Battle Hymn (6 page)

"Strange," Andrew whispered.

"What?" Emil asked, breaking away from his argument with Pat, which was being expressed with an increasingly choice selection of obscenities.

"Oh, just that we look back now on the wars and somehow miss them."

Emil nodded sagely. "I guess we're getting older. Hell, even Pat here is starting to lose his blessed red hair for gray."

Pat stroked his heavy beard, which was now peppered with long streaks of white, and laughed. "Ah, but the lasses still love it."

"When are you ever going to settle down and get respectable?" Emil asked.

"Never! And have three squawking young ones like Andrew here? No wonder he wanted to go on this inspection tour."

Andrew smiled. Every minute away from Kathleen and the three little ones was a torture to him. No, it wasn't to escape that he had come … it was to find something again.

"Do you miss the old times, Pat?"

Pat upended his flask after snatching it away from Emil and gave the doctor a mock angry look. He retreated to his sleeping berth and returned a minute later with a full bottle of vodka. Uncorking it, he took a long pull and then passed it over to Emil.

"Ah, now those were the days. Shielding the northern flank with Fourth Corps as we retreated. And that first day of Hispania, now there was a fight to be proud of."

"But do you miss it?"

"Guess it's the Irish in me, to be certain. I miss it, Lord, how I miss it. I miss old Hans forever chewing, and me beauties, my Napoleon twelve-pounders. Firing them in battery, ramming double canister down the throats of them heathens, now there was a moment to remember."

Andrew looked over at his old friend and smiled.

"And you, Andrew?" Emil asked quietly, his voice slurring after another drink from Pat's bottle.

"I don't know anymore," Andrew replied. "During all of it, all I wanted was an end to the fighting. Lord knows—and I can say it now, no matter what I said or did at the time—I feared that in the end we'd lose. More than anything, I fought to try and give my friends—and my Kathleen—a little more time to live, to let my daughter and now my two boys have a chance.

"But for myself …" He hesitated. "I felt like a sacrifice, someone to be used up for others. I never found in it the same joy you did, Pat."

"As you look back upon it now, though?" Emil pressed.

"It was easier then. There was only one focus, one goal, to make it to the next day, the next campaign. Beyond that, there was no time to think about."

"It was the preciousness of it all that I miss," Pat interjected.

Startled, Andrew stared at him.

"You know. Us being together." He fumbled for words for a moment. "It was good. We trusted each other, knew each other. Now the years are passin', new faces taking over, like Hawthorne. But I miss old Hans, I do. It's never been quite the same."

He shook his head.

"The old days were precious, they were."

All that has transpired since, Andrew thought. In the year after the end of the war, all were united by the common goal of simply getting through the winter and rebuilding. But then, somehow, it seemed to get sidetracked. The alliance with Roum, forged in blood, would endure as long as Proconsul Marcus lived. That, at least, was secure. The Cartha were a different story. In the winter after the war they endured devastating raids from the scattered bands of Merki, who finally drifted off to the west. Fighting a regular campaign was one thing, but the army was not designed for protracted counterinsurgent warfare. A division of troops was all that could be spared to help the Cartha, and by the following spring Hamilcar severed any hope of an alliance. The Cartha, at least for now, were lost.

The dream of building a transcontinental railroad—that seemed to be dissolving as well. The line had been run nearly a thousand miles east, through the region of the Asgard, and then it came to a halt, stopped by negotiations with the next neighbors, the Nippon, and more frustratingly, the vote in Congress to cut back funding.

Now there was the constant skirmishing to the south, on the open steppe frontier between the two seas. Patrols were constantly going out from the defensive line, currently under construction where the Great Sea jutted westward, coming within a hundred fifty miles of the Inland Sea. Probing patrols of cavalry would have occasional run-ins with Bantag patrols. Never anything major—a few casualties traded on both sides—but the numbers slowly added up. Nearly five hundred dead this year alone. It reminded him so much of the Indian wars on the frontier before the Civil War. The land had once been Merki, but now the Bantag laid claim to it.

