Men of War

Chapter Five

Suzdal was seething with rumors of plots and counterplots as Andrew stepped out of his simple clapboard house on the village square, the guards standing to either side of his porch snapping to attention.

After the battle against the Tugars, and the destruction of the lower quarter of the city, the men of the 35th had been given this section of the city as a place to live, and there they had built a fair replica of a New England town square, complete with Presbyterian and Methodist churches, a monument in the center of the square to the men who had come to this world, and a bandstand, where in the brief periods of peace, evening concerts had been held.

Andrew allowed himself the indulgence of a cigar while Hans, hands in his pocket, leaned against a pillar of the porch, anxiously looking around for a place to spit before settling on a bare spot of ground next to a bush covered with exotic yellow flowers. Emil came out a moment later, slapping his stomach.

“First halfway decent meal I’ve had in days,” Emil announced.

Andrew smiled. How Kathleen had managed to scrounge up a piece of corned beef and what passed for cabbages on this world was beyond him. Upstairs he could hear the children settling into bed, and again he felt guilt for not going upstairs to spend a little time, to play with them and forget, but too much had happened today, and there was still more to be done.

“You can almost sense it in the air,” Emil said. “This place is ready to explode.”

It had come close to a riot in the hours after the assassination attempt. Emil declared that Kal stood a chance of making it even though his skull had indeed been fractured by the glancing blow of the bullet. Most of the citizens of the city, though, were convinced that Kal was already dead no matter what Emil or anyone else said. It had almost come to a fight when Andrew personally led a detachment to cut down the broken body of the Roum soldier who had been dragged out of the cathedral and strung up from a tavern sign. It took the intervention of Casmir to still the mob, and the body was taken by a detachment of soldiers to the Roum temple for burial in the catacombs. A guard was now on that temple, and orders passed that any Roum citizens in the city were to remain inside for the time being.

The only good thing to come out of it all was the cancellation of the meeting with the Committee, but that ordeal would come later in the week.

“Here comes Hawthorne,” Hans announced, and Andrew saw Vincent come around the corner of the square, limping slowly, still using a cane, accompanied by the rest of the men Andrew had summoned, Bill Webster, who was secretary of the treasury, Tom Gates from the newspaper, Varinna Ferguson, and Ketswana, who was Hans’s closest friend from their days of captivity and now served on his staff.

As the group came up the steps Andrew motioned for them to stand at ease and led the way into the small dining room, which had already been cleared of the evening meal. The group settled around the table, Andrew playing the role of host and passing around tea and, for those who wanted something stiffer, a bottle of vodka.

“All right, we’ve got to have it out,” Andrew said. “Perhaps I’ve been out of touch,” and he hesitated, “what with getting wounded and staying up at the front. I need to know just what the hell is going on back here.”

No one wanted to open, and finally his gaze fixed on Webster. Years behind the desk had added a bit to his waistline, and his face was rounder, but the flag bearer who had won a Medal of Honor leading a charge still had the old courage in his eyes and the ability to talk straight when needed.

“The economy is in a shambles, sir.”

“You were responsible to make sure it kept running,” Hans interjected.

“Yes sir, I was. Now I could go into some long-winded lecture on this, but the plain and simple fact is we’ve tried ever since we’ve arrived here to pull these people across a hundred years of development in less than a generation. We’ve created a top-heavy system here, and the strain is now showing.”

“Top-heavy? What do you mean?” Andrew asked.

“Well sir. Back when this all started all we needed to build was a factory, actually several factories, that could turn out lightweight rails, steam engines, and a few small locomotives, and works to make powder, smoothbore muskets, light four-pound cannons, and shot. That didn’t take much doing once we got the idea rolling. Primitive as we thought them to be, the Rus can be master craftsmen, and they quickly adapted.”

“And the Tugars were breathing down our necks to spur us along,” Hawthorne interjected.

Webster nodded in agreement and pushed on.

“We had a couple of years of peace after that to consolidate. In fact that was our boom period thanks to the building of railroad installations and the mechanization of farming with McCormick reapers, horse-drawn plows and planters. We produced surpluses that weren’t going into a war, but rather were going to generate yet more production. We even had enough surplus that it started to improve people’s lives as well, things like additional food, clothing, and tools. We started schools, literacy went up, and with it even more productivity.”

“Don’t forget medicine and sanitation,” Emil interjected, and Webster nodded.

