Men of War

Chapter One

Colonel Andrew Lawrence Keane reached up and reverently touched the silken folds of the flag of the 35th Maine. Aged and bloodstained, the fabric was as fragile as the wings of a dying butterfly.

A hundred nameless fields of strife, he thought wistfully. My own blood on that standard, my brother’s, all my comrades. How many of us left? Less than a hundred now. He slowly let his hand drop.

It was early morning, the air heady with the scent of late spring. The grass was up, thick, a lush green, sprinkled with a riot of flowers-blue, yellow, and strange purple orchids unique to this alien world that was now home.

Nature was already hard at work covering over the scars of the bitter winter battle. The deep trenches cut by the besieging Bantag were beginning to erode away, collapsing in on themselves under the incessant drumbeat of the heavy spring rains. Scattered wreckage of battle, discarded cartridge boxes, broken caissons, shell casings, tattered bits of uniform, and even the bones of the fallen were returning to the soil.

His gaze swept across the field, fingering for a moment at the great city of the Roum, looking like a vision of an empire lost to his own world far more than a millennium ago. Pillared temples adorned the hills, the new triumphal arch commemorating the great victory already half-raised in the center of the old forum. Even in the city the scars of the bitter winter battle were beginning to disappear, new buildings rising up out of the wreckage, the distant sound of sawing, hammering; a city being reborn echoed across the fields.

He turned his mount, nudging Mercury with his knees, shifting his gaze to the long lines deployed out behind him, a full corps drawn up for review before heading to the front. It was the glorious old 9th Corps, so badly mauled in the siege. The corps was deployed in battle formation, three divisions, with brigades in column, colors to the fore, occupying a front of more than half a mile. The formation was obsolete for battle use; in an open field it would be torn to shreds by modern firepower. But old traditions died hard, and such a formation could still inspire the ranks, giving them a sense of their strength and numbers.

“They’re starting to look better,” Hans Schuder announced. Andrew looked over to his old friend and nodded, urging Mercury to a slow canter, the flag bearer of the 35th following, as he paraded down the length of the line, saluting the shot-torn standards of the regiments, carefully eyeing the men.

Most of the wear and tear of the winter fight, at least on the exterior, had been repaired … new uniforms to replace the rags that had covered the men by the end of the winter, rifles repaired and well polished, cartridge boxes and haversacks bulging with eighty rounds per man, and five days’ rations.

Here and there the ranks had been replenished with new recruits, but most of the men were veterans: rawboned, tough, lean, eyes dark and hollow. Far too many of the regiments were pitifully small, sometimes down to fewer than a hundred men. Andrew had considered combining units and cutting the corps down to two divisions, but there had been a howl of protest. Regimental pride was as strong on this world as with any army back on the old world, so he had let the formation stand.

Reining in occasionally, he paused to chat, making it a point to single out men who wore the coveted Medals of Honor. Eighteen had been awarded for the siege of Roum, and another five for the units that had flanked the Bantags with Hans Schuder. Self-consciously he looked down at his own medal, given to him personally by President Abraham Lincoln. It still made him feel somewhat guilty that he had thus been singled out. Taking command of the old 35th at Gettysburg after the death of Colonel Estes, he had simply held the line, refusing to budge, the same way the other regiments deployed along Seminary Ridge had fought on that terrible first day of the battle. He had bled the 35th white, lost his only brother, and awakened in the hospital minus an arm. And for that they gave me a medal. He looked over at Hans riding beside him. It wasn’t fair, he thought again. If anyone deserved the medal for that day, it was Hans.

His gaze shifted to a color sergeant from the 14th Roum who had won his medal the hard way, killing over a dozen Bantags in hand-to-hand fighting. Andrew nodded to the sergeant and, as tradition demanded, saluted first in recognition of the medal. The sergeant, really not much more than a boy, grinned with delight and snapped off a salute in return.

“Sergeant, ready to go back up to the front?” Andrew asked, still stumbling over the Latin.

“I think we’re ready, sir.”

Andrew smiled and continued on.

“I think we’re ready,” Andrew said in English, looking over at Hans. “They’ll fight, but they’re worn out.”

“Who isn’t, Andrew?” Hans replied laconically. “The years pass, the fighting continues, the faces keep changing in the ranks. They just keep seem to be getting younger; that boy with the Medal of Honor couldn’t be nineteen.”

“Actually just turned eighteen,” Andrew replied. He looked back again at the boy with the old eyes, and saw the looks of admiration from the others in his company, for Keane had singled him out.

The old game, Andrew thought, “with such baubles armies are led,” Napoleon had once said. Two new awards had been created at the end of the Battle of Roum, and many of the men now wore them, a dark purple stripe on the left sleeve denoting a battle wound, and a silver stripe, also on the same sleeve, for having killed a Bantag in hand-to-hand combat or for a conspicuous display of gallantry. A good third of the corps wore the purple stripe, and several hundred the silver. It just might motivate a frightened boy to stand while others ran.

Coming to the head of the formation Andrew reined in and returned the salute of Stan Bamberg, commander of the 9th Corps and an old gunner of the 44th New York Light Artillery, who today was relinquishing command to head south and take over the 3rd Corps in front at Tyre. Jeff Frady, a redheaded gunner from the 44th had been promoted to take command, and in part this ceremony was the pomp and circumstance for a change of leaders.