He had hoped that the Bantag would continue migrating and move on, but they were staying put, and he surmised that the reason was the Republic. They were preparing, and at some point the blow would come.

Young Admiral Bullfinch's long-coveted Second Fleet was finally coming into existence. At present it comprised only one ironclad and a newly commissioned side-wheeler gunboat, the Petersburg. There were half a dozen wooden three-masted sloops, which were keeping watch mainly over an estuary on the eastern shore of the sea, four hundred miles southeast of the defensive line. There was a small city at the mouth of the river, apparently occupied by Bantag, and indications of a larger town up the river, but the approach was guarded by more than a dozen galleys.

He had wanted to run a patrol up the river, if need be risk an encounter with the galleys, but the president had firmly overruled that idea. The problem was to keep the constant state of watch, to convince Congress, and now even the president, that this was not the time to let one's guard down and, more than ever, to keep pushing the railroad forward.

In the years since he had come here, the railroad had caused his first real falling-out with the president, the wily old peasant Kal. No amount of lobbying on Andrew's part regarding the military necessity of projecting a potential line of conflict as far forward as possible could sway Kal and his party from wanting to cut back on military spending and, with it, the railroad. It was now shaping up as the key issue in the fall congressional elections.

Just thinking about it gave Andrew reason to want another drink, and he reached over and took the bottle from Emil.

"Damn Congress," Andrew muttered.

Emil sat back and laughed.

"What's so damn funny?"

"Ah, the Republic. You're the one who created it here, and now that you can't get your own way, you damn them. You know, you could have made yourself dictator for life and they would have loved you for it."

Andrew looked at Emil as if he had just muttered the foulest obscenity.

"Why, he was dictator," Pat chimed in, "a regular Julius by God Caesar back during the first war. And a damn good one he was. Too bad he threw it away."

Andrew looked from one to the other and finally saw the grins of amusement.

"You're a born Republican and Abolitionist," Emil said. "Guess that's why I came to America from the old country—'cause of folks like you. If you had tried to keep it, I think I would have poisoned you."

Andrew laughed and shook his head.

"It's a soldier's prerogative to mumble against the government in private," he replied. "The best system humanity's ever created, but still, a pox on it at times. Always so damn shortsighted. We really didn't win a war, just a battle. There's still two other tribes out there, and the Merki, what's left of them, lurking on the western border. It could start again at any time."

"I bet old Grant and Lincoln back home made sure the army was treated just fine," Pat interjected.

Emil laughed and shook his head.

"I bet they don't have twenty thousand men in the army now. Unless something good got stirred up in Mexico or the Rebs decided to kick up another fuss. No, my friends, you're anachronisms once the fighting's stopped. You're dealing now with politicians and peasants, neither of which have much use for an army except when the wolf is at the door."

"Well, something is brewing," Andrew replied coldly.

"The Bantag," Pat announced, and there was an edge of hopefulness in his voice. "I tell you, I believe what that old Muzta told us, even if he is a bloody Tugar."

Andrew nodded, saying nothing. The understanding that had developed between the Tugar leader, Muzta, and Andrew was something he would never have dreamed possible. Such a strange irony, he reflected. Seven years ago they damn near destroyed us. In the war with the Merki, they actually wound up on our side. And now, because of some strange quirk of their code of honor, they actually admire me. They were drifting off on the edge of the frontier to the east, settling into a half-million-square-mile range of empty land, living by herding and, though he hated to turn a blind eye to it, by the occasional exacting of tribute from human neighbors. But there were no more slaughter pits, and Muzta was sending warnings as well that something was astir with the Bantag.

Andrew went out the back door of the train onto the platform. Overhead, the stars were obscured by the sooty plume of smoke trailing behind the locomotive as it thundered eastward.

The open steppe was gradually giving way to a scattering of trees as the rail line edged northward to skirt the fever-laden marshlands and tributaries that bordered the Great Sea to the south. Like the Inland Sea, now five hundred miles to the west, the Great Sea formed a defensive barrier to anchor a right flank on. If something should turn and come out of the east, this could be the outer defensive line this time.

