Battle Hymn (2 page)

But what next? We clawed our way into the bowels of the temple, slithering through weed-choked jumbles of rock, the damned forces of the Traitor behind us. They had stopped, though; he could remember their fearful voices outside the ruins. And then there was the flash of light, the tunnel of fire, and now this.

How long have I fallen thus? he wondered. Is this eternity?

The growing fear of it threatened mastery, and he spat out an angry curse at the gods whom he had never believed in. "If this is your punishment, then the hell with you!"

"Kasar. Don't!"

Ha'ark again. So the weakling, the pious one, is with me as well. The thought of it made him throw back his head and roar with laughter. So it was all meaningless—good or evil, warrior or philosopher, we are all doomed to torment.

Even as he laughed he slammed into the ground, a grunt of surprise escaping him. He rolled, still clutching his rifle, and came to his feet.

The fire still swirled around him, but there was no heat, only a pulsing glow. From out of the fire a form appeared … it was Ha'ark, dropping his gun. Eyes wide with terror, Ha'ark scurried back from the cold flames until Kasar grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to his feet.

"Get your gun, you damned idiot!" Kasar roared.

Ha'ark looked up at him, terrified.

"Your gun, damn you!" He kicked Ha'ark toward the pillar of light. Stiff with fear, Ha'ark staggered forward, snatched the weapon from the ground, and scurried back. An instant later four more appeared—Jamul the radio operator, Uthak the heavy weapons man, doggedly clinging to his Vark 32 machine gun, Bakkth, and Machka, the last two both draftees like Ha'ark and both just about as useless.

Kasar stood mesmerized, but only for an instant, until the old instincts again took hold. He quickly scanned the ground around him, which was lit now by the light of what appeared to be either dawn or sunset.

"Check your weapons," Kasar hissed, even as he ran his fingers along the side of the gun, checking to make sure that the muzzle was clear. Just holding the rifle made him feel somehow secure, and he worked the bolt, which clicked reassuringly as a round chambered out and a new round slapped in. If we're in the afterlife, he thought, at least we've come armed.

He looked at Jamul, who was speaking hurriedly into his radio microphone and reaching around to his back, turning dials arrayed along the side panel.

Jamul shook his head. "Where are we? Either the set's shot or all radio traffic, theirs and ours, is simply gone."

Kasar said nothing. Where were they? There was no telling. The air was different, and his nostrils were distended as he breathed in short pants. Dry, desert dry … what in the name of the gods, we were in the jungle?

"Huk Varani gal"

Kasar swung around, crouching low.

In the shadows he could see someone standing silhouetted by the moonlight. Then the hair down his back rose on edge. There were two moons!

"Huk! Huk! Varani gal"

Others came out of the shadows, moving cautiously, but he kept his rifle aimed at the first one, even as he struggled with his terror.

"Uthak, cover right. The rest of you, left."

Soldiers of the Traitor? No, and the realization of it, rather than comforting him, redoubled his fear.

They were armed with bows and lances, their weapons poised.

I can drop one, maybe two, he realized, but then I'm dead. At least it's better than falling into the hands of the Traitors and having your ribs cracked open while you are still alive and watching as your heart is drawn out to be devoured. Even though he had practiced the ritual a hundred times on those he had taken, still it had a certain barbarity to it when it was you on whom it was about to be practiced. I thought I was dead, and now I am.

"Don't move, sir."

It was Ha'ark, and the order, coming from the draftee, startled him.

"Aim at the one on the left," Kasar hissed. "When I give the word, drop him. Maybe we can still get out of here."

"Out of where?" Ha'ark replied, and there was the edge of a taunt in his reply. "Look at the sky. Two moons, not one, like home."

"Just get ready."

"We're somewhere else," Ha'ark replied coolly. "They're telling us to drop our weapons. I understand them, they're speaking the ancient tongue."

Kasar snorted with disdain. The recruit had always thought himself better than the rest of them. He was educated, coming from a family that could wear the red cloak of middle rank, drafted into the army only because of a minor offense that gave him the choice of jail or the ranks. And now he thought he could give orders. Like hell.

"On three, get ready," Kasar growled.

