Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  Tamuka returned to his horse and mounted, and as he did so the nargas sounded, the call being picked up. He kicked his mount into a gallop, making his way up the hill, holding the sword aloft. Crossing over the iron rails, he continued up the hill, weaving his way through the entanglements, clambering over the empty line of fortifications, and stopped atop the battlement, the valley for miles around now visible, the city in flames below him.

  Across the plains, the umens were drawn up, the checkerboard blocks of ten thousand spread out before him. His spirit soared with delight, with the power and the joy. The brash cry of the nargas echoed across the fields, soon drowned by the clashing of swords on shields, the weapons glittering in the midmorning light.

  “Tamuka, Tamuka, Tamuka Qar Qarth!”

  Around him the others, now his subordinates, came to be at his side, even Roaka, head lowered, the roaring of four hundred thousand rising to the heavens.

  “You know what is to be done now!” Tamuka shouted. “We ride east until, as Gubta demanded, we gather to drink blood from the skull of Keane, the cities of the cattle laid waste, the grease of their fat running from our mouths until our stomachs are ready to burst.”

  The Qarths and umen commanders shouted their approval.

  He looked over at Roaka.

  “I give to you now a special task.”

  Roaka looked up at him suspiciously.

  “The three umens of your clan and your people are to return upon the path from which we came. You are then to ride south to Cartha and take it back, either from the cattle or from the Bantag.”

  Shocked, Roaka could not reply.

  “I trust this to you.”

  Roaka, not sure whether to react with anger, could only nod his head.

  Tamuka looked over at Sarg, who gave a subtle grin of approval. It removed Roaka from their camp, thus stilling any voice of dissent. It would safeguard their southern border. Three umens were not enough for him to go renegade with, and Roaka’s own council of tribal Qarths would kill him if he attempted to break clan bonds and desert to the Bantag. If he failed in his mission, it would weaken his position as well. It reduced Tamuka’s forces to thirty-five umens at full strength, but that was still more than sufficient.

  Tamuka turned away from the crestfallen leader, sweeping the others with his gaze, the message clear.

  He pointed his sword to the east.

  “We ride!”

  “Admiral Bullfinch.”

  Stirred from his thoughts, Bullfinch looked back at Elazar, envoy of the Cartha.

  “I think they’re burning Kev,” Bullfinch said, and pointed to the distant plume of smoke that even from forty miles away filled the northern sky, a single black cloud in an otherwise clear blue heaven.

  The Cartha said nothing.

  “It was beautiful city, maybe even more beautiful than Suzdal. The Cathedral there is supposedly the oldest in all of Rus. They say it’s where the Rus first appeared in this world a thousand years ago. I guess it’s all gone now.”

  Elazar nodded sadly. “A strange history for all of us. We and the Roum, the Rus, you Yankees, the Constan and Maya, the Chin to the east, the ancient ones of the Nile far away to our south in the lands of the Bantag. All of us remembering something of our lost world.

  “It means we should be brothers united against the hordes.”

  Bullfinch nodded in agreement. “But your Hamilcar broke ranks. Andrew offered him shelter even after he fought against us. We gave shelter to forty thousand of your people, many of them still here, treated fairly by us even now. Remember it was one of my ships that Hamilcar stole, along with most of our galleys, to return to Cartha.”

  “Which he took back from the Merki.”

  “He broke the treaty agreement with us nevertheless,” Bullfinch snapped angrily.

  Elazar extended his arms as if conceding the point. “Just tell me this. If all of what happened had been reversed, if it had been your people who were slaughtered in the ritual of burying a Qar Qarth, if it had been the people you were ruler of, would you not have felt rage?”

  “I would still have remembered the higher goal, that only through being united may we win.”

  Elazar smiled. “Do you honestly believe your own words?”

  Bullfinch could not reply, for in his heart he knew that he had been speaking as commander of the Navy of the Republics and not as himself. He had seen glimpses of the burial; he still could not block the screams from his darkest nightmares.

