The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe)

by Walter Blaire

  “That’s very kind,” said Gawarty, because nothing else seemed like it would fit.

  “We’re a kind people,” the captain agreed. “But I’ve already forgotten myself. I am Captain Panthan Elyseuran, heavy infantry.”

  “Elyseuran,” Calumn said. “That’s not a Sesseran name.”

  “My people are Emseuran, one of the Ran tribes. We dominated High North before the Haphans landed. My family held land up there but the Haphans took it: rightly so, it was beautiful land. My ancestors who survived the Haphans fled south and the Sesserans killed us almost to a man, but we’re ornery and still around. Pockets of us here and there.”

  “Ah…” Gawarty knew he could not notice a Haphan injustice in front of a servitor, but he had no other ready response.

  Calumn helped. “I’m sure your family has more nice land again.”

  “We do, for the time being.” Behind his smile, Panthan seemed to be watching them closely. “Politically we’re all Sessies now.”

  “I, uh, found that singing very engaging,” Calumn said.

  “How circumspect!” the Tachba cried. “What a sentence; there is a horse that pulls three carts! I knew I picked the right booth for high talk!”

  Calumn switched to a polite smile, but he looked as unsure as Gawarty. Tachba weren’t prone to sarcasm, so perhaps Panthan was just as cheerful he seemed.

  “I’ll explain,” Panthan continued “Those scrags you heard were singing a night song. When we’re young and we feel immortal, we run out at night and kill each other. It’s a thing. We light the dark forests with night songs to attract other Tacchies to us.”

  “There was some screaming.”

  Panthan gave them a bland smile.

  “Yes, screaming, I’m sure I heard it,” Calumn said.

  Panthan said, “Usually the night song lyrics are made up on the spot, for the poor lad you’re hoping to beat to death. If they give you a good run you call them a killkrack. If it’s a good fight, you call them a bird-bear or a trouba-eagle. It’s a way of being complimentary.”

  Gawarty struggled to follow the Tachba, half certain he didn’t really want to understand. Finally, he simply changed the topic. “We were discussing our assignments. We are new to the front.”

  Panthan flushed with pleasure. He pulled an envelope from his breast pocket. “We three lucky bastards! I have an assignment too. Imagine me, among all our millions, with my name on a page! It is a very important task, which I must do until the next assignment comes.”

  “Your medals show you’ve spent a long time at the front.”

  “I’m coming back from a Haphan officer school. I was bumped me to captain, and now I’ve been written by name on this paper.”

  “How is the front?” asked Calumn. Then quickly, to cover any offense generated by his direct question, “Of course, knowing nobody could truly enjoy it—”

  “Nonsense, sir! I think you Haphans have made a wonderful war. Not too fast, not too slow. Bracing. Every chance for adventure, but still time to rest and even grow bored sometimes. More than a few chances to die—which must always be passed up, it wouldn’t be good service.”

  “Which the hubbub is calming down—” The porter stuck his head into the cabin and stopped when he saw the Tachba captain sprawled across the bench.

  Panthan snapped, “A long knife says I’m not being moved.”

  “And a few imperial officers also,” Gawarty added quickly, “if it matters.”

  The porter had bristled when Panthan touched the bayonet at his hip. Now he shrugged. “With the berserkers worn out, sirs, dinner service is rolling the corridor. Shall we move the new gentleman’s luggage up?”

  “Save your strength, I’m not here long.” Panthan returned to Gawarty and Calumn. “Let’s see: we were wondering how nice the war is? Well, there is a lot of death, with the corpses piling up more quickly than one might wish. You’re always seeing old friends in different places, them having been plinked from the South, cut down in an attack, or poked by Uncle Nestor. Sometimes you meet the same friend in different places, if you follow, and none of him is thriving.

  “Other than the death and dismemberment, the war is like a city that is full of people. If you can get past that first urge to kill a stranger, they’re different from what you expect. You have fresh-arrived country lads, sophisticated townies, and officious junior officers who want to order you around. You have funny lads, angry lads, milk-fed, blood-fed. You have every stripe of Tachba pressed together and asked only to fight the South.”

