by Mick Farren
Jesamine smiled alluringly and reached for the coffee pot. “Jesamine, my lord. My name is Jesamine.”
“I’m not a lord, my dear. Just a commoner like yourself. Am I right in thinking you’re the one who just escaped from the Teutons?”
“That’s right.”
“You must tell me the whole story some time soon.”
Cordelia realized that she was seeing the famous and so seductive Kennedy charm in operation. Even at his advanced age and with his long grey hair, the man had a certain magnetism. When young, he must have been irresistible.
Patton was fuming. “I’m sorry, Prime Minister, but I really have to take Lady Blakeney into custody. I feel enough time has been wasted here.”
John Kennedy sipped his coffee. “I also am sorry, Colonel, but I have to tell you that you won’t be taking Lady Blakeney anywhere. Greater considerations have to be balanced here than just a minor matter of RWA discipline.”
“Desertion is no minor matter.”
“We all know that she went for an airship ride, and the train of events ran totally out of control. She has returned to us with vital information and will remain attached to my staff, or the Rangers, for an indefinite period.
Patton huffed. “I can’t just ignore these charges.”
“Then you will put them on hold, Patton. Perhaps until the war is over. The great leveler of national security has closed over you.”
Patton contained her fury, but not to the point that she could speak, especially after Jesamine had stuck out her tongue at her. She turned and made for the exit, followed by her frowning MPs. At the door, she found her voice. “I didn’t vote for you, Prime Minister.”
After Patton was gone, Slide looked slowly round the table. “I suppose that will serve to keep people guessing and confuse Mosul intelligence.”
John Kennedy lit a cigar. “You know, Slide, you have an inhuman nerve. No one asks the prime minister to come to them.”
“These are extraordinary circumstances, John.”
“That’s the only reason I’m here.”
T’saya helped herself to one of Slide’s cheroots. “You’re looking old, John.”
“I am old, my dear T’saya.”
“You still recognize me?”
Kennedy adopted an expression of ancient innocence. “How could I not?”
“You stood me up a lot of years ago, John.”
“And I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“You’re a bullshit artist, John.”
Kennedy smile sadly. He suddenly looked tired. “That I am. I can’t lie to you.”
“You could lie to anyone. That’s what makes you such a brilliant politician.”
“Am I a brilliant politician?”
“One of the most brilliant. Are you still making overtures to Cetshwayo V to start a second front in Africa?”
“Are you still spying for him?”
T’saya’s eyes became blank. “I never spied for Cetshwayo.”
“No?”
“Cetshwayo is as much of a bloody despot as Hassan IX. If it wasn’t for his absurdly traditionalist loathing of firearms and how they spoil the pure nature of warfare as it was conceived by the great Chaka, we’d all be in a mess of trouble.”
Raphael and Jesamine glanced at each other. Rumors regularly circulated in the Mosul world of the mysterious and primitive Zulu Hegemony in the southern half of Africa, of how Mamaluke expeditions seeking slaves and ivory had been put to flight by ZH impis, and Teuton prospecting teams had been slaughtered all save one man, who had been sent back to Hassan to tell the tale. Obviously, if the Zulu formations moved north, the emperor would have to pull troops from the Americas to contain their advance, and Albany would be the beneficiary. With the Mosul they were told nothing, and life was severe but simple. In Albany, you heard so much that the world became a large and complicated place.
T’saya smiled. “I may of course have let slip a few crumbs of information to people who were going that way, but I work for no one.”
“Twelve years among the Mamalukes, and you work for no one?”
T’saya’s smile broadened. “I have my own agendas, John Kennedy.”
“And what might they be?”
“Now, wouldn’t you like to know?”
Cordelia’s eggs were cold, but suddenly she didn’t care. Patton had been sent on her way and would not be bothering her again. Slide was able to pull no less than the prime minister out of his hat to protect her. Cordelia was aware that she was important. Not only by birth or connection, but on the strength who she was and these strange new shared powers. She was at the very center of world events. She was sitting at the table with the prime minister of Albany, a reputed demon who could step sideways in time, and a strange old woman who had lived among the Mamalukes to further her own mysterious and probably mystic interests. Later she would find herself standing on the battlements as the Mosul commenced their advance, and only then did she realize that much was going to be demanded of her for all this protection and attention.
As the guns of Albany roared out, and Cordelia began to believe that her hearing was going to be permanently impaired, she looked up and saw a tiny blue object in the sky. A spotter plane was high above the battle. She could picture the excited young man, with helmet and goggles, wrapped in fur and leather against the chill of the heavens, looking down like a visiting angel on the explosions and the carnage, and she was suddenly seized by a sense of loss for her own airman, and the memory of how she, too, had looked down from the clouds at the world below. Then shock gripped her as the plane seemed to falter and fall. Please, no. She did not want to witness another crash or be a party to the death of another aviator. The aircraft appeared to be plunging straight down. Had it been hit by a well-aimed or lucky Mosul bullet, or had the machinery somehow malfunctioned? Only when it leveled out and flew straight did Cordelia realize that the pilot had been in control all the time. As the plane skimmed over the Mosul, she recognized its triple-winged triplane configuration from one of the aircraft identification outlines that she had been compelled to memorize during RWA basic training. The machine, known as a Hellhound, had almost certainly been prefabricated in the Norse Union but assembled in Brooklyn, so it now wore the proud shield of the Crowned Bear on its wings and fuselage. The pilot dropped a token pair of small bombs and then climbed again to less dangerous altitudes as his two small explosions were added to the general thunder of fire and flame.
