Julian Comstock

by Robert Charles Wilson

  With that he went up to the very edge of the battlements and ordered the Stringmen to stand by their reels and the Furlers to “loft up.”

  The effort proceeded much as it had on the rooftop in Striver, though with certain important variations. At the warehouse the kites had been loaded with buckets of sand. Tonight there were heavy skin bags attached to their bridles. I asked Julian what the bags contained.

  “Anything noxious we could find,” he said. “Some contain pure caustic soda or industrial solvents. Some are filled with liquid bleach, some with waste from the tannery or the field hospital. Some have lice powder in them, and others are stuffed with ground glass.”

  The bags had been broadly daubed with luminous paint, just as the buckets had been. Otherwise there would have been nothing to see, nor any way to judge the kites’ ascent. I had worried about the wind, which was capricious; but just lately it had picked up speed and was blowing gustily. The kites unfurled with loud, crisp bangs. They rose, tested their luggage, hesitated. Then the glowing cargo swept skyward with terrifying speed.

  Julian quickly called on the Tubemen to begin their whirling again, to make sure the Dutch were on alert.

  I cannot say to what height the kites flew, but their clever design kept them level with one another and stable in flight. They appeared as a hundred and more eerie, bobbing green lights, risen above the crowded Mitteleuropan army camp like rogue stars. To an enemy infantryman it would have been impossible to gauge the true size or proximity of the phenomenon—which was why Julian had worked so hard to fertilize the Dutch imagination with hints and legends.

  Certainly the kites didn’t go unnoticed. Almost immediately enemy trumpets began to sound, loudly enough that the howling of the Tubemen did not entirely drown them out. Peeking through an embrasure in the earthen embankment where we sheltered, I saw lanterns flicker in the staff tents of the Mitteleuropan camp. A few stray shots were fired in haste. I cupped my mouth in my hands and leaned toward Julian’s ear. “Won’t they shoot down the kites, Julian?”

  “Not yet—they’re too high. And when they do shoot, Adam, they won’t aim at the kites, which are more or less invisible, but at their cargo.”

  The chief Stringman called out numbers from his immense twine-reel, which had been calibrated to gauge the amount of line paid out. The other Stringmen presumably kept pace, while Julian worked numbers with a pencil and a paper pad,* and the hempen twine bucked and sang at the anchored reels.

  At last Julian reached the conclusion of his figuring and sent out the order to “lax line.” The Stringmen let their cord play out freely a moment longer, then braked the reels with wooden chocks.

  The luminous, toxic cargo glided closer to the enemy infantry, and fresh rifle shots rang out.

  These increased in volume and intensity. Peering across the flat expanse of darkness where the Dutch were encamped I could see the flash of rifle fire as if it were the play of lightning inside a thundercloud—a vast, wide crackling of rifle fire, shockingly intense.

  The Tubemen increased their hooting to a high unholy pitch. I expect all this show intimidated the Mitteleuropans—in fact it was beginning to intimidate me. Those Dutch rifles, though aimed at the kites, were pointed roughly in our direction, and bullets began to drop out of the sky around us, not entirely harmlessly. Hails of them fell against the earthen embankments.

  In the sky to the east of us, the luminous floating targets jerked and danced as they were struck and struck again.

  I pictured in my mind what must be happening on the field of battle. I reminded myself that the Dutch had intercepted the letter Julian entrusted to Private Langers, and that what they perceived was not a theatrical effect but the actions of (in Julian’s words as I had transcribed them) a HELLISH and SATANIC DEVICE, insidious in its LINGERING EFFECTS. As the skin bags were perforated and finally obliterated by volleys of bullets they released into the night air their unpleasant contents, which descended onto the fearful infantrymen like a ghastly dew.

  “Light on the eastern horizon, sir,” an adjutant soon reported to Julian. I looked and detected a brightening there, the air-glow of the coming dawn.

  “Reel in!” Julian ordered.