  “As I already told you, I came here unsolicited,” Elazar said. “My lord Hamilcar acted out of rage, believing if he did not move quickly all in Cartha would be slaughtered. Even as we speak, five umens of the Bantag which had stayed behind from the march of their clan move toward Cartha, eager to seize it in hope of finding weapons. It was easy for Hamilcar to take Cartha by surprise and drive out the one umen there. It is another thing altogether to face five umens ready for war. He has but the one ship, maybe twenty of the small cannons. The factory might make another twenty, perhaps several hundred of the weapons one can fire from the shoulder. But of powder, the place of making that is far outside the city and still in Merki hands.”

  “And you have the gall to come here and ask me to help.” Bullfinch pointed at the patch covering his right eye. “I lost this eye to one of your cannons in last year’s war against you. It’s incredible that I now find you on the deck of this ship asking me for help.”

  “We were trapped into that war. It was either that or be slaughtered by the Merki. We fought for survival the same as you.”

  “This is incredible. You fight us, then you desert us, and now you want me to help you again.” Bullfinch shook his head in disbelief.

  “Precisely. As I told you, Hamilcar has no idea I am asking this. If I had told him he would have forbade me. He believes I’ve come north to try to bring back the families of some our soldiers.”

  “I have my duty here, my own war to fight,” Bullfinch snapped.

  “And what have you accomplished since the Merki moved?”

  Precious little, Bullfinch thought to himself. The first raid had been a moderate success, catching a caravan of yurts moving along the coastal road. The work had sickened him, slaughtering several hundred Merki women and old men, his own soldiers driven to such a frenzy of rage that many of the young had died as well. It was a type of war that turned his stomach. The lesson, though, had apparently been taken; the following day no Merki were moving within five miles of the coast, and he would not venture his forces outside the supporting range of the guns of his ironclad fleet. He had ten ironclad and thirty galleys. Two of the ironclads still lay off Suzdal, harassing the river road and the Ford, over which the Merki were still moving their people. His mere presence was forcing them to forage on a narrower front, but nothing more for the moment.

  “What you ask is too much,” Bullfinch said. “I’d have to have orders from Colonel Keane for what you want me to do.”

  “And where is Keane?”

  “I don’t know,” Bullfinch replied. “I could send a ship up the Penobscot and get a telegram out to him if he’s not there.”

  “Telegram?”

  “The talking wire. From here it’d take three days each way, maybe more. For all I know, the Merki might even be hitting the Penobscot now, though that fire tells me the bastards are still a hundred miles back.”

  “Six days, maybe seven,” Elazar said. “I’m telling you that the Bantag might very well be in Cartha by that time. Baal blessed me with a fair wind and strong rowers that I might come here first to look for you.

  “If you hesitate now, all that is left of my people will die. Has not your war killed enough of them already?”

  Bullfinch tried to look at the man, but all he could think about was the screams. He looked down at his hands, which held the crumpled issue of Gates’s paper, brought out this morning by the message boat from Roum.

  “You talk about the solidarity of all humans on this world against the h
orde. I’m begging you to honor that now, no matter what our past differences,” Elazar said.

  Bullfinch found he could not answer. He looked back at the smoke on the horizon.

  “I only pray that your city of Kev was empty of women and children, because I can tell you,” and Elazar’s voice choked as he tried to blurt out his words, “when the smoke of Cartha drifts north it will be the pyre of half a million souls who never wanted this war and were destroyed by it nevertheless.”

  Chapter 7

  “Get ready.” Dennis Showalter’s voice was a hoarse whisper, as if he were afraid that the Merki could hear him even over the thunder of the approaching hooves.

  He looked down the skirmish line, the boys deployed out, lying in the grass, keeping back from the edge of the ridge. Lifting his head up over the lip of the hill, he trained his field glasses forward. He could see them clearly, individual features. It was horrible—leathery faces, helmets adorned with human bones, bows strung and resting on pommels, lacquered armor creaking as they rode forward watchfully, following the tracks that led like an arrow across the steppe back to where he was now hiding.

