No Man's Land

by James Axler

  “That is no easy task, Baron,” Snake Eye said with his standard calm. “How successful have your shiny sec boss and all your brave soldiers been on that front of late?”

  “Impertinence!” Toth hissed. “General, one word. One word and my men will have him down and be peeling the scaly hide right off him!”

  Snake Eye bent his head forward to show the man a smile. “Feel free to try that, Colonel,” he said, tipping his black hat.

  An uncharacteristic grin warped Jed’s rumpled features.

  “I feel too good to take offense at what he says, Bismuth,” he said. “Which is true, anyway. Not that that’s anything a man should count on as an offense. A baron’s privilege is the foundation of an orderly society. Without it we’d have anarchy.”

  “We certainly can’t have that, Baron,” Snake Eye agreed.

  “As for what I’m doing, isn’t it obvious? I’m leading my troops to put paid to the Uplands Alliance once and for all. Or hadn’t you heard? Their commanding general, Baron Al, partied himself into a stroke last night when he heard about my powder warehouse blowing up, and fell down stone-paralyzed. Which, about now, the entire Uplander Army should be too.”

  “Indeed,” Snake Eye said. “I can see how one would draw such conclusions, certainly. Still, don’t you think a certain degree of caution is in order?”

  “Caution?” Jed laughed. “When the greatest opportunity of a lifetime lies before me? I think not.”

  Snake Eye shrugged. “It is, as you say, your prerogative. So I’ll take my leave of you, Baron. As for my contract with you, I continue to pursue it. At my own pace. And with guaranteed results. I always fulfill a contract.”

  He tipped his hat. “Good day, Baron, gentlemen...Colonel.”

  “Are you sure you don’t at least want to stick around and watch?” Jed called after him as he turned his horse off the road to trot across a fallow cornfield. “It’s going to be historical. The decisive stroke will be struck today!”

  “No doubt it will be decisive, Baron,” Snake Eye said, and spurred the black gelding to a gallop between the broken stalks.

  * * *

  SNAKE EYE FOUND a vantage point in the second story of a derelict barn. The associated farmhouse had had its stone walls half-caved-in by cannonballs at some point during the wars. A fire had completed its ruination by burning through the ceiling beams and letting the roof cave in. The barn, which was wood and corrugated sheet metal, remained mostly intact, occupied largely by dust, and the ghosts of smells of mildew and long-rotted hay. Not a recent casualty, apparently.

  The barn, like its ruined farmhouse, stood on what passed for a height on these bottomlands—more a fold in the grassy land. Its second-story hatch looked to the east, where with the aid of his telescoping brass spyglass he was able to get a decent view of Baron Kylie’s army marching along the road a mile or so to the east.

  Doffing his coat and spreading it on the warped floorboards, Snake Eye sat to enjoy the show.

  * * *

  “WELL, MAJOR,” Colonel Toth said, “are you eager to see your former comrades get their comeuppance?”

  The baron raised an eyebrow at that. It seemed his sec boss was piling it on the turncoat Uplander. Major Bear’s round, bearded face, which was already damp with perspiration—the morning, though far from hot, was definitely humid with the river anchoring their flank not a quarter-mile east—suddenly had its forehead dotted with fresh little domes glinting in the sun.

  The head of the Grand Army had just passed the halfway point between the rival encampments. Bear had swapped his Uplander uniform for a dove-gray coat over a dark gray vest and trousers. Though Jed had told him he was accompanying the Grand Army on its march in order to provide additional assurance he brought accurate information, Jed had allowed him to change clothes as well as getting himself a fresh mount before setting out. Jed reckoned there was less likelihood of him getting targeted in the heat of action—by his new Protector friends by accident, or by his erstwhile Uplander comrades by vengeful design.

  Bear stammered something Jed couldn’t make out. As part of his sec-boss duties, Colonel Toth was naturally the Protector spy-master. It came to Jed to wonder just what hold his master spider had over the Uplander, to get him to betray the very people he’d grown up among. Whatever it was, Toth was tweaking him with it now and smirking in sadistic delight.

