Battle Hymn

by William R. Forstchen

  "Does he know how to make a lifting surface, a wing, for his aerosteamers? What about turbine engines? Blast furnaces? Oh, we already have one of those working, and soon we will convert the factory you run. What about cold-core casting for guns and atomics, or wireless telegraphs? Do you know any of it?"

  Hans tried to register the words, to store them away as he continued to chew and to stare at Ha'ark, not allowing any thoughts to cross his mind.

  "Are you plotting an escape?"

  The question caught him off guard as he struggled to absorb what Ha'ark had just said, an errant thought whispering to him that if he could carry this information back to Chuck, somehow the boy might be able to figure out what Ha'ark was referring to.

  Hans shook his head.

  Ha'ark stared at him, and for a moment Hans felt as if his mind were being peeled back, that in some devilish way Ha'ark was looking within it.

  He raised his gaze, staring straight into Ha'ark's eyes.

  "If even one person attempts to escape, I will annihilate everyone in that factory of yours."

  "I understand that."

  "I just wanted you to know. Make sure everyone knows. You will be responsible for making the announcement."

  "Of course, my Qarth."

  Ha'ark fished in his pocket and pulled out a heavy packet filled with chewing tobacco.

  "You've got me taken with the habit, so I thought to keep you better supplied."

  Hans took the pouch and could not help but nod his thanks.

  "You realize, Schuder, that as long as you stay loyal, you, your wife, and your child will be protected. Your child will grow, have children of his own, and be safe in my circle."

  "I understand that."

  "But? There is something burning inside you."

  "Yesterday, the wife and child of one of the assistants that I am responsible for were murdered by Karga."

  He found himself regretting that he had even said it. Ha'ark was a distant presence, Karga was constant and could make daily existence a torment.

  "Did she do something wrong?"

  "She tripped and fell, dropping some charcoal. But it was more than that. Karga was angry that we had to shut down production on several furnaces to clean them out."

  Ha'ark smiled.

  "These people of mine live by terror," Ha'ark replied. "They know no other way."

  "And it is the way you rule them?"

  "A little more subtle, perhaps, but it is there."

  "You extended protection to myself and my workers."

  "They would not be sent to the pits or the Moon Feast without cause. But I sense cause here.”

  "A few pounds of charcoal are worth a human life?"

  "Yes," Ha'ark snapped back angrily. "Karga is the overseer. If production is not met, he will pay. If he must pay, then your people will pay. That is the way of this world. That is how Karga understands his world, and you must adjust or die. Be more concerned for yourself, Schuder, you and your wife and child. I give them direct protection and that will last as long as you serve. Harden yourself to the others and you will live longer."

  Ha'ark gave a curt nod of dismissal and turned his mount away.

  Hans watched him go, still guarding his thoughts.

  "For your own good, if my suspicions that you are considering a rash move are true, consider the idea no longer," Ha'ark shouted, not even bothering to look back.

  Hans's escort was waiting for him. He reined his horse about and fell in alongside, starting the long ride back down the hill. Showers of sparks bellowed up from smokestacks, and a train carrying the tarp-covered objects lurched forward. A long gang of Chin laborers dragging limestone blocks and looking like laborers on the pharaoh's pyramids, staggered beneath the lash as they dragged their burdens away from the rail yard. Hans rode on in silence, keeping his mind clear, wondering if Ha'ark could somehow probe within him even when he was not present.

  "He knows."

  Startled, Hans looked at his escort.

  "He is not sure what, but he does know something. Consider this to be a warning."

  "Of what?" Hans asked innocently.

  "His mind reaches far."

  "Then why are you talking?"

  "I know where it reaches, but it is not here, not inside me or you. His thoughts are already elsewhere."

  Hans looked back over his shoulder and saw that Ha'ark had stopped and was staring at him. He felt a cold shudder, as if an arrow of ice had plunged into his soul.