“Right there for example, sir. We had close to a thousand people working in Suzdal alone to install sewers and pipes for water. The same in Roum and every other city. We had thousands more building hospitals, training as nurses, midwives, and doctors. They were taken out of the traditional labor force, but the economy could afford that and in fact benefited directly by it. People had immediate benefits with lower mortality, particularly with children. Such things had a major impact on people’s morale and willingness to work.

“Then the Merki War comes along. Sir, as we all know, Rus was devastated from one end to the other in that fight.

We scorched earth like the Russians did against Napoleon; the only thing we evacuated were the machines to make weapons and tools. After the end of that war the rebuilding normally would have taken a generation. Barely a home, other than in Suzdal, was left standing, and in addition we had to help Roum with the building of their railroads.

“Beyond all that we had to change our industry completely to outfit a new kind of army. Now it was rifles, breech-loading guns, more powerful locomotives, aero-steamers, ironclads, new ships for the navy, heavier rail for the track. Tolerances on all machinery had to be improved a full magnitude or more.

“For example our old muzzle-loading flintlocks were nothing more than pipes mounted on wooden stocks; if they were off a hundredth of an inch in the barrel no big deal. The caliber of the ball was three-hundredths of an inch smaller than the barrel anyhow.

“When it comes to our new Sharps model breechloaders, however, we’re talking thousandths of an inch tolerances on each part. It took tremendous effort, precision, and training to reach that. We had to take thousands of men and women and train them from scratch, and that took time, surplus, and money. Remember, they still have to eat, have housing, and the basics of life, even though while they are learning new skills they aren’t directly contributing anything to the economy.”

Andrew nodded, trying to stay focused on what was being said but already feeling frustrated. His point of attention had always been the battlefield, and the politics of shaping a republic, having to deal with this aspect, was troubling to him.

“All our production energy went into improving our military,” Webster continued without pause, “rather than things directly needed to build a broader base of wealth for everybody. Even though we were at peace, we were still running a wartime economy. Living standards, both here and in Roum, actually started to drop as a result even though people were working harder.

“If we had had five years, better yet ten, we could have adjusted, eased off, produced things like housing, schools, churches, hospitals other than for the military, improved roads, made better farm tools, laid track for the transport of goods rather than for items of military priority, trained doctors for the villages-rather than the army, and for that matter had hundreds of thousands of young men building these things rather than carrying rifles. So when this new war started the strain redoubled.

“Add into that the fact that more than half of Roum is occupied territory. Some of our richest land is in the hands of the Horde, with more than a million refugees having to be provided for.”

“Wait a minute,” Hans interjected. “I keep hearing about how nearly half the Rus have died as a result of the wars.”

“That’s right,” Webster replied quietly.

“Then give that land to the Roum refugees.”

“They still have to have places to live, seeds for crops. Some of the fields have been fallow for five years or more and are overgrown. We’re trying that, but still, what they’re producing is maybe one-tenth of what they grew a year ago.”

Hans grunted, looked around, and finally spat out the open window. Andrew could not help but grin and made certain not to make eye contact with Kathleen.

“The point is,” Webster pressed, “the economy is brittle. The best analogy I can give is that we’re like the Confederacy in late 1864. Sherman is cutting the heart out of Georgia, Sheridan has burned the valley, the rail lines have been pounded to pieces by overuse and undermaintenance. I remember Sherman saying that war was not just the armies that fought, it was the entire nation, and he was taking the war into the heart of the enemy nation.

“That’s what the Bantag have done, though I don’t know if they’re actually aware of it or not.”

“From what I suspect of Jurak he’s aware of it,” Andrew replied.

“I hate to say this, sir,” Webster replied, “but no matter how gallant our army the folks back home are just plumb worn-out. People no longer trust the paper money we introduced. The women that make fuses for shells, we were paying them five dollars a week a year ago, now it’s fifty. I’m printing money twenty-four hours a day, and no one wants it anymore. Andrew, the tens of thousands who work in the factories have to eat since they’re no longer growing their own food. We have no gold or silver reserves, so what do we pay them with?”

He fell silent looking around guiltily as if he had created the bad tidings. Everyone knew he had wrought a miracle just managing to build the system up, and for Andrew it was frightful to hear that it was on the point of collapsing.

“And the Bantag, isn’t that reason enough to work?” Hans replied. “Damn it all, their sons and husbands are dying up at the front. Isn’t that reason to go and work?”

“A growling stomach, your children crying because they’re hungry can blunt the argument,” Gates replied. “I’m out there every day talking to people, getting news."

“And what are they saying?” Andrew asked.

