A Band of Brothers

by William R. Forstchen

  Once that was gone the city would be dependent on water from the Tiber, the same river which also served as the sewer. Emil was demanding that the precious supply of coal be used to boil water for drinking, yet another demand Pat knew would most likely not be met when the siege started in earnest.

  Raising his own field glasses, Pat swept the outer perimeter of earthworks ringing the city. Fortunately Andrew had ordered their construction before winter had set in, but the work had been halfhearted, no one expecting that before the winter was half out the enemy would be at the gates. In a final desperate effort over the last week, tens of thousands had labored to pile up snow, pack it down, and cover it with water to add some additional protection. The ice walls covering the raw earthworks gave them a crystalline fairy-tale look, the fortresses of children who were about to fight with snowballs rather than rifles, artillery, and the point of a bayonet.

  His seven corps were deployed around the city; the 1st, 3rd, 9th, and 11th, the units that had served with him on the Shenandoah Front, now occupied the outer perimeter. Their paper strength of sixty thousand had been cut by more than a third, and the line was stretched thin, forty thousand men to cover an arc from the southwest anchoring on the bank of the Tiber around to the north, then across the Tiber, and finally back to the bank on the southeast side of the city, a circumference of nearly twelve miles.

  His main strength, what was left of the 4th, 6th, and 12th, was the reaction forces in reserve, well concealed behind the inner wall of the city proper, a force of forty thousand men well rested and ready, while 10th Corps had been deployed out to cover the eastern shore and the south of Roum. Additional men with artillery, engineering, and auxiliary units took the number up to near a hundred thousand. In a pinch he could arm the civilians with older weapons from the Home Guards, muzzleloading Springfields and even a few flintlocks from the early days of the Republic.

  It was odds of roughly three to one, nowhere near as bad as when the Tugars laid siege to Suzdal or even at Hispania, where the Merki had outnumbered them nearly five to one. The difference, though, was that this foe was equally armed, and beyond that their leader thought in terms of modem war.

  Ha’ark would use his artillery to advantage, concentrating fire for a breakthrough. The mortars would make life in the trenches hell, and chances were he’d bring up airships to spot troop deployments.

  “He’ll come straight in,” Pat announced. “No fooling around, no drawn-out siege. He’ll want the shelter of the city, and besides, he wants to crush our will now. Two days and the storm will hit.”

  Marcus nodded, pointing to the northeast sector on the map.

  “Where I figure as well.”

  “And you want to keep to this plan of yours?”

  “The one chance we have.”

  “You know what morale is like.”

  “I have ears,” Pat replied. “That’s part of the reason I hope he attacks with everything he has. Put our backs to the wall now and scare the shit out of everyone. Make us desperate and we’ll fight like we always have. I want this fight to explode.”

  “And what about Kal?” Marcus asked.

  “What do you mean?” Pat replied innocently.

  “I know what the offers were,” the vice president replied coldly.

  “And they are?”

  “Rus pulls out of the fight, they go free while Roum is occupied.”

  ‘Tell me, what was your offer?” Pat asked sharply.

  Marcus hesitated.

  “Ha’ark isn’t so stupid as not to play both sides against each other. What is it?”

  “Surrender Roum and we avoid pillage and the traditional taking of one out of ten for the moon feasts.”

  Pat uttered a sharp curse, slamming a balled fist against the masonry wall of the watchtower.

  “Do any of the men in the army know this?”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “Do you believe his offer?”

  “I believe that,” Marcus announced, pointing to the distant group that was still surveying their lines. “In two days they will assault my city. This won’t be like the last time, when the Cartha occupied Roum. This will be the full fury of the Horde. Roum, the city of my fathers, of my ancestors for two thousand years, will be consumed as a burnt offering.”

  His words were sharp, bitter. “And if we win, what do we have left but smoking ruins?” he added.

  “You’ll have your freedom. The city can always be rebuilt. Freedom cannot.”

  Marcus nodded, but his features were clouded, torn with pain.

  “Can’t you.see this will be the end of it?” Pat said. “We win here and we win for keeps.”

