Down to the Sea (39 page)

Holstering his empty revolver, Abe ran up to the downed trooper, who was clutching his thigh and gasping.

“Can you run?”

The man looked up at him wide-eyed.

“Take the water!”

His English was broken, thick with the brogue of the Gaelic.

Ignoring Togo’s orders, Abe put an arm under the man’s shoulder and helped him up.

“Run!” Abe hissed.

The two set off, staggering and weaving. He was tempted to throw off their canteens, but the butte looked so close, so damnably close, and he pushed on.

He could no longer see Togo and the others.

He heard hoofbeats, looked over his shoulder, and saw four more riders coming in at the gallop.

“Run, damn it, run!” Abe cried. The wounded trooper gasped, cursing in Gaelic, staggered alongside him, hopping on his one good leg.

The pursuit came closer, thundering. He could hear their wild shouts and sensed they were filled with a mad joy, the joy of the hunt and the kill.

The wounded trooper started to push him away, shouting for Abe to run. Abe turned, pulled his revolver back out, raised it at the lead rider and then remembered that it was empty.

He stood there, stunned. The rider filled his world, a darker shadow in the darkness of night.

The rider tumbled backward, falling, illuminated by a brilliant flash.

A volley crackled around him. Half a dozen troopers came up at a run, crouching low, carbines raised. One of the men grabbed Abe, pushing him forward. Another scooped up the Irish soldier, the two of them shouting at each other in their native tongue.

Abe felt his legs turn to liquid, and for a second he was frightened that he had wet himself in terror, but then realized he was soaked with sweat.

Barely able to walk, he accepted the helping hand of a trooper for the last fifty yards to the butte, the ring of skirmishers closing in around him.

Scrambling onto the base of the mountain, he collapsed behind a barrier of rocks piled up over the last three days as a rough stockade covering the west side trail of the mountain.

In the shadows he looked around at his companions. Men were gasping, bent over. The wounded man was sprawled out, cursing while his companion pulled out a knife and slashed the trouser leg open to examine the wound.

“I told you to leave the wounded behind, sir.”

Abe, knees raised and head between his legs, looked up. Togo was holding a precious canteen, and he offered it. More than a day had passed since his last sip of water, and he eagerly took the canteen, the canvas cover slippery with mud. It was uncorked and Abe tilted his head back. The muddy drink seemed like the finest he had ever tasted. He took a long gulp, then remembering how precious the liquid was, he stopped and offered the canteen back.

Togo squatted at his side. “Go ahead, Lieutenant, take another drink, you need it.”

Abe struggled to refuse but gave in, but this time allowing himself only a sip before recorking it.

“Damn it, sir, that was rather stupid if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Abe took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Sergeant Togo, if I remember the way things work in this army, I’m supposed to be in command, not you. I wasn’t going to leave a man out there to be butchered.”

Togo leaned back and a soft chuckle greeted Abe’s words. A gentle hand clapped him on the shoulder.

“For a Westerner, you did good out there, sir, real good.”

Abe shook his head, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry I froze on you.”

“What?”

“With the Bantag, back at the wagon.”

“Your first kill with a knife, wasn’t it?”

Abe slowly nodded.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“I hope not,” he whispered, remembering the bubbling gasp, what the Bantag was saying. He had heard it before in Jurak’s camp, the ritual prayer to the Ancestors, calling upon them to witness.

The companion of the wounded soldier came over, knelt down, and started to speak in Gaelic.

Abe shook his head.

“English. Speak English, trooper.”

“Oh. Me baby brother, sir. Thank you, sir.” The man fell silent, embarrassed, then withdrew.

Togo leaned closer to Abe. “You did the right thing, Keane. The men here will follow you to hell after this.” Abe laughed softly. “Sergeant, we’ve been trapped here now for nearly four days. I thought we were in hell.”

“It’s only started.”

“Lieutenant Keane, is the lieutenant all right?”

Keane looked up. It was Sergeant Major Mutaka.

He slipped down behind the rock wall just as a rifle shot zipped in, kicking up a shower of splinters. One of the men cursed and peeked up over the side.