  “Frankly, sir,” Bear said, working his way up from mumble to bluster, “I feel—”

  His head vanished. A roar like a full-bore twister howled by. A hard blast of wind slammed Baron Jed on the side of his head.

  As his horse reared and he reeled in the saddle, he saw blood shoot up like a red geyser from the stump of Major Bear’s neck. He heard a flat, hard crack like a big board being split clean across by a sledgehammer strike.

  The major’s tubby torso still sat bolt-upright, reins still prissily upheld in a gloved right hand. Then his red roan mare jumped and hopped as the hot blood splashed onto her neck. The body fell away. The pumps of blood from the headless neck were dwindling visibly as he fell out of sight.

  A strong arm caught Jed around the waist. “Get the general to cover!” Colonel Toth shouted.

  With wiry strength the colonel hauled Jed out of his saddle. The baron kicked and screamed curses and threats. Holding the baron against his side, legs bicycling, the sec boss rode his own horse off the road and into the weeds of the ditch.

  Jed snapped back into control of himself. Even as his sec chief handed him off to bodyguards who had already dismounted, he was screaming for the infantry and artillery to deploy, and for the cavalry to advance and wipe out the blasters.

  Before a sec man unceremoniously pushed him facedown in the muddy weeds at the bottom of the ditch, he saw a horse torn in two as if by a giant hand, twenty yards ahead up the road. A second cannonball screamed by. It bounced again somewhere behind. The screams Jed heard then were from men and animals.

  Nuke take it, he thought. He reckoned he knew what happened. The Uplanders, fearing just such a move from their mortal foe, had sent one or more of their pair of massive twentieth-century-made replica Parrott cannon south to delay the Protector advance as long as they could. Weighing in at over a ton each, the enormous beasts could hurl twenty-pound projectiles with some accuracy more than two miles. Though both sides relied mainly on a couple dozen Napoleon twelve-pounder smoothbores, backed by a couple of three-inch Ordnance rifled cannon, the Association possessed only one of the long-range Parrotts.

  The weapons were well suited for indirect fire, to a map reference or in response to signals sent by a forward observer, by means of flag or heliograph. A week or two before both sides had bombarded the tiny ville of Taint in no-man’s-land, each under the mistaken impression the other was about to occupy the place. That episode ineffectually ended a brief stint in which both armies maneuvered to try to gain an advantage over each other, at the unsuccessful conclusion of which they both pulled back to their existing lines to try to work out what to do next.

  That fat bastard’s Al’s providential stroke had shown Jed what to do now.

  The Uplander blasters were clearly set to fire down the direct road—like triple-big sniper rifles. Jed judged whomever had ordered them out had sent both, given how close together the shots came. They were muzzle-loaders, like all the cannon used by both sides. The rifling grooves in their over three-and-a-half-inch bores made them slow to reload.

  Realizing at that point that another shot from the ambuscade was a ways off, Jed shook off the well-meaning bodyguards who were trying to keep him under cover, to look up the road. Spotting where the blasters were sited was no great task: two localized clouds of dirty white smoke hung to either side of the road, about three-quarters of a mile ahead.

  He watched his cavalry sweeping forward in two blocks to left and right. Though an attack was only really likely from the west or left flank—and only remotely, under the circumstances—Jed had ordered half his horse troopers to cover the
right flank as well, riding between the road and the river, about a quarter mile to the east. He wanted to be able to get all his cavalry into action as quickly as possible once battle was joined, which required them to be split in two.

  As he looked, Jed saw a white flash from near the base of the left-hand cloud, from a green smudge that suggested a stand of trees, a woodlot or an orchard. The shot whistle-roared overhead to strike the long blue column a couple hundred yards south.

  Though he knew that ball had likely smashed up more of his men and horses, Jed smiled in grim satisfaction. Horrifyingly accurate though the big Parrotts could be, especially when fired by the wickedly proficient Uplander gunners, they didn’t hit moving targets for sour-owl shit. Between that and his slowness, the Protector cavalry would certainly take them both down quickly without taking much damage.

