by Scott McKay
“Why is that?”
She sprang up into a sitting position and roughly rocked him onto his back.
“OK, joke’s over,” she said. “I want to be serious with you.”
“Sarah,” Will began…
“No. I have something to say.”
“Before you do that,” he retorted, “I have something to say. Because I have a pretty good idea where this is going, and it’s not going to work.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Think about it, Sarah,” he said. “You’ve been right about me all your life. I’m the goofy kid next door and you always knew you were out of my league. Well, that’s a lot more true than it’s ever been.”
“It is certainly not,” protested Sarah.
“Yes it is. Who am I now? I’ve got no parents and no relatives, other than a half-dozen brothers who all now live 500 miles away or more, and I barely even know any of them because the youngest one is ten years older than me. I have no money and no prospect of getting any in the near future. I couldn’t even buy you a ring, and I can’t pay tuition to finish school at the Academy. Which is the least of my concerns, because as soon as this ship docks I’m going right back to Barley Point to fight in a war that we might not even win. I am the last guy you should give your heart to right now.”
“Oh, that is just completely wrong,” she reprimanded him. “Everything you just said are reasons for you to marry me right this very minute.”
“How can you possibly figure that?” he asked, sitting up.
“You say you don’t have any family? Well, that’s not true – you have family all over Ardenia and they are going to be there for you, Will. Your brothers are great people and you know it.
“And even if what you were saying was true, which it’s not, you should marry me and then you’ll be surrounded by people who love you and have known you all our lives. So that’s not a problem.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Sarah.”
“Shut up,” she fussed. “I’m talking. And no money? Please. The Stuarts have money we don’t even know about. You marry me and you’re immediately rich. And by the way, we now have more than one family business without people to run it, so not only would you have a job, you’d have a great one.”
“I have no idea how to run a storehouse or broker commodities or any of that,” he said.
“So? You’ll learn,” she said. “You’re not stupid, Will.
“And as for the war, you chased down an entire Anur and took out their headman in a knife fight to save me from the worst nightmare there is. You have no idea how close I was to being gone forever. Do you think I don’t have faith you’ll make it back from the war? You’re an even bigger hero than my father, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
“There are millions of them out there,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying I’m willing to bet on you, you big goat!” she said. “Will, I’ve never been out of your league. I was a stupid, silly girl who never realized I had the man of my dreams right next door. And now that I finally woke up and you’re right here there is no way in the world I’m going to let you go.”
Silence ensued for a few moments.
“Damn, Sarah,” he said. “That was pretty good stuff just now.”
“You think so?” she wiped away a tear.
“Yeah, I do,” he said.
“Ssssooooo…” she ran her hand over his chest, “what do you think?”
“I think we need to have a talk with Rob, and I think we’d also better have a talk with your aunt,” he said. “We need to make some wise decisions right now, not rash ones.”
“I’ll take that for now,” she said, getting off the bed and heading for his door, shoes in hand. “Ship’s about to dock. Get up, Forling.”
…
FORTY TWO
Dunnansport – Morning (Fourth Day)
Cross had been to this up-and-coming little burg a few weeks ago, having taken the Clyde on a public-relations tour stop after the Justice’s crash, but he hadn’t seen its train station before.
It’s nice, he thought. Looks like it’s brand new.
There was a platform which reeked of freshly-cut wood, and a station house which looked newly completed, or not quite so, as even in the pre-dawn hours Cross could hear hammering from the wall furthest from the tracks. The train station gave off the impression of being the center of a crash construction program in Dunnansport, which had swelled to multiple times its normal size as resources and manpower began pouring into the city in advance of its expected defense against the Udar.
Cross, who two days earlier would have laughed at the idea of himself as a military man, was now an integral part of that defense.
He’d noticed just before the locomotive reached the station that workers were laying more tracks to the west of the city, which he’d read in his briefing book was a rush-job on finishing a rail line to Barley Point, and then from there northwest to Battleford and on to Trenory to the north along the Tweade. The Army was being dragooned into that construction effort, and the two infantry divisions already in place had devoted half their number, a total of 9,000 men, to completing the Dunnansport-to-Barley Point leg of that line. The crash construction program meant that in a week the line would likely be finished after ten years of inaction that had greatly frustrated the locals. In another week, it was likely to be through to Battleford.
Which assumed Ardenia had that much time, Cross groused to himself.
As the train stopped and Cross and three of the other officers of the new Special Air Force took coffee with General Dees in his private car, a young lieutenant climbed aboard and found them for a briefing.
“Speak, Lieutenant Mason,” Dees said.
“Yes, General. Here’s what I’ve found out. The mission was successful, and just downriver at the port the naval convoy is docking, or will be in the next few minutes. A regiment of cavalry from Barley Point under Colonel Terhune, supplemented by militia from Dunnansport and Battleford along with a few Marines, went almost all the way to Rogers Range and tracked down the Udar raiders, wiping them out in a battle on Sutton Hill and then entering their camp.
“You won’t believe this, sir, but they secured the release of 367 hostages by putting up one of their number, a Lieutenant Will Forling, against the Udar headman in a knife fight, and Forling won.”