“Nice day to be heading up to the front,” Stan announced, looking at the pale blue morning sky. “This is a good corps, Andrew.”

Andrew caught the undercurrent of concern in Stan’s voice. The 9th had been shredded at Roum, and some said the unit had simply broken. The survivors, including Stan, felt that something had to be proven.

“How’s the arm?” Andrew inquired. Stan smiled, flexing it with barely a grimace, a souvenir of the last minutes of the battle for Roum, when the corps commander had gotten a little too enthusiastic, ridden to the front lines, and received a Bantag bullet as a result.

“Ready to head south?”

Stan smiled. “I’ll miss these boys.” He was staring at Jeff, who had been his second for well over a year. “Take good care of them.”

Jeff nodded, not replying.

A steam whistle echoed in the distance, interrupting their thoughts. Looking past Stan, Andrew saw a train coming down the broad open slope, its flatcars empty after delivering half a dozen land ironclads to the front. The corps would need thirty trains to take the ten thousand men and their equipment up to the front lines. Once they were in position everything would be in place for what he prayed would be the blow that cracked the Bantag position wide-open.

He had taken the trip up there only a week before, to see the situation in front of Capua and arrange the final plans for the next offensive. The Bantag withdrawal back to the destroyed town, ninety miles east of Roum, had been thorough and brutal, not a single building, barn, hovel, bridge, or foot of track had been left intact by the retreating Horde. Over the last four months his railroaders had worked themselves to exhaustion, repairing, as well, the damage done by the two umens that had raided between Hispania and Kev.

Even with the reconnected line, Pat O’Donald, up at the front, could barely keep five corps supplied, and though he was screaming for the 9th to move up as quickly as possible, Andrew half wondered if their arrival would be more of a burden than a help.

They were at a stalemate, and he feared that this was a stalemate the Human forces would eventually lose. Though the Battle of Roum, in a tactical sense, had been a victory, in an overall strategic sense he feared it might very well have proven to be a dark turning point of the war.

He remembered his old war back home, the summer and autumn of 1864, when Sherman and Sheridan had laid waste to Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley, crippling the breadbasket of the Confederacy. That, perhaps far more than the bitter siege in the trenches around Petersburg and Richmond, had truly broken the back of the Rebel cause.

Here, in the present, the Bantag ravagings were a blow so severe that he had been forced temporarily to demobilize nearly twenty thousand Roum infantry who had been farmers. If they didn’t get some kind of crops in, the Republic would starve the following winter.

Beyond the physical devastation of the Bantag winter offensive there was the human toll as well. Another forty thousand casualties for the army, more than a hundred thousand civilians lost and a million more homeless. The war was wearing them down, even as they continued to win on the battlefield.

He sensed this new Bantag leader understood that far better than any foe he had ever faced across all the wars with the three hordes. The others had always perceived victory as a prize to be won on the battlefield. Yet in the reality of war that was only one component.

What was needed now was not just a victory but a shattering and overwhelming triumph, an annihilating blow on the battlefield that broke the back of the Bantag Horde. He hoped that the forthcoming offensive would be that blow.

“Sir, are you all right?” Jeff asked.

Andrew stirred, realizing he had been gazing off in silence.

He smiled, saying nothing for a moment. He was still weak, a hollow fluttery feeling inside, as if his heart, his body had gone as brittle as glass. The pain, thank God, was gone, though the dark craving for that terrible elixir, morphine, still lingered, the memory of its soothing touch drifting like a fantasy for a forbidden lover.

“Just fine, Jeff, let’s not keep the boys standing hefe. Reviews might be grand fun for generals, but they can be a hell of a bore for privates.”

“Yes sir. I’ll see you up at the front, sir.”

Jeff snapped off another salute and turned his mount, barking out a command. The fifers and drummers deployed behind him started in, commands echoing across the field as the densely packed columns wheeled about to pass in review and from there deploy out to the depot where the trains waited.

The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” echoed across the open fields as the long sinuous columns marched past, the bayonet-tipped rifles gleaming in the morning sun.

Stan, obviously moved by sentiment for his old command, cantered back and forth along the ranks, reaching down to shake hands and wish the boys well.

“This has got to be the last campaign,” Hans announced. Andrew shifted in his saddle, looking over at his old friend.

“Another battle like the last and it’s over with; either they will break us, or Roum will crack, or maybe even our own government. Andrew, you’ve got to find a way to end — it now.”

Andrew looked away, watching as the ranks passed. There had been a time when this army, his army, so reminded him of the old Army of the Potomac. No longer. It had the look, the feel of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The men were lean, too lean. His army was beginning to unravel from having fought one too many battles and knowing it would be forced to continue to fight, the only escape being dismemberment or death.

It was evident all across the Republic, not just here, or at the front, but back in Suzdal, and to the smallest village hamlet. The vast infrastructure he had attempted to build to support this war was stretched like a bowstring and beginning to fray.

“You see it, too?” Andrew asked.