  “You said you’re heavy infantry?” Gawarty asked his question directly, as a kind of test of his mettle. Panthan didn’t even notice.

  “Yes. I have a unit of my own to lead over the top. Shock troops. Used sparingly but to great effect.”

  “Fascinating,” Calumn said. “So you’ve been to no-man’s-land.”

  Panthan nodded. “It’s a walk like most other walks until you make contact with South. You hear the Southie guns. It sounds like coughing.” His voice slowed. “Their repeater-guns are irregular. Not the precision tools the Haphans bring to the game. A man will always wonder if it’s easier to walk toward a nicely tuned machine, rather than a southern one that barks like a mad uncle.”

  “I wonder if the difference between the two guns is truly so vast…” Calumn said.

  “When you’re hit by such a haphazard, half-assed gun that can barely shoot three rounds in a row, it feels personal,” Panthan said flatly. “If you die like that, you’re a victim of something that wants you dead, rather than an accident of efficiency.”

  “It makes me wonder what it’s like to be wounded,” Calumn prompted, when Panthan fell silent.

  “Why, yes, I have been wounded in fact. The gravest wound, my leg nearly taken off. You’re eating soon, though, so I won’t take my pants down to show you. What was it like? Nothing in itself.”

  “Nothing.” Gawarty said.

  “No pain at first. The first thing you think is: I don’t deserve this! It leaves you feeling lonely, so you set up squalling. Suddenly you have a very thoughtful existence, even if you weren’t the thinking type to begin with. After a while the pain from the wound joins in, and we linger over the pain rather than the thinking.”

  “You Tachba don’t feel pain the way we feel pain, do you?” Gawarty asked.

  “There is pain, but no hurt,” the Tachba said. “It feels like something interesting is about to begin.”

  Another cry sounded from up the train.

  Panthan rolled his eyes. “Our moment of peace seems to be ending, Lieutenant Tawarna. My idiots apparently have their energy back.”

  “I hope you’re able to run them down.”

  “Keep an ear out for my unit,” Panthan said as he stood. “I’m with the Red Trumpets. We’ve been building strength lately, adding solid officers and men from broken units. Our commanding officer, Colonel Goldros, has no peer when it comes to picking useful veterans out of smashed units.”

  He tilted toward Gawarty expectantly.

  After a moment, Gawarty said, “I am liaising with the 314th Indigenous Observers. I’m working with Captain Sethlan Semelon.”

  “Yes.” Panthan said. “I heard he’s still kicking.”

  “You know him?” Calumn asked, with a wink at Gawarty. “Is Sethlan a good man?”

  The Tachba shrugged. “Men are good, and men are bad, aren’t they? He’s alive yet, which is admirable, but then he’s always thinking, too. If you need something, go to his aides. Tejj is the good one. Don’t leave the other one, Diggery, alone with your belongings.”

  The uproar in the train continued to swell. Panthan put a knuckle to his forehead, a salute between friends, and let himself out the door.

  Calumn chuckled without humor. “I like him, but I feel dirty somehow.”

  “He was checking on me,” Gawarty said, hardly believing it. “I didn’t tell him my name, but he knew it anyway. And he knew my assignment.”

  “Is that so? How o
dd. I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Or he suspected my assignment and I confirmed it for him. Somehow he had foreknowledge of my movements.”

  “What a talker he was!” Calumn said pointedly. He nestled his head into his coat for a nap. “Some people can certainly carry on.”

  11

  Eponymous

  “So what, then?” Sethlan asked aloud. The battle raged above their shell hole but it seemed very far away to Eponymous at the moment. A Southie Tachba, verifiably an enemy in this dismal terrestrial war, had her host frozen at gunpoint.

  The Southie looked Sethlan up and down. “Trained dog-la, Observer-geh-na?”

  Sethlan nodded.

  The Southie lowered his gun with a hard, toothy smile. He was gaunt but still big, perhaps taller than Sethlan by six inches. He had the strong chin, shovel jaw, and shelf-like eyebrows of the Northern Tachba, but to Eponymous he seemed somehow more alert, more present.

  The Southie tested him in the Deep Tongue. “For the blood in our hearts, shall I let thee live?”

