Men of War (35 page)

A blinding light ignited. Where the powder works had been a harsh white glare, brighter than a hundred suns, erupted, rising heavenward, the flash brilliance of it seeming to freeze everyone. By the light of the explosion the entire world came into a sharp-etched reality. Far to his left he could see the end of his battle line, a milling confusion, mounted Bantag swirling into a tangled mass of humanity. Straight ahead the track was clogged with people, all of them frozen, then falling, their cries drowned out by the earth-splitting thunderclap. The ragged line of infantry circling about the walled compound were turning, running back, flinging themselves to the ground.

The fireball soared thousands of feet heavenward, the brilliant glare darkening into a sullen red hell, spreading out. The concussion stunned him. He staggered, leaning forward into the gale, the air hot and dry. More explosions ignited, crates of ammunition thrown heavenward, bursting asunder, millions of cartridges flaring, sparkling, streaks of fire plunging back to earth.

The compound walls were down, blown asunder, providing a glimpse into the inferno. Bantag, looking like flaming demons, staggered out, flaying wildly at the agony that was consuming them, humans, dwarflike beside them, burning as well. A box of rifle cartridges crashed down beside the engine, exploding like a bundle of firecrackers, rounds pinging against the side of the tender.

“Hans!”

It was Ketswana, dragging several Chin behind him, all three dressed in the loose black coveralls marking them as men who worked aboard the locomotives. They were the precious few, allowed extra rations, exemption of their families from the feasting pit, and in the madness of the last few hours more than one had been beaten to death by those lower on the order of survival in this mad world and thus the special order to round them up not only for intelligence but also for their own protection.

Ketswana climbed into the locomotive cab and, exhausted, slumped down to the floor, back against the pile of wood in the tender. Hans offered his cup of tea, and Ketswana greedily gulped it down, nodding his thanks when Hans offered a piece of hardtack. The three Chin rail workers he had dragged along were in the cab as well, talking excitedly to the engineer piloting Hans’s train, their words flowing so fast Hans could barely decipher what was being said.

“They’re from the northern line,” Ketswana announced, still chewing on the dry bread.

“Northern line?”

“Remember, we knew they were laying a line up toward Nippon.”

“And?” He felt a flash of fear.

“We should have flown a few reconnaissance flights that way, Hans, before ordering Jack to take the remaining ships back to Xi’an.”

It was a stupid mistake, damn stupid, Hans realized. He should have ordered Jack to circle out for a quick look around, but had yielded to the argument that if any of the aerosteamers were to survive, they had to get back to Xi’an before dark, refuel, patch up, and hopefully find a hydrogen-gas generator at the Bantag airfield. From there they could get back to Tyre the next morning. But now this.

He knew that his releasing of Jack was also motivated by guilt. Jack had finally agreed to the attack, though he had insisted that the other pilots had to volunteer as well and could not be ordered. Of course all of them did volunteer, they were far too green to know when to say no, and none would ever allow himself to be called the coward.

Only nine airships survived the assault intact and in some semblance of flying order. Close to five out of every six Eagle crews alive just two weeks ago were now dead. Jack and his boys were beyond the breaking point, and thus Hans had sent them home. His sentimentality might just have cost him the fight. He had had no idea of the completion of the rail line to the north.

“The bastards didn’t just run the line up to Nippon,” Ketswana continued, “they hooked it all the way up to the line we were running along the north shore of the Sea!”

Hans lowered his head, saying nothing. Damn! Six, eight hundred miles of track in a year. He didn’t think the Bantag were capable of it. Wearily, he looked down at Ketswana.

“They have another route, Hans. Even though we cut the sea-lane, they can still move supplies by rail! Taking Xi’an means nothing; they can still keep the war going!”

“We should have heard something,” Hans replied, his voice thick with exhaustion, his mind refusing to believe the dark reality this intelligence presented. “Prisoners, escaped slaves during the winter, something.”

“The slaves working it were kept separate. They only finished it within the last month. Nearly all the supplies were still going down to Xi’an and moving by boat—it was easier. Now for the bad news.”