The columns swayed past, dust swirling up so that they looked like shadows passing even though it was noon. He could sense the lack of enthusiasm, the almost boyish excitement that went through an army when it finally broke camp and headed back up. No, these were grim veterans who would fight like hell, but the enthusiasm was dampened by the knowledge of reality.

“I see it in you as well, Andrew Keane. You’re still not over your wound.”

Andrew chuckled dismissively. “Breath comes a bit short, but other than that I’m fine.”

“Right.”

He looked over at his old friend and smiled.

“You should talk. How many wounds is it, five now? And that heart of yours. Emil keeps telling you to slow down a bit and to cut out chewing tobacco.”

As if in response Hans fished into his haversack, pulled out a plug, bit off a chew, and, playing out their old ceremony, offered the plug to Andrew. He took it and bit a chew as well, and Hans smiled.

“We’re two worn-out old warhorses Andrew. But hell, what’s the alternative, go to the old soldiers’ home and sit in a rocking chair on the porch? Not I. Down deep, I kind of hope I get shot by the last bullet of the last war.”

“Don’t^even joke about that.”

“Superstitious?” Hans chuckled.

“No, it’s just something you don’t joke about. But you’re right, we’re both wearing down. Everyone is.”

In the dust-choked column a passing regiment raised their caps in salute. Andrew let go of Mercury’s reins and took off his hat to return the gesture.

“You know, there is part of me that would actually miss this,” Hans drawled as he leaded over and spat. “Nothing in peacetime can equal this, full corps of infantry drawn up to march off to war.”

Andrew nodded. It wasn’t just the sight of them, it was the sounds, the smells … the rhythmic clatter of tin cups banging on canteens, the tramping of feet on the dusty road, the snatches of conversations wafting past, the scent of leather, sweat, horses, oil, even the staticlike feel of the powdery dust. It was something eternal, and it was one of the few things the gods of war gave back in exchange for all the blood offered up on their altars.

After so many years he could close his eyes, and it could be anywhere, here on this mad world, or back in Virginia. And he could sense as well the differences, the grimness of purpose, the quiet resignation, the feeling that this was some sort of final effort. He wondered, if, at this very moment, his rival less than a hundred miles away was engaging in the same exercise, towering eight-foot Bantag warriors marching past. Was he judging his troops as well, knowing that a final cataclysmic battle was coming?

“And what about them? What does he have? What is he feeling at this moment?” Andrew whispered.

“Who, this Jurak?”

Andrew nodded again.

“I rarely saw him, can’t recall if I ever even talked to him. He’s changed the war though, that’s certain. Almost makes me wish we still had Ha’ark.”

Escaped Chin slaves confirmed the rumors that Ha’ark had died in front of Roum, most likely murdered by his own followers. For a brief moment Andrew had hoped beyond hope that with the death of the so-called Redeemer, the war would be over, and the Bantags would simply retreat. They had indeed retreated, but it had been to dig in and go on the defensive throughout the waning days of winter and into the spring.

For the first month he was glad of the breathing space, giving them a chance to do repairs, especially to the railroads, evacuate Roum civilians westward to Suzdal, bring up supplies, and get ready.

By the second month he was actually hoping they’d come out of their defensive positions at Capua … and by the third month he knew this new leader, Jurak, had changed the nature of the war.

He could sense a difference, a more methodical mind, calculating, not given to rash moves.

“I hate the fact we have to dig him out,” Andrew said, Hans nodding in agreement. “It’s as if the bastard is sitting there, just begging us to come in.”

“Could always count on them attacking up till now,” Hans replied, “but you’re right, he’s waiting for us to kick off the ball.”

Andrew grunted. Though Hans had taught him how to chew, he had never really mastered it and was embarrassed as he tried to spit and half choked instead.

Damn, the hordes could always be counted on to attack. The trick then was to find a narrow front, dig in, and tear them up. Jurak had reversed the tables. Capua was a damn fine defensive position, flanked by marshes and heavy forests to the north, more marshes and sharp jagged hills to the south. It was a front fifteen miles wide and fortified to the teeth.

Yet it seemed there was no other way. All indicators were that during the spring Jurak had invested a massive effort on building up his infrastructure, and his factories were churning out guns, ammunition, and supplies most likely at a faster pace than that of the Republic. If Andrew let this pace go on for another six months to a year, Jurak could swarm them under. He had to strike, like it or not.

The last of the swaying columns of infantry drifted past, blue uniforms already turning dirty gray-brown from the dust, men covering their faces with bandannas soaked in water. Jeff emerged out of the dust, cantering back down the line, followed by his guidon bearer. They reined in and saluted.

“I’ll see you up at the front, Jeff. Tell Pat not to get overanxious and start the show without me.”

“Yes sir. And sir, please do all of us a favor.”

“What’s that, Jeff?”

“Don’t push yourself too hard.”

Andrew smiled. How strange the role reversal of late. Prior to the wound he had been the father; now he was feeling like the aging parent whose children were increasingly solicitous about his well-being.

Offering a casual salute, Jeff spurred his mount, shouting for the column to increase its pace. Fifers squealed, picking up the “Battle Cry of Freedom,” the song rippling down the ranks, a strange mix as some sang the words in Latin, others in Rus. The column wound past, rank after endless rank, the strange rhythm of rattling canteens and tin cups, the squeaking of leather, the scrape of hobnailed shoes on the hard-packed ground all blending together. More dust swirled up as a battery of three-inch rifles clattered past, the air thick with the smell of horse sweat, leather, tar, and grease, the men riding the caissons waving cheerily.