  “Oh, really? Even if we smash that army, Ha’ark can withdraw. Fall back five hundred miles. Or fifteen hundred, all the way back to where his factories are. Then what? Do we go after them?”

  “Yes. We have to.”

  “You’re talking eternal war.”

  “Eternal vigilance, Andrew once said, is the price of freedom.”

  “Andrew,” Marcus sighed. “Perhaps if he was in command now we would feel differently.”

  Pat did not react to the insult. He felt the same.

  “I’m sorry, but you’re stuck with me.”

  Marcus smiled and extended his hand, patting O’Donald on the shoulder in an almost fatherly gesture.

  “You do fine. I’ll never forget you at Hispania. Andrew always said you were his master of defense.”

  Pat leaned against the battlement, slapping his bare hands together to drive out the chill. He looked up at the sky. The sun had dimmed since dawn, a high thin sheet of clouds making it look as if it were hidden behind a pane of ground glass.

  “Snow later today. I was hoping it’d stay clear.”

  “Damn weather.”

  “Think how those bastards out there feel. We might not have much fuel for heat, but at least we’ve got roofs over our heads.”

  “Until he burns them down.”

  “Ah, it will be a grand fight, it will,” Pat replied. He looked over at Marcus and regretted his words. The grand fight would be the destruction of the old consul’s beloved city.

  “Emil wanted to see me,” Pat said. “I’ll meet with you again later in the day.”

  Leaving Marcus on the battlement, Pat went down the narrow circular stairs, coming out into the old Senate Room, which now served as his headquarters. Staff officers looked up from the plotting board which filled the center of the room. Spotters up on the dome had already called down the information that Ha’ark had been sighted. A wooden block, painted gold, was positioned up at the northeast corner of the table. Blue oblong blocks marked where each brigade was positioned, and soon red blocks would be encircling them.

  Telegraphers, connected to each division and corps headquarters, sat idle, but he could sense that soon this room would be in chaos.

  Not a word was said as he stalked through the room, heading for a door guarded by two sergeants armed with Sharps carbines. Out of everyone in this city he was the only one they would allow to pass.

  Going through the door, he went down another staircase and then turned down a narrow corridor where two more guards were posted. As he reached the door he saw Emil stepping out, eyes dark with fatigue.

  Emil pointed to a basin set by the door. Pat obligingly washed his face and hands with the caustic carbolic acid, and feeling somewhat foolish, he donned a heavy canvas smock and cotton face mask.

  Emil opened the door and led him in.

  “Are they here?” the voice whispered.

  Pat drew up a chair and sat down by Kathleen’s side and then looked at the patient.

  “How are you, Andrew?” Pat whispered.

  “Been better, Pat. Good to see you.”

  “Good to see you,” Pat sighed. He looked over quickly at Kathleen, wanting to ask, but a quick glance back told him that the fever still held. Beads of perspiration dotted Andrew’s forehead. His features were still deathly pale, his eyes wer
e like two sunken coals.

  “I think your blood did get me drunk,” Andrew sighed, and then his features contorted.

  “Damn, I need to sneeze.”

  Kathleen leaned over anxiously.

  “Don’t. Fight it back. Don’t think about it.”

  “Can’t help it.”

  She pressed her finger against his upper lip, leaning over him, whispering to him as if he were a sick child. He nodded, struggling, then his face contorted.

  The sneeze was followed by a gasp of pain, Emil and Kathleen both hovering over him.

  “Morphine,” Andrew whispered pleadingly. “The pain.”

  Emil hesitated, looking at Kathleen, who finally nodded. Emil drew out a needle, Andrew watching him anxiously as he filled it with the soothing potion and slipped it into his arm. Andrew sighed and laid his head back.

  Pat looked down at Andrew’s side. In the struggle the sheet had pulled back. The incision from the surgery was red, puckered, the black thread of the stitches standing out sharply. A rubber tube came out of the wound, leading down to a bottle. Pat didn’t want to look, gazed down quickly at the fluid still draining from his lung and then wished he hadn’t.

