Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  Andrew looked up at an orderly.

  “I want his body taken to the rear. Have his grave marked.”

  The orderly dismounted, and several survivors of the 1st Vazima came up and gently picked up the body. Andrew reached down, took the flag, walked over to the lieutenant, and gave him the colors.

  “God be my witness, I’ll never forget this,” he said softly, and stepping back, he saluted the flag.

  He returned to Mercury, mounted, and galloped off to rejoin the fight. The lieutenant, standing alone, holding the flag, looked up at the colors as if seeing them for the first time.

  Nearly doubled over, he leaned against the trench wall, gasping, his throat so dry that he thought he was about to suffocate. Another rattle of musketry sounded to his left. He didn’t care. A dead Merki was at his feet, a water skin dangling beside the body. He reached down and shook it. There was still some water.

  He took the end of a broken bayonet and used it to cut the water skin’s strap, brought it up, and raised it to his lips.

  “For Kesus sake, sir, some water.”

  Pat looked over. In the dusty smoke-choked haze he saw an old soldier, hair gray, sitting on the firing step, blood streaming from half a dozen wounds.

  Pat sighed, went over, and raised the bag up for the man, the water trickling down his blackened face, the beads of water leaving white furrows. The man nodded a thanks. Another soldier, one of the men from the Roum division of the Fourth, lay beside the gray soldier, an arrow in his chest, unable to speak, but eyes pleading. Pat knelt down, held his head, and gave him the last of the water in the bag.

  A flurry of shots rang out, and he looked up. The men were firing to the east. From out of the smoke and haze he saw several Merki riding back, one of them going down, horse screaming. The other two rode straight over the trench, heading back to the river.

  It was impossible to tell what was going on. All he knew was that the sun was getting lower, its red disk barely visible, a fog of smoke, heat, dust choking the field. He couldn’t even tell what was going on twenty yards away, whether the trench was theirs or not. All he knew now was this small knot of survivors, a hedgehog defense, the battle no longer a battle, but rather a murdering brawl without any semblance of reason or control.

  A musket volley slashed overhead, and from out of the haze a Merki came running back, leaping into the trench as if seeking protection, blood pouring from a wound to his side.

  In panic the Merki looked around, suddenly realizing he had landed in the midst of cattle. The men stood in shock as well for a second, and then with wild screams fell on the lone Merki, pinning him to the trench wall with their bayonets.

  Pat watched with a growing distaste, remembering the young Merki he had killed earlier. The men, as if releasing their rage, continued to stab the Merki, even though he was dead.

  The insane battle continued, and he looked back to the west, understanding now why the Bible said that at Jericho the sun had remained motionless in the sky.

  He heard a hoarse cheer, looked up, and saw shadows moving through the smoke. Men!

  A flag appeared.

  “Third Corps! It’s Third Corps!”

  Stumbling before the advance, the last of the Merki continued to fall back, the survivors of Fourth Corps staggering up out of the trench, bayoneting the remaining Merki caught now between two sides. Pat climbed up out of the trench and stood in silence as the men of Third Corps swept up past him, their lines thin, many of the men wounded but still in the fight.

  “Hold here at the trenches,” Pat said, trying to shout, his voice barely above a whisper.

  The cheering spread, and Pat staggered down the line, unable to avoid stepping on bodies, so thick did the casualties lie. In the haze he saw a rider.

  “Gregory!”

  The Rus soldier turned, came up to Pat, and saluted.

  “Thank Kesus,” Gregory said, sliding off his horse and embracing Pat.

  “We thought all of Fourth Corps was dead.”

  “I guess some of us made it. Sections of trench held out even after we got overrun. Where’s Mikhail?”

  “Dead,” Gregory said. “Killed in the first moments of the charge. I guess I’ve been running the corps since.”

  “You did good, son.”

  Gregory smiled.

  “A long way since we did Shakespeare together.”

  Pat nodded.

