Never Sound Retreat

by William R. Forstchen

  Though Pat might feign the role of a hard-drinking and not-too-smart Irishman, the years of war had seasoned him into a tough and proficient commander in his own right. Beneath the roaring, swearing, drinking, and bluster, traits which endeared him to the men of his command, he was a shrewd pragmatist with the sort of common sense that seemed capable of taking the most complex of issues and reducing them to a simple answer.

  Stepping down from the podium, he fell in by Kathleen's side, joined by Kal, Father Casmar, and a moment later by Hans, who trotted up, then dismounted to lead his horse.

  "The boys looked splendid," Kal announced.

  "The question is, how will they fight," Hans replied. "Nearly half our men did not serve in the last war, they've never stood on a skirmish line, let alone against a Horde charge."

  "They'll learn," Kal said. "Same way I did back in the beginning, same way we did at Hispania."

  "Different kind of fighting now," Hans continued, and he looked over sharply at Kal.

  Andrew was silent. There had been a sharp debate on the floor of Congress only the day before about the nature of the war. This, at least on the surface, did not seem like the same grim war of survival back when the Merki had overrun Rus. It was distant, remote. Over 150,000 men were now deployed a thousand miles away, and yet, to date, there had been precious little fighting—a few skirmishes on the front facing Nippon, the occasional bombing of a ship by a Bantag flyer. More men were dying of disease than of wounds. It had finally been voiced, the question of whether they were really at war. The wild enthusiasm expressed when Hans had escaped was tempered now. The economy was again on a wartime footing—anything but the most essential items was scarce, food was rationed, nearly every family had someone up at the front—but there was no fighting.

  Beyond that, Ha'ark had proven to be a masterful diplomat. A steady stream of human ambassadors, Chin slaves, had been coming through the lines, assuring peace with the one request that the Republic withdraw its forces from the Great Sea. Kal had been busy trying to suppress a rebellion in Congress, but one was definitely simmering. To his utter astonishment the Senate had even voted to allow a formal ambassador to journey to Rus, and he was now locked in the basement of the White House, blindfolded and under guard whenever he left the Executive Mansion. Andrew could see that Hans had endured a grueling time with the Senate; the three days of hearings, discussion of strategy, the begging for yet more appropriations had taken their toll.

  Hans looked around at the crowd that was scattering as the rain increased. A smile finally creased his leathery features when a diminutive dark-skinned girl came through the press, carrying a sleeping baby in her arms. Hans nestled her in close under his arm.

  "You looked so handsome today," she said in halting Rus, and Hans chuckled.

  Andrew suppressed a grin, to hear Hans called handsome was indeed strange. Tamira looked over at Andrew.

  "Does he have to go back tomorrow?"

  Andrew nodded. "We both do, Tamira, I'm sorry."

  "Soldier's wife," Kathleen announced, a touch of sadness in her voice.

  They continued up the street toward the neighborhood the Union soldiers had settled into, and which had become a fairly good replication of a New England country village. There was a small town square with an octagonal band shell, a Presbyterian and a Unitarian church facing the square, even a statue to i the Thirty-fifth and Forty-fourth in the middle. As they turned the corner Andrew looked affectionately at his house, a modest two-story garrison-style house, painted white. Again part of him wished that tonight he would be asleep upstairs, the children in the next room. That tomorrow he could awake, facing nothing more demanding than perhaps a lecture at the small college which had been flourishing until the start of this new war and was now all but empty, with so many of the young students and professors going back into the ranks. The only classes still open were the ones taught by Ferguson and his assistant Theodore as he struggled to pass on all that he knew about engineering, hoping to spark some young mind who could continue his work, if ever the worst should happen.

  "At least one more quite dinner here at home, gentlemen," Kathleen announced, as she stepped up on the porch and closed her umbrella. "Let's forget about what is coming next."

  But Andrew already sensed that the respite of a i few hours was not to be, seeing an orderly from headquarters waiting on the porch. At their approach he nervously snapped to attention and handed a sealed envelop to Andrew.

