Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

by Robert Charles Wilson

  Of course gambling is a sin as well as a vice. But they could make their own reckoning with Heaven. If a man arrived at the Last Judgment with bullet holes in him, acquired in the defense of his country, would he really be dismissed on account of a habit of dice or cards?

  I didn’t think so. Julian had made at least that much of an Agnostic of me.

  Next morning the troop-ships stopped arriving at Striver.

  That was an ominous sign. The ships had been coming down the Narrows like clockwork prior to this time, bringing men and goods and articles of war; but we were still not up to the full strength allotted us in the general military planning. It wasn’t that the army already assembled was insignificant. The Navy had delivered two full divisions of three thousand men apiece, including a detachment of cavalry, along with their mounts; also a fully-equipped field hospital, and an artillery brigade with brand-new field-pieces and ample supplies of ammunition.

  On paper it was a formidable force, although several hundred of those men were already suffering from complaints ranging from seasickness to contagious fevers, rendering them unsuited for battle. But we had hoped to face the enemy with ten thousand able-bodied soldiers altogether—because that was roughly the number of Dutch troops believed to be defending Goose Bay, a force that would be reinforced by rail very soon, if it hadn’t been already.

  Julian spent most of the day at the docks, peering across the troubled waters of Lake Melville with the intensity of a sailor’s widow. I had gone out to summon him back to a hot dinner and a conference with his sub-commanders when a sail at last hove into view … but it was only the Basilisk, which had been across the lake at the town of Shesh, a smaller locality than Striver, now also in American hands. The Admiral came ashore in one of the Basilisk’s boats and joined us for the evening meal.

  I haven’t described Admiral Fairfield before. Suffice to say that he was even older than Sam Godwin, but active and alert, a veteran of many sea battles, and with the political indifference common among Navy men; for the Navy, unlike the two armies, was seldom called upon to settle arguments over the ascension to power of Commanders in Chief. The Navy, in short, never marched to New York City for the purpose of making kings. It simply fought the enemy at sea, and took pride in that tradition; and that was the way Admiral Fairfield liked it.

  He wore a gray beard, its great length commensurate with his age and station, and tonight he frowned through his whiskers, even though the beefsteak set before him was excellent, the best the commissary could come up with.

  “Where are my men?” was the first thing Julian asked of the Admiral, as soon as we were seated.

  “The ships don’t come through the narrows,” the Admiral said bluntly.

  “Do we still hold the Dutch forts?”

  “Securely. Melville is an American lake now, as far as naval power goes. Something must be interfering with the transit between Newfoundland and Hamilton Inlet. For all I know there might have been an ambuscade at sea, or something of that nature. But the news hasn’t reached Rigolet or Eskimo Island, if so.”

  “I’m not sure I can postpone the march to Goose Bay any longer. We lose out advantage, if we have any, with every hour that passes.”

  “I understand your concern,” the Admiral said. “I wouldn’t wait, if I were you. March with the thousands you have, is my advice.”

  Julian forced a smile, though he clearly didn’t like the way events were trending. “As long as the Navy is there to support us with her guns, I suppose the risk might be acceptable.”

  Admiral Fairfield said with all the gravity that was in him, which was very much, “You have my word, Major General Comstock, that the Basilisk will be off-shore when you and your army arrive at Goose Bay. The Dutch might sink every other vessel in the flotilla, but you won’t be abandoned if I have anything to say about it.”

  “I thank you,” said Julian.

  “This is a bold campaign. Some might say foolish. Certainly the odds are long. But a strike at the Dutch vitals in Labrador is overdue.”

  “Then we won’t let it wait any longer.” Julian turned to Sam. “We’ll march in the morning,” he said.

  “We’re still low on horses and mules.”

  “Don’t short the cavalry if you can help it, but make sure the field-pieces aren’t left behind.”

  “Very well. Shall I give the news to the men?”

  “No, I’ll do it,” said Julian. “After dinner.”

  The news of an imminent march quelled many appetites among the regimental commanders, but Julian ate heartily. Arrangements were made to bed down the Admiral until morning; then Julian and his subordinates set out to communicate orders to the men. I tagged along for journalistic purposes.

  We went to each of the buildings that had been set aside as shelters for the infantrymen, and to the cavalry quarters, and finally to the general camp established in the town square. The meetings were mostly uneventful, and the men accepted the news cheerfully, for they were eager for a fight.

  We entered one structure, formerly a sports arena, in which five hundred veteran soldiers were sheltering from the cold. Night came early in the northern parts of the world at that time of year, and November in Labrador would pass for January in a more hospitable section of the country. A number of coal stoves had been installed in the building, and the men had gathered around these, and they were singing Piston, Loom, and Anvil in loud and imperfect harmony when we entered. A Colonel named Abijah, who had dined with us, was embarrassed by their behavior, and he shouted out orders to cease singing and stand to attention.

  As soon as the men became aware of us they fell silent.* Julian stood up on a barrelhead and addressed them.

  “Tomorrow the caissons roll for Goose Bay,” he said simply. “It’s a day’s march, and we may see action by the end of it. Are all of you prepared?”

