighting all the way.

Days were short in Labrador at that time of year. The light we had greeted so optimistically at dawn grew thin and watery. Julian, still drawing on his deepest wells of strength, carried the battle pennon high and fought alongside the rear-guard. I fought beside him, on horseback, as we gave up land that hours earlier we had won and watered with American blood. Dutch bullets flew around us like lethal insects, and—as at the Battle of Mascouche, so long ago—Julian seemed, at first, invulnerable to them.

But only at first. He could not remain wholly unperforated, in a flurry of lead that made his campaign banner a tattered and illegible rag.

I was next to him when a bullet pierced the cloth of his uniform coat about the shoulder. The wound was not grave, but it numbed the arm; and the banner with its proud boast slipped from his grasp. The faded image of the Moon was trodden on by his horse’s hooves as he slumped in the saddle.

“Julian!” I called out.

He turned to the sound of my voice, an apologetic expression on his face. Then a second bullet struck him, and his mouth filled with blood.

7

After dark, the Dutch were in no hurry to chase us—they knew where we were going, and would be content to “mop us up” at their leisure. Thus some fraction of the army that had marched out of Striver arrived back by moonlight, battered and hungry, and took up positions along their old defensive lines. And in the town itself, Dr. Linch—the only one of our physicians to have survived the attempted break-out—set up a diminished version of his old field hospital. His only supplies were a handful of knives and saws, a few bottles of medicinal brandy and liquid opium, and some needles and thread scavenged from the ruin of a tailor’s shop. He boiled water over a stove in which he burned scraps of broken furniture.

He looked at me vaguely when I brought Julian to him. His own exhaustion had just about overcome him. I had to remind him of the urgency of his work, and of the necessity of saving Julian’s life.

He hesitated, then nodded. I carried Julian into the shell of the old field hospital, past corpses piled like cords for a bonfire. Linch examined Julian’s wounds by lantern light.

“The shoulder is only a flesh wound,” he said. “The wound to his face is more serious. The bullet tore away a part of his cheek, and two of his molars are shattered. At that, he’s lucky it wasn’t worse.” He paused and smiled—it was a mirthless, bitter smile, such as I hoped never to see again. “I’d say he might recover, if we had food to give him, or real warmth, or shelter.”

“Will you sew his cheek, in any case?”

“No,” said Dr. Linch. “There are men whose suffering is more intense, and they deserve my attention—and don’t mention the name Comstock, as if that had any claim on my sympathies. If you want him sewn up, Adam Hazzard, do it yourself. You’ve assisted me often enough. You know how it’s done.”

He gave me a needle and thread and left a lantern for me.

Julian remained insensible with shock as I worked on him, though he moaned once or twice. It was not pleasant to press a threaded needle through his lacerated skin—to dab the blood away in order to judge my own work—and then do it again—and yet again—until a rough seam drew the tissues together, effectively if not handsomely. I could do nothing about his cracked and shattered teeth except, at Dr. Linch’s suggestion, to pack the damaged area with cotton. Much blood was spilled during this exercise. It covered my clothing; and the loss of it left Julian breathless.

Dr. Linch, returning, gave him a weak preparation of opium. I sat with Julian through the dark hours, and stoked the stove when the night wind cut too close.

In the morning the shelling resumed with fresh vigor, as if the Dutch meant to punish us for the impudence of our attempted escape. Or perhaps they were just anxious to finish the work of killing us, and get on with their regular business.

Julian spat clotted blood until noon. His distress was palpable, but he couldn’t speak. Eventually he gestured for a paper and pencil.

I kept these items with me habitually, as a writer should, [Even one who owns a typewriter, for those machines are not convenient to carry in one’s pocket.]and handed them to him.

He wrote, in quavering capitals, a demand for MORE OPIUM.

I went and canvassed Dr. Linch, but the news I carried back to my friend’s bedside wasn’t good. “There’s very little opium left, Julian. The doctor is reserving it for the worst cases.”

MORE, wrote Julian.

“There is no more—can’t you hear me?”

He was an awful sight, twig-thin, linen-white, his injuries brown with stale blood, blood congealed on his dusty yellow beard. His eyes rolled in their sockets.

I SHOULD HAVE DIED, he wrote.

But after a while he slept.

The next day our surviving troops retreated to their final defensive position, in a close perimeter around the town. The noose had fully tightened on us, in other words. The word “surrender” was mooted about; but it had not yet come to that… not while there were still trail-crackers to eat… but those wouldn’t last long.

I softened hardtack in water until it was soggy and dropped small morsels of it into Julian’s mouth, which was the only way he could eat in his present condition. He took some nourishment that way, but refused it when the pain became intolerable.