  With a flick of his thumb Andrew snapped the seal open and slid out the single sheet of paper. Scanning the sheet, he handed it to Kal.

  "Hans, we're heading back within the hour. I knew we should have stayed at headquarters."

  Hans took the message from Kal and examined it, then sadly looked over at his wife and nodded.

  "Bad news?" Casmar asked.

  "Vincent's reporting advanced elements of the Bantag approaching out of Nippon and against the southern front. It looks like they're going to open the ball before fall weather sets in. It's starting."

  "Andrew, at least there's still time for dinner."

  It was far more than dinner, Andrew knew; they'd been apart for nearly two months and were looking forward to one more night together. He could see the disappointment, but there was nothing he could say to change it now. In three days all hell could break loose.

  "One hour, Kathleen." He didn't add that it would take an hour for the engineer to get steam up on his command train; otherwise, he'd be gone within ten minutes. He looked over at Hans and sensed the same thing that was in his heart—dread, but an eagerness as well to lock horns at last and get it over with.

  Chapter Three

  "Sir, they're pushing in, not just skirmishers anymore, but artillery and mounted infantry armed with breechloaders."

  Pat O'Donald stirred from a deep sleep which had produced a most pleasant dream, carrying him back over twenty years to Ireland and a fine freckled-faced lass.

  "Where?"

  "We just had a patrol ride in. Claim they ran into advance riders of the Bantag early this afternoon. Their captain is outside."

  "Bring him in."

  Yawning he stood up and pulled on his uniform trousers. A young cavalryman, smelling of horse sweat and leather, came into his tent and saluted. Pat scanned his face, the boy was young, barely out of his teens, but already in command of a troop.

  "Captain Yuri Divonovich, Troop B, Second Suzdal Mounted Rifles, reporting, sir."

  "Go on, Yuri."

  Yuri motioned to the map on the small table in the center of the tent and Pat came up to his side as the captain started to point out details.

  "Sir, we were up near this pass here, where we'd already done some roadbed work for the railroad.

  Hoped to get a good view east and south, thirty miles or more. As we crested the pass we ran smack into a Bantag mounted patrol, two hundred at least."

  "Is that it?" Pat asked, feeling slightly annoyed at being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to be told an enemy patrol was sighted thirty miles forward of their first line.

  "No, sir, of course not."

  Pat could sense a touch of anger in the captain's reply, and he smiled. The boy had spunk.

  "All right, Captain, keep talking."

  "Well, sir, they were mostly armed with bows, so we had good range on them with our Sharps. I managed to scramble up out of the pass and got to the top of the ridge. From there I could see dust plumes rising from the steppe, the entire horizon was dusty."

  "Bantag cavalry?"

  "Yes, sir. It was hard to tell with field glasses, lots of haze and dust, but I think I counted at least ten umen standards and what looked to be a number of horse-drawn field batteries. Like I said, sir, it was hard to see clearly, but I estimate they were ten, fifteen miles farther back. I only had a couple of minutes to watch; their patrol was making it rather hot for me, so I finally had to pull back. Just as we started to withdraw a mounted unit armed with breechloaders came up in supp
ort and gave us a time of it."

  "You certain it was breechloaders?"

  "Certain of it, sir." The captain took off his slouch cap and stuck his finger through a bullet hole in the crown.

  Pat laughed, but the report was disturbing, a confirmation of Jack's information a week ago. Had they really shifted their modern units north, or was this just a false lead, Ha'ark throwing a few units with breechloaders forward so they would be spotted?

  "Fine, Captain. Any losses?"

  "Seven dead, eighteen wounded, sir, lost five horses as well. We dropped a parcel of them, but they kept on coming, chased us all night. I think we were about five miles from here when they finally reined in."

  Pat nodded. He could see that the boy had experienced a bit of a fright. The whole idea of a cavalry arm was still somewhat new to the army, and like the Union cav back home, they'd have to learn their trade by fighting, and most likely take a hell of a lot of beatings from warriors born to the saddle. Being chased by Bantag, especially when one knew what would happen if wounded and captured, took nerve.

