A Band of Brothers

by William R. Forstchen

  “And you’ll kill him nevertheless,” Pat snapped. “He’ll hide up there, afraid of his own shadow, and never come back.”

  “Pat, I’ve seen this before. Give a boy a few months of rest away from the lines. Let him sleep in a clean bed, eat good food again, no sight of Bantag or Merki or any of them. Let his mind get whole again.”

  Pat violently shook his head. “First off, Andrew’s not a boy, he’s commander of the armies, by God. You remember what Hancock said at Gettysburg just before he got shot?”

  Emil shook his head. “I wasn’t interested in such heroics.”

  “Well, I was. I saw him that day. Him in his clean boiled shirt. The rebs pounding our lines just before Pickett came in. And there was Hancock riding slowly along the line as if out for an afternoon jaunt after a heavy dinner. One of the men begged him to get down, and Hancock laughed and said, ‘There’s times when a corps commander’s life just doesn’t count.’ ”

  “And if I remember right, he got shot right after that.”

  “He braced the line, the men stood, we threw the rebs back, and Hancock did it, did it because he had the guts to show his men he wasn’t afraid. Well, I’m telling you that at this moment, as far as this beleaguered army is concerned, the life of Andrew Keane no longer counts. More than once I saw Andrew do the same thing Hancock did at Gettysburg, riding down the line, letting the boys see he wasn’t afraid, that victory was far more important than his staying alive. And now you’re destroying him, helping to turn him into a coward.”

  Emil stiffened again, and Pat extended a hand in a calming gesture.

  “You’re concerned about saving Andrew, or at least saving what’s left. I’m concerned about winning this damn war. And my gut feeling is, today is going to be a very bad day. You take Andrew out of this city and hide him or not, the boys will know. The rumor will shoot through this army like shit through a goose, and by sundown they’ll be panicked, piled up on the docks begging to get out or going over the west wall.

  “You know why Ha’ark hasn’t hit us on the other side of the river? It’s because he wants to keep the back door open for us when we panic. If the circle’s drawn tight and there’s nowhere to run, then a man lights like a cornered animal. But the boys know there isn’t a Horde rider within five miles of that western road. They’ll break and run, I tell you.”

  “He goes out. Pat, I’m trying to save what’s left. Maybe six months, a year, from now, he’ll be ready to command again.”

  “No. If he isn’t ready to command today, then he’ll never be, and I’d rather the army had the legend of Andrew as he was than the pitiful remnant he now is.”

  “He’s right, Emil.”

  Startled, Pat saw Kathleen standing in the door. She had lost weight, and the weeks in the basement with Andrew had robbed her face of its natural freckled Irish complexion, leaving her pale and drawn as if she had aged ten years.

  She slowly walked into the room, the two men stepping back from each other.

  “We could hear you out in the hallway. You don’t want the men to hear this.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pat replied.

  She turned her attention on Emil. “Pat’s right, not just for the army but for Andrew. We let him run today, it will be known by everyone, and he will never live that down. He thinks himself a coward. That will prove it to him, and he’ll spend the rest of his life retreating from it.”

  “Damn all of you with your words, ‘coward,’ ‘hero,’ ” Emil said. “Every man is both. Every man is frightened, and the only difference is that some just manage to hide it longer than others. Our dear Andrew went to the well once too often, Kathleen, can’t you see that? Can’t you see that doesn’t make him anything less than what we know he is? That boy’s been fighting for over ten years now, and not just in the line but commanding armies, terrified of a mistake that could cost an army, an entire nation.

  “I’m sick to death of all you talking about heroes, cowards, when all I see is the wreckage of it.”

  “If we had no heroes,” Pat sighed, “what kind of nation would we be?”

  “He’s paid his share of it. Just let the man be, can’t you?”

  “Well, I want him to go to that well again,” Kathleen whispered, her voice choking. “Lord knows I love him more than my life, and no matter what he now is or will be I’ll always love him. But this is for himself, not me. Because I know this, Emil. We could save his body today. I could take him to that hospital. The children could join us there, and I’d see that smile again when our little ones rush to his embrace.”

