He had been in the army too long, he realized. In the military issues were far clearer—there was survival or death, that was drilled in from day one. You did the right thing, you survived, make a mistake … you died, or worse yet, good men died because of you.
A hell of a lot of good men had just died because of his mistake, his not realizing that the very nature of the war was changing yet again.
It’s changed again, so we have to find a way to change it back in our favor. He looked over at Emil.
“I want the truth from you, my friend.”
“Go on.”
“Since I got wounded, I mean since I came back to command,” he hesitated.
Emil leaned forward in his chair. He sensed Kathleen’s watchful gaze on him.
“I’m not the same. Something’s changed in me.”
“We’re all changed,” Emil started soothingly, but an angry wave from Andrew silenced him.
“No, I don’t mean that. It’s deeper than that. I feel like I’ve lost something. Not just my edge, far deeper, the very mettle of my soul. All along I sensed a problem with our assault at Capua, I sensed it but failed to clearly get ahead of the problem and reason it out before it happened.”
“No one could have anticipated the response from their new leader,” Emil replied.
“But I should have. There’s no damn room for a mistake in my position.”
He looked around the room at his old friends, wondering for a moment if he was about to dissolve into tears. Do that, though, and we’ve all lost. In the end, he realized, all of it, from the moment they had come through the Portal of Light, back so many years, so many ages ago, all rested upon him.
Damn, I never wanted this, and then he hesitated with his inner remorse as the truth surged up from within. The self-humility was a lie, a damnable lie. He had indeed wanted it.
He had wanted command of the regiment, Hans knew that as far back as Fredericksburg. He loved his old commander, Colonel Estes as a father, but like any son of ability, inwardly he longed to transcend what his father was and could be. And when Estes fell at Gettysburg he had mourned him, yet he had sprung to take his place.
He had wanted a brigade, knowing he could do better than far too many of the damned fools Meade and Grant allowed to command. Here was a harsh realization. One is taught to have humility, to admire one’s elders and emulate them, and a display of raw ambition is somehow immoral.
Yet he knew in the core of his soul that he was blessed with something, and that something was the ability to lead … and to dream of all the greatness that a republic could be. Yet so unfortunately a republic, and a volunteer army of a republic, far too often drew into its folds the weak, the venal, those who were ambitious for their own sakes.
He looked around at his friends.
“I fomented a rebellion against the natural order of this world,” he said slowly. “When we realized what the hordes were, the men actually voted to take ship, to find some safe haven and sit it out, but I talked them into fighting and convinced the Rus they could fight.
“And now it is all crashing down around me.
“Emil, I think I’ve been sick. Sick within my soul. Ever since this winter the stress of it has paralyzed me. I feel like a puppet. The strings are moved, I woodenly follow into the next step, and thus I’ve numbly wandered to this point. The government is collapsing, I allowed an offensive to be launched that my inner heart told me not to allow, and now I sit here numbly as the end closes in around us.”
Emil said nothing, staring straight into his eyes. The moment seemed to stretch out.
“I believe there are two paths to this world, to any world,” Andrew said slowly, his voice thick with emotion. “The one is to believe what the masses believe. To make yourself part of them, and to follow, to follow even as you claim to lead.”
“And the other path?” Emil asked.
“If God gave you the ability, even if everyone else thinks you are mad, then use it.”
Emil chuckled softly.
“We shall either meanly lose or nobly save the last best hope of mankind,” Emil finally offered.
“I’m taking control of this situation,” Andrew said. “We’re all frightened right now, me most of all. Either we become mad and fight back, or we die. But if we are doomed to die, let’s die as free men.”
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.”
Surprised, he looked up at Kathleen, who had just spoken. She smiled knowingly, as if having sensed every thought that had crossed his mind.
“And as our case is new,” Gates continued, “we must act anew and think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”
Andrew smiled at the recitation of Lincoln’s famous words. The room was hot, silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the comer of the room, the only other sound the laughter of one of the children upstairs.
We must disenthrall ourselves … but how damn it, how?
“We have to end the war now,” Kathleen said. Her voice was hard, cold. It wasn’t a statement of speculation or hope, it was merely hard honest fact.
He looked up at her.
“You mean negotiate?”
“No, damn it. No! We all know where that will lead. It will merely postpone our deaths. If you do that, I’ll go upstairs and poison our children rather than have them live with the death we all know will come. Jurak cannot rest until all in this room, and all touched by you, are dead. He understands us too well, and thus understands the threat that we are.”
“So what is the alternative then?” Andrew sighed. “Another offensive? The government will block it. For that matter I wonder if we’ll even have a government or a united effort in another few days.”
“Exodus, go north,” Webster ventured quietly.
“You mean just leave?” Andrew asked.
“Exactly. We did it before, we evacuated all of Rus against the Merki. Well, maybe the mistake was we tried to hold on to the steppe region. Lord knows how far north the forest belt extends. Pack it up, and go into the forest until we find a place where they won’t follow.”