"Umaga vikaria. Bantag vu!"

Kasar spared a quick glance to his side. It was Ha'ark speaking. What the hell was the fool doing?

"On three," Kasar snapped. "One, two ….

The impact of the bullet doubled him over. As he spun around, Kasar saw the swirl of smoke cloaking Ha'ark. He struggled to raise his gun toward the recruit. Smiling, Ha'ark chambered another round and squeezed the trigger, knocking Kasar to the ground.

"The rest of you! Don't move!"

"Ha'ark?" It was Jamul. "Why?"

"He was about to get us killed! Let me handle this if you want to live. … Umaga vikaria, Bantag vu!"

Kasar looked up at the stars overhead. Not of home. A great wheel of stars dimming now in the twilight … or was it his vision that was fading?

"Where am I?"

"The home of the ancients, that's where."

Ha'ark was standing over him, looking down, his eyes pitiless.

"Legends," Kasar sighed.

Ha'ark shook his head.

"You thought me an idiot, a fool," Ha'ark hissed, the anger so long suppressed now boiling out. "I wanted to stay with my mentors, but I was forced into your hands instead. But you taught me well, Kasar." And as he spoke, Ha'ark chambered another round.

The world, whichever world it was, was growing distant. Kasar lay his head back, watching the others. His command stood silent, watching the drama play out.

"Kill him." At least he thought he said the words, but no one moved.

Ha'ark looked away from him, shouted something, and the others went down on their knees, murmuring in a strange tongue.

"I was nothing to you, but here"—and his smile turned to a wolfish grin—"here I can be a king."

Ha'ark touched the muzzle of his gun to Kasar's forehead, and in that instant Kasar discovered whether his musings about nothingness were right after all.

Sixth Year of the Republic of Rus

Poking tentatively at his meal, Sergeant Major Hans Schuder of the Thirty-fifth Maine Volunteer Infantry sat in silence. He looked carefully at the bowl of gruel, studying it intently in the dim light that filtered into the yurt. The meal looked clean. A memory of serving out on the Plains against the Comanche came to mind, and he shook his head sadly. Didn't care what the meat looked like back then, just damn grateful to get it, maggots and all. But now …

The bastards had tried to force him to eat "cattle" flesh. They viewed it as part of the ritual of breaking a pet. Get you to eat of your own kind, and the ultimate taboo is broken. Even if you escape, you are never the same, a pariah among your own. He had fought against it, even when they held him down and jammed the cooked flesh into his mouth. When they left he forced himself to vomit it back up.

They had tricked him, to be sure. Shortly after his capture, the contents of a tasty soup had been revealed to him the following morning—a dead Cartha, part of a haul of prisoners as the remnants of the Merki Horde swept southwest after their defeat. That was the first time he tried to kill himself. There had been other attempts afterward. He had desperately wanted to succeed, at least at first. But now, after a year of captivity, the wish to die had flickered away. He had been tricked, but in the back of his mind he knew he would remain unbroken, as long as he did not knowingly eat of his own kind. There was something else as well now that held him. It was all so curious, this strange new emotion.

At the other side of the yurt, she was asleep, curled up in a dirty blanket, almost childlike. Strange, she is almost a child, not more than twenty or twenty-two years, and me in my fifties, he thought. He sat down by her side. She stirred in her sleep, murmured something, a troubled look wrinkling her brow. He watched her intently. She sighed, her brow unknitting, her features relaxing into untroubled sleep.

He kissed her lightly on the forehead and stood up.

How did I allow this to happen, he wondered. Never before … why now? Was it the constant fear, the dread, a wish for some spark, some tenderness, the touch of another by your side as you stand at the edge of the abyss? He looked at her again, wondering. No, no matter where I met her—here, Rus, the States—it would have been the same, something in her pale brown features, gold almond eyes. Where were her people from, back on Earth? Now if Andrew or that damnable Emil was here, he could tell me. India, or maybe one of the heathen isles of the Pacific.

He smiled, remembering sailor stories about the tropical isles and the native girls and jumping ship never to come home. Looking at Tamira, he could understand why. And why me? Was it the fear? After all, I'm old enough to be her father. But no, it wasn't that. There was something instinctive between them, an unspoken word that could communicate volumes.

