Conflagration

by Mick Farren

  Cordelia tapped the handle of her crop thoughtfully against her chin. Neally might be unsophisticated, but even he could appreciate a woman with a whip. “I always thought one of the first principles of warfare was that he who selected the battlefield was halfway to victory?”

  “I think we can concede them that and still come out ahead.”

  Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that dangerously overconfident?”

  Neally dismissed the question out of hand. “Ab Balsol and his flat-heads are starving and short of everything. All we have to worry about is that some kind of delay allows their reinforcements to reach them.”

  “So a clock is ticking?”

  “You could say that.

  “And what is the land like beyond those hills? Is there a reason the Mosul have chosen this particular spot to make their stand?”

  Neally hesitated. He once again looked around to see if any attention was being paid to their conversation. Not, this time, to conceal their romantic involvement, but because he might be revealing privileged information. “It is rather a case of need to know.”

  Cordelia was suddenly irritated. Just a few hours earlier she had been romping uninhibitedly with this oaf, and now he was about to make an issue of describing the disposition of the enemy. “Who the hell do you imagine I’m going to tell? I’m certainly not going to inform the Mosul. They already know where they are. And, anyway, I can order you to tell me. I bloody outrank you, don’t I?”

  Neally flushed. He didn’t like to be reminded that she was a major while he was merely a junior captain. “They’ve bivouacked in a long valley and are showing no signs of moving on. Approached from the north, it opens broad and then narrows at the far end. And the brass are guessing they’ll dig in and let us come to them.”

  Cordelia grimaced. “Straight into a valley with high ground on either side? Does that mean they’ll be pouring fire on our advance from both flanks? Aren’t we going into a box?”

  “The Rangers and cavalry will sweep the hills.”

  Cordelia felt a sudden knot in her stomach. She realized that there was a chance that Tom Neally might be one of the ones doing the sweeping, and clearing the high ground in front of the main advance had to be a high-risk assignment. She eased the gelding forward slightly so their knees touched. “Be careful out there, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Neally looked away, suddenly embarrassed by Cordelia’s show of concern. “I’ll be careful. And you do the same. Whatever you’re doing.”

  Concern again turned to irritation. “You know damned well what I’ll be doing.”

  Tom Neally hung his head, with the look of denial that always came over his face when the subject of her duties came up. Like so many men of Albany, Neally maintained an absolute barrier of disbelief when it came to the other realities. Even those with firsthand experience with Dark Things in the field became profoundly uncomfortable at the first suggestion of the paranormal, and totally refused to accept that Cordelia and the rest of The Four were maybe as crucial to the Albany war effort as any division of infantry. She had been through the “more things in heaven and earth” argument so many times that she was disinclined to repeat it. Overhead, a single rocket bomb inscribed a white vapor-trail trajectory across the blue of the sky, and offered Cordelia a chance to change the subject. “At least we’re still pounding them from the air.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “What?”

  Neally also looked up. “That’s maybe another reason the Mosul have turned.”

  Cordelia frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Watch.”

  The rocket bomb’s engine cut out, and the projectile started to fall. It dropped faster and faster until it impacted somewhere on the far side of the wooded hills. A brief fireball rose into the air, the muffled sound of an explosion reached them, and then a column of smoke roiled up like an elongated mushroom. Cordelia attempted to gauge the distance. “It fell short?”

  “They’re all falling short. The Mosul must know they’ve moved out of effective range.”

  The rocket bombs, supplied under the lend-lease, Trans-Ocean treaty between the Norse Union and the Kingdom of Albany, had been a major factor in turning back the invaders. Although the Norse maintained a flimsy neutrality with the Mosul Empire, the exchange of aid with Albany was close to inevitable. Both peoples came from the same stock, they shared culture and customs, and spoke an approximation of the same language. Indeed, the Norse had founded the very first seafaring settlements in the Americas, but for their descendants to engage Hassan IX in open warfare was unthinkable in practical terms. The Norse were far fewer in number than the Mosul, and, even though alliance between the Scandinavian Vikings, the Scotts, the Eiren, and the English of the Islands had lasted a thousand years, they controlled a great deal less territory. The only thing that stopped the Mosul crossing the narrow waters of the English Channel and overrunning them was superior Norse technology and heavy industry. The Mosul, strangled by the constraining coils of their inflexibly brutal religion, had failed to progress. The Zhaithan priests refused to distinguish a scientist from a heretic, and stifled all research and progress. The foundries in Damascus and the Ruhr turned out cannon and musket twenty-four hours a day, but they produced only crude quantity; nothing to compare with the sophistication of the repeating rifles being developed in Birmingham and Stockholm, or the keels of the submarines being laid in the shipyards along the Clyde. Prefabricated parts of Norse gasoline-powered tanks were now crossing the Northern Ocean, being delivered to the Albany port of Manhattan by convoys of cargo ships, and then assembled in a huge roaring factory complex in the city of Brooklyn. Norse Air Corps instructors were training the crews of Albany’s first small squadron of airships, and cadres of officers from Albany were attending advanced command schools in London and Stockholm, learning the use of these new weapons on the battlefield and on the high seas. In the final months before the offensive on the Potomac, the Norse had even given Albany their new rocket bombs, and the rest had been history.