  “Hell of a fight, by damn, a hell of a fight,” Gregory said, his blood still up. “Schneid’s division closed on our right, Hawthorne’s on the left. We boxed ’em in on three sides, caught the bastards in a crossfire, and murdered them wholesale. Hell of a fight. They were packed so thick you couldn’t miss.”

  “You got a drink?” Pat whispered.

  The young officer reached into his tunic and pulled out a flask.

  “Not that. Just water, for God’s sake.”

  Gregory went to his saddle, unclipped a canteen, and tossed it over to Pat. The old artilleryman tilted it back, the water going down his throat. He felt for a moment as if he couldn’t even swallow it, his throat so raw and choked with dust.

  “Oh, thank God,” he groaned, feeling as if he might live out the day after all.

  Tamuka, unable to speak, paced the crest of the hill.

  Not since the first day of Orki, not in far more than a circling, had a charge of the Merki been broken. It was impossible to see, the other side of the river cloaked in a caldron of fire and smoke. Yet it was evident that the attack had been broken. A steady river of warriors, all formation gone, streamed past him, most of them wounded, clutching at their injuries. There were no cries of victory, no chanting of boasts, of deeds accomplished.

  It was impossible to believe, and yet it was real.

  “And you thought it would be easy.”

  He turned and saw Muzta looking down at him, an almost mocking smile lighting his features.

  “I once paced as you now do. When first we encountered them, the crossing of the ford, and I saw the river choked with my dead as this river now is,” and he pointed to the Sangros, the banks of the river and all the way across the shallow ford carpeted, the stream actually tinged pink farther down.

  “I lost my youngest son that day,” Muzta said.

  Tamuka said nothing, the rage still seething.

  “And you dared to mock me, to mock my people these last three years, as if we somehow were weak, were fools because we lost. Well, now you as well stare into the rotting face of defeat.”

  Tamuka pulled his scimitar from its scabbard and for a brief instant prepared to strike Muzta down. He hesitated. No, stay with what you planned, he thought.

  He resheathed the blade.

  “I am angry,” he said almost apologetically, “but not at you.”

  Muzta smiled. “How many did you lose?”

  “Ten umens were engaged, and all were broken. Forty, perhaps fifty thousand are dead or wounded, the formations shattered.”

  “End it for today,” Muzta said. “Your field is so choked with the wounded, the fleeing, there is no hope to press a fresh assault in to win the day. Your water is short, and in this heat the warriors are collapsing from thirst.”

  Tamuka looked back to the red sun low in the sky.

  He did not need this Tugar to tell him that. Already he had lost far more than he had expected. He had believed that once the cattle line was broken, panic would spread. How they maneuvered to seal the line had filled him with wonder, for they had held with a brilliance worthy of any horde foe. And he realized now as well that his own warriors had always fought mounted battles, sweeping across a dozen leagues of steppe. This fighting upon such a narrow front had disorganized them.

  “I have lost much, but so have they. I still have twenty umens fresh, and they have without doubt used all. Tomorrow we shall see.”

  Muzta smiled as if fully agreeing.

  “And you shall lead one of the assaults, Muzta Qar Qarth. I am curious to see the vaunted skill of the Tugar
against their old foe. Perhaps this time you will fare better.”

  “I was expecting no less from you,” Muzta said, and he rode off.

  It was the place he had always feared more than any other, a military hospital.

  The long rows of tents were crammed to overflowing, the air filled with shrieks of pain, horror, terror of what was going to be done to them.

  Chuck Ferguson weaved his way through the dimly lit tent, looking from cot to cot.

  Not here.

  He stepped out of the far side of the shelter. A long row of bodies lay to one side, not even covered, a detail loading them like cordwood onto a railroad flatcar to be moved to the burial ground. He wanted to go up to look, to check.

  “Chuck?”

  He turned. It was Kathleen.

  Her white uniform was stained with blood, her perfume now a tincture of lime and alcohol.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for…” He couldn’t say the name, terrified that she’d tell him what he feared.