“Maybe if the Bantag were pouring over the White Mountains by Kev, maybe that would rouse them up again. But then again, Andrew, how many times have they already endured that since we got here? It’s these damn Chin ambassadors talking peace and the word going straight from the floor of Congress to the streets that’s helping to undermine it.”

“And can’t they see it’s a damned lie?” Hans cried. “I was there, damn it. The Bantag are no different than the Merki, or even the Tugars for that matter.”

“We have to talk not about what we wish or desire, but rather what is,” Hawthorne replied.

Andrew looked over at his young chief of staff.

“Go on, Vincent.”

“I think Webster and Gates are right. War weariness is eroding our ability to fight. All these people went into this war with little if any concept of what freedom was, other than a vague ideal. Next they expected that it would be one short hard fight and decided. No one, not even us, anticipated a series of wars that would drag on for close to a decade.”

Andrew found that idea alone to be troubling. The question had been raised more than once during his old war back home as to whether a republic had the ability to maintain a long-term conflict. It was through the personal strength of George Washington alone that the Revolution had not finally degenerated into a military dictatorship.

In the war with the Confederacy if victory had not been so evidently close in 1864, the Democrats most likely would have won the elections and accepted a divided country, thus squandering the blood of more than a quarter million Union men who had died to hold the United States together. Given that knowledge he wondered if a republic could endure this continual battering?

“Politics in Congress,” Vincent continued, “is dividing the Republic not just between Roum and Rus, but also between those who are accepting the bait of terms and those who are not. Finally, there is the simple military question we must all face.”

“And that is?”

“Can we still win in the field?”

Andrew looked around the room. Kathleen stood in the doorway, hands tucked into her apron pockets. Upstairs he could hear one of the children engaged in some mischief, their nanny trying to shush him to silence. All eyes were upon him, forcing the question that had burdened his soul long before the start of the doomed offensive.

“It’s not a question of can we win,” Andrew offered, “rather it’s a statement that there is no alternative to victory. Even if we had lost the war back home, we would have gone on living. Sure, we all remember the stories about Andersonville and Libby Prison, but even then we knew that if cornered, surrender was still an option, and most Rebs would share their canteen with you and bandage your wounds. We were fighting a war where surrender for either side was an option. If we had lost that war, we would not have liked the results, but we would have gone home and continued to live.

“We’ll most likely never know if indeed we did win the war back on Earth. I think it was evident that we would. As for the Confederates, defeat did not mean annihilation or even enslavement, so we were all seeing that many of them were willing finally to have peace and to accept the consequences. Here there is no such luxury.”

“You haven’t answered the question, sir,” Vincent pressed.

Andrew bristled slightly at the cold, almost accusing tone in Vincent’s voice but knew that the boy was doing his job, and besides, he would be forced to answer the same question before Congress.

“If it continues as it is,” he hesitated, looking down at his clenched fist, “no, we will lose the war.”

There was a stirring in the room, looks of fear, shock. All except Hans who didn’t stir, his jaw continuing to move mechanically as he worked his chew of tobacco.

“Why?” Gates asked.

“It was always the edge of superior technology that offset their numbers. We had barely a corps of men armed with smoothbores when the Tugars came. We were outnumbered ten to one. but it was enough to stop them. Against the Merki we fielded six corps, about the same size army that fought at Gettysburg. We were outnumbered six to one there, and that was a damn close run for they had smoothbores and artillery the same as we did, but we had moved on to rifles, rockets, and better airships.

“Even last fall we had an edge. They had the land ironclads, but we quickly made one that was better and armed with Gatling guns. But in one short year they’ve caught up with some sort of rapid-fire gun, their airships are as good as ours, and their new ironclads heavier than ours and able to outgun us.

“As to the numbers. One corps is wasted guarding the frontier to the west. Two more corps are ringing the territory to the southeast of Roum. We have three corps in the pocket down on the eastern coast of the Inland Sea, and-until three days ago-we had eight corps on the main front. Now we have little more than five corps on that front.”

He hesitated for a moment.

“So we’ve lost the edge. They’re outproducing us. They outnumber us six to one on the Capua Front. We can assume that within a fortnight they will force a crossing the same as we tried, the difference being that they will succeed. At that moment, in a tactical sense, we will be exactly where we were back at midwinter. Strategically, however, the difference will be that their weapons are better, their commander more prudent, and we will be down well over fifty thousand men compared to what we had the last time.”

“And so that’s it?” Gates asked.

“I think the political ramifications are clear enough,” Andrew continued. “Marcus, God rest him, is dead. Though he was bloody difficult at times, he was a friend I could trust. That strong leadership from Roum is now a vacuum.