  Even such feeble first light soon made the battlefield more visible. A few of the Black Kites had been battered beyond utility, or had their strings cut by rifle fire, and these had fallen like enormous wounded bats among the Dutch. But the Mitteleuropan troops weren’t paying much attention to the fallen kites—in fact they were running aimlessly, many of them.

  I tried to put myself in the shoes of one of those soldiers and imagine it from his point of view. Woken from a troubled sleep by an unearthly keening, he’s called out into the darkness and finds a great number of peculiar Flying Lights descending on his encampment. All manner of fears and fancies compete for his attention. He’s grateful when the order to fire freely rings out, and he lifts his Dutch rifle—let’s say he’s a marksman—and discharges round after round at the eerie targets above him. If his aim isn’t accurate, it doesn’t matter; a thousand men like him are doing just the same thing.

  The shooting bolsters his courage. But before long he perceives a certain rank scent, unpleasant but unidentifiable, composed (though he doesn’t know it) of all the poisons Julian’s men have sent aloft: powders for killing rats, solvents for paint, lye for soap, offal from the field hospital …. A drop of something touches his exposed skin, and tingles or burns there. He squints once more into the night sky; his eyes are doused with caustic agents; he weeps involuntarily, and cannot see.…

  There was not enough of toxins and poisons in those bags to kill an army of Dutchmen, perhaps not enough to kill even one Dutchman, barring a lucky chance. But our hypothetical soldier chokes, he sweats, he fancies himself murdered or at least mortally tainted. It’s not a threat he can contain or confront. It comes out of the night like a supernatural visitation. All he can do, in the end, is run from it.

  He’s not alone in reaching this conclusion.

  I looked out on the Dutch encampments and saw chaos. First light could do nothing to dispel the fears Julian had so adroitly conjured. And Julian’s conjuring wasn’t finished. “Fire canister!” he cried, and the order was swiftly conveyed to our artillery emplacements. Evidently Julian had ordered certain canister shells to be filled with (as he later described it to me) a combination of flea powder and red dye. These exploded in huge clouds of amber dust, which the wind carried among the Dutch infantry in swirling clouds—harmlessly; but the Dutch reckoned the shells to be full of potent poison, and they fled from them the way they would never have fled a conventional artillery barrage.

  The Mitteleuropan commanders rode among the men on horses, trying to rally their troops; but it was soon clear that the Dutch middle had collapsed, creating an opening for an American advance.

  Julian ordered the attack at once. Moments later an entire regiment of American infantry, wearing black silken hoods over their heads, stormed out of our trenches and lunettes, hooting ferociously and wielding Pittsburgh rifles and a few invaluable Trench Sweepers.

  The Dutch commander panicked and threw all his forces against us in an attempt to hold the center. Julian had anticipated this, and quickly directed our cavalry to ride against the Dutch flanks. The American cavalry were hungry men on hungry horses, but their charge was effective. More Trench Sweepers were brought to bear. The watery sun, when it finally broached the horizon, peered down on bloody carnage.

  Our entire army was poised to break out, the infantry and cavalry in front, supply wagons and the portable wounded behind them, more infantry and cavalry at the rear for protection. “Ride with me, Adam!” Julian cried; and two slat-ribbed stallions were brought up, with saddles and provisions and ammunition bags; and we galloped eastward behind a brave flourish of regimental flags.

  I had seen desperate battles before, of course, but there was something especially gaudy and terrible about this one.

  We came down behind th
e advance regiments into a tumbled and ravaged land. The Dutch emplacements, now abandoned, were a hazard to us, and many horses stumbled into trenches or craters and died of their injuries. The aftermath of that first advance, along with the residue of Julian’s Black Kites, had created a charnel-ground abandoned by all but the dead. Dutch troops cut down by Trench Sweepers lay in place, their bodies contorted by their dying exertions. The colored-powder canister barrage had painted the trampled snow with scarlet plumes, and the stink of the various aerial emoluments combined into one acrid, excremental, chemical vapor which even in its dissipated state caused our own eyes to water freely.