  A full regiment of a thousand at least, he thought, spread across several miles of front. Behind them, several miles farther south, the checkerboard pattern of at least five full umens moved over the sun-soaked steppe, pennants flying, heading east toward the upper ford of the Penobscot, where several troops of his men were waiting to contest the crossing.

  A barked command sounded, and the line of Merki skirmishers halted.

  Damn.

  A lone rider broke from the line, trotting up the rise straight at him, now less than two hundred yards away.

  Bastards. He had hoped to bag the whole forward line.

  Far out to either flank the Merki skirmish line continued to move northward toward the forest, the riders weaving their way through the open glades which marked the transition point from steppe to the beginning of the northern forest.

  He looked up at the scorching sun. The heat was maddening. No rain now in ten days, and the grass going dry, rustling as he pressed himself down.

  The rider was a hundred yards away, the rest of the line waiting.

  He slid back down from the crest.

  “They’re not coming in. Get ready to mount and get the hell out of here. Mount when I fire. Pass the word down the line.”

  He edged back up to the top.

  The lone scout was fifty yards out, pausing to look down at the ground, becoming more cautious.

  He cocked his Sharps carbine and poked it through the grass, drawing a bead on the Merki’s chest.

  Behind him the men started to slide back down the hill to where the holders waited with their mounts, three men to the skirmish line, one horse holder in the rear.

  A horse on the line nickered, rearing up.

  The Merki froze and suddenly shouted, his speech grating, harsh.

  Showalter squeezed the trigger.

  The Merki crumpled, the impact of the bullet doubling him over.

  Dennis turned and slid back down the hill, not waiting to see what the opposing skirmish line would do. The men were already mounting, and he ran to join them, throwing his carbine to his holder, climbing atop his mount, and taking the carbine back.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” He pointed north, raking his spurs into his mount. The horse kicked and then bolted, going through the long buildup from trot to canter to gallop. A horn sounded behind them, a harsh shrill cry growing louder by the second.

  The wave of Merki crested the hill. A shower of arrows arced into the morning sky, hovering and then plummeting down, most of the bolts falling fifty or more yards to the rear, a few reaching the retreating cavalry, one striking a horse, causing it to burst into a panic of speed.

  A cry went up from the far end of the troop. Showalter looked to his right to see a trooper tumble to the ground and then come to his feet. He had fallen off, his horse continuing on. He felt a temptation to swerve from the line and gallop down to him, but a look over his shoulder told him it was already too late.

  The Merki charge bore down, the riders nearly stirrup to stirrup. The fallen trooper pulled out his revolver, cocked it, and waited for the range to close.

  “Goddammit, take a bastard with you,” Showalter shouted.

  The next rise was before him, and the line of eighty troopers crested over it, and the fallen boy was lost to view. They were now into a heavy scattering of single pines, the ground sloping straight up as it would now for miles into the high plateau of the forest. The men weaved their way in and out, ducking low to avoid the branches.

  Arrows snicked through the forest, birds scattering up as the retreating men spurred their way into the woods. A solid stand was ahead, and with a shout he pointed toward it, the men closing in around him.

  Behind the group the Merki continued the pursuit, their fresher mounts and years of skill giving them an edge. Slowly the range closed; arrows were now starting to wing in at nearly a flat trajectory. Another trooper tumbled from the saddle, slamming into a tree as he went down, already dead from the arrow in his back.

  Dennis spurred his horse around the edge of the heavy stand and started to rein in.

  The Merki were less than fifty yards away, their harsh cries echoing in the woods.

  The crack of two field pieces thundered in the forest, the spray of canister dropping a dozen of the enemy. A ragged volley roared through the woods, and Dennis gave a shout of triumph.

  They had led the Merki straight into half the regiment.

  The gunners leaped to reload, swabbing the bores, ramming down double charges of canister, turning the guns to fire to either flank. The tiny four-pounders lifted into the air and recoiled.

