Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  “I know you will soon match the honors won by your brothers in the third division of the Fourth Corps.”

  He pointed back to the city walls, which were crammed with spectators.

  “Remember that you are now the walls of Roum for this new type of war that we fight. Upon you rests the burden of defending your homes, your loved ones, your newfound freedom.”

  He looked over at Kal, who stood erect, face shadowed by his stovepipe hat.

  “We fight as a united people, to help our comrades as they helped us last year. We fight for the freedom of all people who look to us to shatter the black tyranny of the cursed hordes. I am proud to march with you into battle.”

  He raised his hand in salute, and a thundering roar went up from the ranks.

  Marcus turned to Kal, who stood beside him.

  The president stepped up to the platform.

  “Comrades, fellow citizens of our united republics,” he said, and to Vincent’s amazement, his Latin was nearly free of the broad Rus accent. “I, like all of you, was a peasant. But now I am free. I gave this arm to fight for that freedom,” and he pointed to his empty right sleeve.

  Vincent knew how embarrassing this must be for Kal, who thought that the waving of the bloody shirt was the lowest form of politicking. But it was the right move for these people, who didn’t know him as his own did. There was a murmur of approval from the ranks.

  “I don’t know when this terrible war will finally end, or if it ever will. But I do know that you are free men, as am I, and for that I will continue to fight until the day I die.”

  He paused, looking out at the men, his features tired and sad.

  “We might call God by different names, but He is still God to us all. Let’s pray together, my friends, that there will come a day when we can put aside our weapons, raise our families, and live together in peace.”

  Kal, taking off his hat, made the sign of the cross, the Roum soldiery standing with heads bowed. A long quiet moment passed, and then he looked up again and smiled.

  “When this is all over with, I plan to retire, and perhaps open a tavern.”

  The men in the ranks broke into smiles and started to chuckle.

  “Now don’t tell my wife I made this promise, but if you should ever come to Suzdal, all you have to do is tell me you’re one of the boys with the Sixth or Seventh Corps and I’ll stand you a couple of rounds for free. Good luck to you.”

  He lowered his head and stepped down, to a rousing cheer, even louder than the one for Marcus.

  Vincent stood to one side, and Kal came up to him.

  “Did I do all right with them?”

  “Well enough,” Vincent replied.

  “Ah, you and your presidential dignity,” Kal said. “Kesus allow that there’ll be enough of these boys left to put a dent in my pocketbook someday.”

  “We should get going now,” Vincent said. He had already delivered his comments—short and to the point: he expected them to do their duty. There had been no cheers for him, and he had not expected them; such things left him cold. But he could see their pride, their determination to prove themselves, and that was enough.

  Kal nodded sadly, as if not yet ready to let go of him. Vincent smiled wanly. They had tried to talk last night, but it was impossible. If he loved any man on this world for his gentleness, it was his father-in-law. Yet at the same time he felt almost ashamed to be near him.

  “Take care of yourself, Father,” he said, feeling a slight catch in his voice. “And if…”

  His words faltered, and he looked back at the men who stood waiting.

  “It’s all right, son, go on.”

  “If I shouldn’t come back,” he whispered, his voice starting to shake, “tell Tanya that it was never her fault. Tell her that I loved her. It’s something that’s gone wrong inside of me. I know she thinks I don’t love her anymore. It’s not that at all.”

  “It’s just that you don’t love yourself,” Kal said softly.

  Vincent looked at him, eyes suddenly smarting.

  “I hate all that I now am,” he whispered, “and God help me, if there is a God, I can’t stop it now. I love this war and I hate myself for the loving of it.”

  “You’ll find a way out. Perhaps Andrew understands it better than all of us. I know he’s worried about you. Try talking to him.”

  Vincent shook his head.

  “Not now. And besides, I’m not sure if I want to. I’m not sure if there’s even the time.”

  He looked at Kal and tried to force a smile.

