Conflagration (2 page)

She wore her green jacket with two top buttons undone, and the front panel partially open and folded down. This was the unofficial affectation of Rangers who had seen action behind enemy lines, and, since she had done exactly that, she didn’t consider her adoption of it in any way inappropriate. A few unpleasant individuals, mainly jealous courtiers, newly drafted to active service, questioned her right to wear the uniform the way she did. They split hairs over the fact that, during those hideous days and nights when she had been a prisoner of Her Grand Eminence Jeakqual-Ahrach, and when she had made her daring escape from the Mosul camp on the Potomac, she was still technically a humble lieutenant in the Royal Women’s Auxiliary. The same malicious gossips also questioned how she had so quickly attained the rank of major, but Cordelia Blakeney dismissed their arguments as being without merit. The fighting Rangers accepted her, and if those hardened and implacable killers wanted to look on her as some kind of mascot and a good luck token into the bargain, the rest could simply shut their mouths. The gossips also had no idea what it meant to be one of The Four.

As the young man came closer, Cordelia made no sign, and only cast the briefest of glances in his direction. She was shorter than most of the riders around her, and he only spotted her at the last minute, but when he did, he quickly reined in his mount, and raised his peaked kepi with a flourish. “Well, well … Major Blakeney.”

She allowed him only a short, almost curt nod. “Captain Neally.”

“Top of the morning to you, ma’am.”

Cordelia eased back her shoulders and straightened in the saddle. She was well aware of the effect such a move would have. “And a good morning to you, Captain.”

Neally urged his horse forward, and moved up beside her. He gestured to the clear blue midday sky. “We seem to have ourselves another fine day for this adventure, Major.”

She nodded for a second time, and allowed herself a faint smile. “Indeed we do, Captain, indeed we do.”

The formality of their greetings belied the relationship between Lady Cordelia Blakeney and Captain Tom Neally. The casual onlooker might only have suspected there was more to it when the captain glanced round, quickly and circumspectly, as if checking that no casual onlooker was, in fact, taking note of their exchange. Only then did he permit himself a sly grin. “And how does the morning find you, Major?”

Cordelia had difficulty keeping a straight face. “It finds me…”

She was also hard-pressed to censor a lewd giggle that bubbled up inside her. The devilment in her wanted to respond with the unvarnished truth that she was a little hung over from the previous night’s champagne, and her muscles still ached from the bone jarring, under-the-stars shaggings to which the captain had treated her just a few hours earlier. Cordelia Blakeney and Tom Neally had become what was known as an item on the third day after they crossed the river, and had remained so ever since. Every night that their other duties permitted, they would make for the deep, spring-night shadows, pressed close, arm in arm, and, laughing drunkenly, to lose their clothes, and have intense, if maybe temporary sex. They both knew that circumstances would not allow the situation to last, and both were determined to make the absolute most of it. In the light of day, though, they observed all the spurious niceties of the Albany upper classes, and the pretense that such things didn’t really happen. If Cordelia ever needed an excuse, which she rarely did, being more than able to rationalize most of her behavior, she would tell herself that it kept the new cycle of dreams away—the bad ones with the uncomfortable white flashes that refused to make any sense.

“… as well as can be expected, Captain, and eager to see what the day might bring.”

“It would seem as though Ab Balsol and his Mosul have found themselves a place to make their stand.”

“So I hear. What’s the latest word?”

Neally’s bay charger and Cordelia’s gelding were now almost touching flanks, and their riders’ knees were within inches of each other.

“This may be the final battle.”