“Bloody good show!” Dees exclaimed.
Cross had to agree. “I want to meet that guy,” he said.
“They evac’ed the force and the hostages by sea,” the lieutenant said, “but despite some shelling of the coastline by the frigates in the convoy, the enemy was advancing at full speed up the coast. In a couple of days they could well be at the Tweade – either here, Barley Point or Battleford or, given their numbers, at all three. Barley Point so far is the weak point in the defense of the river; we don’t have reinforcements there.”
“We are the reinforcements,” Cross said. Dees agreed.
“Two more things, sir,” Lt. Mason added.
“First, I’m sure you’ve heard that somehow the enemy has managed to train and deploy raptors as military assets. We have no intel yet as to where they will surface next.”
“That’s what SAF is for,” Cross said. “And that equipment we’re carrying. All of it.”
“We can handle the raptors,” Dees agreed. “How many of them can Udar have?”
“And finally,” Mason concluded, “it wasn’t known that Strongstead had fallen for practically an entire month because they’d been signaling via teletext that all was well. Dunnansport wired them a message yesterday saying they knew those messages were lies, and got a response.”
“What was it?” Dees asked.
“The respondent identified himself as a Lt. Daniel Thorne of Alvedorne, teletext operator at Strongstead, and said he was responding under duress with the lives of six other officers from the citadel forfeit to his cooperation.”
�
��Thorne of Alvedorne,” Dees said, recognizing the name of the nation’s wealthiest family. “That isn’t good. Who are the other six?”
“Naval ensign Frederick Hale of Newmarket, Marine Lt. Victor Smith of Aldingham, Army Lt. Luke Abrams of Cheatham, Army Lt. Tobias Evans of Belgarden, Army Lt. Peter Curtis of Trenory…and Army Captain Matthew Stuart of Barley Point.”
…
FORTY THREE
Dunnansport – Morning (Fourth Day)
The wharf at the small city of, now, close to 15,000 was already a hive of activity when the ships reached the docks near the mouth of the Tweade just after dawn, proving that the grapevine was still a more effective rapid disseminator of information than even the teletext. Everybody in town knew about the Udar invasion to come, and everybody knew about the rescue along the coast of Watkins Gulf.
So when the Yarmouth docked at the Dunnansport wharf, a large crowd had gathered to cheer and welcome the rescuees and the cavalrymen, militia, and others who played a part in the rescue. An aid station had been set up near the wharf with hot food, lavatories and clothing for the survivors, while in a field nearby, a tent city was being constructed to house the thousands of volunteers streaming into the city via the nonstop locomotives and steamships beginning to pour in via land and sea. One of the Stuart warehouses had been cleared out and temporarily refitted as a hospital and recovery center for the captives, whose lives had been destroyed in the Udar raids and who would need help finding the strength to begin anew.
Ardenia was frantically mobilizing for war, with Dunnansport a major hub in that mobilization.
The main Army forces were being filtered to the west, as the defense of Trenory and its 200,000 residents were considered the top priority. Reinforcements were being established as well at Battleford along the Tweade, as the Fourteenth Infantry Division had passed through from its base at Carteret to the north the day before, disembarking from locomotive cars and immediately marching up the river road on the east bank. Horse-drawn artillery and steam wagons carrying armaments and supplies dotted the column. The Fourteenth had detached a large number of their soldiers to assist in the rushed program building out the rail line, and those soldiers had stayed behind to help lay track along the river road west of Dunnansport. Impressively they’d laid an incredible eleven miles of the seventy-mile distance on the first day. In a mere week, the line, which locals had groused for years should already have been finished, would be complete.
Thus when Latham, Rob, Sarah and Will ambled down the gangplank into the city from Adelaide, they instantly saw that the plucky little city of Dunnansport wasn’t so little anymore.
“Not the same place it was three days ago,” Will said.
“You’ve got that right,” said Latham, as he dodged a rushing Marine.
“Let’s collect our horses and go see Aunt Rebecca,” Rob said.
He held his sister’s hand and gave her a smile. She returned it, and straightened the beret on her head. That was another gift from Broadham, who had donated his headgear to the cause of her sartorial reinforcement after remarking that nobody had ever looked better in a navy uniform.
Sarah had told Will about the origins of her outfit, and she could tell he had a bit of the jealous type in him.
“You look ridiculous in that hat,” Will said.
“You just can’t handle that I’m wearing another man’s clothes,” she needled him back.
“Nah,” he said, looking at the leather coat he’d draped over his arm. “You had mine on first.”
Which was a good point. She hadn’t realized Will had so much skill in snappy repartee; he certainly didn’t have it before he went off to school.
And that brought her a sharp pang of sadness, because it struck her that Will had sent her dozens of letters over the past two and a half years and she’d read only a few of them. They were all back at Hilltop Farm, and they were now almost assuredly ashes.
Will had seen the look on her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Your letters. I think I’ve lost them all. Will, I didn’t even read a lot of them. I’m such a shrew. I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, those?” he chuckled. “Don’t worry about those. I embarrassed myself with most of those letters and it’s better you didn’t read them.”