  “Take care of her. And when this is over, if she should find someone else, let her know that it’s all right, that I wanted her to be happy.”

  “Don’t say goodbye like this.”

  “I think it is goodbye. I’ve had the feeling for weeks. Call it an atonement.”

  Kal found himself unable to speak. Reaching over with his one hand, he pulled Vincent tight to him, kissing him on both cheeks. When he finally let go he lowered his head, unable to look at Vincent, or at all the others.

  Vincent stepped back, came to attention, and saluted Kal, and then the flags of the two republics behind him. Leaving the stand, he mounted his horse. Dimitri and his staff were waiting. The 7th Suzdal, its ranks barely more than that of a company, stood to the front, the rest of their comrades now serving as officers for the two corps, or dead in the defense of Roum. What few remained now served as corps headquarters detail. Their tattered flag fluttered in the breeze. Vincent stopped to look at it—“Hawthorne’s Guard,” emblazed in faded gold letters upon its stained silken folds, an action the men had done themselves when he was reported missing after the first defense of Suzdal. He looked over at Dimitri for a moment, distant memories stirring. At the front of the column were the corps banners, and the flags of the two republics and of the army moving to join them.

  Marcus edged his mount up beside Vincent’s.

  A trumpet call echoed and a thunder of drums sounded. The first battalion wheeled out of line, went into column of fours, and turned to the north and the road to Hispania. As it approached the review stand, the 7th Suzdal moved out in front and marched past. Vincent drew his saber and saluted the colors as they passed. The crowds lining the walls and crowding the hills to the west cheered wildly.

  The song started somewhere in the middle of the mass formation, and within seconds the entire army started to sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in Latin.

  It sounded so strange to Vincent, as if it were some absurd schoolyard exercise led by a warlike and demented teacher of ancient languages. Yet it had a power to it, as if an ideal engendered within the song could somehow leap across the universe.

  “It’s worth dying for,” Vincent whispered.

  Marcus looked over at him.

  Vincent, seeing his gaze, said nothing, and after the colors passed he nudged his mount forward to fall in with the column. As they passed the gate of the city he looked to his right and felt his heart go suddenly to ice.

  Little Andrew had been down with a fever, and so they had said their sad, almost wooden goodbyes at home. But she had come anyhow.

  How could he ever explain it all—that there was part of a lost boy within him that still loved her as passionately as they had loved before all of this had ever started? The worship of Mars, of vengeance, of being all so much the general had consumed him, leaving him barren inside, empty of any semblance of loving, or caring, other than for the training for and the consummation of killing. She had first borne the drinking with quiet patience, then scolding, then tears, and finally with silence, shielding his own children away from him.

  He could never blame her for that, only himself.

  Their gaze held for a brief instant, her raven-black hair covering her shoulders, her eyes still childlike, her youthful body sacrificed to three children but still young-looking and beckoning. Yet it was as if she were an image, a floating memory gone now to a fading picture in a book that was starting already to turn
to dust.

  Tentatively she raised her hand as if to wave.

  “Go to her.”

  He looked away from her.

  It was Marcus.

  He turned his gaze forward and continued on, saying nothing.

  She’ll be better off when I’m dead—for that matter, I’ll be better off as well. At least let me take enough of the bastards with me when the time comes, he thought sadly. And then silence, and a sleep without dreams.

  The firefight flared to life along half a mile of front. Pat grinned with delight at the sight of the Merki tumbling from their saddles, pushing their mounts into the shallow river, riding hard, spray foaming up around them.

  “Not a single bloody cannon on the opposite slope!” Pat shouted.

  Robert Morgan, in charge of the brigade covering the river crossing, slammed his fist into his glove hand.

  “Goddammit, we could hold ’em here for a week.”