If I had met her back home, back in the States, or further back, in Germany, would I have become a soldier? Ridiculous thought. It is what I am—Hans Schuder, Sergeant Major, bei Gott.

So she's the one who keeps me alive now, a desire to live in hell.

She stirred again, curling up and covering her face with a nervous gesture, a whimper escaping her lips. He was tempted to kiss her lightly on the brow, to awaken her. But no, let her sleep.

Again he looked around the yurt. Why are we here? He sensed that there had been some sort of trade, of which he was a part. Otherwise why would he and hundreds of prisoners from the wars be culled out from what was left of the Merki and driven hundreds of miles to the east? This morning he had glimpsed a vast Horde encampment on the far horizon, yurts by the thousands dotting the prairie. The scene reminded him of the buffalo herds that were such a common sight on the plains.

When the two of them were led to a separate yurt, Tamira became rigid with fear that they were being set aside for the Moon Feast. He had lied to her convincingly, stilling his own conviction that they had been driven all this way just to be used for ritual torture, most likely to calm the spirit of some damnable ancestor of some petty chieftain. Perhaps it was part of the tribute that the Bantag Horde now exacted on the shattered remains of the Merki, and the bastards wanted some prisoners to roast alive to cement the deal.

He reached into the right pocket of his tattered sky-blue trousers and felt up along the reinforced waistband. The thin sliver of razor-sharp steel was still reassuringly there, tucked into its hiding place. It was the one assurance he still had that he could at least spare Tamira. If, when the bastards came back to get him there was a sense that they were to be dragged out to provide entertainment, one quick slash, a momentary flicker of pain, a look in her eyes almost of thankfulness, and she at least would be spared.

Why had they even allowed her to come with him? That was a mystery as well. The bastards had no sense, no pity for any of the bonds of human affection. A couple, two pets, might be together for years, even indulged in their affection by their owner, only to be split apart forever on a whim. When the Merki had separated him off to be led away, Tamira had clung tightly to his side … and no one had stopped her from going along.

That alone had filled him with curiosity, and a sense of dread. He knew his status as a prisoner was of the highest. Before Tamuka, the former Qar Quarth, had disappeared, riding back westward with the few that remained loyal to him, he had promised a long and agonizing death, as befitted his rank. He had heard that the issue of his survival had even been debated by the clan chieftains who had taken him away from Tamuka's circle and then shortly afterwards sent him east with so many other prisoners of the war.

Maybe it was curiosity to see what would come next that had prevented him from simply ending Tamira's life and then taking his own. Why had they kept him alive—that alone was beyond understanding. Their hatred of Yankees, and especially of Andrew Lawrence Keane, knew no bounds. They must know that subjecting him to an agonizing death, and then making sure that Andrew knew about it, would be a way of striking back.

He closed his eyes and again allowed "the dream" to form …

They were on campaign—sometimes it was here, other times back on Earth, but everyone was there … Pat, Emil, and, of course, Andrew. It was after a fight, the tension easing off, the bottle of whiskey sliding back and forth across the table. Pat would tell the latest joke, usually about some less than virtuous innkeeper's wife; Emil would complain about the drinking even as he sipped from his glass; and Andrew—Andrew would sit quietly, the occasional flicker of a smile appearing as their gazes locked.

Always there would be that unspoken something, a feeling, an understanding beyond words … again we've survived and won. And something much beyond that, a camaraderie, a trust, a love that would never be voiced but that was a bond unlike all others.

Funny, he's still a boy to me in a way, Hans thought with a smile as "the dream" took on a reality that blocked out all others. The memories swirled like images in a kaleidoscope. Andrew, the scared young professor who had gone to see the elephant and had become a leader of a nation on this strange, accursed world. And I remember him when he didn't even know how to get a company from column into line. He chuckled softly at the thought of it, their old Colonel Estes swearing at Andrew, "Gods! What am I to do with a book-learning professor?" Andrew taking it, eyes straight ahead, the crestfallen look emerging only when he thought he was alone.

Pity him I did at first, figured he'd get killed in the first fight, like so many young lieutenants.