A Band of Brothers

by William R. Forstchen

  “Maybe as he feels better,” Pat offered. “Emil said his strength will come back quick now he’s on the mend.”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. He says once he’s well enough to move he wants to go back to Suzdal to our home to recover there.” She hesitated. “To hide there.”

  The last three words were spoken softly, her voice hollow.

  “Don’t lose respect for all that he is, Kathleen.”

  “No,” she whispered, “it’s just that though I’ll always love him I feel now as if the Andrew I knew is dead and there’s but a shadow left of all that he once was. God knows I didn’t love him for being the colonel, the leader, the hero. I loved him for what he was. The gentle soul, but the lion beneath, the strength covered with gentleness. Now it’s but a hollow core, as if he’s already turned to dust.”

  “I think only you can bring him back,” Pat whispered.

  Her features darkened.

  “Don’t do that to me,” she snapped angrily. “Emil said the same damn thing. Don’t do that to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Kathleen, but it’s true.”

  She lowered her head and turned away, then reached into her apron and pulled out a bundle of dispatches.

  “Emil told me a supply monitor had come in, and I went upstairs and took your dispatches, to wave them under Andrew’s nose and get his interest. He ignored them and told me to give them to you. I read a couple of them, Pat, hope you don’t mind, and that’s why I sent a messenger up to you.”

  Pat did not want to admit that the arrival of the messenger had been a relief, a reason to return back. That thought made him realize that he too was strung to the edge. He had never liked dark confined places. A glorious fight was one for a spring day’s afternoon, rolling fields, a clear range ahead, shining cannons lined hub to hub and battery guidons fluttering in the breeze. Ah now, that was lovely, pretty as a picture, the way war should always be, not the filth, the crawling through sewers that were like the guts of a dark coiling beast crammed with offal. The fires, the darkness, the stench … he blocked the thought out.

  There was a knock on the door, and without waiting for a reply Emil came in.

  “So you’ve talked to him?” Emil asked him, looking over at Kathleen, who was drying her tears.

  Pat nodded.

  “Give it time,” Emil announced. “He still might come around.”

  “And do you believe that?”

  Emil hesitated, Kathleen looking straight at him, and he finally shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m a doctor of bodies,” Emil said, “not minds. We always knew the mind could control how a body heals. We knew as well that hurts to the body could hurt the mind. I’ve seen wounds worse than Andrew’s and a month later the boy was eager for another brawl. I’ve seen mere scratches and a veteran of a dozen battles would curl up on his cot and cry like an infant or threaten to kill himself if he got sent back to the front. Strange to kill oneself rather than face at least the chance of still living.”

  “So you don’t know, is that it?”

  “That’s about it, Pat. Andrew was made of stern stuff. Good Maine Yankee stock. Same kind of stock made men like Ames, Chamberlain, even old Howard—though some boys didn’t like him, he still had courage. Maybe something will change, rekindle the fire that’s burned ' out.”

  He lowered his head. “Then again …” His voice trailed off.

  “Kathleen, I’ll need you in a few minutes, and it’s time to change the bandages. Why don’t you go and start in.”

  She forced a smile, kissed Pat on the cheek, then hurried out.

  “She’s on the edge too,” Emil sighed.

  “We all are.”

  “How was it up there this morning?”

  “Bloody nightmare. Never seen fighting like it. Emil, it’s a whole different kind of war from anything we’ve fought before. These new grenades, fire in the sewers, hand-to-hand fighting through the ruins. Something’s changing.”

  “The machines are changing us, Pat. It’s always been that way before, but now it happens faster and faster.”

  “Well, I wish to God we could go back to what we were. It was cleaner then.”

  “Oh really?” Emil asked sarcastically. “The wounds still look the same, except maybe for the burns. It was hell then, it’s hell now.”

  Pat collapsed onto a chair, opened up the package of dispatches, and started to thumb through them.