  Riding through the encampment, Ha'ark let his thoughts wander. Somehow there is something not covered. I could start the war now and most likely win if the blow is hard enough and swift enough, but it is still better to wait. Yet what is this sense of warning?

  "Did you learn anything?"

  Jamul rode up beside him.

  "He is crafty. Of course he would thirst for freedom. I could sense it as he looked at the rails heading west, that freedom was somewhere over the horizon."

  "You can't blame him for that. He is useful because he is strong. His workers are disciplined, they listen to him, they outproduce any of the other factories."

  "That strength is dangerous."

  "Of course it is. You walk a fine balance here, my friend. It would be better if we could simply kill all these humans and have our own people do the work. Then we would be far more secure. Instead, they idle their days away."

  Ha'ark laughed.

  "Easier to teach our horses to talk. It is hard enough to get some of them even to stand as guards for the factories, to drive the workers inside of them. The only ones that fit that task are of the lowest caste."

  "Basing all of this on slavery I think will hurt us."

  "Are you growing soft?"

  "No, just looking at it with a cold eye. It is always the humans who have the special skills. We seem to be trapped. The work that is essential is done by humans, but because it is done by humans it is viewed as beneath the dignity of our own people."

  "When the war is finished, then we can worry about your philosophy, Jamul. We are not that numerous. We can field sixty umens from our own forces, eventually forty more from other Hordes. If we could work some miracle like you wish, to have our people work in the factories as well, that number would be cut in half. Slaughter all the humans, and it would be one tenth. Perhaps someday, but not now."

  They reined in beside Ha'ark's yurt and dismounted. Taking a cup of fermented mare's milk from one of his concubines, he strode into the yurt. At the scent of roasting meat he realized how empty his stomach felt.

  "This is all rather amusing," Ha'ark announced, speaking in his old tongue. "Here we live beyond our wildest imaginings, here we have limitless power."

  "As long as we win," Jamul replied.

  Ha'ark nodded at one of his guards standing by the entryway.

  A moment later a human was brought in. He stood with head bowed, but Ha'ark could sense the terror.

  "You have done nothing wrong. Your suspicions may very well be right."

  Dale Hinsen raised his head and gave Ha'ark a sidelong glance.

  "Did you kill him, then, my Qar Qarth?"

  "No. He is useful to me yet."

  He could sense the flash of disappointment. There must be some deep hatred there. Good.

  "Use your spies, keep a watch on all the factories. If you can find proof, he and anyone involved with him dies."

  "Yes, my Qar Qarth."

  "But it must be definite proof, not your plotting, for if it is that, it will be you who dies instead."

  "Never, my Qar Qarth."

  Ha'ark gave a curt wave of dismissal, and Hinsen withdrew.

  "More sniveling than most," Jamul said, his disdain showing.

  "But amusing."

  "I do not understand this game you play."

  "Hans is Keane, the teacher who shaped Keane. By watching him, I learn about my opponent. An advantage, since my opponent knows nothing yet of me. Can he keep his thoughts hidden? If so, that will tell me mu
ch. Perhaps he is innocent, and my own fears and the whining of my chief of spies has fed my imagination. If so, then I know something more as well—that Hans can indeed be broken. I am curious too just to see how it ends. Thus why ruin the diversion that can teach me much?"

  "And your true thoughts on this?"

  Ha'ark smiled.

  "He will try to escape, and when he does I will perform the final act. I will give his child and woman to the feast and let him live long enough to watch. That should teach me something about his Yankee character as well."

  "Karga's coming back!"

  The shouted warning echoed down from the entryway above, and Gregory felt as if his heart had turned to ice. They were five days into the tunnel and, according to the morning's measurements, seven feet beyond the camp wall. He looked at his assistant, who was stretched out behind him, and nodded for him to douse all but one of the lamps. With the approach of the Bantag guard the pump would have to be shut down, and within minutes the air would grow fetid. Putting out the lamps would give them a little more time.