ARGO
The enemy guns were slow to fire in response or even in support of the infantry that was preparing to cross the river in the hardest way possible. The Albany bombardment had been going on for a full five minutes before a line of Mosul howitzers on a ridge to the east tore into the Albany earthworks that were directly opposite them. He could hear men on the Albany side screaming for medical attention, and he knew then that the war, in which no quarter was going to be received, given, or even expected, had started in earnest. The Mosul now swarmed at the water’s edge, and, despite the barrage and the hail of small arms’ fire that blazed from the Albany banks, engineers were moving pontoons into place and laying prefabricated lengths of wooden roadway to form a dozen or more swaying and makeshift bridges that, when completed, would carry men and machines across the river. The bridgework was a slow, and, in many cases, suicidal task. The bridge builders were instant and obvious targets, as were the squads of riflemen who advanced onto each new section directly it was secure and used it as a firing platform, discharging volleys over the heads of the sappers as the next section was moved into place and they advanced a dozen yards closer to Albany.
The slow chop of heavy Bergman guns cut down the infantry on the bridges like sweeps of an invisible scythe, while the sappers in the water were picked off by sharpshooters or decimated by concentrated rifle fire, but no matter how intense the carnage, more Mosul moved relentlessly forward to take the place of those who had fallen. Gaping holes were blown in the structures by mortar and artillery sh
ells, but the engineers went right back to work like some mutant hybrid of man, ant, and beaver, repairing the damage and, at the same time, extending their agonizingly slow path of conquest. Now Argo could see quite clearly how the Mosul had gained both their fearsome reputation for tenacity and their total control of half the Old World. They never stopped coming and, no matter how many thousands might be cut down, more were always waiting to climb over the dead and continue the attack.
The enemy strategy did not rely entirely on bridging the Potomac to bring its assault troops across. At the same time as the pontoons were being manhandled into place, an armada of rafts, flat-bottomed barges, and low-to-the-water riverboats was being launched all along the Mosul-held bank, and each was loaded to capacity with men and weapons. Some proved overloaded and quickly foundered, sinking humiliatingly in the shallows. More made it to somewhere around midstream but were then sunk by Albany gunners. Some even approached the Albany banks but were either blasted to matchwood by light four-inch field guns firing cannister from the riverside emplacements, or their occupants were hacked to death by the constant coughing of the Bergmans. Within minutes of the start of the assault, the Potomac was a mass of the floating dead and living men struggling desperately to save themselves from drowning between the leaping waterspouts that marked the impact of shells from both sides. A few of the craft actually reached their objectives. Mosul soldiers splashed onto dry ground and dived for any cover they could. The first across lived only a few minutes, with the Albany defenders allowing them no time to even dig in at the water’s edge. One squad did have enough time to set up a trench mortar and wreak a degree of havoc before they were blown back into the river.
A steam-driven fighting machine had been laboriously maneuvered onto an especially large raft that was surrounded with huge steel barrels for extra buoyancy and now moved sluggishly out into the current. If the mechanical monster was able to gain a foothold on the Albany side, it would be hard to dislodge and could provide the cover for maybe hundreds of men to reach the north bank and press the attack. A direct hit from an artillery shell smashed the raft, and, as the battle tank majestically submerged, its boiler burst, adding one more explosion of noise to the general cacophony. Argo’s life seemed to have gone into high gear since he had arrived in Albany. He had seen Cordelia nearly arrested, and he had met the prime minister, and now he was watching the full might of the Mosul hurling itself at the place that he had so recently accepted as his home.
Argo had never imagined that war would be so loud. The Mosul artillery may have been slow to start, but now every enemy gun seemed to be in action, and, as the earth shook, it was Albany’s turn to face the smack of hot metal and the roar of high explosives. The gunners across the river did not seem to be particularly accurate, but, when firing at full strength, there were so many of them that it hardly mattered. With the din of battle all round him, the shells that, aimed too high, whistled overhead and exploded somewhere in the rear failed to connect with Argo as any kind of personal danger. He had no sense of invincibility. He simply did not make the correlation between the sound and the possibility of his own death. Then a single shell hit the wall on which they were standing. The blast was not a powerful one, and it did little damage, but the rain of falling debris did drop on the Four, and also Dunbar and his officers, who grabbed their hats and ducked. It was enough to convince the spectators that they were unquestionably at risk and a withdrawal to more effective cover was in order. The field telephone was gathered up, and the Albany High Command beat a pragmatic retreat to the blockhouse in the rear of the wall. Argo in no way questioned the courage of the field marshal and his people. During the past conflicts, Dunbar had proved his bravery enough times in the field, and a supreme commander is not expected to stand around and allow himself to be blown up just to prove a point. Argo simply saw no reason that he should do the same. He wanted to see it all in every facet of its terrible majesty. Cordelia and Jesamine also seemed ready to depart for a safer location, but Raphael looked to be of the same mind as him. The two boys were not only watching their first battle at first hand, but it was a battle that, whichever way it went, would be recorded as a turning point in history. Why should they leave on account of a little danger? What they really wanted was guns in their hands and parts of their own to play.