  “Terrible-looking stuff, isn’t it?” Andrew said. “Thought I’d faint when I saw Emil empty it.”

  “Do you think they found the untimely announcement of my death?” Andrew asked.

  “Ha’ark was nearby where the papers were planted. He has it.”

  “Rather a morbid idea of yours,” Pat said.

  A faint smile creased his features.

  “Think like they do, Pat. If there was any temptation for him to bypass us, that ended it. He figures we’re three-quarters beat.”

  Pat didn’t want to reply that perhaps they were. When the battle finally let go, the last thing he wanted was overall command. It was the type of moment Andrew was a genius at, he realized. Just give me a battery and a place to kill the bastards! Getting stuck back here was worse than hell.

  “And there’s something else, though,” Andrew continued after pausing to struggle for breath. “He’ll claim he saw my death.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Remember Tamuka? Remember how I said he could sense my thoughts? I’ve not felt that power with this one, though. He’s more like us than those he leads. But he has to play that he has the power. Now he’ll boast. His army will believe. That can make a difference.”

  Even getting that one statement out exhausted him, and he lay gasping for breath.

  “Enough now,” Emil interjected. “All right, you big mick, out of here.”

  Pat reached out and gently touched Andrew’s hand. Andrew stirred, looked at him, and forced a weak smile.

  “Guess we’re blood brothers now,” Andrew whispered.

  “Always have been, Andrew.”

  Pat squeezed his hand and started to stand up, but Andrew didn’t let go.

  “If I don’t make it,” Andrew whispered, “don’t let Kal and Marcus fall out. No separate peace. Fight to the end.”

  “What I always planned to do. They haven’t beaten us yet.”

  Andrew finally let go, and again there was that fearful look in his eyes, something Pat found unnerving. Even with the morphine dulling the senses, the look of pain was in his eyes. He seemed to drift out, whispering something unintelligible, head tossing back and forth, Kathleen dampening a cloth and wiping his face.

  Clearing his throat, Pat nodded and went for the door, Emil following. Stepping out into the corridor, Pat gratefully removed the mask and robe, looking over at Emil as he did the same.

  “How is it looking?”

  “A long way before we’re out of the woods,” Emil replied. “The lung’s draining. That was a piece of work right there—have to keep the wound airtight but still have a drain. Took some doing.”

  Pat thought about a drink, and the look on his face caused Emil to open a cabinet and pull out a bottle.

  “Medicinal use only. One sip. Your blood’s thin and you’re light-headed.”

  Pat gratefully took the drink, then reluctantly handed the bottle back.

  “But will he make it?”

  “Live? Even chance right now, but that’s better odds than what I figured on yesterday. Using your blood scared me to death, but they seem to have mixed together. If this damn war ever ends I want to retire as I had planned to when we beat the Merki. Maybe research this blood thing. It’d be a lifesaver for thousands, but I’ve got to figure out why some mix and others don’t.

  “But will he live? If the wound continues to drain, if infection doesn’t get any worse, if he doesn’t get galloping consumption. There have been some cases of typhus and typhoid among the army and the civilians. This damn cold and lack of fuel—people can’t stay clean. That touches him and he’s dead. I know you’ve got to see him, but even then it makes me nervous. Kathleen is locked up there with him, and I’m the only other person.”

  Pat nodded. Orders had been passed to all units as they came back from the front to strip off their uniforms and have them boiled, and to bathe. Fortunately the Roum had massive public baths. Whoever was stuck with the job of cleaning them after the tens of thousands of men had passed through had his pity. The stench of the boiling wool uniforms had carried halfway across the city.

  “Wish we could treat all the boys as well,” Emil whispered. “Two doctors for one patient while we’ve got more than a thousand wounded and nearly ten times as many sick from the cold.”

  “Andrew’s worth a corps, an entire army, to our cause.”

  “Tell that to the mothers of the seventeen-year-old boys who are dying in the hospitals,” Emil said wearily.