  She started to choke the words out. “They don’t care if their father’s a hero or coward. He’s just their father. But he’ll know, and he’ll remember. And someday, Emil, I’ll come home and find him dead, a gun in his hand, because he’ll finally remember just who he was, and he won’t be able to live with what is left. Emil, is that what you want to save him for?”

  Emil seemed to sag as if shrinking up in defeat.

  Before he could reply, the room swayed, followed seconds later by a deep rumbling thunder as if the world were being split apart.

  “My God, they did it,” Pat gasped.

  Racing for the door, he stormed into the headquarters room. Plaster from the ceiling was raining down, the kerosene lamps overhead swaying violently. As he headed toward the stairway to the dome, an observer came staggering down, wide-eyed.

  “The wall! They’ve blown the wall!”

  Pat bounded up the steps. Coming out on to the platform he stopped, gape-mouthed.

  Early dawn traced the eastern horizon and silhouetted the spreading mushroom cloud of smoke and debris still soaring up from the inner wall on the other side of the river. The cloud spread out, its interior lit by a hellish fire. Wreckage, bricks, blocks of stone, torn bodies, an entire artillery piece rained down, crashing into the river, trailed by burning fragments and sheets of fire.

  “My God!”

  Kathleen was by his side. The plume of debris continued to spread out, a hail of shattered bricks smashing across the docks on the west side of the river. He could hear glass shattering, the last few panes left in the city bursting from the shock wave and raining down on to the streets.

  Grabbing hold of Kathleen, he shoved her back through the doorway, covering her with his body as the debris arched down over the palace.

  Another sound now mingled with the thunder, the cries of hundreds of thousands shaken awake by the explosion, cries of terror, joined in another instant by the wild throaty cheering of the Horde, the braying of the nargas, and the staccato punch of hundreds of artillery pieces opening up, pouring a blanket of shells across the entire city.

  The storm of debris passed, and Pat stepped back out onto the parapet, sweeping aside the fragments of stone from the sandbag wall. By the flash of the artillery shells he could see where a section of wall at least a hundred yards long had collapsed. From the wall halfway back to the dockyard, an area several blocks deep, buildings not yet destroyed in the siege had collapsed, stunned survivors staggering out of the wreckage. He thanked God he had had the foresight to pull his reserve regiments away from the wall, given the warnings about a mine, but never had he dreamed this would have so much power.

  When he thought of mines he had remembered the Crater at Petersburg, having witnessed the blast. That, he later learned, had had five tons of powder in it. Given the power of this blast, there must have been thirty tons or more.

  Storming up over the still-smoking debris and skirting the edge of the smoldering crater, advance units of the Bantag were already into the inner city. No return fire greeted them, and he pounded his fist against the sandbag, swearing at the sight of men breaking in panic, fleeing the still standing wall for a couple of hundred yards to either side.

  Ha’ark had cut a hole in his defense big enough to push his entire army through and, at that moment, Pat saw no way to stop him.

  Shaken awake by the explosion, Andrew looked around the darkened room in pa
nic.

  “Kathleen?”

  Shadows flickered around him, and still there was the deep echoing thunder. He tried to pick up his glasses and realized that he was attempting to do so with his left hand, the hand, the arm, buried at Gettysburg.

  For a moment he looked down numbly as if it were all a dream and the hand would materialize and do as he desired.

  Gettysburg …

  Johnnie. The boy looked asleep under that solitary elm. How do I tell Mother he’s dead?

  The tears came, seizing him, the grief all-consuming, and he was somehow standing removed from himself, watching his body shake. Each sob there was an agony of pain with the indrawn breath, a fitting penance perhaps.

  A breath of agony for each of them. How many? How many did I lose, how many did I kill? That reb boy in the West Woods of Antietam was the first, point-blank in the face, the eyes wide with astonishment. Is he with Johnnie now? Young enough forever to perhaps be able to play, to laze along the riverbank of that far shore, two boys dead by me.

