A Band of Brothers

by William R. Forstchen

  “This bay is a hundred and fifty miles southeast of Roum,” Vincent explained, tracing out the details. “This was an old road to the quarries the Roum cut years ago. It’ll take you northeastward for just over eighty miles. I’ll tell my guide Tigranius to report to you. He grew up here and worked as a teamster on this road.”

  “Now, you’re certain the road can handle ironclads once we reach the end of the narrow-gauge track?”

  “At the end of the track it’s only thirty-five miles to the quarry. They were hauling wagons with ten-, twenty- ton blocks of marble and limestone on it, so I think it’ll manage the ironclads. Tigranius swears that most of the bridges are made of stone, and you know how good these Roum are at building roads and bridges. You’ll be right at the crest of what we called the Green Mountains when you reach the quarry.”

  “And you don’t think the Bantag have occupied it?”

  “There might be patrols, but no, I doubt it. Small units of Roum mounted infantry were pulling back up into the hills to harass the Bantag supply line and block the passes so refugees might find some safe havens. Last report coming down this road was the Bantag were holding at the pass ten miles beyond the quarry, where the Ebro River cuts through the mountains. Chances are they don’t even know that the quarry exists. They’re nervous about pushing too far away from the railroad.”

  Vincent traced out a line on the map.

  “This will be the hard part. You leave the quarry and follow the road that continues northeast down to the pass where the road drops out of the mountains and into the Ebro River Valley. The road is a couple miles up from the river, and there it turns north. Chances are that’s where you’ll first run into the Bantag.

  “Once you push them aside, the alert will be out. It’s twenty-five miles from there to the railroad bridge over the Ebro, all of it open ground. There are some good roads there, old Roum roads, so you should be able to move fast.”

  Hans nodded, studying the map.

  “You want the main bridge here over the Ebro. It’s a span of nearly two hundred yards. Most likely a lot of slaves there. I suspect it’s a major turnaround depot as well. A fairly large town went up there when we built the railroad. There’s a scattering of villages in the area as well—it was rich farmland.”

  “This bridge over the Ebro, near the mountains—was it blown in the retreat?” Hans pointed to a bridge marked on the map halfway between the pass out of the mountains and the railroad line which, running east-west, bisected the open valley.

  Vincent shook his head. “Didn’t see any sense to it. It wasn’t the railroad, and we didn’t seriously try to hold the Ebro—too many fords. My reports state the bridge was left intact.”

  “If I could cross there, throw a pincer out, swing in from either side, and sweep everything up …”

  “Two columns out of touch, in cavalry country?”

  “Your whole idea is they don’t expect a raid on their line a hundred and fifty miles to the rear. Let’s go all the way, pincer in either side. Might sweep up a couple of their trains, and I suspect they don’t have that many of them.”

  Hans traced the route out, fingers sweeping to either side of the river. “We sweep out wide, then close in following the railroad, reuniting where the track crosses the river.”

  Vincent shrugged. “Well, you stole the operation from me. You decide.”

  “Now don’t go angry on me, lad. If this scheme works, it’s your credit. No one else thought it up. Son, that’s what a good staffs supposed to do. A bit of a weakness of Andrew’s. Build up a stronger staff, train the lads, give them a loose rein once you trust them, and let them do all the planning.”

  Vincent smiled at the lecture.

  “Like you to teach me if we get out of this one, Hans.”

  “Once this is all over, son.”

  “I chose this route since it’s far enough back from Ha’ark that it will take him a day or more to react once he gets the warning. Would have preferred your cutting across to Junction City, but that would have been three hundred miles, and the new ironclads, they might be an improvement, but I don’t think they could do that. Besides, this is supposed to be a good road. So you have just over a hundred and fifty miles to cover. I’ve assigned two Hornets and one Eagle to this operation. I know it tips our hand on the new designs, but you need air cover. They’re undoubtedly patrolling their flanks by air. If you get spotted before you get to the quarry, you have to come back. Do you understand me?”

