Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (17 page)

In the meantime crowds of city people continued to brush past me. Not a few of them were fleeing the artillery attack in the cathedral district, and they were too absorbed in their own misfortune to notice one dislocated infantryman. I stood helpless in my confusion, until my eyes were drawn by a flourish of white across the way—a
surplice robe,
 as you may have guessed, and it was worn by none other than the woman with the spring-loaded hair and lustrous eyes. I dashed across the street, heedless of the many passing carriages.

"You were in the church!" I said when I reached her; and she turned to squint at me, her small fists clenched in case I proved hostile.

"Yes?" she said brusquely.

"Were you—ah—were you hurt?"

"Obviously I was not," she replied, in a tone so cool that I supposed she must have grown accustomed to being shelled by the Dutch from time to time, the event being no more surprising to her than a summer squall.

"I was!" I managed to say. "I injured my head!"

"How unfortunate. I hope you recover."

She turned away.

"Wait!" I said, and gestured back toward the billowing smoke. "What's happening here?"

"It's called
war,
" she said as if she were addressing an idiot who had inquired about the color of the sky (and in her defense, that must have been how I sounded). "The Dutch have launched an artillery barrage. Though it seems to be finished for the moment. Shouldn't you be with your regiment, Soldier?"

"I should be; and I would be, if I could find it. Which way is the big iron bridge?"

"There are several, but the one you want is just down that direction."

I thanked her and added, "May I see you safely home?"

"Of course not," she said

"My name is Adam Hazzard," I said, remembering the importance of a polite introduction.

"Calyxa," she said grudgingly—the first time I had heard that interesting name. "Go back to your regiment, Adam Hazzard, and put a ban dage on your head. It's bleeding."

"You sing very beautifully."

"Huh," said she, and walked off without looking back.

It was a brief meeting but a pleasant one, even under these extraordinary circumstances, and as I hurried to the bridge, despite my anxiety, and the blood trickling down my face, and the smoke rising from the city behind me, I thanked Providence, or Fate, or Fortune, or one of those other pagan deities, for having brought the two of us together.

"They have a Chinese Cannon," said Sam.

I had caught up with my regiment, and both Sam and Julian had apologized for not rescuing me, or even noticing that I was missing until after the cathedral was evacuated. I took this as a commentary on the chaos that followed the attack rather than on my own insignificance, and a hearty welcome dispelled any lingering resentment on my part.

I expected we would be thrust into immediate battle, in order to punish the Dutch for their impudence. But a modern Army is a sedentary beast and slow to move. General Galligasken, who commanded the Army in total, was a notoriously cautious leader, reluctant to unleash his forces until every contingency had been accounted for and all preparations were fully in place. It was a tendency that frustrated the Executive Branch, Julian said, but it made Galligasken a pop u lar figure with the troops, who were well-fed under his regime, and whose lives were not recklessly squandered. (The veterans among us had shared stories of the harsh rule of Galligasken's pre de ces sor, General Stratemeyer, a disciplinarian who squandered thousands of lives in futile and unproductive trench attacks. General Stratemeyer had been killed early last year, when he rode away from his camp to consult a cavalry commander but took a wrong turn, placing him athwart a line of Dutch skirmishers, who were pleased to employ him for target practice.)

For these reasons we did not march into battle at once, but sat in camp while scouts and pickets probed the opposing lines, and brought back captives who disgorged useful intelligence about the enemy's capabilities and intentions. Sam, though still a mere private, worked his connections until he was well-educated about the current state of military affairs. A week after the attack on Montreal the three of us huddled in our tent against another interval of rain, and Sam told us about the Chinese Cannon, while a springtime zephyr whipped the canvas above our heads.

I asked him what made a cannon Chinese, and why it was to be particularly feared.

"The Chinese," he said, "have been waging wars of their own for many years, and they're cunning in the production of field artillery, especially long-bore cannonry. Some of these weapons they sell abroad, to help finance their own military expeditions. Chinese Cannons are formidable but very expensive. The Mitteleuropans must have bought one, or are using their own factories to mimic the design."