Cordelia studied Neally’s face before speaking. Coral Metcalfe, one of her RWA drinking companions, had described him as “a doll, but probably stupid,” and Coral’s judgment could not be faulted. His jaw was square, his features classically even, his light brown hair, even with an unflattering army haircut, had a definite wave. She recognized that, had she and Neally been together in the city, she almost certainly would have tired of him by now. Cordelia was under no illusions about Tom Neally. He was a lot of fun, but hardly as sharp as a razor. Coral had guessed right: he really was a little stupid, highly uncultured in anything but the sporting pursuits of upperclass young men. What he lacked, though, in finesse, subtlety, or imagination, he made up for in rough energy, stamina, and zealousness. In the urban boudoir this might not have been enough, but deep in the rural darkness, amid the smell of woods and fields, with his weight on top of her, and dew-wet grass or last winter’s dead leaves under her naked back and squirming bottom, his relentless and self-sustaining crudity was atavistically apt. No question that, out in the Virginia night, Tom Neally certainly had the knack of reducing her to a shameless and enthusiastically mewing slut, legs spread wide, hair flying, and limbs flailing in abandon.

At various times during the course of the expedition, often while laying beside him, breathing heavily and feeling the cold of the ground creep into her, Cordelia had wondered if, under the circumstances, she should be less exclusive with her favors. Perhaps her taking multiple lovers might have been better for morale, but she had decided that the long-term result would be an even more scandalous reputation than the one she already enjoyed. This certainly seemed to be the case with Hermione Bracewell, another RWA captain, who worked with Coral Metcalfe in coded communications. Hermione was making herself patriotically available to a wide assortment of young officers, sometimes two in the same day, but her patriotism was also becoming the talk of the mess, and, of course, there was Jesamine, Cordelia’s companion in The Four, who had taken up with aborigines. Serial monogamy with her own kind seemed to be Cordelia’s most comfortable style, and, for the duration, Tom Neally was the monogamous object.

Cordelia tapped the handle of her crop thoughtfully against her chin. Neally might be unsophisticated, but even he could appreciate a woman with a whip. “I always thought one of the first principles of warfare was that he who selected the battlefield was halfway to victory?”

“I think we can concede them that and still come out ahead.”

Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that dangerously overconfident?”

Neally dismissed the question out of hand. “Ab Balsol and his flat-heads are starving and short of everything. All we have to worry about is that some kind of delay allows their reinforcements to reach them.”

“So a clock is ticking?”

“You could say that.

“And what is the land like beyond those hills? Is there a reason the Mosul have chosen this particular spot to make their stand?”

Neally hesitated. He once again looked around to see if any attention was being paid to their conversation. Not, this time, to conceal their romantic involvement, but because he might be revealing privileged information. “It is rather a case of need to know.”

Cordelia was suddenly irritated. Just a few hours earlier she had been romping uninhibitedly with this oaf, and now he was about to make an issue of describing the disposition of the enemy. “Who the hell do you imagine I’m going to tell? I’m certainly not going to inform the Mosul. They already know where they are. And, anyway, I can order you to tell me. I bloody outrank you, don’t I?”

Neally flushed. He didn’t like to be reminded that she was a major while he was merely a junior captain. “They’ve bivouacked in a long valley and are showing no signs of moving on. Approached from the north, it opens broad and then narrows at the far end. And the brass are guessing they’ll dig in and let us come to them.”

Cordelia grimaced. “Straight into a valley with high ground on either side? Does that mean they’ll be pouring fire on our advance from both flanks? Aren’t we going into a box?”

“The Rangers and cavalry will sweep the hills.”

Cordelia felt a sudden knot in her stomach. She realized that there was a chance that Tom Neally might be one of the ones doing the sweeping, and clearing the high ground in front of the main advance had to be a high-risk assignment. She eased the gelding forward slightly so their knees touched. “Be careful out there, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Neally looked away, suddenly embarrassed by Cordelia’s show of concern. “I’ll be careful. And you do the same. Whatever you’re doing.”

Concern again turned to irritation. “You know damned well what I’ll be doing.”

Tom Neally hung his head, with the look of denial that always came over his face when the subject of her duties came up. Like so many men of Albany, Neally maintained an absolute barrier of disbelief when it came to the other realities. Even those with firsthand experience with Dark Things in the field became profoundly uncomfortable at the first suggestion of the paranormal, and totally refused to accept that Cordelia and the rest of The Four were maybe as crucial to the Albany war effort as any division of infantry. She had been through the “more things in heaven and earth” argument so many times that she was disinclined to repeat it. Overhead, a single rocket bomb inscribed a white vapor-trail trajectory across the blue of the sky, and offered Cordelia a chance to change the subject. “At least we’re still pounding them from the air.”

