Battle Hymn (37 page)

"There's always what ifs in a war, Andrew. Them flying machines. Remember, it was the Merki who first put engines on them."

"But we were already on the edge of that one."

"If you worry yourself about this, you'll go mad with it all."

"It's my job to worry about it. And it's not just the military side of it, Pat. I wonder how our Republic will react to a war like this. If that Redeemer has any sense, he'll try to divide us. He'll claim that we invaded first. He'll see what we have, then try for peace, and I do wonder if the Republic has the stomach to prosecute a war that in the long term is essential for survival but in the short term might not seem to be worth the expense in lives and treasure. The war to save the Union damn near tore our own country apart. If it hadn't been for Lincoln I think it would have."

"Andrew, you're thinking way too far ahead here. Let's just worry about Hans tonight."

Andrew nodded wearily. "I better get some sleep. I'm going back up tomorrow."

"Like hell you are," Pat snapped angrily. "Or are you forgetting that you're commander of the armies, but it's me, Pat O'Donald, who's in direct control of this front and if anyone should be going, it's me."

Andrew fixed him with a determined gaze. "It's not a military issue for me now, Pat. It's friendship, the same way I know you would throw everything aside if it was me out there or would go yourself if I weren't here."

Pat smiled and shook his head.

"If they can get Flying Cloud patched up enough by tomorrow morning I want to be taken out to the Petersburg. I'm going up that river to meet him," Andrew said.

"Sir, could you come here a moment?"

Hans turned away from a group of Chin men and women whom he was trying to instruct in how to aim a rifle.

Alexi and Gregory stood behind him.

"Now what?"

"A couple of minutes, sir. We want to show you something."

Hans nodded wearily and followed them across the parade ground, barely looking up as a shell screamed overhead and detonated somewhere beyond the north wall.

"Sir, Alexi here's been looking at that machine we have on the flatcars we took from the second train."

"I told you not to waste your time on that. We've got less than eight hours to get ready."

"I'm sorry, sir," Alexi interjected. "I just couldn't keep away from it. I want to show you what I found."

As they approached the flatcar, several Chin women joined them, carrying lanterns. The tarps had been pulled back and the dark bulk of the machine loomed above them.

Alexi scrambled up onto the flatcar and Hans followed, silently cursing his knees. At the back of the car Alexi took a lantern from one of the women and held it aloft.

"That's a steam engine in the forward car." Then he held the lantern up high and pointed to the back car. "And you can see the gun in the back car."

"So? It's some sort of armored gun back there."

"Sir. These two halves fit together. Look at the bolt holes on either side. And you see those three shafts on the front and the two on the back?"

He led Hans around to the back of the second car and pulled back the rest of the tarp to reveal a dark pile of iron wheels more than six feet across.

"Wheels, sir. The wheels fit on the shafts. They had to take them off because they project out too far from the side of the flatcar to transport it."

"So?"

"Sir. This is an armored land cruiser. Bolt the two halves together, put the wheels on, and off it goes."

"What? The damn thing's part of an armored train or something. We should have dumped it off rather than hauling it along in the first place. I just thought we could use the gun."

"Sir, Alexi thinks he can put it together," Gregory said.

Hans shook his head. There simply wasn't time to fool with it now.

"I've figured it out," Alexi said hurriedly. "It's actually an interesting design. We jack the two parts up. They only have to come up about half a foot. We build up the ground on either side of the cars by a foot or so. We can tear up some lumber from the siding. Take the wheels off the back of the car, roll them forward, and slide them onto the axles. Power up the steam engine, back it up until it's against the gun half of the cruiser. Bolt them together and we're ready to fight!"

Hans looked at him, still not convinced. "And you think you can drive this thing?"

"Damn right! I can drive it, sir. The engine's almost identical to the one on the locomotive, only smaller. We put a gun crew inside. There's a wheel up front that's used to steer and half a dozen firing ports on either side of her. In one of the crates inside there's some real beauties, heavy one-inch rifles and ammunition in there for the cannon as well. It's brilliant."