  He stopped, holding the first few sheets up to the light so he could see them more clearly.

  “What is it?” Emil asked.

  “That boy, that damned boy.”

  “Who, Hawthorne?”

  Pat, mumbling a steady stream of curses, held the papers up to Emil, who adjusted his glasses and slowly thumbed through the report.

  “He’s going off half cocked. This was never talked about,” Pat said coldly. “And besides, that equipment was to be kept in reserve or committed to this front.”

  “Well, you are in a fix here,” Emil replied. “We’re using everything faster than it can be resupplied. Civilians already on half rations. Unless there’s a miracle and the spring thaw comes a month early, we’ll run out of supplies before Ha’ark.”

  “He never talked to me about this, or to Andrew, to anyone. Besides, Hans will undoubtedly tell him to go to hell. The boy’s crazy, and he has no business doing this.”

  Emil chuckled. “Well, if I understand my organization correctly, you command what is now First Army, Hans Second Army, and Andrew is overall command, and Vincent is chief of staff.”

  “Andrew just resigned,” Pat snapped. “He said I was in command now.”

  “And will you accept that?”

  Pat wearily shook his head.

  “Not until he’s had more time to think about it. Not one word of that is to be public, Emil.”

  Emil smiled. “Well now, this is a dilemma. If the commander is not present or is temporarily incapacitated, the chief of staff runs the show, following the orders given him by his commander. If that’s the case, I think Vincent’s within his rights to act. Now if you do accept command, then you can stop this, but I daresay that will be one hell of a public showdown between you and our young Mr. Hawthorne.”

  “I remember when that Quaker boy was a frightened private.”

  “He isn’t now.”

  “It violates Andrew’s intent to build up a strategic reserve with our new weapons, and besides that, it’s suicide. Hans will never do it.”

  “Well, according to this, he’s with Hans right now, and the equipment is being moved even as you and I sit here and fume. So what are you going to do about it? Go back in and tell Andrew? Hell, he’ll roll over, face the wall, and tell you to decide.”

  “One hell of a mess,” Pat growled. “If I can get my hands on Vincent I’ll skin him alive, I’ll bust him back down to the ranks. There’s no way in hell they can pull this one off. I remember Andrew and me talking about something like this earlier, even using the same road, but we figured no ironclads could make it that far and infantry out in the open would get cut to pieces.”

  “Let’s look at it this way,” Emil grinned. “By the time you get hold of him, either we’ll have won and the point will be meaningless, or we’ll all be roasting in some damn Bantag pit, or better yet in hell.”

  “Then I’ll hire on as a demon and chase the mad son of a bitch forever.”

  Peering through a narrow firing slit dug into the earthworks once held by the humans, Ha’ark raised his captured field glasses and carefully scanned the ruins of the city. Jurak was right, it was like the wars of the False Pretender back on the old world, the Battles of Pakana and the siege of Kalinarak. The battle before him seethed and writhed all across the entire east bank of the city right up to the old walls, which still held firm. In the cauldron between the old walls and where he now had his forward command post, over ten umens were now engaged, fighting what he estimated to be four of the seven umens of the humans.


  They were grinding them down, but his army was wearing down as well. His warriors, only short years before, dreamed of battle in open array, pennants flying, sword, lance, and bow, the kill an act of glory for all his comrades to witness. Now it was war almost as he knew it from before, street by street, take a block only to lose it an hour later when hidden enemies crawled back up out of the rubble from behind, and then we do the same to them.

  His warriors could no longer understand this. They had been driven by the lust of the kill, and the killing had indeed been good in the first two days when tens of thousands had been rounded up and butchered, but now all that was left was the human warriors, and they hid their dead, dragging them away or deliberately burning them.