  “Can’t the launching sites be moved?”

  Tom Neally regarded the dense column of smoke in the distance. “That’s being done, but it’s a major undertaking. Building the launchers takes time.”

  Cordelia remembered the concrete ramps and the steel rails that guided the howling rockets, as their engines ignited and they raced up the track before rising into the air. The installations were major constructions, and there was no way they could be made portable. In theory, dirigible airships could be used to bomb the enemy from the sky, but, in practice, it was impossible. The rigid flying machines with their aluminum and fabric frames and helium-filled gasbags were too slow, too unwieldy, and vulnerable in the extreme to enemy ground fire. Cordelia had learned all about airship vulnerability at painful firsthand in the fall of the previous year, when the NU98 had crashed behind enemy lines with her on board. The Norse-built Hellhound triplane could carry a small bomb-load, but it was nothing compared with the devastating unmanned rocket bombs that dropped from the upper air with such deadly effect. In this coming fight, Albany would be without one of its most efficient weapons.

  “So this battle will be won or lost on the ground?”

  Neally nodded. “That’s pretty much the strength of it.”

  “So when do you and the rest of the cavalry move out?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t say.”

  Cordelia sighed with exasperation. “Oh Tom, do stop the dramatic secrecy. This is me you’re talking to.”

  “No, I really don’t know. We’re waiting for orders.”

  “Could it be today?”

  “There’s a chance of that.”

  She was suddenly anxious. “But I’ll see you tonight if you’re still here?”

  “Of course.”

  Three riders from Neally’s regiment galloped past, and Neally leaned impulsively forward and kissed Cordelia. “Something’s happening. I have to go.”
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br />   He turned the bay, and put his heels to it. The horse started forward, lunging as though eager to be on the move. Cordelia was always amazed how the mounts of the cavalry were so eager for the fight, when the noise and carnage of the battlefield should have repelled all of their natural instincts. Neally turned in the saddle for a final wave. His saber slapped against the bay’s flank. The image froze in Cordelia’s mind like a still picture. His schoolboy grin, and his broad back in its khaki tunic, with scarlet shoulder boards. She swallowed hard at the sickening realization that the chance existed she would never see him again, and that would be how her memory would always see him. She wasn’t in love with Tom Neally, but he was fun. A threat of tears constricted her throat. The gray gelding seemed to sense her unease and again pawed at the ground.

  “Easy, damn it. We’ll be on the move ourselves soon enough.”

  In the pocket of her uniform jacket, she had a pair of the new sunglasses from London, the ones with the round, dark blue lenses. She quickly put them on.

  ARGO

  A voice called from behind him. “Major?”

  Argo Weaver didn’t turn. “What is it, Riordan?”

  He knew the voice, and he didn’t bother to look round. The question was inevitable, and it was impossible to give Riordan the slip. “Should you be all the way out here on your own, young sir?”

  Argo sighed. “No, I shouldn’t be all the way out here on my own, but I’m not on my own, am I? I have you following my every move.”

  The rotund Sergeant of Horse spurred up beside him and reigned in his mount. “If you fancy going for a gallop, boy, you only have to tell me.”

  There were not too many Sergeants of Horse who would address a major as “boy,” even a somewhat spurious major like Argo Weaver, but Will Riordan was one of the few. The man rode with ease. It was walking that created problems for him. He had been injured at the Battle of the Potomac when a gun carriage had overturned on top of him, fracturing his hip, and that was why he was now assigned to keep an eye on Argo, and see that he stayed out of trouble. Since the Army of Albany had started south, Argo had tried many times to duck the ever-present eye of Sergeant Riordan, but he had never succeeded. The man was as tenacious as a terrier.

  “What the hell do you think’s going to happen to me, Will?”

  “We don’t know that, do we, Major? And that’s why the brass have me following after you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Sure you can, but why take the chance? There’s old campaigners who’ve fallen foul of a Mosul booby trap. The bastards are damned clever.”

  Each of The Four had been assigned a personal guardian, a minder for the advance into what had previously been enemy-held territory. Their strange collective command of the paranormal and their ability to penetrate and operate within other realities made them an important factor in the Albany war effort. “I mean, we can’t have you running round loose and taking the risk of running into a pod of Dark Things, or some sneaky Mosul rearguard.”