The dust thickened, obscuring the view. Andrew reached up to wipe his eyes. But it wasn’t just the dust; to his surprise he was in tears. It was as if he was watching an ageless ritual for one last time, a sense that here was a final moment, the army going forth one last time, hopefully to victory. But the pageantry, the flags snapping in the rising breeze, the dark columns of infantry, rifles glinting, all of it was the passing of the armies into a dark and unknown land. It was an army of ghostly apparitions, and again he thought of the dream that had consumed him while he had lain in the twilight world that bordered on death, the tens of thousands who had gone ahead, sent there by his orders. How many of these boys were now marching to that destiny? When, dear God, would it ever end?

Jurak Qar Qarth of the Bantag Horde walked along the battlements lining the east bank of the river just above Capua. The midsummer twilight cast long shadows across the river, silhouetting the human fortifications on the opposite side of the river. He peered intently, raising his field glasses to scan the lines, oblivious to the warnings about snipers. An occasional shot fluttered overhead, a round smacking into the embankment above the firing slit, sending down a shower of powdery dirt.

An enemy flyer lazily circled above the lines, waiting in challenge for any of his own airships to come over, an offer he would not take since airships were far too precious to waste in foolish dueling that served no strategic purpose.

He slid back down from the firing slit and looked back at the gathering of umen Qarths, the commanders of his twenty-five divisions committed to this front.

In the hours after his killing of Ha’ark he had assumed that he, too, would die. But led by Zartak, the oldest of the clan Qarths, the council had declared him as the rightful successor, the one of legend sent to redeem the world, while Ha’ark had been a false usurper.

It was a position he had never desired, but the simple fact of the matter was that he either take it or die. He knew that if there had actually been a blood challenge, he would have been lost, but there was still enough of the superstitious fear of him and the others who had come through the Portal of Light, to ensure his acceptance as a demigod sent to save the hordes.

Being stuck on this world, fighting this war, none of it was what he desired, but saddled with the responsibility, he would see it through to its conclusion. Ha’ark had been far more the adventurer, the seeker of glory and power, while he had stayed in the background.

Even on the old world he had not sought the shock of battle. Drafted to serve in the War of the False Pretender, he had spent eight years in the ranks, never rising because such power was not what he wanted. Solitude, a good book, a conversation with some depth to it were far more to his liking, and the others of his unit, though they knew he was dependable in a fight, found little else in common with him.

Regarding the humans of this world he felt no real hatred; the visceral loathing and dread shared by all of the hordes for this hairless race since the start of the rebellion of the cattle was beyond him in any true emotional sense. On an intellectual level he fully understood the fundamental core of this war; it was a fight for racial survival. After all that had happened only one race could expect to survive, while the other would have to be destroyed. That is what he now fought for, survival. He was of the race of the hordes, they had made him their leader, and he had to ensure that this world would be safe for them.

He smiled, remembering, a refrain from a poem from his old world:

“Those I fight I do not hate, those I defend I do not love.”

His gaze scanned the umen chieftains. Barbarians, all of them barbarians, clad in black leather, human finger bones strung as necklaces, one of them casually drinking fermented horse milk from a gold-encrusted human skull. Yet they were now his, perhaps the most capable warriors he had ever seen, razor-sharp scimitars that could cut a human in two dangling from waist belts, more than one of them carrying revolving pistols, a few with carbine rifles casually slung over their shoulders.

All of them were scarred, most sporting old saber slashes across cheeks, brow, and forearms, reminders of a simpler and happier age when the enemy were the other hordes and war was the sport of warriors and not a question of survival or total annihilation. Many bore the ritual cuts on forearms or across foreheads, slashes that were self-inflicted at the start of a battle in order to lend a more fearsome appearance. Several were missing limbs, hands, arms blown off or amputated.

Zartak, the eldest, was legendary throughout the Horde, a rider of four circlings of the planet, eighty years or more of age. At Rocky Hill, it was said that his left leg had been blown off just below the knee and he had not even flinched. After,wrapping a tourniquet around his thigh he continued “to lead his umen on the last desperate charge to take the hill, and then, in spite of the injury that normally would have killed someone half his age, he actually survived.

The ancient warrior looked straight at him then, and nodded. Strange, Jurak thought, he had often heard of the ability some claimed to be able to sense and probe the thoughts of others. Ha’ark had claimed the skill, but lied. Zartak had it, though, and in the months since becoming Qar Qarth Jurak had felt an increasing bond with this ancient one who had seen the world from one end to the other four times over.

That must indeed have been a dreamworld, the endless ride eastward toward the rising sun. The daily cycle of rising, mounting, following the slow pace of the wheeled yurts, herding the millions of horses that were the wealth of the clans, the arrival at yet another city of the cattle, there to exact tribute of gold, silver, cunningly wrought weapons, and the flesh of four-legged cattle and the delicacy of the two-legged variety as well. Then moving on the next day, riding forever, breaking the tedium by raiding northward into the realm of the Merki Horde, or to the far north and the domains of the dead Tugars.