  He knew now it was a question of who would be exhausted first, whose will would crumble under the strain. He could withdraw out of this madness. The enemy would still be pinned here. Pull back thirty miles, rest his army for half a score of days, then send them in two wings, one south into the vast areas of the Roum territory not yet occupied and another wing westward. The two umens he had sent across the vast open wastelands were worse than useless along the fringes of the Rus lands. Ten umens would slice through and devastate their lands. That would break the will of the defenders of this city and serve, his plan of dividing them against each other.

  But always it was logistics as well. If I send ten umens west, he thought, one pitched battle will exhaust their ammunition, with no hope of bringing up more. Split my army into two wings, and the scum inside this city could move against my blocking force, push it back, and cut off the umens sent to Rus.

  And as for supplies, nearly all the stockpiles so laboriously moved up were exhausted. Without the daily arrival of the trains the battle would be finished. Even now he was carefully rationing the ammunition, using enough to keep up the pressure but setting a bit aside each day for the one final strike.

  Yet there were ten more umens pinned down against the three of Hans Schuder. Call them back? By the time they arrived here, the issue would be decided.

  Cursing under his breath, he realized that he was as stuck in this battle as his human opponents. Neither side now wanted it, neither side could withdraw, one had to prevail.

  Walking down the gangplank, Hans took a deep breath, glad to be out of the choking stench of the monitor. The morning was crisp, clear, the promise of another cold day. Turning, he watched as the side-wheeled steamer gingerly edged up to the shore, ice floes cracking and parting underneath it.

  A heavy landing plank was laid down, there was the roar of a steam whistle, and with studded wheels digging into the decking the first of the ironclads skidded down the planking and rolled onto the dock.

  The small port of Padua, tucked into a long bay of the Inland Sea that jutted into the mountains, was nothing more than a rude village, the terminus of a partially completed narrow-gauge rail line that snaked up into the hills and to the marble and granite quarries a hundred miles away. The quarries had been the main source of stone for the vast Roum building projects, and stone had been cut there a thousand years before the arrival of the regiment. The rock had then been laboriously dragged down the road to this port, loaded, and then shipped up to Roum. Marcus, to the disgust of the army, had managed to vote in an allocation to build the narrow-gauge line to speed up the hauling of stone, claiming it was a strategic necessity, but the line had only been half completed before the resurgence of the war. If only the material wasted here had been used for the running of the rails eastward, Hans thought, things might have been different. But now, who knew, it might make a difference after all.

  A second steamship, edging in by the first, started to offload as well. The dock, designed to hold heavy slabs of stone, barely moved under the weight of the ironclads that slowly paraded past.

  Hans walked to the end of the dock, watching as one of the ironclads turned and edged up onto a loading platform. The narrow-gauge train had four diminutive flatcars behind it. It would take eight runs to haul the thirty ironclads fifty miles up the line, where they would be off-loaded and then have to move the rest of the distance under their own steam. Fifty miles saved on wear and tear might be crucial, but still, it would take several days to get the job done before they could actually start the advance, and every minute now was precious.

  Along a second dock another ship was unloading two regiments of infantry. Hans watched as the men formed up, burdened down with a heavy load of ten days’ rations and a hundred rounds of ammunition, and started up the road that led into the forest.

  The echo of axes thundered in a glen, and Hans turned, climbing up the gentle slope, stopping as a tree came crashing down, men shouting. A team of horses plodded by, dragging a log, already notched for placement in the makeshift fortress being constructed on the heights overlooking the narrow bay and the landing strip being laid out on a sandy spit of land.

  “Hans!”

  He looked back down at the trail and saw Vincent, mounted, reining in.

  “We’re already five miles up the trail. It’s like that Roum officer said—a fairly good road. Now if he’s on his mark, there should be bridges most of the way. I’ve already got a mounted unit forging ahead. Once we move the ironclads up, I should be up there within four days, six at the most.”

  “You?” Hans asked quietly. Without even having to make a gesture his headquarters company, led by his loyal friend Ketswana, came walking over.

  Vincent paused, looking around.

  “Now Hans, there was never any talk of this.”