  Something he had never admitted was his fear of being in a confined place. The reassuring blasts of fresh air coming from the end of the wooden air pipe now stilled and the terror again took hold. The smell of the damp clay assailed him, conjuring with it thoughts of the grave. He tried to stare at the lamp flickering before him, focusing his thoughts.

  "I'm going home, going home," he chanted it softly to himself.

  Home… and yet there was anguish in the thought. I was most likely listed as dead, more than four years ago. My wife? Would she have…? The night before he had left for his new command on the southern frontier she had told him they were expecting. The child would be nearly four now. What would she say? Funny, it was always a little girl in his mind—laughing, squealing, running to him with open arms.

  He was glad for the darkness as the tears came. Is she now calling someone else Daddy? He couldn't blame Sonya if she did. After all, I'm dead. But if I come home and she's remarried, then what?

  Married. He could so easily imagine it, being with her, the passion before they had even gone to her parents. Was she sharing that now with someone else? He forced it away. Think of anything else, anything. There was always that young Chin girl in the next barracks, the one with the curious green eyes. No, I made a vow.

  A burst of cool air sputtered out of the leather pipe by his face. He looked over his shoulder and saw Vasga, one of his Cartha diggers, in the shadows.

  "You all right?" Vasga asked.

  "Sure, fine."

  Vasga looked at him intently and Gregory, embarrassed, realized that the tears might have streaked the dirt on his face. Mumbling a curse, he returned to his diggings.

  "How was the hearing today?"

  Stifling the oaths that were about to explode, Andrew tossed the leather dispatch case on the chair next to the door. Madison, Abraham, and Hans enveloped him, the boys going for the knees, Hans now able to crawl up to his father, and Madison flinging her arms around his waist.

  "A nightmare—and your day?"

  Andrew settled down on the sofa in the parlor, picking up little Hans and trying to listen intently as Madison told about the terrible adventures her dolly had endured playing in the backyard.

  Andrew looked up gratefully as Kathleen appeared bearing a cup of tea. Nadia, their Rus nanny, peeked through the door, and the exhausted look in Andrew's eyes was signal enough for her to intervene and take the children out into the kitchen.

  "So give me some good news," Andrew said.

  "Emil's really onto something with this Simes theory of his.”

  Andrew shook his head questioningly.

  "That's what he's calling the microorganisms that cause disease. They're named after his mentor, Simmelweiss."

  "A strange honor."

  "Oh, for a doctor I think it's rather nice. He thinks he might have a treatment for rabies. That little girl I told you about, the one that was bitten by the rabid cat. She's recovering. If this works, he might be onto a cure for a whole host of diseases. Typhoid and consumption are next on his list. You'll read all about it tomorrow in Gates's Weekly."

  Andrew tried to listen to her. Emil had certainly cut typhoid in the army camps to a fraction of what he remembered back on Earth by posting strict orders on camp sanitation and sources of water. A cure for it would be even better, but the frustration of a senatorial hearing had simply left him drained.

  "Go on," she said. "The standard formula for conversation is that I say something and you reply. Then you say something and I reply."

  He saw her playful smile, and yet again he thanked God that he had found her, someone who was willing to endure the weeks and months when he was gone, the tension, the long silences, the locking away in his office, sometimes till dawn.

  "Sorry, it's just they're so damn shortsighted."

  Kathleen looked to the kitchen door to make sure the children had not heard him.

  "Well, their dad's a solider, they might as well get used to it."

  "He's also a college professor, and they shouldn't get used to it."

  He shook his head and smiled. "Sorry."

  "Go on, then."

  "The stink over the airship. Couple of the senators are calling for a full investigation. They know they can't get Ferguson since I've officially put him on permanent sick leave, but they're after Hawthorne and Pat."

  "What do they want?"