“We’ve talked about that before,” Vincent replied. “It’s impossible. First off, the government will break apart on that one. Second, they’ll follow us, and we’ll be burdened down with hundreds of thousands of civilians, children, old people. It will turn into a slaughter.”
“Well if the government does surrender, that’s where I think we should all head,” Webster replied. “I’ll be damned if I stay here and wait to have my throat slit. At least there’s some hope in that.”
“If I were Jurak,” Andrew replied, “I wouldn’t care if it took twenty years. I’d hunt down the survivors. There is no way they can ever dream of continuing their ride until they know we are all dead, for once they turn their backs upon us we’ll rebuild. The fundamental issue, besides the moon feast, the enslavement, is that they are nomadic. They cannot leave a cancer behind that will spread in their wake.”
“He’ll kill everyone once we’re dead or fled,” Hans said. “You people seem to have forgotten something in all this. Andrew, I remember the dream was there for you at the start, but it seems to have blurred. This is not just about us. We started a revolution on this world. The only way it will survive is if we spread the revolution around the entire planet. We must free everyone or no one. I left millions of comrades in slavery when I escaped, and I vowed upon my soul to help set them free and if need be to die doing it.”
Andrew was surprised by the passion of Hans’s words. He was normally so reticent, and so rarely was an idealism allowed to creep out from behind the gruff Germanic exterior of the old sergeant major. He could not help but smile at the revolutionary passion that moved his oldest friend.
“Then free them,” Varinna Ferguson said in flawless English.
For the first time since the meeting had started Andrew took serious notice of the woman sitting on the chair by the doo
rway. Kathleen’s hands slipped down to rest on the woman’s slender shoulders. As she spoke it seemed that the voice almost came from somewhere else, so horribly scarred were her features, the skin that had grown over the burns a taut expressionless mask. And yet he could still sense the graceful beauty that was locked within, that had caused Chuck Ferguson to see beyond the torn exterior to the beauty and strength of the soul.
“I didn’t know you could speak English,” Gates exclaimed, looking over at her in surprise.
“You never asked,” she replied, her words causing a round of chuckles from the others. “You were always too busy talking to my husband to notice me.”
“My apologies, madam,” Gates quickly said, his features turning red, “my most humble apologies.”
“You said ‘free them,’ ” Hans said, the slightest tone of eagerness in his voice. “How, may I ask?”
“How did we first know that you were alive?” she replied.
“Jack Petracci flew over us.”
She looked inquiringly at Andrew, who nodded. She slowly stood up. In her hands was a battered notebook.
“These are some of my husband’s writings. How do you say … ideas, dreams. That is why he taught me English, so I could read them after he was gone.”
She put the book upon the table and all looked at it with a bit of reverence, for without the mind of Chuck Ferguson they knew they would have died long ago.
“Right after you were rescued, before the war started on the eastern front, he made some notes here.” And she opened the book, skimming through the pages until she finally came to the place she wanted. “Just a few pages, but on the night before he died he pointed them out to me, told me to work upon them.”
She passed the book over to Andrew. He carefully took the bound volume, scanning the page, wondering how she had managed to master Chuck’s infamous scrawled crablike writings.
She reached into her apron pocket, pulled out a sheaf of papers, carefully unfolded them, and laid them out on the table. It wasn’t a bundle of papers but rather a large single sheet of drafting paper, half a dozen feet across and several feet wide, taking up most of the table. Andrew noticed just how badly her hands had been burned as well—two of the fingers on her left hand were little more than stumps. As he scanned the paper he saw that half of it was a detailed map, the other half covered with a different kind of handwriting than Chuck’s, simple block lettering, some of it calculations, the rest commentary with lines drawn to the map while the far right side of the sheet had sketches of airships.
“I did,” she hesitated, “calculations. I think it is possible to do, but the chances? It is win all or lose all.”
Andrew stood up and went over to her side, the others gathering around him. He stood silent, scanning the map, then the plan written out, and finally the calculations. It was the details of the plan Vincent had forwarded to him just prior to the assault. He looked over at Vincent; there was the slightest flicker of a smile tracing the corners of his mouth.
“Impossible,” Webster announced sharply, breaking the silence.
Andrew looked over at Hans and saw the eyes of his comrade shining brightly, and he felt a stab of fear, knowing what it undoubtedly meant.
“I rejected this idea out of hand less than a week ago,” he finally announced.
“That was a week ago,” Varinna replied. “Today is today, the day after a defeat. Just minutes ago I heard you admit that we shall lose the war. If we are to lose the war, then this plan should go forward.”
“Why?” Emil asked, leaning over the table to study the lines on the map. “I think anyone who goes on this, particularly the airship operation is doomed to die.”
“Because it won’t matter then,” she announced smoothly. “The men who go would die anyhow if they stay home. If they go and die, and lose, then it is the same. If they go, and die, but change the path of the war to victory, then it is a sacrifice that is worth it.”
Andrew marveled at her cold precise logic, which cut straight to the heart of the matter.
