Fateful Lightning

by William R. Forstchen

  He weaved his way through the tents, stopping occasionally as a hand reached up to grab him.

  “We licked ’em good today, didn’t we colonel?”

  He’d nod and smile.

  “We’ll win, won’t we?”

  Again he’d smile.

  A young man grabbed hold of his arm, reaching up from the floor, and he looked down. The face was familiar, from the old 35th.

  “Billy, how are you?” Andrew said softly, stopping and kneeling down on the bloody floor.

  “Not good, colonel,” he whispered.

  “I saw your brigade fight today. You did good, son, very good.”

  The young brigadier smiled weakly.

  “I’m afraid, sir,” he whispered.

  Andrew didn’t know what to say, feeling already the coldness in the young veteran’s hand.

  “What should I do now?”

  Andrew lowered his head.

  “Remember back home, on Earth?”

  Billy smiled sadly.

  “Remember the prayer your mother taught you when you went to sleep?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Let’s say it.”

  His voice came out, barely a whisper, and Andrew joined him.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep…”

  Andrew finished the prayer alone, the soldier’s hand slipping out of his.

  Andrew pulled the blanket up over the boy’s head and heard crying behind him.

  It was Kathleen.

  She wiped the tears away.

  “That poor boy. He kept calling for his mother, and then you came.”

  “Most of them do call for their mothers in the end,” he said softly.

  “I keep realizing how much more I love you,” she whispered. “Andrew, thank God you’re still alive.”

  “Where’s Emil?”

  “Next tent. Why?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  She fell silent, as if knowing. Then she asked, “How are we doing? I’ve been hearing things all day, and I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Take me to Emil,” he said softly.

  Taking his hand, she led him into the next tent, where Emil was finishing up a surgery, extracting an arrow from a boy’s chest, laying a bandage across the wound, turning away to wash his hands while an assistant finished bandaging the wound. Emil looked up to see Andrew, and his eyes were dark circles of exhaustion.

  “We need to talk,” Andrew said.

  Emil motioned for him to wait. The assistant and orderly picked up the stretcher and carried it out of the tent. Emil followed them and then came back a moment later, pulling the flap shut behind him.

  “How bad is it?” Emil asked.

  Andrew looked over at Kathleen and tried to form the words but couldn’t.

  “It’s finished, isn’t it?” Kathleen said softly.

  Andrew nodded, unable to speak.

  Emil exhaled noisily and sat down in a chair in the comer.

  “And you’re here to tell me I should kill the wounded.”

  Andrew hesitated, wishing somehow that Kathleen weren’t here, wanting to tell her to leave. He looked back at her. There was a sad gentle smile on her lips. No tears, no anguish or hysteria, only a vast hidden strength.

  “Even if it all ends tomorrow, it was still worth it,” she whispered, coming up and putting her arm around him.

  He nodded, kissing her on the forehead.

  “At least Maddie will be safe awhile longer,” she said softly. “For that only it was worth it all.”

  He tried not to think of his daughter; he knew if he did it would finish him. He had to keep his thoughts focused. He looked back at Emil.

  “You know how many casualties we’ve had. I’ve got less than thirty thousand men left able to fight, and not even enough ammunition to get us through another day. The artillery’s almost been depleted. First charge tomorrow and they’ll be through us. And then…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “My God, Emil, you know what they’ll do to those poor men out there,” and he nodded toward the madness just outside the tent.

  Emil reached over to a side table. With hands shaking he poured himself a drink and downed it.

  “For forty years I’ve been trying to save lives, and now you’re telling me to kill all those men.”

  “Emil, you know how the Merki will make them suffer first.”

  Emil nodded. “Fucking animals.” He looked up at Kathleen, suddenly ashamed of his profanity.

  “Oh, I agree,” she whispered, a smile coming to her lips.

  “Come dawn, I’ll detach a regiment to this hospital. We’ve got some extra revolvers, and your orderlies have weapons. Any wounded that can fight should be sent back up, or have them stay here as a guard.

  “I’ll have the order in writing in my breast pocket. My aides will know it’s there if something should happen to me. I’ll only send it when I know it is truly finished and not before. God help me, I don’t want any mistakes on this. But if they start to overrun you first, you know what you’ll have to do.”

  Emil nodded, hands still shaking.

  “Is there any chance?”

  Andrew looked back at Kathleen.

  “There’s always a chance,” he whispered, and she looked back at him, knowing the truth.

  He looked back at Emil. “Thank you for everything, Dr. Weiss—for your friendship, your advice.” He paused and tapped his empty sleeve. “And for my life.”

  He let go of Kathleen and stepped forward, taking Emil’s hand in his.

  The old doctor smiled, shaking his head softly.

  “Next year Jerusalem,” Emil said in Hebrew.

  “What?”

  “Oh, just an old promise I always wanted to keep.”

  Andrew smiled and turned away. “Maybe someday you will.”

  He walked out of the tent, Kathleen by his side.

  “I’ve got to go back.”

  She said nothing, watching from the corner of her eye as a fresh casualty was brought into her tent.

  “I’ve got to go too.”

  He hesitated.