  Pat turned back to his cot, reached underneath, pulled out a small bottle, and tossed it to the captain. Gratefully the young officer took a long drink.

  "Thank you, sir."

  Pat motioned for him to keep the bottle and turned to hunch over the map. Studying it intently, he traced in lines where Yuri had reported the enemy formation.

  Andrew and Schuder were suppose to be back at Port Lincoln later in the afternoon, his reported sightings of the skirmishers the day before causing them to return to headquarters. He looked at the small clock atop his field desk. Just after one in the morning. Let the boys sleep a few more hours, then best to get them moving into the fortified lines.

  Stepping out of his tent, he looked up at the stars, sparkling in the cool night sky. It was going to be a wonderful day for a fight.

  Pat O'Donald squinted as he shaded his eyes and gazed eastward into the early-morning sun.

  "Fine day for a battle," he announced, looking at his staff. Whistling off-key, he paced back and forth, watching as the umens of the Bantag Horde deployed across the rolling steppe, several miles distant. He could not have asked for a better field of fire. His men were dug in on a low crest line several hundred feet above the prairie, the scattering of trees which had once marched down from the high hills having all been cut to offer clear fields of fire. He knew it was just a forward position, the tip of the Republic's spear, probing into the edge of the domain that had always been, and most likely always would be, controlled by horse-mounted warriors. But behind him was the type of terrain that was ideal for what he wanted, right on back to what was now called the Shenandoah River, a 120 miles away.

  The ground he would fall back on was hilly, mostly forest, broken up with small open patches of farmland tilled by descendants of the Irish, a discovery which had delighted Pat, though to his chagrin he found he could barely understand a word of the Gaelic dialect they spoke. He was trying to form a regiment of them, hoping that the grand old tradition of the Irish Brigade, complete to green flag, could be revived, but the men were woefully uncooperative when it came to army discipline, and with the war his pet project was on hold.

  The only real road was what was called the Old Tugar track, the path that the Horde had once traversed in its ride around the world. A trestle bridge had been thrown across the Shenandoah and a rail line pushed up through the forest to within fifty miles of this forward position. It was a bit of a gamble putting two full corps so far forward without a railhead, with two more corps in the fallback position ten miles to the rear, but Pat had argued, and Andrew agreed, that the rough terrain all but eliminated the prospect of mounted units cutting them off. If the damn Bantag wanted a fight, they were going to have to slug their way through primeval forest, paying with blood every step of the way.

  The Bantag formations approached in their old traditional checkerboard pattern, each block fifty riders across and twenty deep. It was an impressive sight, a hundred thousand at the very least he estimated, but madness on this ground.

  He walked down the length of his line, carefully looking at the men deployed along the breastworks. The old veterans could easily be spotted, watching with a casual insolence, the new recruits silent and pale, or talking nervously. Sergeants paced behind the firing line, some offering words of encouragement, or cursing at the men to be silent.

  Hans smiled at the stream of imprecations one of them was leveling at a shaking young boy who had fired his rifle with the enemy still almost two miles off.

  Rick Schneid, commander of First Corps, rode up and snapped off a salute.

  "Splendid day for a fight," Rick announced loudly so the men nearby could hear. "We'll pile the bastards up."

  Pat nodded, saying nothing as Rick dismounted.

  "Where's all them new weapons Hans kept talking about?" Pat asked softly. "Those bastards out there are armed with bows and lances."

  "Maybe they don't have that much to go around."

  "Still, keep a sharp eye open."

  Even as he spoke one of Rick's staff officers shouted and pointed off to the southeast, where through a pass in the hills could be seen the sparkling of the sea. A lone Bantag airship was coming through the pass, climbing steeply.

  "Well, we had to expect that," Pat announced. "Still, wish we weren't blind. Can't see for all the dust out there. Like to know what they might have hidden."

  "I think the damn fools are going to charge," Rick said, and he nodded toward the front.