  They shouted “Yes!” in unison, or cried out “Hoo-ah!” or made similar martial exclamations, for their spirits were high.

  “Good,” Julian said. He looked hardly more than a child in the lantern light—more like a boy playing soldier than a grizzled general—but that just suited the infantry, who had grown fond of the idea of being led by the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. “I believe you were singing when I came in. Please don’t let me stop you.”

  There was some uneasiness over this. These were men who had worked in industry before they were drafted, or had herded horses on rural Estates, or were the living donations of landowners who held them in indenture. For all their loyalty they remained conscious of Julian’s status as an Aristo, and some of them were ashamed of what they had been singing, as if it were an insult to his class (which in a real sense it was). But Julian clapped his hands and began it for them—“By Piston, Loom, and Anvil, boys,” in his reedy but heartfelt tenor. And before the chorus was finished the whole group had joined in; and at the end of a few verses they cheered lustily, and called out “General Julian!” or “Julian Comstock!” or—the first time I had heard this formulation—“Julian Conqueror!”

  For reasons I couldn’t fathom, the sound of hundreds of men shouting “Julian Conqueror” caused a melancholy shiver to run up my spine, and the night seemed colder for it. But Julian only smiled, and accepted the men’s regard as if it were his due.

  * I had made it a point to befriend some of the sailors, and I picked up a little of their “salt slang,” which I thought would lend verisimilitude to the novels I planned to write.

  † “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, to dwell in the Land of Nod, in the eastern part of Eden.” Genesis 4:16—it doesn’t mention anything about Lake Melville or Goose Bay.

  * They were perhaps a little slow in their thinking, for among the other luxuries imported by the Dutch had been a few bales of cultivated Indian Hemp, some of which had begun to circulate among the troops, until Sam had the contraband placed under guard.

  2

  The Battle of Goose Bay has been much described elsewhere, and I wil
l not weary the reader with details of our maneuvers, nor tease out the minutiae of those tragic days.

  I rode near Julian in the forefront of our army. In the cold, low sunlight of the morning we were by all appearances a formidable body of men. Julian rode a muscular gray-and-white stallion at the very forefront of the troops, with the Campaign Flag carried by a mounted adjutant just behind him.* The road from Striver to Goose Bay was a fine one, paved in the Dutch manner, so that our carts and caissons were not bogged down even though the land around us was all icy fens and jagged rock and stands of spruce. Whenever we marched over a slight rise I made a point of looking back at the chain of men, mules, ammunition carts, hospital wagons, etc., strung out behind us. It was a heartening sight; and if we felt invincible that morning perhaps the error was understandable.

  The cavalry scouted ahead of us, and every so often a man on horseback would report all-clear ahead. We made good time until the afternoon, when the cavalry began to encounter pickets, and there was some mild skirmishing.

  Almost simultaneously we came under attack from small groups of Dutch riders who knew these woods and string bogs intimately and used them to their advantage. None of this amounted to much—a few shots fired from cover, a few horses frightened, a few men nicked with lead. One regiment or another would make quick work of the attackers, or at least chase them away. But if such flea-bites did not damage us materially, they did succeed in slowing us down.

  Julian and his subordinate commanders did their best to keep the army in good order. Our objective was a line of low ridges where he believed the bulk of the Dutch army was encamped. Soon enough our scouts confirmed that suspicion. The Dutch entrenchments straddled the road on the outskirts of the town of Goose Bay. Their positions were well-chosen, and dislodging them would not be simple.

  We camped for the night just out of range of these enemy emplacements. The infantrymen dug holes where the ground was yielding; and after dark, by subtle moonlight, the artillerymen hauled their guns to forward positions.

  Once the moon was down, a tenuous blue aurora shivered in the sky. The temperature dropped, and the breath of sleeping men rose up like luminous smoke. In the morning the battle began.

  Julian had studied the way armies maneuver in the field, and he had made sure his regimental commanders were up to the task of understanding and enacting his orders. Although he remained at a command tent in the rear of the action—and Sam and I with him—he pored over maps all the while, and messengers transited in and out of his headquarters as busily as ants at a picnic.

  All morning the artillery roared relentlessly, theirs and ours.

  We were outnumbered; but the Dutch had not positioned themselves to their best advantage. Not knowing which way Julian would attack, they had reinforced their flanks and neglected their middle. Julian abetted their confusion by feinting left and right, but stored up his big guns for a frontal charge. This began about noon, and was bloody. We lost nearly a thousand men in the battle that came to be called Goose Gap, and five hundred more were trucked away in Dominion wagons with missing limbs or other disabling injuries. By nightfall the battlefield resembled the waste-bin of a remedial school for inept butchers. I will not describe the odors that began to arise from it.

  The Mitteleuropans fled their positions as soon as we were close enough to bring our Trench Sweepers to bear. We captured dozens of prisoners, and after some “mopping up” of stray pockets of re sis tance the day was ours. We had taken the low ridge that was the gateway to Goose Bay, and we hastily occupied and strengthened the former Dutch defenses there. The Dutch commander arranged under a flag of truce to remove his dead and injured from the battlefield. That was a mournful sight—foreign soldiers stumbling with carts among the corpses, accompanied by the terrible groans of the dying—and no doubt disappointing to Private Langers, who would be denied the luxury of looting the enemy dead.