  Julian rode past companies of foot-soldiers toward the front, pausing at one point to take up the Battle Flag of the Goose Bay Campaign. This was an ennobling sight, in spite of (or because of) the tattered condition of the flag.

  WE HAVE WALKED UPON THE MOON, the banner declared, and we might have been marching on the Moon right now for all the desolation around us; though the Moon, I suppose, is not pockmarked with crude abattises and open latrines. Every infantry company we passed took pleasure in the sight of the banner, and cries of “Julian Conqueror!” were commonplace.

  We came into a lightly forested, complex terrain. The wind, for which we had prayed so fervently and which we had so eagerly welcomed, became a nuisance as the day progressed. Low clouds raced across the sky in gusts and gales, scouring old snow into the air and bringing fresh squalls. The Dutch army had fled before us, but we didn’t pursue them; our objective was escape, not confrontation, and for a time the only fighting was sporadic, as we encountered straggling Mitteleuropan infantrymen and overwhelmed them.

  But the Mitteleuropan commander was no fool, and as the snow impeded our progress he was busy rallying his troops in their fall-back positions. Our first hint of this was the sound of gunfire in the snowy haze to the east of us—I took it for just another skirmish, though Julian frowned and pressed his mount to greater speed.

  In our eagerness to escape Striver we had allowed our forces to disperse somewhat, and now it seemed our vanguard had fallen into a trap. The sound of rifle fire swelled rapidly, and as we galloped toward it we began to see casualties flowing back on us in limping lines. Full battle ahead, one soldier warned us, “and the Dutch aren’t running anymore, sir—they’re standing fast!”

  Julian established a rough command headquarters near the fighting and quickly organized his staff. Scouts reported that the American vanguard had marched into a declivity on the road and come under sustained fire from protected positions; before they could entrench or retreat, shells exploded in their midst. They were falling back by companies, in a state of confusion.

  Julian did what he could. He ordered his artillery up. He consulted his maps, and tried to anchor his lines securely, though the terrain was flat and unsuitable. Before long one of his adjutants announced that the sparse American right wing had entirely collapsed and the Mitteleuropans were rolling it up.

  I could hear the artillery and the rifle fire—it was noticeably closer now. Dutch shells began to fall perilously near to us. We were in danger of being overrun by our own troops, should the battle become a rout.

  Julian barked ferociously at the Lieutenant who first counseled retreat. It was not at all certain that we could return to Striver safely—and then we would only be under siege again, with our numbers depleted and our provisions exhausted. Striver was a prison, and our whole purpose had been to break out of it. But more messengers arrived with increasingly bad news, and when a shell knocked down the crude shelter around us Julian finally admitted the impossibility of sustaining the advance. The Dutch had regained all their courage, and had checked us effectively, and there were no more pantomime weapons to throw at them.

  The realization that his plan had failed drove Julian to his lowest ebb. He had been fed no more generously than the rest of us, and several times I had to stand beside him as he consulted with his adjutants, and take his arm to support him when his physical weakness crested. There was in Julian a fierce, almost supernatural strength; I had seen it sustain him through terrible battles before this one; but even that strength had its limit, which he seemed to have just about reached. “I’m cold, Adam,” he whispered to me as the day advanced, “and the dead are all around—so many dead!”

  “We have to extract all the survivors we can,” I told him.

  “So they can have the privilege of dying later rather than sooner,” he muttered; but the admonition worked to brace him. He reached down into the deepest part of himself, as it seemed, and discovered there a last reserve of courage.

  “Bring me the campaign flag,” he told the nearest adjutant, “and my horse, and sound a general retreat.”

  I wish I could paint a word-picture vivid enough to convey the nightmare of our Retreat to Striver. I have neither the skill or the stomach for it, however. It isn’t that these images are lost to me, for they return, on a regular basis in my sleep, and I often awake sweating or shouting from their thrall. But I cannot bear to set them down on the page with minute fidelity.

  Suffice to say that we rode through Tartarus with the Devil at our backs, fighting all the way.