  And now that his marching troops were ducking off the roadway into the ditch they’d be much less vulnerable to the bounding projectiles. Both sides had explosive shells, which would be marginally more effective against troops in cover. But because they had access to nothing like predark fusing technology, the things were unpredictable at best—most likely to explode ineffectually in midflight or not at all. And occasionally in the barrel of the weapon that fired them. Or—potentially worse—a yard or so past the muzzle.

  His supply wags—and his own artillery train, including his own giant Parrott blaster—were far more vulnerable. But he consoled himself that the enemy superblasters would soon be silenced. Forever.

  “Now watch this, Bismuth,” he said excitedly to his sec boss, who squatted inelegantly next to him with his spit-polished riding boots buried to the insteps in the mud of the ditch bottom. “Those rad-blasted rifled cannons have been a pain in our butts for two generations! Now they’re going to be ours. And once my cavalry sweeps this delay away—”

  Fifty yards ahead of both wings of cavalry, still too far from the concealed blasters to charge and advancing at a lope, the very Earth seemed to erupt in stabs of yellow flame and puffs of smoke. Horses reared and fell thrashing to the ground. Others fled with emptied saddles.

  From the left came a bigger, brighter flash. A giant invisible fist seemed to punch a hole in the advancing cavalry line as twelve pounds of musket balls with random bits of metal scrap hit them.

  Just like that the Grand Army’s glorious cavalry were streaming back south, far faster than they’d been going north an eyeblink before.

  Through the roaring of his ears, louder than the longblasters of his men lying in hiding, louder than the blasters, louder even than the screams of unendurable agony, Baron Jed heard Colonel Toth utter the most unnecessary words he’d ever heard in his life.

  “It’s a trap!”

  * * *

  WITH A GRIN Snake Eye snapped his spyglass back to a short tube and packed it away in its protective black velvet carrying bag.

  He wasn’t especially surprised by the turn of events, although he suspected there were even more surprises in store for his current employer and associates. Such as when the body of Uplander cavalry he’d spotted a few moments before, winging around to the west, hit the disorganized and already demoralized Grand Army in the left flank.

  He didn’t need to see any more. He enjoyed watching explosions and violence as much as any man, but the script for this old-days action vid was too familiar.

  Plus he had a good idea how it all came out.

  Hearing the crash of battle—or one-sided slaughter, to give it its proper name—crashing to a crescendo, he turned, climbed gingerly down a rickety wooden ladder and reclaimed his black gelding from where it was tethered in the stall. He rubbed its soft muzzle and blew up its nostrils briefly to reassure it. The animal was used to blasterfire, but not exactly on this scale, even at some distance away. And not impossibly some shift in the sluggish breeze had brought a hint of the spilled blood of fellow equines to its sensitive nose.

  Regarding the massacre’s outcome, the only real question in his mind was what the Association would be able to preserve of its Grand Army. If anything. As to the fate of his employer...well, Baron Jed wasn’t conspicuously lovable, even by the notably unlovable standards of barons. Nor did he seem to go out of his way to be so.

  And whether Jed lived or died made little difference. Snake Eye would find more of his specialized kind of mercie work, in more abundance than even a craftsman at his level of mastery could actually handle.

  He would carry out his contract, though. He always carried out his contracts.

  But at his own time, as he had so recently told the unfortunate baron. Snake Eye had his own priorities.

  With his horse’s tail high in agitation he loped away to the west. He had treasure to find.

  And prey to play with. Because in many ways, his name and slightly scaly skin notwithstanding, Snake Eye was more like a cat than an actual snake.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The soldiers, some in green shirts, most identified by the green rags tied around their upper arms, were finishing off the badly wounded with quick, decisive thrusts of fixed bayonets. Or occasionally strokes from a brass-clad blaster butt.

  Mildred winced as she rode with her friends from where they’d watched the battle. It had been north of the line where Baron Al had deployed his infantry and lighter, smoothbore artillery along a shallow stream. It had also been east of the Uplander Army.