I asked him whether he had any orders for the men.

NO ORDERS (he wrote) NOTHING LEFT WHY WOULD THEY WANT MY ORDERS?

“Because you’re their commander, Julian. Even if our attack didn’t succeed, the men recognize it as a noble attempt—better than they could have made without you.”

FAILURE

“The Dutch were reinforced. It’s no one’s fault we couldn’t overwhelm them. It was a glorious effort—it will be remembered as such.”

FOOLISH NO ONE TO REMEMBER WE WON’T LEAVE HERE ALIVE

“Don’t say so!” I pleaded with him. “We will go home—we must! Calyxa needs me—she’s having problems with the Dominion. Perhaps that Deacon from Colorado wants to torture her. Also, she’s—that is—I haven’t told anyone yet, Julian, but—she’s going to have a child!”

He stared at me. Then he took up the pencil and paper again.

YOUR CHILD?

“Of course my child!—what else would it be?”

He wrote, after another pause, GOOD NEWS CONGRATULATIONS WOULD SMILE IF I COULD OF COURSE YOU’LL GO HOME

“Thank you, Julian. You’ll come home with me, and we’ll see that baby born. You’ll be its uncle, in effect; and you can hold it on your knee and feed it mashy apples if you like.”

GODFATHER?

“Yes, if you’ll accept the nomination!”

CLOSE TO GOD AS I’LL GET, he wrote, and then laid back against the wooden slats that served him as a bed. His eyes closed, and his wounds seeped pinkish fluids.

8

The next day looked to be our last, despite the optimism I had tried to impress upon Julian. The shelling of Striver intensified. The Dutch barrages reached every part of the town, and I was often bathed in plaster shaken from the ceiling while I tended to Julian’s needs.

His adjutants and junior colonels had stopped begging him for orders—he was too badly hurt to lead, and anyway there were no useful orders to give. The Army of the Laurentians, Northern Division, had become a sort of automaton, firing reflexively whenever a target presented itself. That couldn’t continue—our last supplies of ammunition had been tapped.

It was a cold day, clear and windless. Julian slept fitfully whenever the cannonade permitted; and I slept, often enough, on the chair beside him.

I was awake, however, and Julian was asleep, when a freshly-promoted Lieutenant rushed into the room. “General Comstock!” the man exclaimed.

“Quiet, Lieutenant—the General’s napping, and he needs his rest—what’s the matter?”

“Sorry, Colonel Hazzard, but I was sent to report—that is, we’ve seen—”

“What? Some new Dutch outrage? If our defenses have collapsed there’s no need to trouble Julian Comstock about it. He’s in no position to help, though he would, if he could.”

“It’s not that, sir.

Sails !”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sails, sir! We’ve sighted sails, coming down Lake Melville from the east!”

“Dutch sails?”

“Sir, it’s hard to be sure, but the lookouts think not—in fact it looks like Admiral Fairfield’s fleet! The Navy has come for us at last, sir!”

I found I couldn’t speak. There is a species of release from fear that in its effect is as unmanning as fear itself. I covered my face with my hands to conceal my emotion.

“Sir?” the Lieutenant said. “Aren’t you going to tell the General?”

“As soon as it’s confirmed,” I managed to say. “I wouldn’t like to disappoint him.”

But I couldn’t wait for an adjutant’s word. I left Julian sleeping and climbed up to the top of the hospital.

The hospital, in better days, had been a Dutch shop, with apartments overhead, located at the shoreward end of Portage Street. It had lost its roof in the battle, and the second story had become an open platform, exposed to the elements. It afforded a good view of the harbor. I stood in the empty casing of a shattered window, gazing off across the lake.

The sails hove into view soon enough. Without a spyglass I couldn’t discern the colors they were flying, and I feared some new Mitteleuropan attack despite the Lieutenant’s encouraging words. Then the outline of the nearest vessel began to seem familiar to me, and my heart fluttered a little.

She was the Basilisk —the beloved Basilisk —Admiral Fairfield’s flagship.

I was grateful, and I addressed my prayerful thanks to the slate-gray sky and the surging clouds, or whatever lay beyond them.

Lake Melville was too salt to freeze entirely, but fringes of ice had formed at the edges of it, and the Navy couldn’t anchor as close to shore as they might have liked; but there were gaps of open water where her boats could freely move. An advance party quickly gauged the extremity of our situation, and communicated details to the Basilisk by signal-flags; and before long that ship, along with the others of the fleet, began to fire shells which flew above Striver and dropped into the Dutch lines with telling accuracy. The bombardment was continuous; it drove the Mitteleuropans back a mile or more from their forward entrenchments; and the sound of it was what finally woke Julian from his profound sleep.