  “Who’s giving the orders here, Vincent? I thought we settled this issue. I know what I’m doing, son.”

  “As chief of staff I am giving the orders, Sergeant Major Schuder, even if I’m not going up there with you,” Vincent snapped. “If he gets a day to react before you hit the rail line, he’ll have five or more umens on you and you’ll never break through.”

  “And getting out?”

  “You got two choices. Once you know he’s closing in, if you can, hightail it back up to the mountains. Bullfinch will be landing a brigade of marines here in seven days as support. They’ll have additional supplies and another two ironclads and will move up to secure your line of retreat. The other alternative is head north into the forest. There’s some small units up there—hook up and wait till spring.”

  “That means losing thirty ironclads. Like hell.”

  “Hans, chances are only ten will even make it to the railroad. Getting them back over the mountains, no chance.”

  “You’re blowing two months of production here. We’ll need those ironclads come spring.”

  “If we don’t cut Ha’ark’s supply line and break off the battle around Roum, there won’t be anything left come spring. We can’t throw the ironclads from Kev all the way over to Hispania. Committing them to Roum would be a waste. They’d get torn apart in the city, and Ha’ark most likely has his ironclads in reserve to meet ours if we should commit them there. It’s two hundred miles of open ground from Tyre to the Great Sea, and until we can put enough corps in to match those besieging umens, that would be a waste. This is the one place they can fight and do some good, so here it is.”

  Hans finally nodded in agreement. “Always kind of figured those damn smoke belchers were best for the surprise slash into the rear, that and breaking through an infantry line. All right, this is the place for them, if they can stand the climb over the mountain on icy roads.”

  “That’s why I figured a week. You got five thousand infantry for support, three hundred mounted, and the flyers. Good luck, Hans.”

  The old sergeant smiled.

  Chapter Ten

  “God have mercy, Schneid, what the hell happened?”

  Barely able to walk, needing the help of a burly sergeant, Rick Schneid staggered into the headquarters and was eased into a chair. His features were pinched, drawn; every breath seemed to be an agony.

  “Think I broke some ribs,” he whispered, and Pat turned around and snapped for a staff orderly to fetch Dr. Weiss.

  “Sewer caved in on us,” the sergeant gasped. “Half the headquarters staff are cut off behind us.”

  Pat nodded. Going to his desk, he pulled out a bottle of vodka and passed it to the sergeant, who gratefully took a long drink before passing it on to the half-dozen other survivors of Rick’s headquarters who had staggered in behind him.

  Having watched the attempted relief of 1st Corps from the observation tower, Pat was still stunned by the fiasco. The operation had started out smoothly enough, the survivors of 1st Corps moving west, back into the old city, via the sewer under one of the main thoroughfares, men of 12th Corps moving up under an adjoining line to take their place.

  It seemed, though, as if the Bantag had figured out what was going on. Just before dawn they had launched another offensive. Pincering in on the road over the access sewer being used by 12th Corps, they had poured hundreds of gallons of kerosene into the line and ignited it with heavy powder charges. Pat had tried to pass orders up for the remnants of 1st Corps to hold thei
r position, but panic had set in, men abandoning the underground passages, sprinting through the rubble, getting cut off by heavy formations of Bantag infantry who relentlessly advanced without consideration of loss. A twenty-block section, held tenaciously for three weeks, had been lost in two hours. What was left of 9th Corps and half of 4th Corps was now completely cut off, while the disorganized 12th Corps fell back to the inner wall.

  Emil came into the room, took one look at Rick, and motioned for two of his assistants to help Schneid to his feet and then tried to get his uniform off. The greatcoat was slipped off, but when they tried to remove his tightly fitted twelve-button jacket he gasped with pain. One of the men produced a heavy pair of scissors and started cutting at the back of the uniform:

  “Dammit,” Schneid gasped, “that jacket cost me half a month’s pay.”