  “You know I want you to live, to try to escape, there’s still time…” His voice trailed off; he was ashamed of what he was saying when so many others were standing and dying. But this was his wife. He looked over at her.

  She shook her head. “I have my duty as well,” she whispered. “Tanya and Ludmilla will see that our baby is safe.”

  He looked at her, filled with pain and yet also with a deep pride.

  “If I had it to do all over again, even the losing in the end, it would be worth it,” Andrew said softly. “It’d be worth it because for at least one moment I had you.”

  He kissed her gently on the mouth and then backed away, the lingering touch between the two dropping, arms lowering.

  He turned and walked into the night.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she whispered, and then went back into the tent.

  “That’s him right there.”

  He could barely understand the words; it had been long since he had learned the cattle language of the Rus.

  He felt someone grab his shoulder, rolling him over, and the cold touch of steel at his throat.

  Muzta Qar Qarth waited for death, but it did not come.

  Rough hands grabbed hold of him, pulling him up. By the light of the lantern he saw a short burly man, red-haired, hair on his face growing out of either cheek and over his lip.

  The man looked at him and grinned coldly.

  “Muzta of the Tugars?”

  Muzta remained silent, sparing a glance to either side. The field was covered yet again with his own dead, dying yet another time. But this time he felt it was not the cattle who had killed them, it was Tamuka.

  “Will you kill me now?” Muzta asked, struggling to form the strange words.

  The red-haired one looked up at him and slowly smiled.

  “I think there’s someone you might talk to first.”

>   He felt the nick of a sword at his back. But he needed no urging to go forward. The wall of the parapet was but a dozen strides away. His head ached, and he reached up to his helmet, feeling the dent on the side, from whatever it was that had knocked him senseless.

  He paused for a moment and looked down.

  Jamadu, his last son, lay upon the ground, unconscious, a gaping wound in his chest.

  Muzta paused and looked over at Pat.

  “My son,” he whispered. “Please help him.”

  Pat nodded, and motioned for a detail to bring the youth in. Muzta knelt down beside Jamadu, touching his brow, smoothing the hair back, praying silently, and then stood back up, going over the parapet wall, no longer needing any urging.

  “Once more, only one more charge,” Tamuka shouted, looking at the silent forms around him. “I was there, I was atop the ridge, and it was near to empty.”

  “Then why were we defeated?” Haga asked, his voice cold. “By all the gods, Tamuka, a hundred and fifty thousand or more of our warriors are dead or hurt. If you claim this to be victory, I dread the specter of defeat.”

  “And yet it is victory,” Tamuka shouted in reply. “Three times today our host gained the ridge.”

  “And three times driven back,” Haga replied.

  “Yet each time it was closer to the final victory. I tell you, if that last charge had been but five hundred paces to the north it would have broken through into empty air and tonight we would already be feasting.”

  Several in the circle nodded their heads, but the others stood silent.

  “If! I hear nothing but ifs,” Haga said coldly. “If we had extra skins of water so our warriors did not drop of thirst, if we had charged only a few hundred paces to one side, if the cloud fliers had not been defeated. All of it ifs, and I see the certainty of over one in three of our warriors gone, one in three no longer fit to fight. Our arrows are near gone, the flashing powder for the cannons all but used, and still the cattle stand upon the hills.”

  “How many of theirs do you think are left standing?” Gubta snarled. “Their numbers have never been as great as ours. Even if they have struck us down three for their one, there are few left. Though my umen did not attack today, I rode forward into the breakthrough upon our left. I saw open steppe beyond and clear sky, and nothing but one thin wall of cattle.

  "If you, Haga of the black horse, had supported that charge, it would have gone clean through to victory.”

  Tamuka turned to Haga.

  “He is right,” Tamuka said coldly. “Thirteen umens finally were across the river, two of them yours, and they did not fight.”

  “How were they even to get in?” Haga snarled. “The signal flags could not be seen for the smoke.”

  “The cattle fight in smoke, not in clean air for all to see valor and to see the flags,”, snapped Yimak, umen commander under Haga. “By the time the bell rider had come to me with my commands, the assault was already repulsed, the field before me clogged with retreat.”

  Tamuka held up his hand for silence, and slowly the arguments died away.

  “I tell you this from my ka,” he whispered, deliberately keeping his voice low so that all were forced into silence to listen. “Today I saw into the heart of Keane, just before the setting of the sun. And he was afraid, he saw defeat before him. Never have I felt such fear within him. I was atop the ridge and I saw the light of victory beyond.”

  There was a murmur from some, others yet silent.

  “My brothers, have we ridden so far, fought them so many times, to now turn away as Haga would wish, only to hear their laughter of scorn?

  “I tell you now this. Our fate rest upon tomorrow. Behind us our women, the old ones, the young, move across the steppe, expecting that by the passage of another moon we shall spread before them the fat, the wealth, of this land to feed their hungry stomachs. Are we now to ride back, heads lowered, and whine that a few remaining cattle have frightened us away?”

  “At least we shall ride back and not have them come to seek our bleached bones,” Haga said.

  “Are you of the blood of the Merki?” Tamuka snarled, looking over at Haga.