But Keane had changed all that. Keane and his Yankees from another world.

Those changes were spreading like a plague around the world faster than a Horde could ride, and if he, his race were to survive, there was but one answer now: total annihilation. This was a war of no quarter. Either the rebellion and this human dream died, or within a generation not a single rider of the hordes would still be alive. They would be hunted by the victors, with machines ever more cunning and complex. The memory of the thousands of years of the Endless Ride, of the joy of the Riders, of the misery of the cattle, could be forgotten by neither side, and the time of reckoning had come.

Jurak had promised them that when victory was complete, when the last of the Rus and Roum were dead, and for good measure the Cartha, Chin, and Nippon were systematically slaughtered as well, so that there was no living memory of what happened, then the Golden Age would return. The machines would be destroyed. Bow, lance, and scimitar would again rule, and again they would ride eastward, resuming the endless journey of their ancestors.

He knew the promise was a lie. Such knowledge once released could not be returned. As he gazed silently at those gathered around him, he could sense that change already. Many of the Qarths, the clan and umen commanders, had already started to adapt themselves, speaking of enfilading fire, advancing by fire and cover, the use of artillery for suppressive fire. They understood how one locomotive could move in a single day what once required ten thousand horses, and the advantages of that. No, the machines would triumph in the end, and in a way the thought pleased him, for he knew it was a vital necessity.

For if Keane and his Yankees had come to this world via the Portals of Light bearing the knowledge that they did, it meant that somewhere in this universe there was a world of cattle who had mastered steam. The natural progression of such things would lead them forward to more, and greater, discoveries. Eventually, as well, they would discover that their world was studded with the lost Portals of Light left behind by his own fallen race, and how such gates could be used to span the universe.

No, there would come a day when more humans might very well arrive with yet more advanced weapons, and on that day his own race must be ready or, better still, rediscover the portals for themselves and use them.

That was but part of the reason why he had moved so aggressively throughout the last of winter and the spring to stop offensive action, to build up reserves, to spend more on the making of more factories and newer weapons. With the millions of slaves at his disposal, as distasteful as that was, he would outproduce the Yankees and then destroy them.

But such musings were not for now. There was still this war to be won. It was fitting that the Qar Qarth, the new Redeemer, have moments of silence, as if praying to the ancestors, but they waited for his pronouncements.

“You are right, Zartak,” he said, finally breaking the silence, “they are building up for.an attack. New gun emplacements, more sniper fire, the report of troop trains carrying ironclads.”

Zartak, who would be known as a chief of staff on his old,world, grunted an acknowledgment. Jurak looked at the old one, mane nearly gone to white, balanced precariously on his peg leg, and felt a bond of affection. Here was one who during the long months after the defeat before Roum had educated the new Qar Qarth as to the ways of the world, the history of the Bantag clan and of all the hordes that rode the world in the north, or who sailed the great seas of the southern hemisphere.

“I know the inactivity of the past months has weighed heavily upon all of you,” Jurak continued, “as it has weighed upon me. Victory was within our grasp before Roum and lost in the blinking of an eye for but one foolish mistake, the failure to protect our transport for supplies.

“That is why we have waited for so long. We have built those supplies back, but we have done more, occupying half of the lands that were once of the cattle of Roum. This is causing them to starve, and sooner or later they will be forced to attack, and it will be here.”

. “Directly across the river?” Tukkanger, commander of the elite umen of the white horse, asked. “Even we have learned the folly of that.”

“Yet they will come. The river is low, fordable now for much of its length.” And he pointed back west. The river, the only barrier separating the two lines dug in on opposite banks six hundred yards apart, was reduced to a muddy trickle.

“Keane must attack; it is the only front available. Their southern pocket leads but to open steppe, and, without a rail line advancing behind them, they cannot support an operation. We, in turn, are building a rail line across the narrows between the two seas to support our efforts against Tyre. That city has become a trap for them, one which they now cannot abandon for fear that we will use it as a base once our rail line is completed. Yet for them to attack us there would be a useless thrust into empty land.

“The path up through the mountains where they flanked us last time is now secured and heavily fortified by us. No, they must cross the river here. He will seek a battle of annihilation, a final desperate lunge to break our strength and our morale.”

There was no sense in explaining the political pressure to these warriors, though he and Zartak had spoken of it often enough. Part of his strategy, in fact the major part, was to try and drive a wedge between the alliances of Roum and the Rus, to emphasize their military helplessness.

“They must take back this land which belonged to the Roum or lose face. So we will let him attack; he will fail. Then, when the time is right, we shall attack in turn. And this time, I promise you, we will not stop until Roum, and beyond that Suzdal and all of Rus, are in flames.”

He said the words not as some grandiose vision or prophecy, but rather as a simple statement of the campaign to come, and those around him nodded one by one in agreement.

This would be a new kind of war for them, he realized. They had been bloodied in the long campaign all the way from the Great Sea to the gates of Roum, learning how all things had changed. Now they would see it in action. All he needed was for Keane to step into the trap, and in his heart he knew that Keane was about to take that step.