  From out of the smoke a few remaining Merki emerged, bows up, a gunner screaming, pinned to a tree, the Merki who killed him lifting out of the saddle from the blast of a sawed-off musket loaded with buckshot. Dennis drew his revolver, snapping off a full cylinder at a Merki who weaved his way through the battery, slashing with his sword, killing a gun sergeant. A gunner dismounted him with a blow from a sponge staff, the Merki falling off his horse, the gunner then remembering that he had a revolver and finishing the job by putting the gun in the fallen warrior’s face and firing.

  The other cannon fired again, this time into the smoke, no targets visible.

  “Cease fire!” Dennis shouted. The bugler picked up the order and sounded the call.

  The spattering of fire died away.

  An occasional arrow still came from the other side, but they were drawing back—at least for the moment, until the flanking units came up to support.

  “Bugler sound retreat! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Within a minute the gun section was limbered and started moving up the narrow trail into the forest, their two dead comrades lying in the battery wagon, four troops of cavalry moving to either side, spread out in loose order, the woods closing in around them, growing thicker the higher they climbed into the forest.

  Dennis and the last troops waited to provide rear guard, armed as they were with the quick-firing carbines. There was an occasional crack of a rifle. The woods were eerie with smoke, and the piercing singsong keening of a wounded Merki.

  Forward he could again hear the sound of hooves. So they were coming after him. He smiled.

  Andrew had said to slow them down, tie them up. Well, he knew the woods and they didn’t. His guide was a Rus hunter, who had lived in the forest all his life since fleeing from the Tugars over forty years before. He had not even known there was a war on until yesterday, and for that matter still thought that the old boyars were in charge of things. But at the mention that they were killing the horde, his eyes sparkled with delight. To Dennis’s amazement there was an entire outlaw world in the forest, hundreds of people, nearly all of them Rus, but some Roum, even a few from farther west, Maya, Totec, and a fellow he thought must be from India or some such place. They had fled before the
coming of the horde, most of them before the last arrival of the Tugars, but a significant number had been in the woods for generations, banned from the world to the south because they would not submit to the slaughter pits.

  Quite a few disappeared farther north to wait things out, but enough of them, like the Rus hunter, wanted to help, eager for a good fight of vengeance.

  If the Merki were dumb enough to follow, they’d get a taste of it, Dennis thought with a grin, and when they finally quit he’d come back out and hit them again. He had another battalion of cavalry waiting to do the same trick at the river ford, and nearly twenty-five hundred men, on foot and mounted, working in small bands from Kev all the way back to the ford of the Neiper.

  An arrow shot past, striking the tree beside him. Raising his carbine, he cracked off a round at a distant shadow, barely visible through the smoke, then turned and galloped off. He started to laugh. He was fulfilling his fantasy to be a cavalryman and having the time of his life.

  “Soldiers of Roum, I am proud of you this day.”

  Marcus Licinius Gracca gazed out upon the two corps drawn up before the gate of Roum, the men arrayed by column of battalions, their serried ranks filling the field upon which they had drilled so hard and for so many long months.

  “Less than a year ago, by the will of the Senate you were slaves, and now you stand proud as free men.”

  A cheer rose up from the ranks, and Vincent Hawthorne looked upon the men, feeling a sense of pride that even as they cheered they still stood at attention. He looked over at Marcus, almost amused at the man’s placing all of the blame of slavery upon the Senate. But after all, what else could he do, and that dishonored assembly was a convenient enough target.

  “Today you officially become part of the Army of the Republics, designated as Sixth and Seventh Corps.”

  The men nodded their approval, proud of the corps badges which only this morning Vincent had allowed them to affix to their caps, the Greek cross for the Sixth Corps, the crescent moon and star for the Seventh Corps, red for first division, white for second, and blue for third of each. The symbols of themselves meant nothing to the men, but word had been passed down to them about how in the legendary armies of the Union back in the old world the badges had been the symbols for the same units, though the most famed of all had been the simple red circle belonging to the 35th Maine.