  Haga bristled, hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  “If you did not bear the helm of the Qar Qarth I would strike you dead for that.”

  The circle about the fire was deathly quiet.

  “I should ask,” Haga said low, his voice a sinister hiss, “if you are even our Qar Qarth.”

  No one spoke. Tamuka gazed at Haga, seeing his deadly resolve, his desire to offer challenge of sword, perhaps even here, at this very moment, and he knew in his heart that Haga would win. Yet his anger boiled and his hand came to rest upon the hilt of the sword of the Qar Qarth, ready to draw it out.

  “It is forbidden for there to be blood challenge in time of war.” Sarg came into the circle to stand before the fire. He looked around at the clan chieftains and commanders.

  “It is forbidden,” Gubta said, coming to stand by Tamuka, half-drawing his blade.

  With a low snarl, Haga turned and walked out of the circle.

  Tamuka watched him depart, knowing that in Haga’s mind it was not settled.

  He looked back at the others.

  “I tell you this from all that I know, that you cannot even see,” and his voice was low but insistent. “If we turn away now, there shall come a day when it will be the cattle who will come in search of us, armed with weapons beyond our darkest nightmares. Three seasons back they were but infants in the ways of war, and the Tugars in their foolishness allowed themselves to be defeated.”

  He looked around the circle. Muzta was not present, and he smiled inwardly, having heard the report that the Qar Qarth of the Tugars and his son had fallen at the head of the assault. The survivors of his two umens were gathered together singing their death songs even now, vowing to die at dawn and thus end their disgrace. The world would be best rid of them anyhow.

  “I tell you now that if we suffer the cattle to live, there will be endless war. They will rebuild, become yet stronger, forge new weapons, spreading their madness to all the cattle of this world. Tonight, upon that ridge,” and he pointing to the low surrounding hills, “their broken army stands, knowing they cannot retreat, knowing as well that they cannot win. Yet if we ride away now, in years to come it will be war after war, our sons struggling against theirs, a war across the world, and we shall lose ten times what we have lost here, until in the end the Merki will be no more.

  “We must do, we have to do, this.”

  He could see nods of reluctant agreement.

  “I tell you this now as well. As Qar Qarth I promise you victory at dawn. Already I have ordered remounts brought forth. Six umens of horse I shall have placed in the center at dawn, four umens of warriors afoot behind them and to either side.”

  He picked up a broken musket, and using the attached bayonet he drew a half circle on the ground and a block in the middle. Then he drew an arrow straight forward from the block to pierce the half circle.

  “This is how it will be. By tomorrow evening our riders will already be to the gates of Roum, which stand defenseless, their army here, what little is left smashed and captured. The day after, the rest of the horses will be brought up, and after we have feasted upon the cattle we take, we shall ride eastward and feast some more upon the city.

  “I swear this as Qar Qarth, I swear this upon the ka of my spirit, which can see such things and bring them to be. I tell you now they are already beaten and at the first charge we shall slice through them with ease.

  “Tomorrow I promise you victory.”

  Andrew Lawrence Keane walked along the lines, his thoughts no longer on the war; they seemed to take in so much more, all the dreams he had ever had since coming to this place, and he saw them reflected in the eyes of those who looked up at him.

  The field was quiet now, a few fires sparkling low, men sitting around them, cooking what little they had, sharing the last of the rations.r />
  There were no songs tonight; it was beyond that. He stopped, looking out across the fields. The Great Wheel of the heavens was moving westward; soon it would be dawn.

  A fire flared up, and he turned to look at a knot of men gathered around a ruined villa. He drew closer.

  “A hard day.”

  It was Marcus, Rick Schneid beside him.

  “A hard day,” Andrew whispered.

  “And tomorrow?”

  Andrew smiled sadly, and then shook his head.

  “We’re played out. Over twenty thousand more casualties today. It was a miracle that we held them at all—they started too late, or they would have finished it. Tomorrow they’ll come in at dawn.”

  He shook his head again and looked off.

  “A miracle,” Marcus said. “A miracle we made ourselves today, perhaps tomorrow another.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What’s over there?” Andrew asked, nodding toward the fire.

  “Gregory, some of the boys,” Rick said, limping along, nursing the saber cut to his leg. “Word kind of spread that Gregory wants to say something, so I thought I’d come over.”

  “How’s Vincent?” Andrew said, looking over at Marcus.

  “He’s fine now. I think he’ll be all right.”

  Andrew smiled sadly, having seen Vincent, Marcus holding him; he had quietly withdrawn, not even capable of helping.

  He started over toward the fire. The villa had served as the anchor point for Third and Fourth Corps sealing off the breach to the line. The ground was still carpeted with Merki dead. A roaring fire was blazing in front of the ruined building. More and more men were coming up, many with bandaged wounds. Leaning against the wall were the battle standards, and as Andrew approached he stopped to look at them. Proud flags, Suzdalian regiments, Kev, Novrod, MurOm, and Vazima. Old names of ancient Russia, now upon this world, the army instilled with all the valor and traditions of the Army of the Potomac. In the middle of the stand he saw the colors of the 35th Maine, the men of the unit deployed to help seal the breach, and already he had heard more names said softly, men who would never answer another roll.