Varinna Ferguson, widow of the famed inventor who had done so much to ensure the survival of the Republic, walked through the vast hangar, gazing up in wonder at the air machine that filled the cavernous hall. This machine was special, with the name Ferguson painted on the port side, just behind the pilot’s cabin. Work crews were busy putting the final coat of lacquer on the double-weaved canvas of the wings. Tomorrow the machine would be ready for its first rollout.

“You checking this one off, too?”

She looked over at Vincent Hawthorne, chief of staff of the Army of the Republic, and smiled. He was directly responsible for all ordnance development, and thus her boss. But the relationship of Ferguson’s widow to the Republic was a strange one. She held no official rank or title. As she was heir to the memory of the great inventor, all showed her deference, for in the final months of his life she was the one who increasingly served as his eyes, his ears, and finally even his voice. It was as if some part of him still survived through her.

What few had grasped was just how unique their pairing had been. The attraction wasn’t just that of a shy eccentric inventor for a beautiful slave in the house of Marcus, former Proconsul of Roum and now the vice president of the Republic. The beauty was long gone, and she was no longer even conscious of the frozen scar tissue that made her face a mask, or the twisted hands that still cracked open and bled after hours of writing. It had always been something more than the simple attraction, as if Chuck had sensed the brilliant light of the mind within. When he had first started to share his drawings, his plans, his daydreams with her, she found she could strangely visualize them in their entirety, the parts on the sheets of paper springing into three-dimensional form, fitting together, interlocking, working or not working.

Though she might not have the leaps of imagination he did, there was within her the concrete ability to carry out what he had visualized, to sense when to reject the impractical and when to mold the practical into life. Only a few, the inner circle of Chuck’s young apprentices and assistants, fully realized just how much it was Varinna running things toward the end. She had the natural mind of an administrator who should be paired with a dreamer. Her dreamer was dead, but his notes, his sketchbooks, his frantic last months of scribblings were still alive, lovingly stored away, and she would make their contents real.

He had recognized that in her, and in so doing had not just been her lover but her liberator as well. In any other world she would have lived her life out as a servant in a house of nobility, a mistress most likely in her youth, as she had in fact been to Marcus, and then married off to another slave or underling when the prime of beauty began to fade. That, indeed, had been her fate, but instead she married a free man, a Yankee who had loved her for what she was, and she knew there would never be another like him in her life.

She looked over at Vincent and smiled, suddenly aware that she had allowed her thoughts to drift again. Even after all these years, he was still slightly embarrassed around her, unable to forget the day they had first met, when a very young Colonel Vincent Hawthorne had come to Roum as a military attache and Marcus had casually suggested that she make sure that the guest was comfortable in every way that a guest of a Proconsul should be.

The young Quaker had been in a panic over her advances and now, with the memory of Chuck, she was glad it had turned out as it did, for though Chuck was able to deal with her relationship to Marcus, there was something about the way the Yankees thought about sex that might have made difficulties between her husband and Vincent if anything had indeed finally happened.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“This machine. Is it getting checked off for the-front?”

She shook her head.

Vincent looked around for a moment at the vast hangar. Over a hundred feet long and forty feet high it was like a cathedral for the new age of air, high timber-vaulted ceiling, skylights open to admit as much light as possible for dozens of workers lining the scaffolding, carefully inspecting every double-stitched seam, searching for the slightest leak of hydrogen from the four gasbags inside the hull. It had been Varinna’s idea to mix in a small amount of pungent coal gas with the hydrogen for this test so that the smell would be a tip off of a leak. She watched as one of the inspectors called over a crew master who leaned over, sniffed a seam, and then gave the go-ahead to lacquer on a patch.

“Let’s step outside where we can talk,” Vincent suggested, and she nodded an agreement.

The evening was fair, the first hint of a cooling breeze coming up from the Inland Sea to the south, rippling the tops of the trees, and with the sleeve of her white-linen dress, she wiped the sweat from her brow.

The crew down at number seven hangar was carefully guiding its machine, E class, ship number forty-two, out of its hangar, a crew chief swearing profusely as a dozen boys worked the guidelines attached to the starboard side, keeping the ship steady against the faint southerly breeze. As the tail cleared the hangar they cast off, letting the 110-foot-long airship pivot around, pointing its nose into the breeze. Carefully they guided the ship over to a mooring post, in the open field where ships number thirty-five, through forty-one were anchored as well. The production run of the last four weeks, all of them going through the final fitting out, engine checks, test flights, and crew training before being sent up to the front.

She had nearly ten thousand people working for her. An entire mill had been set up just for the weaving of silk and canvas, then stitching the panels together on the new trea-cile sewing machines. Hundreds more worked in the bamboo groves, selecting, harvesting, and splitting the wood that would serve as the wicker frames for the airships.

Canvas, silk, and framing came together in the cavernous sheds to make the 110-foot-long ships, while in other workshops the bi-level wings were fashioned. From the engine works the lightweight caloric steam engines were produced, brought to the airfield, mounted to the wings, hooked into the fiiel lines for kerosene, and mounted with propellers.

Only within the last six months had one of her young apprentices, after examining the remains of a captured Ban-tag ship, announced that the propellers should not be made like ship’s propellers, but would work far better if shaped like the airfoils Chuck had designed for the wings. The new designs, though difficult to make, had resulted in a significant increase in performance.