The way he said the word "brilliant" troubled Hans. If they're making these things, what else were they preparing?

"How many do you need?"

"Give me fifty workers and I'll have it ready by dawn."

Hans stared at him intently. Alexi could be of far more use training the Chin in how to work a field-piece or fire rifles. But if he could actually do it, the damn thing might come in handy. He finally gave a barely perceptible nod and walked off into the darkness.

"The night is long, my Qarth."

Ha'ark nodded and motioned Jamul to sit in the other camp chair by the fire.

Jamul settled into the chair and looked up at the Great Wheel.

"A long way from home," he sighed.

"Wonder if home is even in that galaxy overhead," Ha'ark replied.

"Do you miss it?"

Ha'ark chuckled. "Home. What was home? We were two drafted soldiers, caught in a war not of our making. We should have died in that ambush. Even if we had lived, that bastard sergeant would have had us killed by now."

"I don't mean that."

Ha'ark snorted with disdain. "What we were? Not of the upper caste. Students before the war—and if we had lived? Then what? You saw the mangled veterans of the last war, forgotten, disdained because they had fought on the losing side. I'm glad we're here."

"I'm not."

Ha'ark looked at him.

Jamul lowered his head. "This slaughter sickens me."

Ha'ark laughed. "Life is war, war is life."

"Easy enough for you to say, oh, Redeemer."

Ha'ark bristled at the sarcasm in his voice.

Jamul looked at him. "After all, you are the Redeemer. But the question is, do you really believe it?"

Ha'ark stood and looked down at him.

Jamul smiled. "Remember, I knew you as Ha'ark, a scared recruit, the same as I. Do you really believe what you've become to these primitives?"

"And why not? If the prophecy fits, wear it. We came to this world for a reason and have found it."

Ha'ark nodded toward the encampment spread out in the valley below.

"These are the illustrious ancestors of legend. It was from here that our race sprang while here there was the descent into barbarism. We have come to return them to their rightful place."

"Their destiny, as you call it?" Jamul replied. "You want to unleash them on other worlds?"

"The humans we face. All that I learned and could sense from Schuder. If once we can defeat them here and marshal our forces, in ten, fifteen years we'd be ready to cross to their world, once we've learned the secret of the Tunnel of Light and how to use it."

Jamul did not reply, his gaze fixed upon the fire.

"I cannot accept that we must defeat the humans," he finally said. "Too much has been done by our 'illustrious ancestors' as you call them, to make it otherwise. But I am weary of it all."

He looked at Ha'ark. "And you, my friend. What have you become? What amazes me is that you actually believe all this. You believe you are the Redeemer."

"There is no alternative but to believe. And is there complaint from you? You are one of the companions."

"Oh, thank you for that."

Ha'ark bristled. "On the day we came here I saw the terror in your eyes. Remember it was I who killed our stupid commander, not you. It was I who remembered enough of the old language to ensure our survival, the overthrow of the last Qar Qarth, the life of luxury you now lead. I do not hear you complain about the concubines, the wealth, even the choice food."

He nodded toward the human limb roasting on a spit over the fire.

"That, at least, has come to trouble me," Jamul replied. "If they have souls, which I am coming to believe, then it is sacrilege to use them as we do."

"It's either that or we die, you and I die," Ha'ark snapped back. "It has been the way of this world for thousands of years. I have asked much in the changing of them. To ask that as well is to go too far."

"It makes them an implacable foe. If we faced such horror we would fight to the death as well."

"They didn't fight until the Yankees came. That proves something to me right there."

"Hans—does he have a soul?"

Ha'ark looked across the open fields to the fort.

Do you? Ha'ark wondered. You've deceived me, you've defeated me throughout this chase. You've been a worthy foe. There was something in the human he even admired, the inability to submit.