  “This field is sown with my kin.” Sethlan gestured over the Tachba’s shoulder, but the man was too cagey to turn. “When their night song failed, they turned away and were cut down from behind. Now they will never improve. Prideful waste, my king. It shames the Southern Kingdoms.”

  “So what?” The Southie dropped back into trenchtalk. “You-running short of Haphan slaves? Can it be, your bitches are-turning barren, la?”

  “Only the most polluted children cannot answer a direct question,” Sethlan said. He produced his notebook and flipped it open. “The soldiers are dead. Show me which repeating gun shot them down. Restore justice to the great creature of the front.”

  The Southie could care less about great creatures or justice, but his eyes lit when he saw the notebook. He crawled next to Sethlan, sitting informally close.

  “Nicely drawn map! This emplacement, and this too, are empty now. The rest looks good to my poor eye. Here is your target.” He stabbed a forward pit with his finger. It had been hidden, cleverly hidden, behind the bulk of the hill. It would generate devastating cross-fire. “It was this squad which forgot itself, and still-gunning your Sessies when they turned to flee. Call down the imperial wrath!”

  Sethlan scrawled a note beside the emplacement. He wondered what the Southerner would ask in exchange.

  “How big is this assault? How long?”

  Sethlan shrugged. “Not big. Not long. It’s a test.”

  “Oh, pity,” the Southie said.

  Eponymous sensed Sethlan’s obscure embarrassment. “Our troops aren’t seasoned. This is no real fight.”

  “Your troops shall-seasoning soon,” the Southie said darkly. Then his tone changed. “Take down my name: Progur Pilladon. Will you write it in letters, please? My ancestor’s home is in the territory of Renegade Sessera, la.”

  “Progur Pilladon.” Sethlan wrote with large, florid letters that would please the Southie.

  “Family-meh began as a daughter. She were married off and sent south, oh, two hundreds of years ago. We have her bones still, to be-returning and for burying in Ville Emsa. She fire-remembering how delightful a city it is.”

  “Ancestor interment petition,” Sethlan added under the name. The Haphans had an office for even these requests.

  “Imagine me, in all these millions of men. I have a dead granny, and a thing to wish!” Progur laughed, shaking his head. “We also wish Sessera would join the Southern Kingdoms. We’ll having-you soon enough. Big plans, big plans.”

  “That’s not likely.” Sethlan snapped his notebook shut.

  “You-preferring the Haphans, la?” The Tachba had no malice in his voice. “You-seeking the overlord’s leash?”

  Eponymous felt the chop and sway of Sethlan’s thoughts turn still. “I want civilization, without the leash.”

  “Almost a third choice, out of only two choices?” As Sethlan seemed to expect, the Tachba didn’t enjoy that kind of unexpected corner, even in conversation. “Never mind, Observer. Go now. I will let my attention wander, so you can slink back to your masters.”

  ~It’s a trick.~

  Regardless, Sethlan moved immediately. He was more concerned that the Pollution would cause the Tachba’s mind to lapse and reset in a more violent frame.

  Eponymous had no choice in the matter. She thrummed with anxiety, waiting for a bullet in the back, until they put five minutes or more between themselves and the Southie.

  ~After seeing that Southie, I’m utterly unimpressed with you. And I can’t fathom how the tiny Haphan soldiers fight those monsters.~

  Haphan guns are good.

  ~They better be excellent.~

  Even a single trapped Haphan is costly to overrun, so long as he still has his trigger finger. Not that they ever let themselves get trapped. Perhaps the Haphans can be beaten with cleverness, but I’ve never seen it. The Southies are primitive and stupid beyond all reckoning.

  The thought triggered another in Sethlan’s mind. At least, they used to be.

  Sethlan now worked toward the hill from the front, navigating by some directional instinct Eponymous couldn’t tap. They intersected with Sheflis casualties returning from the hill. Most of them were disoriented, some circling. Sethlan pointed them north toward safety, but did not linger.

  Instead, he found a shallow crater where he could see the entire hill and dropped in. They didn’t wait long.

  With the hill captured, the South unleashed its artillery. The first shell announced itself with a wailing, broken scream in the darkness. It landed to the east, flinging dirt and debris into the sky.