Finally, with framework completed, wings mounted and folded up against the side of the ship, forward cab, bomber’s position underneath, and topside gunner positions mounted, tail and elevators added on, and all the controls and cables correctly mounted, it was time to gas up the ship.

The center bag was hot air, hooked into the exhaust from the four caloric engines mounted on the wings. Forward and aft were the hydrogen gasbags, filled from the dangerous mix of sulfuric acid and zinc shavings, cooked in a lead-lined vat, mixed with a bit of coal gas for scent.

Ten thousand laborers produced eight Eagles and four of the smaller Hornets per month. And the average life expectancy was but ten missions. She wondered, given the current state of affairs, how much longer she’d be allowed such resources, yet in her heart she sensed that it was there, not with the vast arrays of army corps and artillery, that the fate of the Republic would be decided.

All of this from my husband’s mind, she thought with a wistful smile. Ten years ago I would have thought it mad wizardry, or the product of gods to fly thus.

Of all of Chuck’s projects it was flight that had captivated him the most, inspiring his greatest leaps of creative talent and research. The Eagle class airships were the culmination of that effort. With a crew of four and three Gatling guns, it could range over nearly five hundred miles and go nearly forty miles in an hour.

A low humming caught her attention, and she looked up to see a Hornet single-engine ship diving in at a sharp angle, leveling out at less than fifty feet and winging across the field, the evening ship returning from patrol of the western steppes on the far side of the Neiper, keeping a watch over the wandering bands from the old Merki Horde. They weren’t enough to pose a truly serious threat, but they were sufficient in number to tie down a corps of infantry and a brigade of cavalry to make sure they didn’t raid across the river.

The Hornet banked up sharply, the pilot showing off for the audience on the ground, and Varinna winced slightly at the boyish display. The fault with the rear-mounted engine had killed half a dozen pilots before it was figured out, and though the problem had been solved, she wished the pilots were a little less reckless.

Out in the field where the seven new Eagles were moored, ground crews were double-checking the tie-downs for the evening and getting ready to settle in for the night in their camp, each crew of twenty-five sleeping in tents arranged around the mooring poles. They had to be ready to react instantly, day or night, to any shift in the wind or weather. Far more ships had been lost to thunderstorms than had ever been shot down by the Bantags.

Another airship, a somewhat battered Eagle-number twelve, a veteran of the winter campaign and sent back for refitting-came in, banking erratically, a cadet pilot most likely at the controls. She watched anxiously as it turned to line up on the vast open landing field of several dozen acres.

“The boy’s crabbing, not watching the wind vane,” Vincent announced.

Varinna nodded, saying nothing, as one wing dipped, almost scraped, then straightened back up, the boy touching down hard, bouncing twice, then finally holding the ground. She could well imagine the chewing out he’d get from Feyodor, her assistant now in command of the pilot-training school, made worse by the withering sarcasm of the crew chief for the machine, who would make it a point of stalking along with the pilot for the postflight checkoff, blaming the novice for every crack and dent the machine had ever suffered since the day it had first emerged from a hangar.

“How many more machines can you have up within the next five days?” Vincent asked.

“For what?”

“Varinna, you know it really isn’t your place to ask. I’m ordered to send up every available machine, and that’s what I’m out here to check on.”

“I know the plan as well as you do,” she replied sharply. Vincent started to sputter and, quickly smiling, she held up an appeasing hand.

“Colonel Keane shared it with me when he was here in the city last week. But even before then I knew about it.”

“I don’t even want to ask.” Vincent sighed, gesturing back to the west, where the distant spires of the cathedral in Suzdal stood out sharply against the late-aftemoon sky. “That damn city is a sieve when it comes to keeping a secret.”

“And that’s just one of the reasons I don’t think the attack should be launched in front of Capua.”

She could see her statement had caught his attention, and he had learned long ago not to dismissively wave off her opinions. That was another thing Chuck had taught her. When you prove yourself right on the big issues, you can get away with one hell of a lot. It was Chuck’s insistence on continuing the rocket-launcher program that had saved everyone’s hide at Hispania, and that little feat had been performed in direct contradiction to orders.

“So go on, madam general, explain,” Vincent pressed. She bristled for a second, then realized that he wasn’t being sarcastic and was in fact listening respectfully.

“Capua is so damn obvious that this new chief of theirs must know it as well. For that reason alone I think we should avoid it.”

“Don’t you think Andrew and I have argued out that point a dozen times in the last three months?” Vincent replied, a slight flash of temper in his voice.

“Ah, so you don’t agree either then?”

He flushed, his eyes turning away for a moment, and she nodded slowly. Vincent always had been too transparent. But now she knew she was in.

“I’ve talked with every pilot who’s come back here throughout the spring. One of them, Stasha Igorovich, told me that he flew a reconnaissance flight just two weeks ago and reported signs of numerous land ironclads having been moved into the forests north of town.”

“I read that report, and you know then as well as I do that when Andrew sent up two Hornets the following mnming to check on these tracks this eagle-eyed pilot claimed he saw, there was no sign of them.”