  Two of the umens, twenty thousand riders, were spreading out, the checkerboard pattern of alternating blocks and open spaces shifting into one long open line, five ranks or more deep and several miles across. Even from two miles away, in the still morning air, he could hear the thunder of their coming, while two more umens maneuvered in heavy column formation to swing in behind them.

  "Unbelievable," Pat whispered. "You'd think they would have learned."

  "They might think they can simply break us."

  Pat nodded. There was always that chance a panic could set in, but as he surveyed his line he knew the men would hold. He could even hear some of the sergeants and officers laughing, offering encouragement to their men. Veterans of Hispania were shaking their heads with disbelief, many of them pulling cartridges and percussion caps out of their pouches and lining them up along the breastworks so they could be reached more quickly.

  Pat, as if by instinct, moved to where a battery was deployed, gunners standing at the ready. Their captain, sporting a black eye patch, stood on the parapets, telescope trained forward. The ground forward had been paced out weeks before, firing stakes topped with fluttering red pennants driven in, so the range was clearly marked.

  "Case shot, three thousand yards, fifteen-second fuses!" one of them shouted, and within seconds the runners came up from the caissons, which were well dug in behind revetments thirty yards to the rear of the firing line. Breechblocks were screwed open, shells rammed in, powder bags pushed in behind them.

  Pat watched the gunners carefully. He felt a wave of nostalgia for his beloved bronze Napoleons, but he had to admit that the twenty-pounders before him were about to do a devilish job at over twice the range of what he could have ever hoped for.

  Farther up the line, a half mile to the north, one of the batteries opened with a salvo, the other ten batteries along the line joining in. The commander in front of him waited a few more seconds.

  "Battery fire by salvo—the battery commander stood with right arm raised high, fist clenched and then snapped it down—"FIRE!"

  The four guns leapt back, the view forward instantly disappearing in a swirling cloud of smoke.

  "Range twenty-eight hundred yards, fuse fourteen seconds!"

  Pat, unable to contain himself, stepped forward and scrambled up on the breastworks, raising his field glasses, breathing deeply of the sulfurous black-powder smoke swirling around him.

  After several seconds a swirling eddy p
arted and he silently counted off the interval of time. A burst of fire silently ignited directly in front of the charging line, followed almost instantly by three more detonations, two of them plowing straight into the Bantag ranks. Grinning, he looked over at the battery commander to offer his congratulations but the one-eyed captain was already back by his guns, as the metallic clang of breechblocks being slammed shut echoed.

  "FIRE!"

  The four guns kicked back yet again, and even while the crews scrambled to push the heavy weapons forward, the gun sergeants were pulling the breeches open. Wet sponges were run up the barrel to dampen any sparks, then the sergeants turned the elevation screws up, dropping the barrels ever so slightly lower. Hans looked forward again and saw the bursts igniting, one of them directly over the charging line, the others falling long.

  Though his true desire was to stay with the gunners, he stepped back and away, walking down the top of the breastworks to get clear of the battery's smoke. Flame was igniting up and down his line as over forty guns were now in play. Out across the field he could see the enemy line relentlessly advancing, closing up the gaps in their lines as they continued to push forward.

  Though they were the bloody enemy, he could not help but admire the Bantag's discipline. They continued to advance at the walk, taking the pounding, closing ranks, red-and-yellow pennants held high and defiant. Even as he watched, a shell detonated directly above a flag bearer, reducing his towering form to a bloody smear, the horse beneath the stan-dard-bearer collapsing in a flying heap. The shredded standard wavered, started to fall, and then was instantly swept up by another Bantag.

  The range closed to less than a mile and above the thundering of the guns Pat could hear the high clarion call of the narga horns, the Horde battle trumpets. Red pennants dipped, twirling in circles as their bearers broke out from the line and galloped down the front, signaling for the umens to break into a canter.

  Pat heard an increasing note of urgency in the battery commander's voice and looked over his shoulder, catching the young captain's gaze. The captain stiffened, and his next command was again issued in a slow deliberate voice. Pat looked down at the riflemen, deployed nearly shoulder to shoulder behind the breastworks.