  The next shell detonated before the dust from the first settled. The dirt and dust clouded higher into the sky. More shells followed, and shortly the hill disappeared behind towering stacks of airborne dirt that hung like curtains.

  Looks like the attack has proven those giant shells are real, Sethlan thought.

  ~Yay.~

  They’re very precise, Sethlan added. Only a few have gone astray.

  ~You called the South primitive and stupid.~

  So how do they fire precise, giant shells? Good question.

  The shells were huge. They were visible even in the faint morning light, and through the haze of the barrage. Against the vast sky they seemed to move slowly, like sick birds. They were larger than Drivvy’s steam cart.

  Sethlan heard shouted orders and glanced over his shoulder. The artillery interdiction unit had stirred to life. Eponymous was amazed to see they them battening the guns between the trenches, rather than safely behind them. Support legs were unfolded through the wheels of the articulated guns, giving them stability on the uneven ground. The gunners then inserted their shaved heads into leather-rimmed accordion boxes. They watched the sky through large glass lenses that capped the ends of each box.

  The arcane mechanisms were constructed of wood, but the guns themselves were metal. Despite their size and weight, they moved quickly. Complicated gears and waldos magnified the gunners’ movements with insectile speed.

  The guns opened fire without fanfare. Streams of glowing tracer bullets rose into the sky and converged in the distance. The tracers deflected when they found their targets, the incoming artillery shells. The gunners then increased the count of piercing rounds over tracers feeding from the ammunition crates, and hammered the shells until they burst.

  ~That looks difficult and inefficient,~ Eponymous said.

  Variable success. Today it’s not working.

  While some of the huge shells exploded mid-flight, most of them deflected the interdiction rounds like birds cutting through the rain. Tracers glanced off the surface of the shells in every direction, filling the sky with pulsating phosphorus flowers. The flowers, with the shells in the middle, drew ever closer to the hill. Eponymous found it eerily beautiful.

  Hitting them is no challenge, Sethlan observed. They’re simply not causing enough damage.

  Mortar rounds now fell among the interdiction guns. Shr
apnel carved through the gun crews. The explosions created more dust to put off their aim. Yet they never flinched as the mortars edged closer, except to finally fold to the ground in place when they were hit. The guns gave a final arrogant toss of the head and went still.

  Eponymous forced herself to ignore the slaughter, to think of anything else. ~Are the shells coming from a very small battery?~

  Sethlan focused his attention back to the incoming shells. The barrage decimated the Sheflis brigade on the hill. There was no escape. The explosions moved like giant hands, sweeping the earth clean.

  Presently, two large shells landed nearly at the same time, a few dozen yards apart. As far as Sethlan could discern, the trajectories were parallel: Two guns, close together. Sethlan recorded this in his notebook.

  Whistles sounded from the Northern trenches, calling for retreat.

  A few nearby Sheflis soldiers turned with their guns to offer supporting fire. They waited.

  No response from the hill. No stream of figures hurrying down the slope.

  ~How long do we wait?~

  They’re all gone.

  Eponymous felt Sethlan’s unease. The shells were too large to be subject to the whims of the atmosphere. They arrived closely packed and precisely targeted. They had fully cleaned a regiment of Northerners off the eternal front. That didn’t happen. That never happened. Even massed artillery barrages left survivors behind.

  This was something new in the war.

  It’s time to go.

  Sethlan was only twenty-eight years old, but he was stiff as he climbed out of the crater.

  ~How do they fire those huge shells?~

  The South doesn’t fire huge shells.

  ~We just saw them do it.~

  Sethlan didn’t answer. His mind burned through facts that didn’t connect. Each thread burned itself out like a bad fuse.

  The South doesn’t have field artillery that big. They don’t have sufficient powers of invention to conceive of field guns that size. They don’t have the discipline to test and improve the guns they’ve built—their entire arsenal was stolen from the Haphans and then aped in southern factories. But for argument’s sake, let’s say they somehow did build the guns. Even then, they lack the coordination to position the battery. They can’t keep giant guns supplied. They can’t even keep their own soldiers supplied.