Flavius is good as Speaker of the House but doesn’t have the following Marcus did. I fear that once the line is broken, Jurak will shrewdly offer terms yet again, the fears between the two states of the Republic will explode, the Republic will fracture, and then we shall be destroyed.” Andrew stopped talking. As he reached over to his glass of tea he realized his hand was trembling.

“Are you suggesting that we stage a coup d’etat?” Gates asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Andrew replied sharply.

“It has to be considered,” Hawthorne replied forcefully. Startled, Andrew looked over at him.

“Sir, the army knows what it is fighting for. They see what the enemy can do. For that matter damn near every veteran who is no longer in the service because of disabilities understands it as well. Yes, they’re war weary, we all are, but they’ll be damned if they’ll ever bare their throats to the Bantags’ butchering knives.

“And as for Congress. If those bastards are willing to sell us down the river, if they’re maneuvering to splinter the Republic, then they deserve to be hung as traitors, every one of them.”

“What you’re saying is treasonous,” Andrew snapped. “If this be treason, make the most of it,” Hawthorne cried.

Vincent looked over at Hans. “Ask Ketswana to tell us what he learned.”

Hans nodded and quickly spoke to Ketswana in the dialect of Chin which the captives had used while in slavery. Ketswana replied in broken Rus.

“Roum soldier, one who hung. Was in tavern five minutes before shot fired.”

Surprised, Andrew looked at Hans.

“I have my own intelligence net here; they answer to Vincent when I’m not around.”

“This was never authorized by me.”

“It was by me. The Chin and Zulus were neutral; they could talk to both sides, Rus and Roum. With the stress developing between the two sides I thought it best to act, so I got this going last autumn.”

“Something about that shooting didn’t sit right from the start,” Vincent replied. “I checked that poor boy’s record.

Promoted to corporal for heroism at Rocky Hill. Invalid due to dysentery and the last nine months in hospital. But everyone said he was a good soldier, eager to get back. Not the assassin type.”

“But he was found in the church?” Kathleen asked.

“Yes, he went running in to try and catch who did it. Then a mob grabbed him, claimed he had a gun, and he was dragged out and hung.”

“According to who?”

Hans looked over at Ketswana.

“One of my men drink with him, follow, see all, get away before he hung, too.”

“So who was leading this mob?”

“It might have been a crowd carried away with frenzy. It might have been more, though,” Hans said.

“Go on.”

“Kill the president. There’s no vice president; therefore, the Speaker of the House, Tiberius Flavius, becomes president. Either he was plotting to do it or someone else.”

“Flavius is an honorable man,” Andrew replied sharply. “I knew him as a damn good officer who came up through the ranks, and he’s a wounded veteran of Hispania. He’s not the type.”

“Or then a countercoup,” Hawthorne replied. “Blame Flavius for the death of Kal, claim it’s a plot by Roum to seize the government, and break the Republic in the process.”

“Bugarin?”

“My likely candidate,” Hawthorne snapped bitterly.

“Damn all.” Andrew sighed. So that’s why Hawthorne is thinking coup, strike first in order to prevent one.

There was too much to assimilate. He had been far too preoccupied with the preparations for the offensive and the dealing with the results to give serious consideration as to what was going on seven hundred miles away in the capital. He knew there were tensions but prayed that a successful attack, even one that was just a partial success, would quiet the differences and create the resolve to push the war through to its conclusion. He wondered self-critically if that concern had clouded his decision-making to go ahead with the offensive.

He suddenly felt exhausted, unable to decide what to do next. He knew that a mere nod of his head would mean that Vincent would get up, walk out of the room, and within the hour Congress would be arrested. Besides the training school of cadets who were now the 35th Maine and 44th New York, there was a sprinkling of forty or fifty men from the original units in the city, holding various key positions. There was a brigade of troops garrisoned there and thousands of discharged vets in the factories who could be called out in an emergency. He’d have the government by morning, straighten out the mess, then go from there.

And, damn it, destroy forever what I wanted to create here. Of that he was certain. Once the precedent had been set, it would be forever embedded in the heart of the Republic. Washington had resisted the temptation knowing the history of Rome and Greece when it came to coups. He would rather have seen the Revolution go down to bloody defeat than betray it. Napoleon, rather than Lincoln and Washington, would then be the model for this Republic, this entire world. The concept of a republic which he had so carefully nurtured since first setting foot upon this world would be lost forever.