  Days were short in Labrador at that time of year. The light we had greeted so optimistically at dawn grew thin and watery. Julian, still drawing on his deepest wells of strength, carried the battle pennon high and fought alongside the rear-guard. I fought beside him, on horseback, as we gave up land that hours earlier we had won and watered with American blood. Dutch bullets flew around us like lethal insects, and—as at the Battle of Mascouche, so long ago—Julian seemed, at first, invulnerable to them.

  But only at first. He could not remain wholly unperforated, in a flurry of lead that made his campaign banner a tattered and illegible rag.

  I was next to him when a bullet pierced the cloth of his uniform coat about the shoulder. The wound was not grave, but it numbed the arm; and the banner with its proud boast slipped from his grasp. The faded image of the Moon was trodden on by his horse’s hooves as he slumped in the saddle.

  “Julian!” I called out.

  He turned to the sound of my voice, an apologetic expression on his face. Then a second bullet struck him, and his mouth filled with blood.

  * Perhaps the Mitteleuropans know how to pronounce this jaw-cracker—I do not.

  † Hostilities which had not ceased for decades, and showed no sign of doing so now, which weakened the argument somewhat.

  * To this day I don’t understand how Julian was able to estimate the kites’ position by noting their apparent height above the horizon and the amount of string paid out. It seemed like black magic; though it involved numbers, not spells or toad’s-feet or any such occult contrivances.

  7

  After dark, the Dutch were in no hurry to chase us—they knew where we were going, and would be content to “mop us up” at their leisure. Thus some fraction of the army that had marched out of Striver arrived back by moonlight, battered and hungry, and took up positions along their old defensive lines. And in the town itself, Dr. Linch—the only one of our physicians to have survived the attempted break-out—set up a diminished version of his old field hospital. His only supplies were a handful of knives and saws, a few bottles of medicinal brandy and liquid opium, and some needles and thread scavenged from the ruin of a tailor’s shop. He boiled water over a stove in which he burned scraps of broken furniture.

  He looked at me vaguely when I brought Julian to him. His own exhaustion had just about overcome him. I had to remind him of the urgency of his work, and of the necessity of saving Julian’s life.

  He hesitated, then nodded. I carried Julian into the shell of the old field hospital, past corpses piled like cords for a bonfire. Linch examined Julian’s wounds by lantern light.

  “The shoulder is only a flesh wound,” he said. “The wound to his face is more serious. The bullet tore away a part of his cheek, and two of his molars are shattered. At that, he’s lucky it wasn’t worse
.” He paused and smiled—it was a mirthless, bitter smile, such as I hoped never to see again. “I’d say he might recover, if we had food to give him, or real warmth, or shelter.”

  “Will you sew his cheek, in any case?”

  “No,” said Dr. Linch. “There are men whose suffering is more intense, and they deserve my attention—and don’t mention the name Comstock, as if that had any claim on my sympathies. If you want him sewn up, Adam Hazzard, do it yourself. You’ve assisted me often enough. You know how it’s done.”

  He gave me a needle and thread and left a lantern for me.

  Julian remained insensible with shock as I worked on him, though he moaned once or twice. It was not pleasant to press a threaded needle through his lacerated skin—to dab the blood away in order to judge my own work—and then do it again—and yet again—until a rough seam drew the tissues together, effectively if not handsomely. I could do nothing about his cracked and shattered teeth except, at Dr. Linch’s suggestion, to pack the damaged area with cotton. Much blood was spilled during this exercise. It covered my clothing; and the loss of it left Julian breathless.

  Dr. Linch, returning, gave him a weak preparation of opium. I sat with Julian through the dark hours, and stoked the stove when the night wind cut too close.

  In the morning the shelling resumed with fresh vigor, as if the Dutch meant to punish us for the impudence of our attempted escape. Or perhaps they were just anxious to finish the work of killing us, and get on with their regular business.

  Julian spat clotted blood until noon. His distress was palpable, but he couldn’t speak. Eventually he gestured for a paper and pencil.

  I kept these items with me habitually, as a writer should,* and handed them to him.

  He wrote, in quavering capitals, a demand for