“Damn, there’s a whole parcel of them out there.”

The sergeant major sat down with Abe. “You hurt, sir?”

“No, I’m fine, just winded.”

Before he could say more, Togo quickly related what had happened.

“I figure we got around half a quart of water per man, not much, but it will keep us going another day. The lieutenant and I got lucky. We found four or five hundred rounds of carbine ammunition as well.”

Abe, remembering the haversack slung around his neck, reached down and opened it up. A sickening stench wafted up, and he quickly closed it.

“If we do this again tomorrow night,” the sergeant major announced, “sir, you stay behind. I know why you volunteered to lead the first one, but you’ve proven your point with the men. So do us all a favor and let one of the other lieutenants go.”

Abe would not admit it, but he was more than glad to nod in agreement.

“And, sir. The major started coming around while you were gone. Started saying he was in command again.”

“Oh, damn. What did you do, Sergeant? For God’s sake I hope you didn’t hit him again.”

Mutaka chuckled softly. “No, sir. It’s twice now I’ve whacked him. Any more, and I think it’d kill him.”

He paused, and Abe wondered if the sergeant was quietly waiting for some sign to simply go and finish the job. “Sergeant, don’t even think about it.”

“What, sir?”

“We both know, so let’s drop it.”

“Anyhow, one of the boys finally admitted he had a quart of vodka still stashed away in his saddlebag. How he’d hung on to it without drinking it is beyond me. The captain drank it all and passed out, so we don’t have to deal with it for a while yet.”

“Thank God.”

Two men had rigged up a stretcher from a blanket and two Bantag rifles. They started back up the steep slope carrying the wounded soldier, his brother walking beside him.

“There, I see another one,” a watching soldier whispered, pointing over the rock wall. He started to raise his carbine.

Abe crawled up beside him and peered over. He could see several of them, crouching low, weaving their way across the flat open plain. On impulse he touched the trooper beside him on the shoulder and shook his head.

He looked back at the stretcher team heading up the slope, keeping low, quickly moving from the cover of one boulder to another. He was suddenly aware that it was getting lighter. On the other side of the butte the first dim glow of dawn must already be visible.

He knelt and cupped his hands.

“No shooting!” he cried, struggling to remember the Bantag words. “Your wounded and dead we honor. Take them back to their yurts.”

The men around him shifted uncomfortably. Togo cursed softly under his breath.

One of the Bantags slowly stood up, then held his rifle over his head with both hands, the sign that he would not shoot. Others stood up, and Abe was surprised to see not two or three but a dozen or more, one of them less than fifty yards away. He wondered if the closest had seen the stretcher party going up the slope and had been waiting for a kill.

Wounded and dead out on the ground in front of the butte were picked up and carried off.

The lone warrior, rifle over his head, remained still until the last of the bodies had been retrieved. Finally he lowered his gun and turned away, walking upright.

“Not even a thank-you, damn them,” Mutaka hissed.

“I didn’t expect one,” Abe replied softly.

He started up the slope, Togo falling in by his side.

“This isn’t no gentleman’s war, sir,” Togo whispered.

“I know that, Sergeant.”

“But, sir, maybe you were right,” Togo finally conceded.

Abe thought of the warrior he had cut apart with the knife and then what was left of the two troopers in the wrecked wagon. What the hell is right out here? he wondered. Was this what my father saw? Is this what he felt?

They gained the crest of the butte, the horizon before him shifting from deep indigo to a pale glowing red. The troopers who had gone on the expedition spread out, passing out canteens. Desperate men eagerly took the precious loads, gulping down a drink, but Abe could see that in almost every case a man would drink but briefly, then pause and pass it on to a comrade waiting beside him.

He could see the men who had been with him returning to their friends, squatting down, whispering, and gradually heads would lift, turn and gaze in his direction. Under a roughly made shelter, rigged from blankets and ground clothes, was the hospital. The surgeon was a lone surviving medical orderly who had worked without rest for three days on the forty odd men who had been wounded and dragged to the top of the butte. The orderly was already at work, the men who had gathered around to watch were turning as well, looking at Abe.