"We have artillery pieces aplenty," I protested, for I had seen them about the camp.

"Many, and well- made," Sam agreed. "But the Chinese Cannon has a greater range than anything of ours. It can deliver shells and canister deep into an opponent's territory. I suppose we could build a similar cannon along traditional lines, but it would be clumsy to transport. The genius of the Chinese Cannon is that it quickly breaks down into what are called 'sub-assemblies,' which can be moved by horse or rail as easily as a conventional artillery piece."

"We need to capture or decommission this cannon," I said firmly.

"Probably General Galligasken has thought of that," said Julian, "though your reasoning, as far as it goes, is flawless, Adam."

Sam ignored Julian's sarcasm and said, "We will do so, or at least make the attempt, but it needs forethought and careful planning. I expect we'll see action before the week is out. Curb your impatience, Adam—the Dutch are just as eager to get you in their sights as you are to punish them."

I would punish them grandly, I declared, for it was cowardly of them to have attacked helpless civilians at Montreal (putting Calyxa, among others, at risk). "You'll see worse things before the Army is done with us," said Sam; and in that, as in most of his prophecies, he was entirely correct.

The next day the rain stopped, and a few days after that the roads had dried, and General Galligasken himself rode through camp, which we took to be the signal of an impending attack.

I caught a brief glimpse of the General. One wide dirt lane cut through the entirety of the Army encampment, connecting several parade grounds, and it was down this route that General Galligasken rode. Infantrymen pressed the margins of the road on all sides, waving their caps and shouting as the General passed by. I was determined not to miss such a spectacle, and by a determined use of my elbows I made my way to the front of the crowd, or close enough that by some well-timed jumping I could see the whole of the pro cession.

What surprised me was the General's relative youth. He was not a young man, especially, but neither was he a grizzled veteran—last year's campaigns had been a success for the Dutch, Sam had explained, and there were fewer grizzled veterans extant than there ought to have been. Many younger men had been catapulted up the ranks. General Bernard W. Galligasken was one of these, and he cut a sprightly figure in the saddle, smiling serenely at the lapping ocean of infantrymen that surrounded him. He was vain, some said, about his appearance, and certainly his uniform was tailored to within a fine inch, and bright in all its colors. The blue-and-yellow costume suited him, however, and his long hair brushed his stiff starched collar in a jaunty fashion.

The alabaster handle of his Porter & Earle pistol glinted from the supple leather holster at his hip, and there was a great deal of stamped metal on his chest, to mark the battles he had endured and the bravery he had displayed in them. His hat was a broad-brimmed extravagance with a turkey feather attached.

(The Chinese Cannon spoke twice during this display, and one of the shells burst less than a quarter of a mile from our camp; but the Dutch did not exactly have our range, because of the great distance from which they aimed and their inability to spot the impacts.
It was a haphazard affair, which we all ignored.)
²⁹

This pro cession of General Galligasken with his train of subordinates and standard-bearers was a little more "fuss and feathers" than would have been deemed proper back in Williams Ford; but the General was not in camp solely to make a show. He met with his battalion commanders that night in a Council of War. Final plans were laid, and we were instructed by our superiors to "sleep on our arms," and be ready to move before dawn.

The next morning we marched to battle.

At first it was "route march," in which we were not held to a strict formation; though our Regiment, aware of its unblooded status, kept up in dignified lines-of-four. Things went slowly in the darkness of the early morning, and the roads were still damp, so that mule trains and horse-drawn wagons struggled in the soft spots. As dawn pearled the horizon the sound of marching feet, creaking leather, rattling canteens and tinkling spurs was joined by an incongruously joyful chorus of bird song. It was spring, and the birds were nesting, unaware that their homes might be destroyed by cannonade or rifle fire before the day or the season was out.

The territory through which we passed had been overbuilt in the days of the Secular Ancients, but only a few traces of that exuberant time remained, and a whole forest had grown up since then, maple and birch and pine, its woody roots no doubt entwined with artifacts from the Efflorescence of Oil and with the bones of the artifacts' own ers. What is the modern world, Julian once asked, but a vast Cemetery, reclaimed by nature? Every step we took re-verberated in the skulls of our ancestors, and I felt as if there were centuries rather than soil beneath my feet.