Yet even if I did seize control, then what? The war is still being lost. We might hold on for a while, maybe even create a stalemate on the Capua Front, but still Jurak will wear us down, for he has the labor of millions of slaves to support him, and if need be feed him with their own flesh. Either way we lose.

He looked at his friends. How to admit it, that after ten years of valiant effort, they were losing. Have we been losing all along, he wondered, and were just not willing to admit it? If that’s true, then is the dream of a republic one that is ultimately doomed to failure? Though he wanted to believe in Kal, he sensed that his old friend was weakening under the stress, and for the time being he was out of the picture. The other side promised peace. And the greater complexities of the issues-well, tragically, the average person just didn’t seem to grasp them.

He had been in the army too long, he realized. In the military issues were far clearer-there was survival or death, that was drilled in from day one. You did the right thing, you survived, make a mistake … you died, or worse yet, good men died because of you.

A hell of a lot of good men had just died because of his mistake, his not realizing that the very nature of the war was changing yet again.

It’s changed again, so we have to find a way to change it back in our favor. He looked over at Emil.

“I want the truth from you, my friend.”

“Go on.”

“Since I got wounded, I mean since I came back to command,” he hesitated.

Emil leaned forward in his chair. He sensed Kathleen’s watchful gaze on him.

“I’m not the same. Something’s changed in me.”

“We’re all changed,” Emil started soothingly, but an angry wave from Andrew silenced him.

“No, I don’t mean that. It’s deeper than that. I feel like I’ve lost something. Not just my edge, far deeper, the very mettle of my soul. All along I sensed a problem with our assault at Capua, I sensed it but failed to clearly get ahead of the problem and reason it out before it happened.”

“No one could have anticipated the response from their new leader,” Emil replied.

“But I should have. There’s no damn room for a mistake in my position.”

He looked around the room at his old friends, wondering for a moment if he was about to dissolve into tears. Do that, though, and we’ve all lost. In the end, he realized, all of it, from the moment they had come through the Portal of Light, back so many years, so many ages ago, all rested upon him.

Damn, I never wanted this, and then he hesitated with his inner remorse as the truth surged up from within. The self-humility was a lie, a damnable lie. He had indeed wanted it.

He had wanted command of the regiment, Hans knew that as far back as Fredericksburg. He loved his old commander, Colonel Estes as a father, but like any son of ability, inwardly he longed to transcend what his father was and could be. And when Estes fell at Gettysburg he had mourned him, yet he had sprung to take his place.

He had wanted a brigade, knowing he could do better than far too many of the damned fools Meade and Grant allowed to command. Here was a harsh realization. One is taught to have humility, to admire one’s elders and emulate them, and a display of raw ambition is somehow immoral.

Yet he knew in the core of his soul that he was blessed with something, and that something was the ability to lead … and to dream of all the greatness that a republic could be. Yet so unfortunately a republic, and a volunteer army of a republic, far too often drew into its folds the weak, the venal, those who were ambitious for their own sakes.

He looked around at his friends.

“I fomented a rebellion against the natural order of this world,” he said slowly. “When we realized what the hordes were, the men actually voted to take ship, to find some safe haven and sit it out, but I talked them into fighting and convinced the Rus they could fight.

“And now it is all crashing down around me.

“Emil, I think I’ve been sick. Sick within my soul. Ever since this winter the stress of it has paralyzed me. I feel like a puppet. The strings are moved, I woodenly follow into the next step, and thus I’ve numbly wandered to this point. The government is collapsing, I allowed an offensive to be launched that my inner heart told me not to allow, and now I sit here numbly as the end closes in around us.”

Emil said nothing, staring straight into his eyes. The moment seemed to stretch out.

“I believe there are two paths to this world, to any world,” Andrew said slowly, his voice thick with emotion. “The one is to believe what the masses believe. To make yourself part of them, and to follow, to follow even as you claim to lead.”

“And the other path?” Emil asked.

“If God gave you the ability, even if everyone else thinks you are mad, then use it.”

Emil chuckled softly.

“We shall either meanly lose or nobly save the last best hope of mankind,” Emil finally offered.

“I’m taking control of this situation,” Andrew said. “We’re all frightened right now, me most of all. Either we become mad and fight back, or we die. But if we are doomed to die, let’s die as free men.”

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.”

Surprised, he looked up at Kathleen, who had just spoken. She smiled knowingly, as if having sensed every thought that had crossed his mind.

“And as our case is new,” Gates continued, “we must act anew and think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

Andrew smiled at the recitation of Lincoln’s famous words. The room was hot, silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the comer of the room, the only other sound the laughter of one of the children upstairs.