"That's not the question now," Ha'ark finally replied. "We must destroy them tomorrow. We must not just destroy them, we must wipe their memory from the face of this world. We've taught our people that the Yankees and the cattle who follow them are possessed by demons, and therefore are foes worthy to fight. We must unleash their hatred and fear. And the Yankees now know of us. Their flyers have at least seen what we are doing. Therefore the war begins."

He studied Jamul carefully.

"I need you and the others to fight this war. There are so many things still to be made, to be improved upon. It will be years, perhaps a generation or more, before we can train the primitives we rule to think as we do, to make machines, to create and control so much of what we left behind from our world. Do you understand that?"

Jamul nodded slowly.

A flurry of rifle fire erupted from the fort, and he looked up to see the pinpoints of light flashing along the parapet and return fire coming from the field.

"Damn it all," said Ha'ark. "If only we could drive our warriors to fight at night. One storming column and we'd be over the parapet and this would be finished. We'll lose twice, three times as many trying to take it in the daylight."

"They're not trained for it anyhow," Jamul replied.

"Neither are the cattle."

"It's going to be carnage out there tomorrow."

"A good blooding for them. Let them taste real action rather than the shams we've been staging."

He surveyed the encampment. Two regiments of his elite umens had come up during the night, along with a battery of thirty-pound guns. The other units could launch the first assaults, a fitting punishment for panicking before the gate and running. And then let them see what well-trained troops could do.

He looked back up at the Wheel and smiled.

"We have indeed come a long way," he whispered.

"Hans?"

Stirring from a dreamless, exhausted sleep, he saw her by his side, sitting up, looking down at him.

"What?" He wanted to tell her to sleep, that the hours till dawn were precious, but then he saw the glimmer of a tear, caught in the reflection of the starlight streaming in through the window.

"Will we live?"

"Of course, Tamira."

She tried to force a smile. "I keep thinking, if it wasn't for me, this never would have happened."

There was no sense in denying the truth of that now. But then again, if it wasn't for her, he would have been dead years ago. It was always to protect her that he had restrained himself from some final act of madness that would have resulted in his death. It was because of her, and especially because of Andrew, that he had agreed to try the escape.

"All those who died," she whispered. "And now, tomorrow, all the people of this town who will die as well."

"We were doomed anyhow. At least we regained our honor, our pride."

"And is that what Andrew will one day die for? If he lives through tomorrow, will he one day be killed anyway?"

He wanted to say no, but he couldn't. How many wars have been fought, he wondered, with those who did the bleeding, the dying, promising themselves that they suffered thus so their children would never know such horror?

"At least we're giving him the chance to live, to be a man, to be free. That's the best we can hope for."

He knew the words were small comfort, but he had never lied to her. He could not bring himself to do it, not with her golden eyes gazing into his soul.

He reached up and brushed the hair off her forehead, and she lay back down, snuggling against him. Why does she love me so? he wondered. I'm an old man, past fifty. She could have had so many others, and yet she chose me.

"I'll always love you," she whispered. "I never knew anyone to be so gentle and yet so strong."

He looked at her and again brushed the lock of unruly hair from her forehead.

"Go to sleep," he whispered.

"I can't."

"And?"

Smiling, she gently wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him closer.

"Cast off all lines!"

Andrew felt his stomach knot as the ship began to climb. He closed his eyes, cursing this madness that had seized him and now compelled him to go up in an airship again. In the darkness he could just make out Jack's profile to his left. Behind him he saw Feyodor hunched down in the small aft compartment of the ship. They had argued vehemently over that, Andrew insisting that he sit on the floor and Feyodor arguing just as fiercely that he'd be damned before he'd let his commander sit on the floor. It was Jack who finally settled it, with the statement that he was captain of the ship and Andrew was to have the chair.

"You might as well settle back and get some sleep, sir," Jack said, interrupting Andrew's thoughts. "Six hours till we get there."

"And what about you? You had less than four hours' sleep in the last day and a half."

"What the hell, sir. There's only so many hours. Considering how long I expect to live, I might as well stay awake for most of them."