  Oh, Johnnie, I never had time to cry for you. I couldn’t weep over you as you slept beneath that tree. I never could find you later. They took me away to that place, that terrible place, where they cut into me, saying it would make me whole again.

  Maybe you sleep now in that half circle of graves around the place that Lincoln spoke. More likely you’re lost, your bones resting under that tree, forgotten. And I forgot you, I didn’t keep the promise I made to see that you lived, that there would be a life for you, a return to Mama, a boy rushing home with nothing more than a skinned knee to be kissed rather than a bullet in the heart.

  Maybe you’re back in Maine. The lake, evening time, the warm breeze. The ghosts in the woods, they’re my ghosts, my memories fled back home before all this. And he walked among them so that they were real. It seemed that everything else had now become the world of ghosts.

  “Time, oh time, stop in thy flight …” The poem drifted, and he took wings upon it. Young again, that first love, walking hand in hand in the moonlight and the whisper of the breeze on Webber Pond … and he smiled.

  “Andrew?”

  He felt a light touch on his face, a handkerchief, stale scent, brushing the tears away. Though his eyes were opened, he could not see her at first, and there was a wondering if indeed he had crossed, had fled, and the soft gentle dream was real.

  He felt something cold brushing against his ears and the cruel world came into sharp focus. Kathleen.

  He stared at her, for a moment uncomprehending. And at that moment he wasn’t sure if he loved her or hated her for being all that she was, tied to all that had become the ghosts.

  “Andrew, look at me!”

  The words were harsh, cold.

  “Andrew, it’s Kathleen. I need you to listen.”

  He turned his head toward her, and she was a ghost, distant, as if he were looking at her through the wrong end of a spyglass.

  “Andrew, the Bantag have blown the inner wall. They’re pouring through the breech. We’re going to lose the harbor.”

  The harbor. What harbor? The words flowed in, but there was no registering for the longest moment. After all, they were ghosts. Finally there came some dim recognition. She wanted something from him yet again.

  He gazed at her and felt as if the floor beneath had given way. A great black hole had opened and he was sliding into it, the sides of the hole made of glass, nothing to hold to even if he wanted to hold, which of course he didn’t.

  He took another breath, remembering that he had to will himself to breathe, and the pain stabbed through him.

  “It hurts,” he whispered. “I need something for it.”

  “No more morphine,” she snapped. “That’s finished. If it hurts you have to live with it.”

  He wanted to cry, but something in her face made him stop. It was a look he could not bear, as if she were judging again. And he turned his head away.

  “Did you hear me, Andrew? They’re into the city.”

  “So?”

  She let go of him, the drawing away of her hands as sharp as a blow.

  He looked back, struggling to remember.

  “If they’re here, they’re here. I can’t do anything more.”

  “I have to go see to those worse hurt now than you,” she said, and each word was a blow.

  “Go then.”

  She reached into the pocket of her smock and drew out something, small, dark, and the sight of it made him want to recoil. It was a revolver. She placed it on the nightstand.

  “If they break through, you’ll want this,” she said.

  He gazed at the weapon, dark, sinister, the faint smell of oil. It seemed so familiar.

  He looked back up at her in wonder. There was something else here, the gun was an offer of something else, he wasn’t sure if she was even aware of it, and the thought sent a chill through him. Was it the offer of the dream, the atonement? Did she know that? And in a terrifying instant he knew that she did.

  . She reached back into her smock and pulled out something else, a small folded case. She looked down at it, her features seeming to go out of focus as she opened the case and gazed at it. Leaving the case open, she set it on the table by the gun.

  Without another word, she turned and left the room, and as the door closed he thought he heard her sobbing.

  He looked over at the table. The gun. He reached out for it, this time with his right hand. The polished handle was smooth, cold, like the skin of a snake. It was heavy. He lifted it up, feeling the balance, the sense of it striking some memory, and then his gaze fell on the case. Open, it revealed two daguerreotypes, one of a soldier sitting, a woman behind him, her hands resting on his shoulders, and something told him it was Kathleen and he from an eternity ago. The other image was hard to see through the mists … it was their children.