We must disenthrall ourselves … but how damn it, how?

“We have to end the war now,” Kathleen said. Her voice was hard, cold. It wasn’t a statement of speculation or hope, it was merely hard honest fact.

He looked up at her.

“You mean negotiate?”

“No, damn it. No! We all know where that will lead. It will merely postpone our deaths. If you do that, I’ll go upstairs and poison our children rather than have them live with the death we all know will come. Jurak cannot rest until all in this room, and all touched by you, are dead. He understands us too well, and thus understands the threat that we are.”

“So what is the alternative then?” Andrew sighed. “Another offensive? The government will block it. For that matter I wonder if we’ll even have a government or a united effort in another few days.”

“Exodus, go north,” Webster ventured quietly.

“You mean just leave?” Andrew asked.

“Exactly. We did it before, we evacuated all of Rus against the Merki. Well, maybe the mistake was we tried to hold on to the steppe region. Lord knows how far north the forest belt extends. Pack it up, and go into the forest until we find a place where they won’t follow.”

“We’ve talked about that before,” Vincent replied. “It’s impossible. First off, the government will break apart on that one. Second, they’ll follow us, and we’ll be burdened down with hundreds of thousands of civilians, children, old people. It will turn into a slaughter.”

“Well if the government does surrender, that’s where I think we should all head,” Webster replied. “I’ll be damned if I stay here and wait to have my throat slit. At least there’s some hope in that.”

“If I were Jurak,” Andrew replied, “I wouldn’t care if it took twenty years. I’d hunt down the survivors. There is no way they can ever dream of continuing their ride until they know we are all dead, for once they turn their backs upon us we’ll rebuild. The fundamental issue, besides the moon feast, the enslavement, is that they are nomadic. They cannot leave a cancer behind that will spread in their wake.”

“He’ll kill everyone once we’re dead or fled,” Hans said. “You people seem to have forgotten something in all this. Andrew, I remember the dream was there for you at the start, but it seems to have blurred. This is not just about us. We started a revolution on this world. The only way it will survive is if we spread the revolution around the entire planet. We must free everyone or no one. I left millions of comrades in slavery when I escaped, and I vowed upon my soul to help set them free and if need be to die doing it.”

Andrew was surprised by the passion of Hans’s words. He was normally so reticent, and so rarely was an idealism allowed to creep out from behind the gruff Germanic exterior of the old sergeant major. He could not help but smile at the revolutionary passion that moved his oldest friend.

“Then free them,” Varinna Ferguson said in flawless English.

For the first time since the meeting had started Andrew took serious notice of the woman sitting on the chair by the doorway. Kathleen’s hands slipped down to rest on the woman’s slender shoulders. As she spoke it seemed that the voice almost came from somewhere else, so horribly scarred were her features, the skin that had grown over the burns a taut expressionless mask. And yet he could still sense the graceful beauty that was locked within, that had caused Chuck Ferguson to see beyond the torn exterior to the beauty and strength of the soul.

“I didn’t know you could speak English,” Gates exclaimed, looking over at her in surprise.

“You never asked,” she replied, her words causing a round of chuckles from the others. “You were always too busy talking to my husband to notice me.”

“My apologies, madam,” Gates quickly said, his features turning red, “my most humble apologies.”

“You said ‘free them,’ ” Hans said, the slightest tone of eagerness in his voice. “How, may I ask?”

“How did we first know that you were alive?” she replied.

“Jack Petracci flew over us.”

She looked inquiringly at Andrew, who nodded. She slowly stood up. In her hands was a battered notebook.

“These are some of my husband’s writings. How do you say … ideas, dreams. That is why he taught me English, so I could read them after he was gone.”

She put the book upon the table and all looked at it with a bit of reverence, for without the mind of Chuck Ferguson they knew they would have died long ago.

“Right after you were rescued, before the war started on the eastern front, he made some notes here.” And she opened the book, skimming through the pages until she finally came to the place she wanted. “Just a few pages, but on the night before he died he pointed them out to me, told me to work upon them.”

She passed the book over to Andrew. He carefully took the bound volume, scanning the page, wondering how she had managed to master Chuck’s infamous scrawled crablike writings.