  All of The Four found this imposed caution irksome. At first, a great deal of pressure had been brought to bear not to allow them to go south with the army at all. Many of the civilian politicians and a few of the generals had wanted them to remain in Albany, supposedly out of harm’s way. After the long winter of grueling training, and the exploration of their powers that had, on occasion, proved close to mind-snapping, none of them was inclined to be left back with the baggage. They had made vocal protests to Yancey Slide and anyone else in authority who would listen. They were trained and combat-hardened. They had held the underground tunnel during the Battle of the Potomac and they had saved the King from the last ditch assault of the Mothmen during the investiture ceremony that had followed. If the war was moving south, what possible reason was there for Albany’s most effective paranormal asset to stay behind under wraps? Cordelia had finally made a personal appeal to no less than Prime Minister Jack Kennedy. Cordelia had her own, slightly mysterious, direct line to the Prime Minister. Rumors had long been whispered about an ancient affair between Kennedy and Cordelia’s mother. Whatever the truth behind the gossip, she seemed to have the required influence. Kennedy had instructed that they should ride with the army, and, at that point, the argument had ceased, leaving only an insistence from all sides that they should be afforded round-the-clock protection.

  Cordelia had also been the first one to balk at the constant for-their-own-good surveillance. On the march down to Richmond, she had been assigned a skinny, masculine RWA corporal, who rode a rawboned, bad-tempered mare that made them two of a kind. Cordelia had, however, become so adept at giving the woman the slip that Slide had devised the ruse of putting a young cavalry captain called Tom Neally in charge of her safety and welfare. He and Cordelia had immediately become lovers, which made Neally’s assignment considerably easier. The two of them had been fucking each other’s brains out every night since the army had passed Richmond. Cordelia actually believed she was being the soul of discretion, and she had everyone fooled, but the truth was that most of the high command, plus a majority of their fellow officers, were well aware of what was going on. Argo knew from months of experience that Cordelia could be totally carried away by illusions of her own excessive cleverness.

  Raphael and Jesamine, the other two members of The Four, seemed less bothered by the watch that was kept on them. Very little seemed to bother Raphael. The taciturn and withdrawn Hispanian had been a Mosul conscript the previous fall, and Argo could only assume that just about anything would be acceptable after being dragged from his home when barely in his teens, beaten and bullied through Mosul boot camp, and then shipped across the Northern Ocean in an ironclad troopship to serve as cannon fodder in the American war. Through the winter, Argo and Raphael had trained together, bunked together, and even, on a couple of occasions, drunk themselves stupid together, but Argo still did not feel that he really knew his young companion. It may have been a legacy of Raphael having served in Hassan IX’s Provincial Levies, or maybe just a facet of his deep and complex nature, but a part of his character seemed to be permanently concealed, even to those who were supposed to be closest to him. He drew in his sketch pad and said little, and no overtures or encouragement seemed able to change that.

  Argo could hardly say that he did not know Jesamine. They had started sleeping together almost as soon as the two of them had joined the ranks of Albany, and, although he was loath to admit such a thing openly, she had been his first extended relationship and only the second woman he had ever bedded. Although she was less than a year older than him, the nightmare experience she had suffered as a Mosul prostitute and the concubine of a brutal Teuton colonel had left her with a wealth of carnal experience he might never equal. She had been his erotic mentor, teaching him lessons, and raising him to heights of pleasure that had left him awed. They had shared a hundred secrets and a thousand intimacies, and, for a time, Argo had worshiped her huge dark eyes, her lithe, honey-colored body, and long dark hair, but she, too, seemed to keep a part of her mind closed off. Argo suspected, though, that the same could be said about him. He knew that he had never revealed everything about himself to Jesamine, even at the height of their shared passion. This may well have been a result of also having lived under the harsh rule of the Mosul invaders, when so much had to be concealed just in order to survive, and it could also have been the reason that Cordelia, who had never lived that way, chaffed so hard under the current surveillance while he, Jesamine, and Raphael were more able to take it in their stride.

  Jesamine had also taught Argo to drink, passing on the fruits of her long experience, when alcohol had been the easiest and most available way to provide a little insulation between herself and her innate revulsion at being a chattel of the conquerors. At first the drunken nights had been fun—high as kites, rolling and sliding together in bed or elsewhere, their bodies slick with mingled sweat—but then the training of The Four had started, and the affair had ended. Argo and Jesamine had
parted on the specific orders of Yancey Slide, their inhuman mentor, but Argo and Jesamine had always known this was the way that it would be. All of The Four knew from experience that sexual energy was one of the metaphysical triggers of their power, and an exclusive romance between two of them simply could not be if they were to function as was expected of them. Knowledge, and the demands of what they had become in this world and the Other Place, did not make the separation any easier. For the first time, Argo had turned to alcohol for solace. Drinking was an after-hours refuge from the emotional pain of having to see Jesamine for most of every day, but never being able to touch except as their duties dictated, and never to feel or taste her. His drinking had caused a certain consternation on the part of Raphael, with whom he shared quarters, but it had seemed better than living with a constant hurt, and mercifully the young and less-than-outgoing young Hispanian had not made mention of it to anyone else. Yancey Slide could hardly have been unaware of Argo’s newfound taste for the bottle, but he had also said nothing, and, now that they had started on the march south, Riordan, who watched him constantly, also knew his secret and attempted to ensure that Argo did not indulge to any greater extent than the other young officers who thronged the expedition’s mess tents every night.