Then Yancey Slide was beside them, shouting above the racket. “What the hell do you two idiots think you’re doing? Are you looking to get killed?”
Argo shook his head and gestured to the spectacle in front of them, hardly comprehending what Slide was saying. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
“Unfortunately, I have. Many times, and considerably worse into the bargain. Now take cover. I didn’t bring you all the way across occupied Virginia to have you blown apart by a stray shell.”
Both Argo and Raphael stared at Slide in amazement. “We can’t just run away.”
Slide’s eyes flashed angrily. “I’m not asking you to run away. I’m just telling you that you’re no use here. You’re needed as something other than cannon fodder, and I want you in one piece.”
“We’ll look like cowards.”
“Right now you look like damn fools.” Slide grabbed both boys roughly, one shoulder each, and propelled them after the girls, who were already making good their escape. “Get to safety right now, or I’ll throw you off this damned wall myself.”
JESAMINE
“Why the hell were you boys arguing with Slide? You wanted to stay out in all that?”
At least Raphael and Argo had the good grace to look shamefaced. “I guess we got a bit too caught up in the excitement.”
Now Cordelia started. “You find all that killing exciting?”
Argo and Raphael attempted to explain the attraction of the moving men and the thunder of conflict but quickly realized that they were wasting their time. The Four were back in the house where they were quartered. In peacetime it had been the manor house of a village called Forest Heights, but, with the Mosul so close, the original owners had evacuated, and the army had taken it over and added extensive fortifications and a network of connecting bunkers to convert it into a command center and a lodging place, just in the rear of the Potomac defenses, for generals and distinguished visitors. A mile-long tunnel had been constructed that connected the manor with the main blockhouse, a dark and echoing cement tube with its own clanking system of rack and pinion subway cars, and that was how the Four had returned to the manor from the front when Slide had ordered them down from the wall. The village of Forest Heights had also grown beyond all prewar recognition. It had been made the railhead for the hastily constructed rail line that ran from the front all of the fifty miles to Baltimore, putting just two hours between the fighting and the supplies being shipped in through the road and river links of Albany’s most southern and strategically crucial city. Locomotives hauling boxcars and passenger carriages arrived and departed all day and night, while men and munitions were shuttled the rest of the way to the river, both overland, by trucks that ran in constant convoy, and through the tunnel on the railcars, and since the Mosul assault had begun, previously idle ambulances and hospital trains were now worked to capacity bringing out the wounded.
Although the Four were away from the front line, the battle still made itself thoroughly felt. The floor constantly shook from the recoil of the rear artillery batteries, and sharper shocks followed the sound of any large explosion. Constant pandemonium was one factor of the battlefield that Jesamine should have anticipated but had not. Even though they were out of immediate sight of the conflict, there was no way that they could relax or put the reality of the nearby combat out of their minds. Slide might have brought them away from the fighting, but that did not mean that they were going to sit out the assault in the comfort of the rear. The boys had defended their wanting to stay on the wall by claiming it was a sense of duty that held them there. “I mean, how could we run away when men were dying out there?”
“We have anoth
er duty to perform, and that’s to get our own end of things in order.” Jesamine felt uncharacteristically unbending as she spoke, and something of a shrew, but she knew what she was saying had to be said. The Four had a power, but, as yet, they had been unable to focus their energy or direct it to a purpose. Jesamine had already communicated her feeling to Cordelia, and Cordelia seemed to agree that very little of any practical use was being done, and the boys were spending too much useless time swaggering around in their Ranger uniforms, although Jesamine privately considered that Cordelia did more than enough swaggering of her own. As a collective consciousness, or whatever they were supposed to be, they had only managed to keep returning to what they had started to call the Gold Rectangle. They could link hands and find their way to that first place of blazing light that they had accessed so briefly back in the Zhaithan Bunker, when the power had seemingly located them, but the imperative to escape had left them no time to explore. Now, with a little more time on their hands, they found they were unable to explore. They could enter the place of inexplicable geometry, linear energy, and black emptiness, but they could still find no perception or perspective to use for movement or location. The implacable right angles still stood at ninety degrees to each other, on and on to infinity, and refused to bend or make any accommodation for the Four. All keys eluded them, and no doors opened to permit them to advance into what they now all called the Other Place. Jesamine was certain that they had not completed the process that would make them truly operate as one, and she was equally certain that she was not alone in her belief.
“I think we have to talk about the problem right now.”
Raphael attempted to play innocent. “What problem?”
“The one that we’ve all been thinking about, but no one has quite liked to mention.”
Argo looked up from staring at his boot, something he had been doing since Jesamine had castigated him for supposedly enjoying the violence. “What no one is talking about is ‘bonding in the old manner.’”