She reached into her apron pocket, pulled out a sheaf of papers, carefully unfolded them, and laid them out on the table. It wasn’t a bundle of papers but rather a large single sheet of drafting paper, half a dozen feet across and several feet wide, taking up most of the table. Andrew noticed just how badly her hands had been burned as well-two of the fingers on her left hand were little more than stumps. As he scanned the paper he saw that half of it was a detailed map, the other half covered with a different kind of handwriting than Chuck’s, simple block lettering, some of it calculations, the rest commentary with lines drawn to the map while the far right side of the sheet had sketches of airships.

“I did,” she hesitated, “calculations. I think it is possible to do, but the chances? It is win all or lose all.”

Andrew stood up and went over to her side, the others gathering around him. He stood silent, scanning the map, then the plan written out, and finally the calculations. It was the details of the plan Vincent had forwarded to him just prior to the assault. He looked over at Vincent; there was the slightest flicker of a smile tracing the corners of his mouth.

“Impossible,” Webster announced sharply, breaking the silence.

Andrew looked over at Hans and saw the eyes of his comrade shining brightly, and he felt a stab of fear, knowing what it undoubtedly meant.

“I rejected this idea out of hand less than a week ago,” he finally announced.

“That was a week ago,” Varinna replied. “Today is today, the day after a defeat. Just minutes ago I heard you admit that we shall lose the war. If we are to lose the war, then this plan should go forward.”

“Why?” Emil asked, leaning over the table to study the lines on the map. “I think anyone who goes on this, particularly the airship operation is doomed to die.”

“Because it won’t matter then,” she announced smoothly. “The men who go would die anyhow if they stay home. If they go and die, and lose, then it is the same. If they go, and die, but change the path of the war to victory, then it is a sacrifice that is worth it.”

Andrew marveled at her cold precise logic, which cut straight to the heart of the matter.

As if from a great distance he could hear the grandfather clock chiming the hour-it was midnight.

All waited for him to speak. He was torn. He so desperately wanted to grab this, to cling to it, to see it bring them to a change in fate. Yet he feared it as well and all that it suggested and held, especially for Hans.

“This is what I’ve dreamed of all along. I say go,” Hans finally said, breaking the silence. Andrew turned, looking into his eyes again.

Andrew finally nodded.

“We do it. Start preparations at once.”

Who was it? Kal stirred uncomfortably, the pain was numbing but he had known worse, losing an arm, the beatings old Boyar Ivor, might his soul burn in hell, had administered.

Yet who did it?

He opened his eyes. His wife, sitting at the foot of the bed, roused from her sleep and started to get out of the chair. Her features were pale, heavy cheeks looking.pasty in the candlelight.

He motioned for her to sit back down, but she was already at the side of the bed.

“Water, my husband?” she whispered.

He started to shake his head, but the pain was too much.

“No, nothing.”

“I made some broth, beef, your favorite.”

“No, please.”

He looked around the room.

“Emil?”

“He left. Said I was to fetch him if you wanted.”

“Where?”

“He’s at the colonel’s home.”

“Ah, I see.”

He knew she would not relent with her attentions until she could do something, so he finally let her pull the blankets up, even though the night was so hot. He remained quiet, staring at the candle as she finally settled back into her chair and picked up her knitting which had fallen to the floor when she had dozed off.

Why would Emil be at Andrew’s? Were they planning something?

Not Andrew. Never Andrew. In the beginning he could have so easily become boyar himself. No one would have objected, least of all me, he reasoned. I was just peasant, he was already officer, like a noble and he was the liberator. Instead he propped me up, trained me, made me the president.

But was that so I could always follow what he desired. Bugarin said as much, that a Yankee could never rule for long, so he had chosen a dumb peasant to be his shield. He wondered on that thought for a moment. There was a certain wisdom to it, for in the end never did I go against what Andrew desired; therefore, in a way he did rule without all the bother of it.

“Not Andrew,” he whispered.

She stirred, ready to get up again and he allowed his eyes to flutter shut. She settled back down in her chair.

Bugarin? Logical. Blame it on Flavius. I’m dead, Flavius is killed by the mob, Bugarin becomes president and then boyar again. So guard against Bugarin. But it just might have been Flavius after all. Yet if I had died, we would not have lived an hour in the city of Suzdal.

Who then?

I have lost Congress. Bugarin has the votes of those who want an end to it. The Roum congressmen are in terror, lost with the news of Marcus’s death. If I continue the war as Andrew wants, then they will block it, splitting the Republic. If I try to stop it, what will Andrew do?

An inch to the right Emil said. But one inch, and I would not have to worry about this. I would be standing before Perm and his glorious son Kesus, all cares forgotten. Yet Tanya would still be here, the grandchildren, their half-mad father Vincent.