The look, he realized, they are giving me “the look.” He had seen it wherever his father went, the gaze, the flicker of a smile, the slight straightening of the shoulders. Always he had associated it with his father, and for a second he wondered if somehow his father had come into their midst and was standing behind him.

But then he knew that it was him they were looking at. These were now his men.

Embarrassed, he lowered his head, slumped down behind a boulder, and within minutes was asleep, untroubled by the nightmare he had just survived.

And when he awoke an hour later with dawn, he found that someone had put a blanket over his shoulders and left a cup of water by his side.

Dawn was obscured by banks of clouds marching along the eastern horizon, their interiors glowing with flashes of lightning.

It had been a hard night of flying. The summer heat was at its height, the ocean below heavy with warmth that, during the night, would continue to evaporate, the warm air rising, changing it to clouds and then towering thunder-heads. To drift into one was almost certain death. The wind shears were capable of ripping the wings off a steamer in a single, cruel slash. It was the perfect brew for the beginning of the cyclone season.

Richard had weaved and darted around the storms, going down so low at times that salt spray coated his windscreen, then rising up again through canyons of open air. The stars twinkling overhead guided him as they had guided all navigators who sailed or flew at night.

In the dawning light he looked out across the massive wings of his four-engine aerosteamer, one of the new Ilya Murometz models, capable of ranging outward a thousand miles. He had run with all four engines through most of the night, wanting to get as far out to sea as possible, pushing the range. His fuel was nearly half gone. For the journey back he’d cut two of the engines off, add buoyancy by releasing additional hydrogen into the aft gasbag, which was tucked into the huge, hundred foot tail boom, then lift to the thin air of fourteen thousand feet.

His forward and aft observers had been violently sick through most of the night flight as they bobbed up and down in the warm thermals, and it was hard to keep them at their tasks. Both of the men kept groaning, their agony echoing through the speaking tubes.

Richard tried to block out the sounds. He was just as susceptible as they were and had leaned out the port side window more than once.

His copilot and navigator, a hearty Rus flight sergeant, had taken the entire ride as an immense joke, laughing at the agony of his three companions. Propped above and behind Richard in the top gunner position, he kept shouting ribald songs to the wind…and then fell silent.

“Cromwell, off to starboard!”

Richard looked to the right, but saw nothing.

“Igor, what the hell is it? You are supposed to tell me what you see,” he cried, turning to look up past the feet of the man behind him.

“Smoke. I see smoke.”

Richard called to his forward observer, who came back with a negative. Banking the huge aerosteamer slightly to port so that the windscreen to his right rose, he tried to see what Igor was shouting about, but saw nothing.

“Igor, get down here, damn it!”

Igor slipped back down into the cabin and sat in the chair beside Richard. He could see that Igor’s face was beet red from the wind as he pulled up his goggles and grinned.

“I saw it. Smoke, lots of smoke.” As Igor spoke, he pointed off to starboard, roughly twenty degrees from their heading. Igor then reached around behind the seat and pulled out the plot board, their map tacked to it. Igor’s estimates of their speed and heading had been checked off every fifteen minutes. According to the chart, they were fifty miles northwest of the previous day’s sighting of smoke.

Richard knew it was all guess work. Without the sun it was impossible to shoot a sighting, and even when it was out, most of the time the navigator would calculate that they were two hundred miles north of Suzdal and in the Great Northern Forest. Shooting an angle might work on a boat, but in a plane, surging and falling with the wind, it was a waste of time.

So everything had to be based on airspeed, and estimated winds, and in ten hours they could be a hundred, even two hundred miles off from where they were supposed to be this morning. For that matter, the pilot of this aircraft from the previous day could be two hundred miles off from where he claimed he was.

They had not sighted any known landmark so far, not the Tortuga Shoals, the Caldonian Isles, or the Archipelago of the Malacca Pirates. Their only fix had been on the Mi-noan Shoals, ninety miles due south of Constantine, and that had been less than two hours into their flight. It was all guesswork, and he wondered if Igor, given his reputation on land, had been secretly sipping vodka during the night.