He was afraid we were about to be assaulted by the enemy, and I soothed him by giving him the good news.

He was less cheered by it than I expected. He took up pencil and paper and wrote: ARE WE SAVED?

“Yes, Julian, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! The men are coming into the streets, cheering!”

USELESS THEN I MEAN OUR ATTEMPT TO BREAK THROUGH

“Well, but how could we have known—?”

HOW MANY DEAD FOR NO PURPOSE HUNDREDS THOUSANDS STILL ALIVE IF ONLY I HAD WAITED

“That’s not the way to think of it, Julian!”

BLOOD ON MY HANDS

“No—you were magnificent!”

He refused to be convinced.

An adjutant arrived with word that the Admiral wanted to see Julian, in order to begin to plan the evacuation of our troops from Striver.

TELL HIM I’M NOT IN, Julian wrote; but he didn’t mean it—it was only his injuries speaking.

The Admiral was promptly admitted.

It was so heartening to see the old naval officer again that I nearly wept. His uniform was so bright and bold, compared to our tattered rags, that he seemed to have descended from a distant Valhalla well-supplied with patriotic tailors. He looked at Julian with the knowledgeable sympathy of a man who had seen injured men, and worse, many times before. “Don’t rise,” he said, as Julian struggled to sit straight up and essay a salute. “And don’t try to speak, if your wounds make it difficult.”

I CAN WRITE, Julian hastily set down, and I read the message to Admiral Fairfield on his behalf.

“Well,” said Fairfield , “there is not much to say that can’t wait a short while. The important thing is that your men have been rescued—the siege is lifted.”

TOO LATE, wrote Julian, but I couldn’t communicate anything so pessimistic to the Admiral. “Julian thanks you,” I said, ignoring the looks he shot in my direction. The expression was all in his eyes, since Julian’s jaw was too badly hurt to move—even a frown would have wounded him.

“No thanks are called for. In fact I apologize for delaying as long as we have.”

DEKLAN MEANT FOR ME TO DIE HEREA WELL-LAID PLANWHAT CHANGED?

“Julian says he can hardly accept your apology. He does wonder what circumstances made this rescue possible.”

“Of course—I forget you’ve been cut off from all news,” the Admiral said. “The order that kept us out of Lake Melville was rescinded.”

DEKLAN MUST BE DEAD “Julian asks about the health of his uncle.”

“That’s the key to it,” Admiral Fairfield said, nodding. “The plain fact is, Deklan Conqueror has been deposed. In part it was because of the reports of the Goose Bay campaign you sent out when the Basilisk last saw these shores, Colonel Hazzard. The Spark published them in the ignorant belief that Deklan Conqueror would want Julian’s heroism widely publicized. But it was obvious enough, reading between the lines, that Julian had been betrayed by the Executive Branch. The Army of the Laurentians was already profoundly unhappy about Deklan’s misrule and arrogance—the balance was finally tipped.”

DID THEY KILL HIM?

“Was Deklan Conqueror’s abdication wholly voluntary?” I asked.

“It wasn’t voluntary at all. A brigade came down from the Laurentians and marched on the Presidential Palace. The Republican Guard chose not to resist—their opinion of Deklan Comstock is no higher than anyone else’s.”

DOES THE MURDERER YET LIVE?

“Was Julian’s uncle injured in the process?”

“He’s a prisoner in the Palace for the time being.”

WHO TAKES COMMAND OF THE PRESIDENCY?

“Has a successor been named?”

Here Admiral Fairfield looked somewhat abashed. “I wish I had a more ceremonial way to convey the information,” he said, “and a venue for it grander than this ruined building, but—yes,” he said, looking Julian hard in the eye, “a successor has been named, pending my confirmation that he has survived. That successor is you , General Comstock. Or I should say President Comstock. Or Julian Conqueror, as the infantry like to style you.”

Julian sank back into his rude bed, his eyes clenched shut. All color fled from his face. I expect Admiral Fairfield took this as an expression of pain or shock due to his injury. There was an embarrassed silence. Then Julian gestured for the pad and pencil again.

THIS IS WORSE THAN DEATH (he wrote) I WISH THE DUTCH HAD KILLED ME OH GOD NO TELL HIM GO TO HELL ALL OF THEM GO TO HELLI WILL NOT SERVE

“Julian is too feverish to express his astonishment,” I said. “He’s humbled by the honor so unexpectedly bestowed upon him, and hopes he’ll prove worthy of it. But he’s tired now, and needs to rest.”

“Thank you,” the Admiral said to me, and “Thank you, Mr. President,” to Julian.