Ah, now there is a thought. Vincent is the warhawk. Could he be the mask behind the mask? Andrew would never do it, but Vincent was capable. If Bugarin tried a coup, Andrew would block it but might fall as well. Then it would be Vincent.

No. What was it Emil called it? A word for too much fear. But it was troubling, and he could not go to sleep.

The fact that he had asked for the meeting had caught him by surprise. Walking into the main hall of the Capitol Building he stopped, looking to his right toward his own chambers. The building was empty except for the lone military guard posted under the open rotunda. It had been started in the year before the start of the Bantag War. Though Keane insisted that construction must go forward in spite of the war, the less than half-completed dome was now covered with canvas.

He turned to his left and walked into the meeting chamber of the House of Representatives. Often he had heard the shouted debates coming from this room, and he found it distasteful, a rowdy mix of foreigners and lowborn peasants. At least the fifteen members of the Senate were, except for one or two, of the proper blood, even those from Roum, in spite of their being cursed pagans.

“Senator Bugarin. Thank you for coming.”

The chair behind the desk turned and the diminutive Flavius was staring at him. He was lean and wiry, a mere servant in the house of Marcus and now the Speaker.

Though he loathed the type, Bugarin could sense that Flavius was a soldier’s soldier, one whom the veterans who predominated in Congress could trust whether they were of Rus or Roum. And since the pagans were the majority, of course their man would control this half of Congress.

Bugarin said nothing. He simply approached the chair, waiting for this one to rise in front of a better. Flavius, as if sensing the game, waited, and then slowly stood, favoring his right leg, giving a bare nod of the head in acknowledgment of the man who controlled the other half of the legislators.

“I’ll come straight to the issue,” Flavius said in Rus, his accent atrocious to Bugarin’s ears. “We both know that poor soldier who was murdered today had nothing to do with the assassination attempt.”

“How do you know?” Bugarin asked politely.

Flavius extended his hands in a gesture of exasperation. “We might disagree on a great many things, but to assassinate the president. Never.”

“Are you saying he acted alone then?”

“You know precisely what I am saying. The boy was innocent. He should have been standing in these chambers receiving a medal rather than being hung by a Rus mob.”

“So you are saying we murdered him?”

“Damn you,” Flavius muttered in Latin, but Bugarin could sense what was said and bristled.

“The Republic is dying; we can still save it,” Flavius continued, gaining control of his temper.

“Republic? It is already dead,” Bugarin snapped. “It died when your soldiers ran at Capua, unable even to retake their own territory.”

“I had a brother with Eleventh Corps,” Flavius announced coldly. “If he is dead, he died fighting, not running. I’ve been a soldier most of my life, and I know my people. They are as good in battle as those from Rus. I wish I could strangle with my own hands whoever started these rumors, these lies about my people.”

“Understandable you would react that way.”

Flavius stopped for a moment, not sure of what to say next.

“If that is all you wish to discuss?” Bugarin asked haughtily.

“No, of course not.”

“Then out with it. It’s late, and I have other concerns.”

“Will you pull Rus out of the war?”

“My position is well-known.”

“And that is?”

“The war is unwinnable now. We must seek a way out.”

“And that means selling Roum to the Bantag?”

“Are you not contemplating the same deal with Jurak?” Flavius said nothing for a moment.

“You have spies as do I. I know that Marcus, before his death, was secretly meeting with the ambassadors before they were forwarded to the Senate. And remember, Flavius, the issues of war and peace rest with the Senate. The great colonel designed it that way, did he not?”

“There is nothing more to be said,” Flavius replied coldly.

Bugarin smiled.

“It was a feeble attempt,” Bugarin ventured just as he was starting to turn to leave.

“What?” And there was a cold note of challenge in Flavius’s voice.

“Just that. Too bad you missed.”

As Bugarin turned the sound of a dagger being drawn hissed in the assembly hall. Bugarin turned, dagger drawn as well.

“Come on you lowborn bastard,” Bugarin snarled. “Spill blood here and show what a lie this place is.”

Flavius was as still as statue, dagger poised low. Finally, he relaxed, letting the blade slip back into its sheath.

“Yes, it’s true I know not who my father is. My bastardy is of birth, not of behavior.”

Bugarin tensed, ready to spring, but knew that before he even crossed the few feet that separated them the old veteran would have his blade back out and buried to the hilt. Forcing a smile, Bugarin stepped back several feet.

“It will be settled soon enough. I think the question is now, who will betray whom first.”

“As I assumed, Senator,” Flavius said with a smile.