  Pat shook his head. There were far too many fords along the Penobscot in its eighty-mile run out of the forest to the sea. All the Merki needed to do was take one of them, push an umen across, and cut the rail line farther up, and anyone along the river line would be cut off. It was only here on the rail line that they could quickly retreat. An aerosteamer was keeping a watchful eye on the fords farther north, and Showalter, he hoped, was engaging them up at the forest. The bridge across the river was already a smoking ruin, fired before dawn.

  A twelve-pound shot whistled overhead, and he instinctively ducked. The round reached the far bank of the river, bursting beyond a file of Merki cavalry with no effect. He looked back at the armored car, a quarter mile to the rear.

  “Damn amateurs—how could they miss?” he growled impatiently.

  Shading his eyes, he looked westward at the setting sun, which silhouetted the vast lines of Merki moving relentlessly eastward. Four days to cross a hundred miles to the Androsocggin. They were coming on slowly, deliberately. According to the aerosteamer, their artillery was fifty miles behind them. Eighty miles from here to the Kennebec and then a hundred and twenty more to the Sangros and the main line.

  They could do it in a week, ten days. He looked back eastward. But this was the hard part of the crossing, with barely any running water for the next eighty miles, the grass already drying in the scorching heat of early summer. Please God don’t let it rain for a month, he thought.

  A thundering cry went up from the opposite bank, and he looked up to watch a heavy line of Merki cavalry coming down the slope, the first line in midstream turning to get out of the way. The charge waded in, muddy water splashing up, riders leaning forward, another line behind them cresting the bank, bows raised. A dark shadow of arrows winged over the river, bracketing the entrenchments and breastworks hastily prepared by Morgan’s men.

  The cries of wounded now joined the uproar. The Merki charge pressed in, and the firing on the line died away. Pat looked over at Robert, who grinned wickedly.

  The first of the riders gained the east bank, another volley of arrows passing over them. From out of the entrenchments the entire line stood up and fired a volley at point-blank range. The Merki charge disintegrated. Yet another volley of arrows came in, dozens of men dropping, yet they continued to stand and fire, the river littered with corpses.

  “You’ve got good men,” Pat said appreciatively.

  “Bloody Fourth Corps. We learned that trick holding the fords—let ’em get to point-blank range. Half my boys still got old smoothbores, so they load ’em up with a ball and half a dozen buckshot. That’s how the New Jersey boys chewed up Pickett’s charge—got ’em at ten yards.”

  A deep-throated horn sounded from the opposite bank, and the Merki firing support turned their mounts and retreated back over the hills. The few survivors who had gained the east shore died fighting, pressing into the trenches, disappearing under a swarm of bayonet thrusts and clubbed muskets.

  On the next line of hills, Pat saw a knot of standards. He knew that there must be their chief, Vuka they called him. Through his field glasses he could barely distinguish them. He saw one raise a long tube, a telescope, and point it in his direction. Unable to resist the urge, he lowered his glasses and made a rude gesture, a universal sign of contempt.

  “We hold until night, then pack ’em up on the trains and fall back to the Kennebec,” Pat announced. “And then bloody ’em again.”

  Tamuka scanned the group of cattle.

  Was that Keane? he wondered. No, this one had both arms, obvious by the curious gesture, which Tamuka knew was undoubtedly directed toward himself. A red-haired cattle. It must be the second in command. He thought about the prisoner, who even now was under guard to the rear. That one would take a long time to convert into a pet. Twice already he had tried to kill himself, the second time nearly succeeding with a thin strip of cattlehide rope. No, he wanted to save that one—he might be useful once he was sufficiently broken.

  “So, Qar Qarth Tamuka, they are still game for a fight.”

  Tamuka looked over at Muzta and said nothing.

  “After this river, according to my chart reader, the grass is short and water scarce all the way to the next great river.”

  “The Merki are used to deserts,” Gubta of the Vushka Hush snapped peevishly.

  “But there the Merki ride with four umens covering the same area through which thirty-six and my own two must now ride. I remember this region. We did the crossing a month earlier than now, when the grass was still sweet with spring, the few brooks still flowing with water.”