  Slicing the jacket up the back and then unbuttoning it down the front, they peeled the two halves off, and in seconds had his shirt off as well. Schneid started to shiver in the cold.

  Pat saw that the whole right front side of Schneid’s chest was black-and-blue. As Emil gently touched and pushed, Rick grimaced.

  “Four ribs broke, maybe five, Rick. Don’t think they punctured anything, but you, young man, are out of the war for now.”

  “Goddammit,” Schneid muttered.

  “Get him down to the hospital, wrap him up, and give him a little morphine for the pain.”

  “Save it for the men who need it,” Rick snapped.

  Pat smiled at the young corps commander’s grit and the string of curses as he was led away.

  “Didn’t think we’d get him out,” Rick’s sergeant major said. “The whole thing just collapsed right on top of us.”

  Pat sighed and looked back at the battle map. It was impossible to tell anymore which sections were still held. The Bantag had finally caught on to the use of the sewers as the main conduit for moving men and supplies back and forth to the various beleaguered sections. Now it looked like they were going to fight every inch of the way for that as well. What was most troubling, though, was the report that the line under the old Capua Way had been seized for its entire length, the Bantag using fire, coal gas, and assault troops advancing behind makeshift iron shields. They had even fired rockets down the length of the pipe.

  The scheme of the last three weeks was disintegrating. Again Ha’ark had learned to adapt and to improve upon an idea. If only Ferguson were here, he most likely would have thought up some new ideas.

  But Ferguson’s dead, Pat thought grimly. Andrew is out, Hawthorne half crippled, Schneid is out, Jacobson in command of the 4th Corps has been missing for three days, over three-quarters of the regimental and brigade commanders are down, three out of the seven corps committed to the defense of the city have been smashed to pieces. They’re using us up, he thought as he gazed at the map.

  He watched as a staff officer took a sheet of paper from a telegrapher, studied it, and walked back up to the plot board. The marker showing just how far the Bantag had advanced under the Capua Way was moved up another two blocks. Since dawn half a dozen other blocks marking positions still held in the outer city had been removed as well. The bastards were within two blocks of the inner wall in some places.

  Break through that and they’re on the harbor, and we’re finished, he thought.

  Pat sighed and sat down, staring at the table, the rumble of a renewed bombardment thundering through the doorway leading up to the watchtower.

  He looked up at the staff officer who had moved the marker.

  “Pass the order up to Horatius—he’s still commanding engineering for the 11th Corps, isn’t he?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Order him to flood the Capua tunnel as planned, empty the Livonian Baths, then pour in what benzene we have left and fire it.”

  “Sir, remember that tunnel interconnects to the sewer under the Aneius Way. That’s the access for units moving up to the 9th Corps.”

  Pat sighed.

  “Can we cut off the Capua tunnel above ground, come in behind them?”

  The staff officer looked down at the map and shook his head. “Remember, sir, we talked about that a couple of hours ago. The Bantag must have half an umen or more along that road.”

  “All right,” Pat replied wearily. It was all starting to blend together into one mad confusing swirl.

  Should he leave what was left of the 9th out there? No, they were fought out. But how could he get them out? The pullback and rotation of the 1st had turned into a rout. They were simply too closely engaged, the men not trained for what was expected.

  Ha’ark must be expecting me to pull them back out, must be ready to pounce. No, it would be a slaughter. It will be a slaughter anyhow, he realized, but at least they’ll take the bastards down with them. Maybe when things settle down, maybe tonight, we can start trying to get them out, a regiment at a time.

  “Change it,” Pat finally said. “All positions hold until relieved. Get that engineering regiment down into the sewers again. I want barricades forward of the inner wall wherever possible.”

  “And the relief?” one of the staff asked.

  “We do it one regiment at a time from now on. The fresh regiment moves up and secures the position, and only then does the old unit get relieved. And no diversion of units on the way up by commanders in the field. That has to stop unless there’s a clear breakthrough.”

