A Band of Brothers

by William R. Forstchen

  “Maybe you should stop it,” Pat said, feeling a growing sense of alarm. “Emil, I was wrong when I said what I did. I’d rather see him live. You can go down there and stop it, take the damn gun, get him on Bullfinch’s ship and get him the hell out of this goddam hellhole.”

  Emil shook his head.

  “She is the next of kin. I have to observe her wishes.”

  “To hell with her wishes.”

  “Pat, I have to follow Andrew’s wishes as well. Twice, once at Gettysburg and again when he was on the floor of that train, just before I put him under, he told me that if it meant he’d be a cripple to let him die instead. He’s a cripple—I saved his body, but this time I didn’t save his mind, Pat. The Andrew I knew would want me to leave him alone until he decided for himself what was to be done.”

  Pacing the riverbank, Hans watched the bridge burn. It had taken hours to finally get it going, after tearing down most of the prisoner hovels to provide enough fuel to get the green lumber of the trestle ignited. What precious kerosene was left had to be saved for the ironclads. The moonlight had disappeared shortly before midnight, and the sky was overcast again, but this time the air was warm. After the weeks of unrelenting cold it actually felt intolerably hot. He felt something wet splash on his face … a raindrop.

  Damn. At this point rain would be worse than snow. The poor bastards would be soaked to the skin. Throughout the evening the Chin had been evacuated across to the east bank of the river. Huge bonfires blazed, the smell of roasting horsemeat heavy on the air. They had no thought of tomorrow; all they knew was that tonight they were warm and their bellies filled to bursting. Dozens had died during the feast, gorging, trying to soak in a month of sustenance in one meal, which had become their last. He didn’t feel any sense of loss in that—there was almost a melancholic joy to it. At least the poor bastards had died warm and full rather than screaming out their last breath under a Bantag’s butcher knife. He remembered many a night as a slave when he would have traded his so-called life at dawn for a meal and a warm place to sleep that night.

  And come dawn, what then? He had sent half his ironclads under Timokin back south to try to secure and hold the lower bridge over the Ebro. If the Bantag did not come up tonight, they’d march a couple of hours before dawn. Maybe the strongest could reach the pass, but he doubted if that would be even half of them. And dozens, maybe hundreds, would die.

  But the Bantag would come up, that was a given, and placing the bet that Ha’ark would move troops and equipment from around Roum, he had decided to withdraw to the east bank. The river would provide some sort of shield, at least down to the lower bridge. And they will come up and they will block us, he thought. What was coming from behind he didn’t know. Timokin, like him, had sent a lone ironclad eastward up the track with a company of mounted infantry to round up escaped Chin and to tear up track. For all he knew there could be a full mounted umen moving up from behind, maybe half a dozen of them. If so, he thought, we’ll be pinned on this side of the river, the enemy holding the other side, and we’ll be annihilated.

  If it was only mounted or infantry, the ironclads could fight through, but that was wistful dreaming. Ha’ark had ironclads and he would bring them here. But as he watched his comrades, for as slaves they were his comrades, singing their incomprehensible songs, those with a little strength up and dancing, silhouetted by the soaring flames, all of them happy for at least one brief evening to breathe air that was free, he felt no remorse. They would die tomorrow, but they would die as free men, perhaps a precious Bantag rifle in their hand, more likely a club, a rock, but they would die fighting, and that was enough. There was no better company on this godforsaken world, Hans thought, than to die among men who would die in order to be free.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “All right, let’s take them up.”

  Jack Petracci broke from his ground crew and started to where his Eagle was parked.

  “Jack.”

  Controlling his anger, Jack stopped, waiting for Feyodor, his copilot, to catch up.

  “Jack, I still think this is madness. It’s raining, visibility is terrible. Just what the hell do you expect to accomplish?”

  “We know nothing of what is going on up there. Just some damn vague report from one courier that they broke through. Now the infantry is leaving the safety of the pass to go out looking for Hans. Those boys need to know if the Bantag are closing in. I suspect Hans is blind as well.”

  “Jack, you call this an aerosteamer field?” Feyodor pointed to the narrow stretch of open ground running along the edge of the quarry. “Hell, Jack, we have a crosswind, there’s mountains straight ahead, and besides, you can’t see fifty yards.”