  He had carried her to the train that was rushing the survivors of the powder mill explosion to the hospital. She had not even been able to tell it was him; she was unconscious, bleeding and battered, face blackened, hair burned away.

  He had wanted to ride with her, to stay, but Theodor had forcibly held him back, screaming that he had work to do.

  Well, now it was midnight, and the hell with the duty, and he had taken the train down here to find out the truth.

  “Is she…”

  “She’s alive,” Kathleen said quietly. “I’ll take you to her.”

  He tried to gasp out a thanks but couldn’t, his shoulders shaking with relief.

  Kathleen put a soothing arm around him and led him through the hospital.

  It was, to his eyes, worse than any hell he had ever imagined. Every wound he could ever imagine was there, and some he had not believed possible. He looked to a side tent as they came out between wards and saw Emil hunched over an operating table, an orderly holding a flaring lantern, Emil cursing for the man to give him more light, his hand moving up and down rhythmically as he stitched, a pile of arms and legs lying outside the open flap.

  “Merciful God,” Chuck whispered, and he looked back at Kathleen. “This is what you do?”

  She nodded, wanting to cry, to blurt out her own agony. At her last operation the Roum soldier had begged in incomprehensible Latin, but his pleas were obvious nevertheless, as she prepared to take off both his legs.

  She pulled Chuck along into the next tent, a ward for female casualties, filled now mostly with the survivors of the mill blast.

  “She’s at the far end,” Kathleen whispered. “I’ve got to get back to my own ward.” She kissed him lightly on the forehead, hesitated, and then decided to tell him.

  “It’s bad, over twenty percent of her body burned. The concussion deafened her, so she won’t be able to hear you.”

  “Will she live?”

  “She’s got a chance. She’s a fighter.”

  Chuck started to cry openly with relief.

  “But Chuck…”

  He looked at her through his tears.

  “She’ll be scarred, horribly scarred, especially her face and hands.”

  “I don’t care, I just want her back, I don’t care about anything else.”

  Kathleen forced a smile.

  “When I’m done, I’ll come here to check on her, I’ll personally see to her.”

  “Thank you.”

  He turned to go to her, and Kathleen took hold of him, kissing him on the forehead.

  “Saints preserve you, Chuck, I’ll pray for both of you,” and in her emotion her Irish brogue came back strong and clear.

  Chuck walked quietly up to Olivia’s bed, not sure if she was asleep or not. Her face and hands were heavily swaddled in bandages, one eye covered, the other barely visible. She stirred and looked up at him, and then turned her head away.

  He sat down on the edge of her cot, and she started to shake her head back and forth.

  “Olivia.”

  “Go away,” she whispered. “Go away, and don’t ever come back.”

  He sat numb, gently reaching out to take a bandaged hand in his.

  “I’m ugly, a monster now. Go away, let me die.”

  He smiled and spoke slowly, hoping that she could read his lips.

  “I don’t care how you look. Stay with me forever. I love you.”

  With a muffled cry she sat up, wrapping her arms around him, oblivious to the physical pain, as the other pain within disappeared, the two holding each other and crying with joy and relief.

  Rubbing his eyes, Andrew leaned back in his chair, the cup of tea by his side long since gone cold, and looked at the small group of officers around him.

  “If they hit the line tomorrow as they did today, we’ll crack open like a rotten shell.”

  A throaty snoring filled the room, and he looked over to where Pat was stretched out on the floor in the corner, fast asleep. Gregory laughed softly and then was still.

  “His corps is finished, out of the fight for tomorrow,” Andrew said. “He’s got less than three thousand effectives. I’m putting him into reserve. Gregory, your boys were gallant today, but you’re out tomorrow as well.”

  Gregory started to raise a protest but fell silent.

  “Gentlemen, we took sixteen thousand casualties here, Barry another two thousand up in the woods.”

  “We did a hell of a lot of killing in return,” Vincent said. “Maybe seventy or eighty thousand.”

  “That still leaves twenty-five or more umens left. If they come at us the same, we’ll crack wide open.”