  Julian relocated his headquarters and the Campaign Flag to an elevated position from which we could see the town and the harbor of Goose Bay, as well as the surviving Dutch forces, who were hastily rolling out cutwire and building abatisses in anticipation of a siege. Julian used this perspective to mark his maps, and he was still examining those maps by lamplight as midnight approached. My typewriter had been brought up in a wagon along with other supplies appropriate to a mobile headquarters, and I sat in a corner of the same huge tent recording the events of that notable day. At last fatigue overcame me; but before I departed for my own cot I told Julian we had won a great victory, and that he ought to rest now that it had been achieved.

  “I can’t afford to rest,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  He looked gaunt and distracted, and I pitied him. It might seem unjust to feel sympathy for a Major General who had not lifted a rifle, on a day when thousands of men had sacrificed lives and limbs on his behalf. But it seemed to me that Julian had lived the struggle of every soldier under his command, at least in his imagination, and suffered each loss as though the bullets had pierced his own body. He identified closely with his men, and always took pains to see that they were fed and rested, and this had helped to make him popular among them; but he paid for it now, in stress and in grief.

  “Of course you can afford to rest,” I said gently. “You’ll be a better officer for it.”

  He rose from his camp table, stretching, and together we stepped outside. Away from the portable stove the air was very cold, and the fires of the enemy smoldered like coals in the flatlands ahead of us.

  “See all that we’ve won,” I said.

  “I’m content with what I see,” said Julian. “Apart from the number of the dead. What worries me is what I don’t see.”

  “Well, it’s dark, after all … what don’t you see?”

  “The cavalry detachment I sent to tear up tracks behind the enemy’s lines, for one. Not a man of them has reported back. If the rail connection to Goose Bay remains intact, reinforcements will begin to arrive, and keep on arriving.”

  “It’s no easy job, bending rails and blowing up bridges. Probably the cavalry was just detained in its work.”

  “And the harbor at Goose Bay. What do you make out by this light, Adam?”

  “It seems peaceful.” There was a glow in the sky—a dusty patch of the Northern Lights, which waxed and waned—and I saw a few masts and ships at anchor—Dutch commercial shipping, I supposed. “They threw all their gunboats against us at Striver, and lost them.”

  “I see the same. What I don’t see is any American ship of war. I had hoped Admiral Fairfield would be shelling Goose Bay by now, or at least positioning his vessels.”

  That was true … and the absence seemed ominous, now that he pointed it out to me.

  “Perhaps they’ll arrive in the morning,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” said Julian wearily.

  I have not yet said very much about Sam Godwin and his role in these events.

  That’s not because his part was insignificant, but because it was performed in intimate consultation with Julian, and I didn’t participate directly in battle-planning.* But Sam pored over the maps just as intently as did Julian, and brought his greater experience into play. He did not attempt to take command, but made himself sympathetic to Julian’s suggestions, and seldom contradicted them, but only offered nuance in their refinement. I supposed this was the role he had played with Julian’s father Bryce during the successful Isthmian War, and at times, when the two of them put their heads together, I could imagine that twenty years of history had been rolled back, and that this was the command tent of the Army of the Californias … though Julian’s unusual yellow beard belied the daydream, as did the cold November weather.

  Julian, in any case, succeeded in maintaining a fragile optimism about the campaign; while Sam, though he tried not to show it, was obviously less hopeful. Ever since we sailed from Manhattan, all humor had fled from him. He didn’t joke, or laugh at jokes. He scowled, instead … and there was a glitter in his eye that might have been f
ear, sternly suppressed. I expect Sam had concluded that he might not see New York City, or more importantly Emily Baines Comstock, ever again in this earthly life; and it was my fervent wish that Julian might succeed in proving him wrong. But the events of the next day were not encouraging.

  The Dutch counter-attacked at dawn.

  Perhaps they had done some scouting of their own, and calculated that our army, while intimidating, was not as large as they feared; or perhaps reinforcements had arrived by rail during the night. Whatever the case, their resolve had grown firm and their courage was not lacking.

  Though the defenders of Goose Bay lacked a Chinese Cannon, their field artillery outranged ours by several hundred yards. They had figured that difference finely, and used it to their advantage. Shot and shell pummeled our forward ranks and masked their first advance. Our men soon brought their own weapons to bear, including the formidable Trench Sweeper; but the Dutch had come ahead too quickly for our field-pieces to be of much use against them, and an important hill, along with an entire artillery battery, was captured before Julian or his lieutenants could react.

  All that morning I heard the unceasing roar of cannonry and the cries of wounded men as they were carried back from the front. Dutch and American regiments went at one another like clashing sabers, shooting off sparks of blood and mayhem. Messengers arrived and departed with desperation in their eyes, and each one seemed more exhausted than the last. An entire battalion collapsed on our right flank, driven back by cannonade, although reinforcements held the position—barely.

  Noon passed, and the smoke of the battle continued to rise like a crow-colored obelisk into the wan and windless sky. “Panic is our greatest enemy now,” Sam said grimly.