In the shadows he saw villages drift past, marked by the distinctive wooden huts and feasting halls of the Asgard. They could prove tough fighters in a pinch but were totally lacking in the discipline that had been instilled in the regiments of Rus and Roum. Hans would have liked them, given their Teutonic origin from what he guessed was Roman Germania.

The door opened behind him, and Emil joined him in the chilled night air. "Come on in here, damn it, or you'll catch your death of cold."

"You really believe that?" Andrew asked.

"No, but it sounds good."

"In a minute."

"Still thinking of Hans."

"Wish he were here."

"If it's any comfort, I think he always will be."

"That's something Father Casmar would say."

"No, I don't mean it that way. I mean in you. Hans trained you, he trained most of the boys with the old Thirty-fifth. You and the regiment shaped this world. If ever there was a soldier who represented the grand old Army of the Potomac it's Sergeant Major Hans Schuder. That army created the Republic here on this world. It had to create the Republic to mirror what it was and always will be. Draw on that, Colonel Keane, whenever you feel like you now do."

Andrew smiled at Emil. "Again the philosopher."

"What old Jew like me isn't a philosopher?" Emil said with an answering smile.

Andrew nodded. "I know something's coming." He hesitated. "There's been the other dreams. Somewhat the same as with Jamuka."

Emil looked closely at Andrew.

"It was a look inside of me, the same way I told you Tamuka tried to do during the war. Some of the Horde seem to have that, and this one is strong, far stronger. His mind is different," Andrew paused, as if looking for the right word. "Modem. That's it, modern. He thinks differently and that, my friend, frightens me."

Emil looked at him, his features drawn. "If you are frightened, Andrew, then maybe we all should be."

"Battalion … attenshun!"

Major General Vincent Hawthorne scanned the line as the troops arrayed before him snapped to shoulders. He felt a cool shiver of delight at the sound. The Fifth Suzdal, "Hawthorne's Guards," stood arrayed before him. With access to blue dye gained by trading with the Asgard, the Army of the Republic was gradually adopting the traditional uniform of their mentors—sky-blue trousers, navy-blue four-button jacket, and black felt slouch caps. The sight of his regiment dressed in the cherished blue made his heart beat faster. He looked up at the colors snapping in the breeze, his gaze lingering on the shot-torn standard of the regiment emblazoned with the names of half a dozen hard-fought battles.

Deployed next to them was a company of sailors wearing the blue trousers, blue-and-white-checkered shirts, and white neckerchiefs of the navy, with Admiral Bullfinch proudly standing in front of them in his finest double-breasted blue frock coat, his handsome features made exotic and slightly dangerous-looking by the black eye patch.

As the train drifted to a stop, venting steam, the band gave a single ruffle and flourish as befitted the commander of the armies, and then broke into "Battle Cry of Freedom."

Vincent, joined by Bullfinch, turned and walked to the last car and, coming to attention, saluted as Andrew stepped out onto the platform. Andrew, smiling, snapped off a salute to the colors and then to Vincent and Bullfinch. He climbed off the train, and walked down the line of troops, followed by Pat and Emil, who peered curiously at the men, as if looking for a telltale cough or a sign of fever.

"The men look good," Andrew stated, loud enough so his words could be heard, "but then again, I wouldn't expect anything less from the old Fifth."

Behind the line of troops Andrew saw the crowd of curious onlookers, the hundreds of railroad men, dockhands, shipbuilders, and factory workers who were laboring at what was now the railhead of the eastward expansion of the Republic. As they left the platform Andrew smiled at Vincent.

"It's been how long?"

"Four months since I was last in Suzdal."

"Good to see you, Vincent."

"And you too, sir. My family?"

"That poor girl," Pat laughed. "Good heavens, is she pregnant!"

"She's all right, isn't she?" He looked at Emil.

"Don't worry. Another two months. She's doing fine."

"Maybe you should stay out here another year and give her some rest," Pat interjected.

Vincent fixed his old friend with a cool stare, and Pat held up his hands in surrender.

"Ah, those Quaker sensibilities of yours. All right, but good heavens, the way you make babes I'd think you were an Irishman."