“Maybe not.”

“What?”

Neally also looked up. “That’s maybe another reason the Mosul have turned.”

Cordelia frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Watch.”

The rocket bomb’s engine cut out, and the projectile started to fall. It dropped faster and faster until it impacted somewhere on the far side of the wooded hills. A brief fireball rose into the air, the muffled sound of an explosion reached them, and then a column of smoke roiled up like an elongated mushroom. Cordelia attempted to gauge the distance. “It fell short?”

“They’re all falling short. The Mosul must know they’ve moved out of effective range.”

The rocket bombs, supplied under the lend-lease, Trans-Ocean treaty between the Norse Union and the Kingdom of Albany, had been a major factor in turning back the invaders. Although the Norse maintained a flimsy neutrality with the Mosul Empire, the exchange of aid with Albany was close to inevitable. Both peoples came from the same stock, they shared culture and customs, and spoke an approximation of the same language. Indeed, the Norse had founded the very first seafaring settlements in the Americas, but for their descendants to engage Hassan IX in open warfare was unthinkable in practical terms. The Norse were far fewer in number than the Mosul, and, even though alliance between the Scandinavian Vikings, the Scotts, the Eiren, and the English of the Islands had lasted a thousand years, they controlled a great deal less territory. The only thing that stopped the Mosul crossing the narrow waters of the English Channel and overrunning them was superior Norse technology and heavy industry. The Mosul, strangled by the constraining coils of their inflexibly brutal religion, had failed to progress. The Zhaithan priests refused to distinguish a scientist from a heretic, and stifled all research and progress. The foundries in Damascus and the Ruhr turned out cannon and musket twenty-four hours a day, but they produced only crude quantity; nothing to compare with the sophistication of the repeating rifles being developed in Birmingham and Stockholm, or the keels of the submarines being laid in the shipyards along the Clyde. Prefabricated parts of Norse gasoline-powered tanks were now crossing the Northern Ocean, being delivered to the Albany port of Manhattan by convoys of cargo ships, and then assembled in a huge roaring factory complex in the city of Brooklyn. Norse Air Corps instructors were training the crews of Albany’s first small squadron of airships, and cadres of officers from Albany were attending advanced command schools in London and Stockholm, learning the use of these new weapons on the battlefield and on the high seas. In the final months before the offensive on the Potomac, the Norse had even given Albany their new rocket bombs, and the rest had been history.

“Can’t the launching sites be moved?”

Tom Neally regarded the dense column of smoke in the distance. “That’s being done, but it’s a major undertaking. Building the launchers takes time.”

Cordelia remembered the concrete ramps and the steel rails that guided the howling rockets, as their engines ignited and they raced up the track before rising into the air. The installations were major constructions, and there was no way they could be made portable. In theory, dirigible airships could be used to bomb the enemy from the sky, but, in practice, it was impossible. The rigid flying machines with their aluminum and fabric frames and helium-filled gasbags were too slow, too unwieldy, and vulnerable in the extreme to enemy ground fire. Cordelia had learned all about airship vulnerability at painful firsthand in the fall of the previous year, when the NU98 had crashed behind enemy lines with her on board. The Norse-built Hellhound triplane could carry a small bomb-load, but it was nothing compared with the devastating unmanned rocket bombs that dropped from the upper air with such deadly effect. In this coming fight, Albany would be without one of its most efficient weapons.

“So this battle will be won or lost on the ground?”

Neally nodded. “That’s pretty much the strength of it.”

“So when do you and the rest of the cavalry move out?”

He shook his head. “I can’t say.”

Cordelia sighed with exasperation. “Oh Tom, do stop the dramatic secrecy. This is me you’re talking to.”

“No, I really don’t know. We’re waiting for orders.”

“Could it be today?”

“There’s a chance of that.”

She was suddenly anxious. “But I’ll see you tonight if you’re still here?”

“Of course.”