“The Bantag are learning concealment, Vincent. The same as we have.” She pointed back up toward the all-important offices and machine shops for the Ordnance Department. The once attractive whitewashed buildings had been covered with a coating of dirty brown paint. Netting with woven strips of green-and-brown cloth had been draped over the buildings so that from the air they were all but invisible.

“Need I remind you that we got the idea for that netting from the Bantag? Yet another thing this Ha’ark and his companions most likely brought over from their own world. In fact, I suspect that from the air we are far more visible than they are. And if so, the Bantag must be blind not to have noticed the buildup along the Capua front, the number of guns moved up, the dozen pontoon bridges and hundreds of canvas boats, rocket launchers, all of the equipment needed for a direct assault across a river. They’re waiting for us.”

“Maybe they are, but the war has to be decided, and decided now If we can only come to grips with them, beat them on their own field, we’ll turn the tide. Damn it all, woman, they’re still parked less than one hundred miles from Roum. We have to get them out of there now.”

“Or if we don’t Roum leaves the Republic? Is that the sole motivation now for this attack?”

“Or the Republic, or what we want to call the Republic, will leave Roum.” Vincent sighed, wearily shaking his head. “Varinna, you know as well as I do this country’s finished. One more winter of war, and we fall apart. Even if we win now, it’ll be a near-run thing at best.”

Vincent looked away again, watching for a moment as the pilot who had so clumsily landed endured a good chewing out from Feyodor while the crew chief pointed at what was most likely a broken wheel strut and exploded into a torrent of swearing.

“Tell me where we have shortages right now,” Vincent snapped, looking back at her.

She said nothing.

“Where do I start then? Fulminate of mercury for percussion caps? Our source of quicksilver is playing out, six more months and we might have to start rationing cartridges, or go all the way back to flintlock guns. How about silk for these airships? We’re out. Oil for kerosene, the Bantags overran the last oil well eleven days ago. Sure we can substitute coal oil, but that’s just one more example. And men …. ”

His voice trailed off for a moment.

“How many hundred thousands dead? If we had five corps more, even three corps, I’d break the back of this war in a month. But even if I did have the extra men, where the hell would I get fifty thousand more uniforms, cartridge boxes, tents, smallpox inoculations, and rations for a summer’s campaign, let alone the rifles and eighty cartridges per man for one afternoon’s good fight?”

| Again he sighed, extending his hands in a gesture of infinite weariness.

“One of the things I’m supposed to order is the reduction of the workforce for the airships.”

“What?”.

“You heard me right. You and I played a good litde game of doctoring the books, but some of our congressmen finally figured it out and hit the ceiling. They want the resources put into artillery or land ironclads.”

She waved her hand dismissively.

“Taking one for the other is illogical. Those people are trained for this job. We’ll lose production on both ends if we switch them off.”

“Well, they want five thousand of them transferred before the month is out. Sent to the fields if need be to try and harvest more food. Lord knows we’re falling short of that as well.”

She wearily shook her head.

“Varinna, we can’t keep what we have in the field much longer. That’s why Andrew’s making this lunge.”

“They must be in the same boat as we are,” she replied.

“Maybe so, but then again maybe not. Remember, they have slaves, millions, tens of millions if need be, spread all across this world. I think the newcomers, Ha’ark and the others, brought with them the understanding of how to harness that labor to their own ends. So they outproduce us, and in the end they overwhelm us. Our only hope was to kill so damn many of the Bantag warriors that they’d finally turn aside. We destroyed a good third of their army during the campaign of last autumn and winter, but it wasn’t enough.”

“So destroy their supplies.”

Vincent smiled, and for an instant he caused her temper to flare, the dismissive look reminiscent of ones far too many men would show when she first stepped forward to make a suggestion. The smile finally disappeared.

“Sorry, Varinna, it’s just that every damn senator and member of the cabinet, and even the president comes at me with their war-winning suggestion.”

“I’m not one of them. I was Ferguson’s wife first, then I was his assistant, then his partner, and finally in the end I did it myself, including holding him while he died.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She lowered her head. She didn’t let it show much anymore, the memory of the pain. With an effort, she forced it aside.

“To go all the way back to your original question, I could force ten more ships into the air and have them up at the front for the offensive.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“They’ll most likely all get shot down the first day. You saw the way that boy just landed. I agree with Jack Petracci that these ships need to be used en masse. We saw that last month when forty of the Bantag machines bombed Roum and sank three supply transports in the harbor.”

And they lost half their machines in the process,” Vincent replied. “Not much of a trade-off in my book.”

“Still, it showed what could be done. But there’s no sense in having the mass if the poor dumb fools fly straight into enemy fire. After all the work it takes to build one of these, sending it up with a boy who’s got twenty, maybe twenty-five hours of flying time is suicide. Hold these machines back from this fight. Give us time to train more pilots. Twenty more Eagles and Hornets won’t make a difference.”

“I have my orders.”

“For flightworthy machines. Listen to me in this, and while you’re at it keep those bastards from Congress and their investigating committees out of my way. I’m tiling you, my friend, after the attack on Capua, these ships might be the deciding factor for this war.”

“After Capua?”

“You’ll see, Vincent. You’ll see.”