The skirmishing began as soon as the sun cleared the horizon, or perhaps it had begun sooner, since we were in the rear of the advance and the hilly terrain around us obscured the sounds of battle. In fact the battle announced itself like a coming storm, by a series of ominous signs: first, the pall of smoke over the hilly ground ahead of us; second, the low growl of artillery; third, the crackle of small-arms fire; fourth, the acrid smell of gunpowder. These tokens of conflict increased in volume and intensity as the sun rose, and then we began to see a sight that disheartens any soldier: wagonloads of casualties being carried to the rear. "It must be fierce fighting," I said in a low voice, as a canvasback Dominion wagon (as these makeshift ambulances were called) jounced past, its passengers concealed but their groans and screams all too audible on the morning air.

Then we topped another hill, and the battlefield was briefly laid out before us like a game board—much of it, however, masked by smoke. I thought I saw General Galligasken observing from this same ridge, and our longest-range cannons were here arrayed, banging and recoiling repetitively. Down below were the nearest of the enemy's trenches.

It was my first glimpse of the Dutch.
³⁰

I could hardly contain myself at the sight of their massed army. All my life I had heard of the vicious and aggressive Mitteleuropans, until they became a kind of legend to me, often
cited
 but never
seen
. But here they were in the flesh, and even at this great distance, through the coiling smoke and the air hot with gunfire, I caught glimpses of their characteristic black uniforms and blue helmets, and their curious cross-and-laurel flags.

They seemed from this height to be in well-defended positions, with their trenches arranged in a broad semicircle dotted with lunettes and redoubts and abatisses, each end anchored against a riverbank firmly controlled by enemy artillery. Currently an American division was making a brazen frontal attack, with some diversionary skirmishing at the sides. The attack was not going well, however, to judge by the numerous corpses already littering the ground before the Dutch entrenchments.

Sam leaned close to Julian and asked, in his tutelary voice, "What do you see?"

"A battle," Julian said. His voice was unsteady, and I had seldom seen his face so bloodless, though he was pale by nature.

"You can do better than that! Keep your wits about you, and
tell me whatyou see
!"

Julian suppressed his fear with a visible effort. "I see ... well, a conventional attack ... boldly conducted, but I can't imagine why the General is wasting so many troops this way ... there seems to be no strategy about it, only brute force."

"Galligasken is a cannier officer than that. What do you
not
 see, Julian?"

Julian gazed a little longer, then nodded. "The cavalry."

"And why would Galligasken not put his cavalry into battle?"

"Because they're elsewhere. You're implying that he
does
 have a strategy, and that it involves our mounted forces."

"That, at least, is what I'm hoping."

It was true that the fight seemed bold but in effec tive. The American attack began to buckle as we watched—one of our veteran divisions had come under especially galling fire, and the commander failed to rally his troops. A standard-bearer fell; his flag was not recovered. Terrified men lay motionless or turned and dashed for the rear, and it might have been the beginning of a rout, except that our regiment was sent into the fray as reinforcements.

A soldier whose arm had been shattered walked past me as we advanced into the smoke and noise. His left forearm was all but detached—connected to its elbow by a few mucilaginous strings—and he clasped it against his belly with his right hand as a child might clutch a bag of candy to protect it from thieving playmates. His uniform was thoroughly doused with blood. He seemed not to see us, and although he opened his mouth repeatedly no sound emerged from it.

"Don't look at that man!" Sam scolded me. "Eyes ahead, Adam!"

Sam was the only soldierly one among us. He advanced in a crouch with his Pittsburgh rifle held steadily. The rest of us moved across this scarred meadow like cattle up a slaughter house chute (a pro cess Lymon Pugh had described to me). Our company commander shouted at us to stop bunching together or be killed like geese, and we separated, but reluctantly. At such a time any normal person craves the presence of another human being, if only to have something to hide behind.