  He sighed and looked back at the map.

  “I’m abandoning the forward line,” Andrew said quietly.

  “What?”

  Vincent was up on his feet, looking at Andrew, incredulous at what he had just heard.

  “Any objections Mr. Hawthorne?” Andrew asked quietly.

  “Sir, the front across the valley is nearly four miles, and the ridgeline behind is over five miles from the south grand battery to the north, six in all to the river. You’re saying we lost over fifteen thousand men and now you want to extend our line by an additional fifty percent. I don’t get it.”

  Andrew more than half agreed with Vincent and had been agonizing over the decision for hours.

  “They broke the front when we were at our strongest—we had over twenty thousand men committed to close the gap. Damn near that number of men are gone now. And I think it’s fair to assume that tomorrow they’ll break us again, and this time they’ll keep right on going.

  “If we hadn’t retaken the trenches, every last man of Fourth Corps would have died and the entire corps artillery would have been lost. Tomorrow I want those sixty guns and every other field piece from the trench line back up on the hills.

  “I think they’ll open the same way, a bombardment of several hours, thinking to rattle us even more. Remember that when they charge this time the deadfalls will no longer be there, they’re covered now by their bodies, and the abatis is down, the trench coverings torn to shreds in the fight. They’ll overrun the line in minutes. Well, this time they’ll hit empty air. I think that alone will slow them, confuse them. They’ll reform, then have to wait for their artillery to be brought across to prepare for the next assault. By then it’ll be midday, maybe even afternoon. We’ll now have the hills, and clear fields of interlocking fire as they come up the slopes. Remember, they’ll be firing uphill, their arrows less effective, while we’ll be firing straight down into their damn throats.”

  The room was silent, the men listening intently.

  “If they send their aerosteamers over at dawn, they’ll see the lines are empty,” Vincent said.

  Andrew nodded.

  “I think you know we lost the powder mill today to a suicide attack from the air, that two of the three remaining aerosteamers were destroyed.”

  Most of them had no
t yet heard, and the news hit hard, the exhausted men not replying.

  “We have one ship left. According to our reports they still have two, maybe three. It’ll be our one ship’s job to keep them back.”

  “That’s the end of the air fleet,” Schneid said coldly.

  Andrew did not reply, knowing that he had ordered Jack back up again, not willing to let the inexperienced crew of Republic to take on the job. He thought of Homula again for a moment and closed his eyes.

  “Vincent, pull your corps straight back to the ridge to the east,” he began again, his voice quiet. “Anchor your command post on the central grand battery.”

  Vincent did not reply, but merely looked at the map.

  “Marcus, your entire Seventh Corps will deploy to the left of Vincent, plus I want one division of your Fifth Corps as reserve.”

  “Andrew, what about the river to the south?”

  “One division will have to handle it. I think, though, that he’s focused here, his blood is up now. We’ve seen nearly all his warriors on foot—the horses are most likely being held to the rear. We’ll have to trust that he doesn’t try something to the south. I don’t think he will.”

  Marcus nodded.

  “Schneid, you extend your line to hook into Vincent’s right, and Barry’s reserve division will serve you.”

  “Andrew, they damn near got across just south of the powder mill early this evening,” Barry objected. “I need that reserve.”

  “You’ll have to make do,” Andrew replied, and Barry nodded glumly. “Gregory, you and Pat will form to the rear of Vincent. Get your men reorganized, but be ready to act if we have another crisis.”

  Gregory smiled, relishing the role of acting corps commander, even though his unit was down now to little more than a reenforced brigade.

  “Good luck, gentlemen. Now get back to your posts.”

  The room slowly cleared until finally he was left alone, except for Pat, still sleeping in the corner.

  He looked down at the map, the decision made, but still agonizing if it was the right one.

  Again that cold chill, and he blocked off the thoughts of his decision as if sensing that somehow this one could almost read his mind and thus steal his secrets. He stood up and went out the door. One moon was rising low in the eastern sky, the second one just starting to break the horizon.