  J.B. had expressed reservations about the possibility of getting caught between either a battle or a streaming rout and the river if things turned sour for their side. But Ryan wanted them in position to move on the enemy if they could do their employer some good. He wanted to be on the other side from the Uplander cavalry launching its sneak attack, and he was fully confident in their ability to travel along the riverbank as need be. To which J.B. nodded and concurred, and the matter was done.

  They rode openly down the road. When Uplander foot soldiers examining chills or looting wags saw them, they stopped to cheer. Krysty smiled and waved. Doc doffed his hat and waved like a late-nineteenth century politician on a stump tour. Ricky looked as embarrassed as Mildred herself felt; Jak, J.B. and Ryan sat as stone-faced as if they were watching mud dry in the sun after a brief shower, only occasionally nodding acknowledgment.

  Halfway down the column Baron Al, himself dressed in his shapeless trousers and a dirty undershirt, sat in the box of a covered wag. The surviving horse had been released from its harness and presumably run away. What was left of its teammates...

  Mildred had to look away. It was irrational, she knew, but she was of necessity inured, relatively, to human suffering. The suffering of animals always hit her hard.

  At least these horses weren’t suffering anymore. And if the level of trauma was any guide—and though no veterinarian, Mildred was pretty sure it was—they couldn’t have suffered long.

  Despite the fact that he sat surrounded by the outcome of the most one-sided victory in a generation, possibly the whole family saga of a war, the winning commander was being harangued by his chief lieutenant, who stood in the road next to the wag with his hat off and a saber still in his gloved right hand.

  “But how could you hold us back, General?” Colonel Turnbull was saying. His leanly handsome face was twisted in what seemed authentic emotional agony. “We could have smashed the Grand Army once and for all!”

  Lips clamped stubbornly inside his black beard, which was even less kempt than usual, Al shook his head.

  “That won’t answer, Cody,” he said. “And you know it. Once the cavalry came in they took off pretty fast. And some of the units toward the rear in the column in good order. Had we sent the cavalry against them, their blasters would’ve ripped our boys and beasts up bad.”

  “And to what end?”

  He gestured panoramically with a big hand.

  “We killed the devils, plenty of them. We got most of their supply train, most of their artillery. Even their own lone big Parrott. They’re not a threat to the Alliance Army any more t
his year. Far less to the people of the Alliance herself. Not this season, not this year. Probably not for years to come.”

  “But we could have ended the war for good, General,” Turnbull persisted.

  “Is there really any such thing, Cody?” Al asked with a gentleness that surprised Mildred. “You know better than that. Even if we bagged Baron Jed, even if we caught him and all his barons, what then? Association territory is bigger than ours. We could kill every man who was on this road today, and their total population would still be twice ours or more. We couldn’t conquer them. Not without bleeding ourselves dry in a hopeless never-ending war to beat them down. That could only end with us so weak they’d likely turn the tables on us, and we’d be back under their boot heels again.”

  Al stopped, then wiped sweat from his face with a grimy rag from a pocket of his drawers. He looked at the companions, who had drawn their horses to a halt a few paces from the debate and sat quietly waiting. Ryan wasn’t one to yield readily to any man, but he was also smart enough to know better than to try to interrupt any argument between rival barons, which functionally Turnbull was as much as Al, without some compelling reason to do so.

  “Where are my rad-blasted manners?” Al said. Mildred failed to miss the way Turnbull winced at a baron apologizing to mere hirelings. She decided she didn’t much care for the colonel. “Sorry. We won big today, ladies, gentlemen, and you all made it possible. The Alliance is in your debt.”

  “Will you still be requiring our services, Baron?” asked Krysty, who sat on her gray mare at Ryan’s right.

  “No,” Turnbull said. But Al laughed.

  “Reckon so,” he said, “though in what you might call a lower key. Jed, if he survived, his successor if he didn’t, is going to dig in tight and start thinking they’re in a stronger position than they are. Precisely because we can’t really afford what it would cost us to finish them off—now, or at any time.”

  He added the latter without even having to look to see Turnbull opening his yap, undoubtedly to whine about how a good pursuit could have ended the Protectors after all.