  Stamping his feet, he looked down and saw the puddles of slush splashing, felt the cold wet soaking through his boots. A rolling salvo thundered to either side as forty guns moved up onto the top of the outer battlements during the night fired in unison, a thunderclap concussion, forty tongues of flame, smoke boiling out, seconds later the shells impacting on the facing of the inner wall. It wouldn’t do much damage, unless a lucky hit detonated a shell atop the bastion, but that was not the purpose. The firepower was to demonstrate, to intimidate, to shatter what will was left.

  Directly ahead a full umen, moving in column down the rubble-choked street, headed for the breach, which was still wreathed in dark coiling plumes of smoke and fire. Signal rockets rising up from the battlements to either side indicated where his warriors had widened the break to nearly twice the width of the hole blasted into the wall.

  For the first time since the start of the war, prisoners were actually being taken. Remnants of one of the units cut off in the outer city had accepted the offer of surrender with the promise they would not be consumed. The line of men shuffled past, filthy, their stink wafting up to him. And yes, the promise would be kept, for now, for the sight of them could be of use later.

  Ha’ark finally looked back down at the telegram a messenger had handed to him only moments before. He scanned the contents again. It was most likely nothing, one lone report, but it was enough to cause a stab of concern at the moment that promised to be victory.

  The messenger still waited, and finally Ha’ark looked back at him.

  “Signal the umen commander in that district. I want confirmation of this report. I can’t send troops racing back and forth based on only this. Also an order to the flying machines posted in that area. The weather is good, so there are to be no excuses. Send them up to find out. Tell the umen commander, as well, that if this report is confirmed, I expect the rail line to be held at all costs. Nothing must stop the supplies. I need those trainloads of ammunition tonight.”

  The warrior repeated the message, bowed, then raced back to his headquarters. Damn, if only this were a modern army. A radio, a damn radio, and I would know exactly what is
going on. If there was a threat we could race the trains through or stop them outside the danger area and wait till it was cleared.

  He pondered that thought for a moment. The damn things can’t go any faster. Wait? But if I order them to wait tomorrow, we will be out of ammunition. Weeks of hoarding for this attack and half of it was expended in the first two hours. Order a slowdown? Never, not with the breakthrough accomplished.

  His precious ironclads. After their first use in the city, when they had been destroyed in the narrow streets, they had been withdrawn, and they had lingered ever since in reserve at the rail depot. Part of his plan was to send them in for the killing blow, but he knew he’d lose half of them in the wreckage and confusion of the city, and for what? Victory was already assured. No, if there was a threat to the rear, he’d send them out there to match the Yankees, if indeed they were out there.

  He waved for one of his staff officers.

  “The ironclads in reserve—I want them on the next train out. That has priority over anything else. Send the train back up to the bridge on the Ebro River.”

  “Priority over everything else?”

  What about the ammunition? The ironclads were already loaded on the rail cars, sitting on a siding, positioned thus in case of just such an emergency. Eight hours to get them back to the Ebro. If they waited for the three trains, it’d be after dark, useless if there was a threat. If the ammunition trains were delayed eight hours, they’d still be up by early tomorrow morning, and there was still enough in reserve to see the battle through till midday.

  “Move the ironclads. Tell the ammunition trains to keep coming forward, then sidetrack them for the ironclads. If the report is found to be false, then the ironclads can be sidetracked and the ammunition moved up on schedule.”

  The staff officer nodded, sorting out the variables in his head, and bowing low he ran toward the headquarters and conveyed the orders as he thought he remembered them.

  Leaning against the open top hatch, Hans braced his elbows on the cold metal and trained his field glasses on the stone bridge spanning the Ebro. The few mounted Bantag were fleeing eastward as the column of ten ironclads slid down the slope, and in less than a minute they crossed the span without a single shot being fired. The lead ironclad came to a stop, and a diminutive figure rose up out of the hatch and waved.