As if from a great distance he could hear the grandfather clock chiming the hour—it was midnight.
All waited for him to speak. He was torn. He so desperately wanted to grab this, to cling to it, to see it bring them to a change in fate. Yet he feared it as well and all that it suggested and held, especially for Hans.
“This is what I’ve dreamed of all along. I say go,” Hans finally said, breaking the silence. Andrew turned, looking into his eyes again.
Andrew finally nodded.
“We do it. Start preparations at once.”
* * *
Who was it? Kal stirred uncomfortably, the pain was numbing but he had known worse, losing an arm, the beatings old Boyar Ivor, might his soul burn in hell, had administered.
Yet who did it?
He opened his eyes. His wife, sitting at the foot of the bed, roused from her sleep and started to get out of the chair. Her features were pale, heavy cheeks looking.pasty in the candlelight.
He motioned for her to sit back down, but she was already at the side of the bed.
“Water, my husband?” she whispered.
He started to shake his head, but the pain was too much.
“No, nothing.”
“I made some broth, beef, your favorite.”
“No, please.”
He looked around the room.
“Emil?”
“He left. Said I was to fetch him if you wanted.”
“Where?”
“He’s at the colonel’s home.”
“Ah, I see.”
He knew she would not relent with her attentions until she could do something, so he finally let her pull the blankets up, even though the night was so hot. He remained quiet, staring at the candle as she finally settled back into her chair and picked up her knitting which had fallen to the floor when she had dozed off.
Why would Emil be at Andrew’s? Were they planning something?
Not Andrew. Never Andrew. In the beginning he could have so easily become boyar himself. No one would have objected, least of all me, he reasoned. I was just peasant, he was already officer, like a noble and he was the liberator. Instead he propped me up, trained me, made me the president.
But was that so I could always follow what he desired. Bugarin said as much, that a Yankee could never rule for long, so he had chosen a dumb peasant to be his shield. He wondered on that thought for a moment. There was a certain wisdom to it, for in the end never did I go against what Andrew desired; therefore, in a way he did rule without all the bother of it.
“Not Andrew,” he whispered.
She stirred, ready to get up again and he allowed his eyes to flutter shut. She settled back down in her chair.
Bugarin? Logical. Blame it on Flavius. I’m dead, Flavius is killed by the mob, Bugarin becomes president and then boyar again. So guard against Bugarin. But it just might have been Flavius after all. Yet if I had died, we would not have lived an hour in the city of Suzdal.
Who then?
I have lost Congress. Bugarin has the votes of those who want an end to it. The Roum congressmen are in terror, lost with the news of Marcus’s death. If I continue the war as Andrew wants, then they will block it, splitting the Republic. If I try to stop it, what will Andrew do?
An inch to the right Emil said. But one inch, and I would not have to worry about this. I would be standing before Perm and his glorious son Kesus, all cares forgotten. Yet Tanya would still be here, the grandchildren, their half-mad father Vincent.
Ah, now there is a thought. Vincent is the warhawk. Could he be the mask behind the mask? Andrew would never do it, but Vincent was capable. If Bugarin tried a coup, Andrew would block it but might fall as well. Then it would be Vincent.
No. What was it Emil called it? A word for too much fear. But it was troubling, and he could not go to sleep.
* * *
The fact that he had asked for the meeting had caught him by surprise. Walking into
the main hall of the Capitol Building he stopped, looking to his right toward his own chambers. The building was empty except for the lone military guard posted under the open rotunda. It had been started in the year before the start of the Bantag War. Though Keane insisted that construction must go forward in spite of the war, the less than half-completed dome was now covered with canvas.
He turned to his left and walked into the meeting chamber of the House of Representatives. Often he had heard the shouted debates coming from this room, and he found it distasteful, a rowdy mix of foreigners and lowborn peasants. At least the fifteen members of the Senate were, except for one or two, of the proper blood, even those from Roum, in spite of their being cursed pagans.
“Senator Bugarin. Thank you for coming.”
The chair behind the desk turned and the diminutive Flavius was staring at him. He was lean and wiry, a mere servant in the house of Marcus and now the Speaker.
Though he loathed the type, Bugarin could sense that Flavius was a soldier’s soldier, one whom the veterans who predominated in Congress could trust whether they were of Rus or Roum. And since the pagans were the majority, of course their man would control this half of Congress.
Bugarin said nothing. He simply approached the chair, waiting for this one to rise in front of a better. Flavius, as if sensing the game, waited, and then slowly stood, favoring his right leg, giving a bare nod of the head in acknowledgment of the man who controlled the other half of the legislators.
“I’ll come straight to the issue,” Flavius said in Rus, his accent atrocious to Bugarin’s ears. “We both know that poor soldier who was murdered today had nothing to do with the assassination attempt.”
“How do you know?” Bugarin asked politely.
Flavius extended his hands in a gesture of exasperation. “We might disagree on a great many things, but to assassinate the president. Never.”
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