  “Now Vincent Hawthorne, I think it is time to talk of it.”

  Vincent drew up stiffly.

  “Hans Schuder, as chief of staff I thought this idea up. I am senior to you according to how the army is organized, and I should lead it.”

  Hans, with almost a gentle look, reached out and took the reins of Vincent’s horse and turned it about, leading him off the road while an ironclad chugged past. Colonel Timokin was up in the turret, grinning.

  “Hell of a machine, a hell of a machine!” he laughed, saluting.

  The two returned the salute, then looked at each other.

  “Son, I’ve had twenty years more experience than you,” Hans said softly, lowering his voice so no one else would hear. “I was commanding before you were even thought of.”

  “The hell with that, Hans.”

  “Next point then,” Hans said, obviously having planned his argument. “You know what the political situation is back in Rus. You might be the only person your father-in-law will listen to now. You are needed back there to keep an eye on things. Suppose the Bantag decide to throw an extra five umens westward? If you’re not there, I think Kal might quit.”

  “My staff can handle that.”

  “All right, Hawthorne, let’s try this. I’m getting old, Pat isn’t much behind. With Andrew down, we might lead things for a while, but then it’s you, son. Andrew had you picked long ago, I think even back as far as when we fought the Tugars. You’re him, son. I could see that in you—the next Andrew Keane for this world.”

  “Thank you,” Vincent whispered, but his expression was still grim.

  “You need, though, to learn an edge of softness, that’s all. Unfortunately you remind me of Sheridan as well, right down to that ridiculous little tuft of chin whiskers and mustache. Good officer, Sheridan, but a bit too much of the hard killer edge to him. I know what they did to you, the wounds, the pain. Hell, I spent years as a slave to the bastards. It’s just this—if you get killed, then who leads?”

  “I won’t get killed.”

  “It won’t be easy up there. You’re barely recovered, you can hardly sit a horse, and every step must be agony. You need time to heal, boy. Suppose you get halfway up then you give out? Then what?”

  “I can manage,” Vincent replied softly.

  “Fine then,” Hans said, and he looked back at Ketswana, commander of his headquarters company. “You pulled a division from my line down in Tyre for th
is. We could spare it, and the Bantag don’t know we did it. But Vincent, this is my division. They’ve fought under me for three months now, they retreated with me from our defensive line all the way to Tyre. The boys will fight for me, but if you try and force the issue of who is in command I’ll tell them to halt.”

  “Hans, that’s mutiny!”

  Hans smiled. “Call it what you want. Nothing will happen in Tyre for a while—they can spare me. Suzdal can’t spare you. And one other thing. Bullfinch back there in his monitor, he’s got orders to take you back and not me, so that settles it. The admiral’s with me, the men are with me.”

  Vincent started to sputter, and Hans smiled in a fatherly way.

  “Mr. Hawthorne, a bit of advice to a general.”

  “What the hell is it?”

  “Fight only the battles you can win. If you can’t, withdraw quickly and with grace.”

  Vincent seemed to slump in the saddle.

  “Now there’s no shame, boy. My suggestion would be that the official report read that after serious consultation between you and me it was realized that your presence in securing the defense of Rus and the management of our factories was far more important to the war effort. Also, that since the front at Tyre was serving its purpose of diverting enemy troops but offensive operations could not yet be mounted, it was felt safe to briefly release one division and myself to lead this expedition.”

  “Sounds like you wrote it out already.”

  “I did,” Hans said with a grin, handing up a penciled note.

  Vincent seemed to collapse, and Hans, offering his hand, helped him down from his mount.

  “I have to admit,” Vincent whispered, “I didn’t know if I could stand this march, but I had to try.”

  “It would have killed you for certain, I could see that, and the men would see it too, son. Go home, heal. There will be more than enough fighting come spring.”

  Vincent reluctantly nodded. Taking off the map case that was hung over his shoulder, he opened it up and pulled out a detailed sketch of the region.