  Jack said nothing. There was no sense in admitting he was scared to death again. He was supposed to have been up with Hans as soon as he seized the quarry. The last storm had kept them grounded. Fog on the coast had kept him on the ground till midday yesterday, and he would be damned if he stayed down again. What was worse, though, was that one of the Hornets was gone. It had suddenly burst into flames ten miles short of the quarry and disappeared. A wing had simply folded up and the aerosteamer had spiraled down, taking its pilot with it. Something had shaken loose, but the realization did nothing to solve the problem now. In the dim morning light he looked over at his one remaining Hornet pilot. The boy was game enough, and that was always the problem—they were so damn eager they didn’t think of the odds, while he was all too aware just how short a time the boy would most likely wear his sky-blue uniform before going down to his death.

  He heard the sound of propellers turning over, and, ghostlike, his aerosteamer came into view. Wings were extended, gas bags topped off, top gunner and bottom gunner standing by the ladder. Grinning, they saluted.

  Jack barely returned the salute as he broke away and did one final walk-around. Behind his ship the diminutive Hornet was ready as well, the pilot imitating him, walking around, checking the pins that held the wings to the frame, the guywires and the control surfaces.

  Finishing his own preflight, he looked back at Bugarin, the Hornet pilot, who waved that everything was ready.

  Jack climbed up the ladder into the forward cockpit, Feyodor slipping in beside him. He felt the machine settle slightly as his top gunner climbed up the outside of the machine and into his cramped position, and finally the bottom gunner scrambled into the rear position.

  Jack checked the speaking tubes connecting to the other two, scanned the dials showing the engine temperatures and fuel, and took the control wheel, turning it back and forth while Feyodor checked the lever for the elevator. He looked out the window, and his ground crew sergeant held his hand up and saluted, indicating that all control surfaces appeared to be working. The rest of the ground crew, which had hiked all the way up here with the advancing column, hauling the mixing tank, jars of sulfuric acid, zinc for the making of hydrogen, and extra fuel and ammunition, stood to one side, watching expectantly.

  The sergeant pointed straight ahead. Jack spared one final look at the flag fluttering to one side. The breeze was coming out of the southwest, maybe ten miles an hour, and he would be taking off heading south. This was going to be tough—the breeze might very well push them right over the edge and into the quarry.

  “Well, here goes.”

  Feyodor made the sign of the cross as Jack took the fuel knobs and turned them open, then opened up the steam cocks for all four engines.

  The propellers, which had been lazily turning over, picked up speed, shifting to a blur. The aerosteamer edged forward, hesitated for an instant as the wheels dug into the slushy snow, then started forward again. All they needed was ten miles an hour of ground speed and there should be positive lift when combined with the headwind. He watched the wind speed gauge as it inched up to fifteen and finally to twenty. Feyodor, hand on the elevator lever, pulled back. Nothing happened. He held his breath, wondering just how much room they had ahead. He could feel the aerosteamer crabbing, pushed to h
is left by the wind. Looking out the window, he felt his heart stop at the sight of the edge of the quarry wall, which dropped straight down into the mists. The portside wheel went over the edge, and the machine started to drop over. Jack turned the wheel to starboard, trying to hold the wing up.

  “Warning flag!” Feyodor shouted.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the red banner, a Bantag regimental standard which had been stuck in the ground a hundred yards from the edge of the open field. A wall of snow-clad pine trees was just ahead.

  “Hang on!” Jack shouted, and he pushed the wheel to port, the wing dropping over into the quarry. His mind raced. They had tested the machine at Suzdal. This was higher—maybe the theory about higher air being thinner was true. The starboard wing lifted. Reaching out with his right hand, he put it over Feyodor’s deathlike grip on the elevator and pushed it forward. The nose of the aerosteamer went over the edge and pointed down into the quarry. He felt their speed picking up, the controls becoming firmer. As he held the machine in a tight banking turn to the left, the compass mounted at eye level spun through east to northeast to north. He pulled back hard on,the elevator and continued the turn. In the shadows he sensed the bulk of the mountain wall looming on his right, the side of the quarry curving along with him as he turned. He steadied out pointing to the southwest, straight into the wind, elevator still held back, the machine clawing for every inch of space.