“I really doubt that.”
“Look, it’s not a problem. Besides, I’ll write you new ones. And this time I bet you actually will read them.”
She’d kissed him hard then. “You bet right, Forling. And from now on whenever we’re apart I’m going to be writing you all the time.”
Terhune had debarked from Adelaide first, as he was now the commander of the newly-formed Lower Tweade Military District, and that meant he might be the busiest man in the region. He said he needed to get a handle on the logistics of the resupply of his garrison at Barley Point and arrange transport for his soldiers back to the base, and then he himself would be off to the smaller city up the river. Terhune gave Will one day’s leave in Dunnansport to “do what you gotta go,” and then directed him back to Barley Point. Forling was getting a promotion and an appointment as the Executive Officer of the Barley Point command.
Latham also was given permission to stay behind a day in Dunnansport, because Terhune told him he was putting him in command of Barley Point’s engineer corps and he’d need to round up men and materials for several projects the two had discussed on the way in. “Start with that damn railroad,” he’d said, “and see if you can’t help those people get it done any faster.”
As for Rob, Terhune told him not to even think about trying to join back up with his command. “Your family needs you, son,” he said. “Consider this an indefinite leave. If you want, you can play with your militia friends in Dunnansport, but you’re the man of that house now and you should act accordingly.”
All of which meant that the quintet of passengers on the Adelaide were going their separate ways. All agreed to one last meeting before splitting up, though, that being at the Stuart mansion in Tweade’s Landing where Rob and Sarah would be taking up residence.
Latham still wasn’t sure what he was going to do about Ethan and Hannah, who he felt were his responsibility to deliver to the Stuarts. Perhaps he’d bring Jefferson, the manservant David brought with him on the expedition–Jefferson had made it out alive largely by keeping his head down, as best as Latham could tell, though that wasn’t a negative judgment on the man’s combat abilities–up to Barley Point, and then Jefferson could transport the children home. He’d have to find out if that would be necessary.
Rob had suggested to Sarah that when the contents of the Hilltop Farm strongbox showed up, they would have some decisions to make and a strategy to put together. Sarah responded that she thought Will ought to be part of that discussion, and Rob immediately knew why, giving her a big hug and yelling, “Congratulations, sis!”
“Don’t say congratulations!” she scolded. “It’s bad luck. You’re supposed to say ‘Best wishes’ about an engagement.”
“Oh,” Rob said. “I didn’t know that.”
Nearly an hour later, the four had fought their way through the crowds and chaos and made their way to the Stuarts’ Tweade Landing mansion. It was up to Rob to deliver the news of his death to his aunt. They’d buried David atop Sutton Hill after the battle, he told her, before riding west to rescue Sarah.
Rebecca was a wreck. She clung tightly to her niece and nephew. She gave her sympathies to Will for the loss of his parents and told him he was welcome at the house any time he wanted. And she cried, nonstop.
The burden of Rebecca’s grief would have lots of bearers, however. As the morning continued, a steady stream of well-wishers made their way to the Tweade Landing mansion to pay their respects, in a makeshift wake, to one of the city’s commercial giants, and David’s fellow militiamen who survived the battle on the ridge west of Sutton Hill sought out Aunt Rebecca to tell her of her husband’s bravery.
“I never thought of him as a military
hero,” she sobbed. “Even in death the old coot can still surprise me.”
Rebecca said they’d soon have as complete a family reunion as was still possible. Their cousins Josey and Peter were due in later in the week; Josey was married to a banker in Port William, while Peter was a lawyer in Principia. But civilian travel into Dunnansport was rapidly becoming a challenge with all the traffic coming into the city.
Also arriving to pay his respects to David’s widow was Col. Terhune. “You don’t know me, ma’am,” he said, “but I had the pleasure of commanding the expeditionary force out there in the last few days. And let me say that your husband is a hero. He gave his life for his country, and without him we couldn’t have brought 367 of our friends, relatives, and neighbors out of the clutches of the enemy.”
With that he presented her with an Ardenian flag, and the thanks of a grateful nation.
And just before lunchtime, there was another party of guests at the door, this one headed by Mistress Helen Irving of Barley Point, who had brought Ethan and Hannah the seventy miles downriver on the small river steamer Blackbird. They’d left early that morning and arrived with two men carrying a large trunk, which Helen said contained all of the papers Latham had rescued from Hilltop Farm, “plus a few things we thought the children might need.” Helen had put the word out among the ladies of Barley Point and taken up a collection of toys, books and clothes that might replace, in some small way, what the children had lost at Hilltop Farm.
Rebecca was moved, again, to tears. “That is just the most decent thing,” she said. “Mistress Irving, you are truly a saint and our newest, truest friend.”
Latham smiled at Helen, and she smiled back. She kissed the children, who were being smothered by their aunt and older siblings. They then joined Latham on a pair of wicker chairs on the back veranda of the house.
“It seems you’re a war hero, H.V.,” she said.
“Hardly,” he responded. “And call me Henry.”
“Henry Latham – like the famous actor? Were you related?”
“I was. In fact, he was my father. It’s a long story.”