  “You have to cross it with us,” Tamuka replied.

  “It will be interesting to watch nevertheless.”

  Tamuka looked over at his commanders of five umens.

  “All warriors are to make sure their water bags are full. Water for the horses first until the next river. We will not wait here for the cannons to catch up. They can follow. At least their wagons can be loaded with water skins.”

  He looked back toward the opposite side of the river. Shagta would be almost full in the sky tonight. It was tempting to order an assault across at night, but he thought better of it. Let the horses crop until midday tomorrow, then cross and ride for half the night. Sarg would have to find some appropriate excuse, the same as when they crossed the sand deserts near the cattle lands of the Ubi. He was tempted to push the attack right now, even without cannons and the cloud fliers, which were still based back at Suzdal while a new base was prepared at Kev. Once the next river was reached they would tear up the wooden part of the iron track lines and build new sheds closer to where the fighting would be.

  All these damn cattle weapons simply made war slower, the cannons moving not much faster than the yurts, the cloud fliers forever needing new sheds built to protect them and put them in convenient range of the fighting. He almost wished that somehow they had the machines to move on iron rails. Far off to the north he saw a tiny sliver of white in the sky, a Yankee cloud flier. They knew where he was, but for the moment he wasn’t sure of anything regarding what the cattle were doing.

  He looked down at the river, at dozens of his warriors floating down to sea upon its slowly moving current.

  “Next river we cross, Tugar, I think it is time that your warriors lead the way,” Tamuka snapped, and turning his mount he rode away.

  Andrew thought about the message from Bullfinch, angrily stuffed into his pants pocket.

  Damn him, running off like a knight errant in violation of orders. Too much was happening too quickly now, and he didn’t like it when a part of his plan was thrown off by a young officer who should have known better than to simply take his fleet out of the war. Especially now.

  He could sense their coming, as if they were an unstoppable force of nature, like a hurricane or tornado just beyond the horizon. It must be some hidden sense, a change in the weather, impending battle; you could feel it gathering its forces, just before rushing in to destroy. The road to Gettysburg had felt like this, and so too the Wilderness and the march
to Cold Harbor. Hans could feel it as well, and looked to the horizon like a prairie farmer fearful of a summer storm. He’d shake his head, mutter to himself, and finally look up at him with that curious tilt to his head, as if he somehow had to look at things sideways in order to see them straight.

  “A hell of a fight buildin’ up ahead,” he’d mumble—and he’d damn near always be right.

  “A hell of a battle coming,” Andrew Keane said, his voice a drawn-out sigh.

  “Perhaps then it’ll be finished with,” Kathleen said, sitting down to rest, “and then we can go back home.”

  “Home? Suzdal, Maine?”

  “Suzdal. Of course I mean Suzdal.”

  “Don’t you ever miss the other place?”

  She looked up at him and smiled.

  “At first. Of course I did. The war there, at least it was different. I never thought there could be a worse type of war, but we certainly found it here. But in spite of that, this is home.”

  A worse kind of war. He looked down at her, barely visible in the evening shadows. She never spoke of her fiancé, and he couldn’t even recall his name now. Didn’t want to. Dead at First Bull Run and she goes off to be a nurse. It was hard to imagine she might have loved someone else once. Unpleasant thought. But he had loved others. He remembered Mary, and how he finally and so brutally had found out the truth. Kathleen never asked; it was just as well.

  They had both lost and gained. If he should fall this time, he wondered what she would do. Fall. Funny the euphemisms of war. Fall. Far better that way, almost clean in its imagery, like a sudden going into the earth. Not gutshot, or bayoneted and clubbed to death or blown apart by canister. A simple lying down into peace, like the leaves of autumn drifting to the ground.

  “If I don’t come out of this one, I want you to live,” he said, the words almost blurted out.