He could already sense what it would be.

“First off, they built some more factories up in Nippon and put the people to work. Hans, even if we smash this place up, they’ll still be able to produce weapons.”

“We had to figure on that.” Hans sighed, trying to hide his bitter disappointment. So this would not be the crippling blow. The thought sank in with a brutal clarity that the war was indeed lost. Jurak would annihilate the Chin, perhaps stop for a while to regroup, then simply press on with the fight. He was afraid that in his exhaustion his despair would show. He lowered his head in order to hide his face.

“And Hans. Those three Chin I rounded up,” Ketswana continued, “were supposed to run a trainload of rails north this morning. They told me that even then word was already in the city that we had taken Xi’an. The Bantag were getting nervous, rounding up the families of the Chin rulers as hostages when we hit the factories west of here. That’s when all hell broke loose, and the city rioted.”

“Kind of what we figured.”

“That’s not the main point, though. These three were supposed to pull out with that load of rails when suddenly they got orders to wait in the rail yard. One of them, his brother worked on the telegraph line, said that messages were flying north, up toward Nippon, calling back two umens of troops.”

Hans tried not to react.

“We had to figure on resistance. If they only had two umens here covering their rear, we should be able to handle it.”

“Hans, two umens of troops with modern weapons. They were sent back here after the Battle of Roum to refit. These Bantag are veterans. They’re deploying north of the city right now.”

Hans looked back toward Huan. Damn all, it would have been the perfect place for a defensive fight. Like most Chin cities, it was a rabbit warren of narrow streets, laid out with no rhyme or reason. It had once housed over a million people. There was no telling how many were left after the years of occupation and slavery, but even with several hundred thousand he could have consumed half a dozen umens in a street-to-street fight.

The pillar of fire filled the night sky, a vast inferno, a city thousands of years old dying in one final cataclysm. There was a flash of guilt. He knew that everyone who had lived in that city was doomed to die. Once the war a thousand miles to the north and west was finished, everyone here would have been massacred before the Bantag moved on. Yet still, as a slave he remembered far too well the clinging to life in spite of the doom. If one more day of survival could be wrung out of existence, that was all that counted, a day of numbing agony ameliorated by a warm bowl of millet at sundown, the gentle touch of a loved one sought in the middle of the night, the prayer that the night would last forever, the dawn and the agony that came with it banished by a dream.

His coming had shattered that dream, for everyone here this was the last night, and they knew it. Come dawn two umens of the Horde’s finest warriors, battle-hardened from bitter campaigning, would be unleashed, and in their frenzy all would die.

He turned to look west, the twin rails glimmering by the firelight. He could back the train down that track right then. Fighting against despair, he tried to reason that at least they had accomplished something. It was a blow that would take months to recover from. Jurak would undoubtedly have to retreat to the Sea, perhaps even as far back as the Shennadoah or Nippon if Vincent’s mad thrust won through and thus threatened the southern flank of the Horde armies.

And then what? Ultimately nothing would change, nothing. Jurak would simply build a new war machine.

Hans squatted next to his friend, sighing with the pain as his knees creaked in protest. He looked at the three railroad men who sat hunched up in the far corner of the cab, talking in whispers with the driver of the locomotive. He caught words here and there, whispers about slaughter, death, families lost, fear.

Outside, to either side of the stalled engine, the columns of frightened refugees continued to pass, fleeing they knew not where, but trying to get out nevertheless. Again another short stab of pain.

“Hans?”

“Yeah?”

“You all right?”

“Just tired, so damned tired.”

“We’ve got to do something, you know.”

“What?” He could sense his voice breaking. His mind was clouded, and it was becoming too hard to focus.

“Come dawn they’ll attack; they’re reorganizing not five miles from here.”

“I know that.”

Ketswana spoke quickly to the locomotive engineer, motioning with his tin cup. The engineer took it, vented some more hot water, and threw some leaves in. Ketswana took the cup and pressed it into Hans’s hands, which were trembling.

Hans took a sip, set the cup down, and leaned his head back against the woodpile.