  “He scares me in a way,” Pat finally said.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Seen it before, you know. Fine officers or a good tough sergeant. In a dozen fights and never scratched, and they can fight like the demons,' they can. Then they get hit, lose an arm, a leg. They come back, but they’re never the same.

  “Always wondered where the soul lived in us. Figured it was the heart, it was. But seen fellows like that, something of the soul is gone later, maybe it got cut off by one of you sawbones and didn’t heal back. Seen that with Winfield Hancock. Damn near died at Gettysburg. They said when he came back a year later he weren’t the same. Heard some rebs say how old Baldy Dick Ewell and John Hood were devils themselves when they commanded divisions. Lord knows that’s true, since my battery faced both of them at Antietam and Second Manassas. Well, they got tore up, Ewell at Manassas, Hood at Gettysburg. They came back and something was gone from them.”

  His voice trailed off, and he looked longingly at the bottle. Emil took it and put it back in the cabinet.

  “Time will tell,” Emil replied. “Remember, I took his arm off at Gettysburg. He was a hell of a fighter then and was afterward.”

  “He was not much over thirty then—that was ten years ago. Something in the eyes,” Pat sighed. “He’s afraid now. And if he’s afraid when he comes back, then God help us all.”

  Andrew smiled as the gentle spring breeze drifted across the lake, stirring the thick green stalks of winter wheat so that they wavered and shimmered.

  The warmth was delicious, and unbuttoning his uniform jacket, he lay back, plucking a stalk, chewing on the rich taste a delight.

  Funny, I unbuttoned my uniform with my left hand. He looked down. The ghost hand was real, and for a brief instant the realization was so startling that consciousness of its all being a dream almost shattered the illusion.

  But the image held. No, of course it’s my hand. He sat back up, looking down on the lake. Someone was out in the rowboat, laughing, rod raised high as a bass leaped on the end of the line. God, so long since I’ve been fishing. Standing, he walked down the hill toward the shoreline, the scent of the water rich, heavy, the surface of the lake mirror-smooth, reflecting the scattering of cumulus clouds that were slowly dissolving as the sun went down.

  “Andrew?”
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br />   She came through the high wheat, the rich green stalks parting as if by magic. Her dress was simple, long, white, a dog bounding by her side, barking joyfully.

  Strange, it was all blending together. Was it Kathleen? Was it Mary from so long ago? The dog—was it his old Border collie? He wasn’t sure, it was hard to see … he was crying.

  She drifted, floated up to his side, hand slipping into his, face upturned for a chaste loving kiss, almost childlike in its innocence.

  They walked hand in hand, saying nothing, the foolish dog leaping ahead, disappearing, wanting to play their old game of hide and seek, then jumping back out, barking, tail wagging so furiously that his whole body was shaking. And the tears continued to flow. He was a boy again, a young man, this was eternal in his heart. And he was whole, body young, left hand feeling the warmth of hers clinging tightly.

  “I love you, I’ll always love you,” she whispered.

  His own voice was choked, he couldn’t speak, for in the woods he saw something else. They were standing there, smiling, beckoning. All of them so young, his brother John, and Mina, and so many others, so many he couldn’t remember their names.

  He felt a shiver of fear. Was this the edge of their domain? Am I dying?

  Strange, the thought was comforting. I could be whole again, I could be young.

  She had stopped, her hand slipping from his. He looked back, and somehow he sensed all that he had once been was back here … Maine, springtime at the lake fishing, long lazy summer evenings and the calling of loons. How I miss that.

  “Stay here with me,” she whispered.

  He sat down, leaning back against a pine tree that swayed and whispered with the breeze.

  “I’m so tired,” he sighed. “I want to go home.”

  “Stay here.”

  How peaceful, dreamlike. The lake was golden and red, each ripple a band of light. Loons, their haunting call, and geese, coming down in perfect formation, wings flapping, flaring, water splashing, their happy cries echoing.

  Precious. There had been moments like this. How fleeting they were, how I thought they were eternal and wasted them the way a child spins out summer days of play not realizing all that will come.