  "To have them cashiered from the service for misappropriation of funds. Part of the fuel is that Vincent is the president's son-in-law, and it's a way of getting at Kal. But, by God, Kathleen, those are my two best officers. We lose them and we cripple the army. It's not like I have deep pockets, with a ready supply of well-trained personnel waiting to move up. We lost damn near half our officers corps in the war. We've got a lot youngsters who are good regimental and brigade commanders, but the type of thinking needed on the corps and army level takes years to develop."

  "Vincent got it without the training."

  "He's a rarity. A Sheridan type, born with it."

  "So what did you say?"

  "I indicated that if the issue were pressed I'd refuse."

  Kathleen shook her head. "You can't do that. Remember, you're always the one saying the army has to answer to the civilian government. I fully agree with what those two fools did, but it was wrong anyway."

  "I know that. I'm not saying I'd refuse directly. Rather, I'd resign."

  "And?"

  "Well, there was a lot of hemming and hawing. Damn near every senator is a veteran, several of them front line combat as enlisted men. They're behind me, but more than one, several of them from the old group of boyar retainers and royalty in Roum, see a chance here possibly to reassert their power. We got rid of the Hordes, and as far as they're concerned it's time to set things back right and let them take over. They had power. They lost it but still haven't accepted the fact that there's been a real revolution."

  "What happens next?"

  "They wanted a committee appointed immediately to call in Hawthorne and Pat and put them on the grill. Marcus, God bless him, managed to get it delayed by several weeks."

  "So you're betting on the first flight to prove something."

  Andrew nodded and, standing up, went over to the mantel, and looked up at the painting of Hispania.

  "Funny, if we find nothing, they'll really have us. If we do find something, it'll be forgotten and the Union Party will scream that the Home First Party tied the army's hands and has now left us open."

  He shook his head. "A paradox here. If we win we lose and if we lose we win. I sense we'll find something, but I pray to God we don't."

  "And if we don't?"

  "I resign. Maybe that will shield Pat, though I suspect Vincent might very well go because of his father. It'll be drummed around as an issue in the next election and the Union Party will go along with even bigger budget cuts to try and stay in power."

  "Too bad Hans wasn't here. He'd
have sniffed out this little plot of Ferguson's, found a way around it, and no one ever would have known."

  Kathleen stood up, put her arm around Andrew's waist, and looked up at the painting.

  "Your nose is too big."

  "What?"

  "In the painting. Your nose is too big and he gave you shoulders like Pat's."

  Andrew laughed. He had always been self-conscious about his slender frame, and though the painting embarrassed him, he did secretly like the more heroic build the artist had given him.

  "No wonder Lincoln aged so much in four years," Andrew said. "Here we were, fighting a war for survival, and there was more than one in the Senate and the Congress who didn't give a good damn about anything other than his own power and what he could wring from it while our boys died by the tens of thousands. I do wonder at times if the Republic will actually survive."

  "Lincoln most likely wondered that every night," she said, holding him close.

  Chapter Four

  The knock on the door caused him to look up with a start. It was followed by two more knocks, and he felt the pressure in his chest relax.

  "Come."

  The door opened, and Ketswana, followed by Manda, slipped into the room.

  Hans looked at Alexi and Gregory and saw the tension drain out of their faces.

  "You're late," Hans said.

  "Karga and two of his scum were poking around the furnace. I felt I should stay. I thought my heart would stop when he paused at the charcoal pile and started poking it with a stick."

  "Do you think he was onto something?" Gregory asked.

  "No, but I was afraid one of my crew might give something away or, worst yet, that the diggers would hear the rapping and misinterpret it. Remember, three taps means it's all clear to bring up the dirt. Every second I expected the hatch to open."

  Hans said, "We change that tonight."

  Gregory nodded.

  "Anything else, Ketswana?"

  "I think we might have a problem. A new puddler was assigned to my furnace today. I don't trust him. I asked around, and no one seems to know him. He says he was an ironworker in one of the Chin cities before the Bantag came."