“We’ve got six hours or so till dawn,” Ketswana announced. “We have to dig in and get ready. Build a fortified line anchored on this rail line, use the factory compounds we’ve taken as bastions.”

“I know, I know,” he whispered.

So many years of struggle, so many long hard years, and now it seems to all end here. His mind drifted, the prairie, the starlit nights: Antietam, the road to Antietam, cresting South Mountain, looking back across the valley, the blue serpentine columns stretching to the horizon, afternoon sun glinting on fifty thousand rifle barrels; Gettysburg, when the sun seemed to stand still in the heavens; and these strange heavens. He looked up, the Great Wheel overhead, again wondering which star was home. To have run the race so far, so far, and now to fall at the last step and see it all washed away.

He closed his eyes, a prayer drifting through his heart,
God, let this all be for something.

“Hans?”

Ketswana leaned over, a moment of fright, his hand gently touching his friend’s forehead, drifting down to his throat, feeling for a pulse.

He sighed and leaned back. Let him sleep, he needed sleep. Always trying to carry all the burden, forgetting just how many he had inspired and trained. No, let him sleep.

The engineer was looking over, and Ketswana motioned that Hans was not to be disturbed.

“Ketswana?”

He looked down from the cab. Through the confused press milling about he saw Fen Chu, one of the old guard, a survivor of the Escape.

“There’s not much left of the powder mill,” Fen reported. “All blown to hell it is.”

“The next compound?” He motioned up the tracks toward Huan.

“Told by some of the slaves that escaped that the guards started to shoot everyone, then fled. It was a cartridge factory for their rifles.”

Ketswana looked back to the west. The factory compounds were strung like beads along the track for miles, most of them basically laid out the same, brick buildings housing foundries, mills, works for cartridges, shells, bullets, rifles, artillery barrels, land ironclads … the brick building surrounded by wooden barracks for the slaves, and those in turn surrounded by a palisades, usually of logs or rough-cut planking.

Most of them were burning.

He looked back toward the city. No, that hope was finished.

South? He knew next to nothing of the land, just rumors. From his days of slavery he occasionally was allowed outside the compound on some errand, southward was nothing but open farmlands, vast rice paddies and pastures before the coming of the Bantag. Most of the farms were abandoned now. He remembered that on a clear day, from the roof of the factory one could see hills rising up, the distant hint of cloud-capped mountains beyond.

“Can’t go south,” Fen announced, as if reading Ketswa-na’s thoughts.

“Why?”

“People are fleeing from that way as well. They said most of the Horde’s encampments are down that way, hundreds of thousands of them, their old ones, women and cubs, yurts as far as you can see. That’s their summer pasturing grounds on what had once been farms before everyone was herded into the compounds or slaughtered.”

That was out then.

No. The anchor was the railroad.
We try to flee south, this mob will spread out run, in panic, and it will turn into a hunt.

“All right, pull our men together; we start retreating back along the tracks. We’ll push the trains back up the line three or four miles. We string the trains along the tracks between three or four of the compounds and upend them. Loot out what weapons we can. Get into the cartridge works, for example, and drag out as much ammunition as you can. Start culling out this mob, tell them reinforcements are coming up the rail line but we have to hold out.”

“Are they?”

“We both know the answer to that, but we got to give these people some hope, some reason to turn and fight like men, rather than be hunted down like the cattle they were. If we can get ten hours, even eight, we should be able to fortify a good position, and then let’s see what those bastards will do.”

“You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people out here,” Fen cried. “They’ll all die once the Horde recovers and attacks.”

“Fen, a year ago we all figured we’d die anyhow. All I asked then was to die killing the bastards. I still feel that way; how about you?”

A grin creased Fen’s weary face, he came to attention, and saluted.

“Fine, let’s get to work.”

Fen raced off, disappearing into the mob, shouting orders. Ketswana looked over at the engineer and motioned for him to start backing the train up. As the machine slowly lurched into reverse, he looked down at Hans. Picking up a dirty blanket from the comer of the locomotive cab he gently draped it around his friend’s shoulders.