  “Wall!” Feyodor shouted.

  Jack ignored him. He heard shouting from outside. Sparing a quick glance straight ahead, he saw the ground crew, still at his point of takeoff, scattering as he skimmed up out of the quarry. The Hornet was still on the ground, pilot looking up at him wide-eyed as he skimmed over the machine, clearing it with barely a dozen feet to spare.

  Gaining another twenty feet, he gradually edged the portside wing over again, turning to an easterly heading.

  “The village,” Feyodor announced, pointing down to his right.

  Eyes glued straight ahead, he scanned the forest ahead and then saw the road climbing up through the pass. He had more speed now, and he edged the elevator back, threading his way through the cut. Clouds hung low, cloaking the treetops. The ground dropped away underneath and then instantly disappeared when he climbed too high. He edged back down, wingtips barely clearing the trees on either side of the gorge. Heavy raindrops started to splatter on the forward windscreen, distorting the view, and he wondered if there was some device they could make to wipe the water off.

  The road below rose and fell in gentle undulations, and finally he released his deathlike grip on Feyodor’s hand.

  “Remind me never to fly with you again,” Feyodor announced.

  “Anytime you want to quit is fine with me.”

  “Sir?”

  It was his bottom gunner, Julius Crassus, a nephew of Marcus, on the speaker tube.

  “You all right back there?” Jack asked.

  “Sir, is every takeoff that exciting?” the boy asked, his Rus barely understandable.

  Feyodor grabbed the tube. “With this insane bastard flying it gets even better at times.”

  “I was just wondering, sir,” the boy replied, his voice shaking.

  The miles down to the pass slipped by. With the tailwind Jack estimated they were making at least forty miles an hour.

  “Sir, I see Bugarin—he’s behind us,” Julius announced excitedly.

  Jack grinned. The pilot had less than eight hours in the air, half of them on the flight from the coast up to the quarry. It was a miracle he’d gotten off.

  “Pass ahead,” Feyodor announced.

  Jack nodded, saying nothing. The ground ahead sloped up through a notch in the hills, and the notch was completely obscured by clouds.

  “Here goes,” he whispered. Nosing down slightly, he swept down to treetop level, skimming along the road, then edged back up as the road started to climb. He looked at the compass, fixing it.

  “Let’s hope these damn Roum build their roads straight.”

  “We do,” came an angry reply from the rear.

  Jack ignored him, eye on the compass, putting on more elevator. A shadow raced past to his left, and he flinched as a tree, clad in snow, raced past, a shudder running through the machine as the portside wing brushed against it.

  “Barely see the road,” Feyodor announced. “Still see it, still see it.”

  He continued the chant. Jack holding the controls. According to the chart the road went straight through the pass, then turned to the right and followed the side of the slope down into the open prairie below. If he turned too late he’d fly straight into the opposite slope; too soon and again there would be a crash. He was threading a needle through the fog.

  He waited a few more seconds.

  “Road’s turned east!” Feyodor shouted.

  Jack pulled the wheel to the right. The starboard wing dipped, the aerosteamer turning. Gently he edged the elevator down, and then in a startling instant they were out of the clouds.

  Directly below, a long column of wagons was moving, led by three ironclads that had been salvaged from the path of the march up to the quarry and put back into running condition. The road turned again to the left, and he followed it. The rain had abated somewhat on the lee side of the mountains, only a light drizzle streaking the windscreen, and there, to his absolute delight, was a long serpentine column of blue … 3rd Division, 8th Corps, on the march, spilling out of the pass and onto the open plain, thousands of faces upturned, men waving, cheering, as he passed. To his right he could see the road curving down to the valley of the Ebro, and in the distance he could even see the span of a bridge crossing the river. Far beyond in the distance a dark smoky smudge filled the horizon. That had to be the railroad crossing—Hans must be burning the bridge. All the drama of the campaign was laid out before him, visible in a single glance, and he grinned.