  He knew that was going to make it tougher to get the exhausted troops out. The problem was made worse by division and even corps commanders grabbing units not of their command which were passing through their sectors. Even though strict orders had been issued to stop the practice, it still went on; what officer could resist grabbing a fresh unit to plug into his own line and the hell with where it was supposed to be going?

  He looked again at the map. He could sense they were starting to crumble under the pressure. Again it was that mind of Ha’ark, modern, far too modern. He had grasped what Pat wanted as soon as the breakthrough had been achieved, to turn it into a battle to grind the enemy down. Ha’ark had accepted the embrace, and now it seemed he was winning.

  “I tell you we’re finished,” Jurak snapped, his voice near to breaking.

  Ha’ark looked up, glad that none of his staff were present in the bunker dug into the outer slope of the city wall.

  “You press too close,” Ha’ark hissed.

  “I’m telling you what I saw.”

  “And I’m telling you that you press too close. I am not some officer of the old world. Here I am the Redeemer, and to dare to speak to me as you just have is death.”

  “So you want to kill me?”

  “The thought has crossed my mind.”

  Jurak undid the filth-encrusted belt to his revolver, took it off, and flung it on the table.

  “Before you shoot, though, remember I am the only commander in the field who understands this fight. To the others it’s just the slaughter of cattle gone mad.”

  “I know that, Jurak, and I remember what else it is I still owe.”

  There was the unspoken acknowledgment that in the war on the old world Jurak had taken Ha’ark under his wing, breaking him in to the rigors of combat and saving his life more than once. The memory of it rankled. To be indebted as Ha’ark the Qar Qarth was an uneasy balance.

  “You remember the siege of Uvadorum?”

  Ha’ark nodded. It had been Ha’ark’s first campaign in the War of the False Pretender. The city had been struck by atomic weapons. There were places that were still hot, and his unit had been flung into the cauldron of battle. Most of the fighting had been underground, basement to basement, through the sewers, as here, vicious and unrelenting for forty-three days of poison gas, radioactive pockets, and fanatical resistance by the followers of the Pretender, who knew that capture equaled death.

  “And you are saying this is as bad as Uvadorum?”

  “Worse in some ways. The fighting is visceral, hatred we never knew. I wondered how our umens
of horse riders would manage this. Would they break? I tell you, they are at that point now. The slightest reversal will set them running.”

  “As long as they believe in me they will never break,” Ha’ark replied coolly, and he knew it was no idle boast. The madness of the cattle could be explained by their shamans in no other way than possession by demons. For across all the long centuries of the eternal ride, cattle had always submitted. There were riders and there were cattle ready to receive them. And then came the Yankees, the defeat of the Tugar and Merki Hordes, and finally his own arrival on this world as if in fulfillment of prophecy … the prophecy that there would be a time of demons and in that time a leader would be sent by the ancestors to reunite all the Hordes.

  There were times of late when he could even wonder if indeed he was an instrument of the ancestors and this was not simply a coincidence to be taken advantage of for his own power and pleasure. For now he could see that if he did not win this war, if the Yankees and their Republic were allowed to survive, finally there would be a day of annihilation.

  “We’ve broken ten umens in that damned city,” Jurak pressed. “They’re used up, exhausted. Warriors stare at you, dead-eyed. And disease, Ha’ark—hundreds have the spotted fever. They’re finding corpses of the enemy buried in the rubble for days, already swollen, and are devouring them, part from hunger and part from rage. The next day they vomit, then roll over and die.”

  “We still have ten umens here in the line.”

  “I thought you said we needed them for the final assault.”

  Ha’ark nodded. “And that is why they will stay in reserve. We’ve identified two of their umens as the ones we overran. Elements of three more have fought as well. That leaves but two left. Once they’re pulled in and identified, we know they are at the bottom of the barrel.”

  “What about the twenty umens strung out between here and our supply head at the sea? Can’t we bring up just five, even three, of them?”

  “They dropped off raiders on either flank all along the line of retreat.”