  There were times, he realized, when in spite of the terror, being a pilot of an aerosteamer was godlike in its power and joy. Up here, out of the mud, the stink and squalor war still held a certain grandeur, and he now soared over the center of the stage.

  He waged his wings in salute, tempted to circle around for another pass.

  “Jack, off to the northwest,” Feyodor announced.

  Jack looked to where his friend was pointing. On the horizon he could see smoke, dozens of small columns of smoke, and his heart sank. Ha’ark’s ironclads were coming.

  Wiping the rain from his eyes, Pat raised his field glasses, training them on the outer wall on the west side of the city. The banners lining it for more than a hundred yards, from the edge of the Tiber up to the base of a four-gun battery position, were red, the standards of half a dozen Bantag regiments. A curtain of rain swept across his vision, then lifted, and he saw a solid block formation of a thousand cresting the battlement, swooping down the inside wall. Blasts of canister from the four-gun battery cut down a hundred or more, but still they surged on. In the warren of streets it was impossible to see what was happening. Fortunately the rain helped to keep the fires down, but he could well imagine the panic that was breaking out. Half a million refugees had been crammed into the west half of a city that before the war had housed, in its entirety, not more than a hundred thousand. If the outer suburbs on the west side fell, all those people would be shoved into the tiny enclave of the old city. There simply would not be enough room for them all.

  He had positioned his troops long before dawn, knowing that once the blow struck it would be impossible to maneuver, to bring up reinforcements or pull men back. Down in the headquarters room the telegraphs were chattering, desperate pleas for more men, for ammunition, for permission to withdraw. There was nothing he could do now, the battle was out of his control, and all he could hope was that the veterans of his army, after years of combat experience, could stem the attack on their own.

  The bombardment, which had erupted the hour before dawn, continued unabated. But as he listened, the ears of an old artilleryman caught on to s
omething. The fire was more measured. A battery would fire, wait for several minutes, then fire again. The mass of guns was such that the explosions were continuous, but the barrage lacked the savage fury of the first breakthrough assault or of the weeks of vicious fighting on the eastern side and was definitely slower than yesterday’s barrage when they stormed over the inner wall on the east bank.

  Ha’ark’s rate of fire was slowing down. Why?

  There was a moment when almost no shells were exploding in the old city, then a renewal, as if they had rushed to fill a silence.

  Clapping his hands together, he raced back down the steps into the headquarters room. Staff looked up anxiously. Pat turned to the row of telegraphers and shouted for their attention.

  “I want a message up to all units. Message is as follows,” and the men grabbed scratch pads, pencils raised. “Report immediately. On bodies of Bantag dead, how many rounds of ammunition are they carrying?”

  The message went out, and Pat paced back and forth nervously. Finally after long minutes of delay the first report came in from 2nd Division, 6th Corps. “Count on four dead, one with thirty rounds, other two around twenty, one with eight.”

  Another report came in, this one of nine dead counted, with an average of twelve rounds, and other reports confirmed the numbers. Not one of them had a standard issue of sixty or more rounds.

  “They’re running out,” Pat shouted, looking back at his staff. “Not one had more than thirty rounds on him. By God, you don’t assault a city with thirty rounds in your cartridge box. You carry a hundred at least for a fight like this. They’re running out.”

  “But we’re running out of city to hold,” and Pat saw Marcus standing in the doorway. “Even with ten rounds per warrior, Pat, everyone in this city will be slaughtered by nightfall.”

  “Keep them moving,” Hans shouted, the three words a litany he had repeated endlessly since dawn.

  Sitting atop his ironclad, he watched the ragged procession dragging past him in the rain, and he felt as if he were watching some scene of the ancient world caught in an etching in a Bible. The long column of Chin refugees stretched off into the mist in either direction, spilling over the road, staggering through the mud and slush, rags pulled tightly over emaciated bodies, shivering in the cold rain. Clumps of huddled rags lay alongside the road, those who could no longer keep up, and yet again he had to close his eyes, yet again he had to wrestle with the bitter realization that he could not save all of them and had to settle for but some of them. But that did not ease the pain of watching comrades clutching each other, one sinking to the ground, waving a feeble hand, with a dying breath urging his friend, or father, or wife, or son or daughter, to go on.