Battle Hymn (11 page)

"Then we will do another pouring today," Karga finally announced.

"My master. The same problem will still exist tomorrow and the day after."

"Are you telling me no, slave?"

Hans stood silent, looking him straight in the eye. That in itself was a most dangerous gesture. Among the Bantag, to do so was to make a clear indication of equal caste; for a cattle to do it was an act bordering on mutiny. He held the gaze for several seconds, then shifted his eyes away.

"My Master. I present you with fact that cannot be changed. It is the way of iron and machines. You cannot will them to bend like a bow whenever you desire. They must be cleaned, repaired."

"Repaired? Did someone break something?"

Hans could see the puddlers flinch at the master's words. The last time he had become convinced that someone had deliberately broken a tool, half a dozen workers were hurled into the molten pit, which resulted in an even more towering rage when it was pointed out that the six incinerated bodies had contaminated the iron and the pour was now useless … at that point the entire crew had been annihilated, setting production back even further, until new workers could be trained.

"As you rest your horse, so must you rest the furnace, my master. The same as your harness or bowstring wears and needs repair, so does the furnace."

Hans waited expectantly for a homicidal outbreak and was startled when the master chuckled softly.

"Another pour, then we stop to do what you ask."

Hans breathed an inner sigh of relief, even though the crew had been condemned to a straight twenty-four hours of work, a pace that would most likely kill or cripple several of them before the coming of dawn.

Hans bowed low from the waist, keeping his head lowered until the master turned away.

"There are times, cattle, when you are too clever with words," the master snarled. "Someday I shall cut your tongue out and eat it."

Then who will run this for you? Hans thought silently. He knew the pressure the master was under. Iron and steel were needed, tens of thousands of tons of the precious stuff. Overseers who did not meet the demand were removed, and such a disgrace in Bantag society could be met with only one response, suicide.

"If I should ever fall from grace," the master continued, "I will slaughter everyone here, and all whom they hold dear, to be my slaves in the Everlasting Sky."

The threat made Hans shudder, for he knew that in the end it was all but inevitable that the overseer's words would come to pass.

Hans was standing silent, waiting for dismissal, the master looking all the more demonlike, when a worker at the number three furnace behind him, broke open the tap, and a river of molten iron cascaded out onto the pouring floor. Choking clouds of steam and swirling sparks soared upward with a hissing roar.

Karga held him with his gaze, and Hans stood silent, waiting for the barked command of dismissal.

"Go. Return to your quarters."

Hans did not turn away. "Shouldn't I stay here to make sure the work is done to your satisfaction?"

The master chuckled. "They will hate you more if they labor and you sleep. I like that."

"I will need a pass."

Grumbling a curse, Karga fished in the pouch dangling from his belt and pulled out a brass tablet signifying that he was under orders and therefore could leave the foundry.

Hans, bowing low, backed away as the pit master, with an angry curse, turned and stalked off into the shadows. Breathing a sigh of relief, he stood up and looked at the puddlers, who had continued to work throughout the encounter.

"Do you think there'll be a slaughter?"

Hans saw the fear in Gregory's eyes. He clapped the boy on the shoulder.

"It's all right. The bastard can't kill all of us." He tried to force a smile of encouragement. "Hell, if he kills me, you get the job."

A flicker of a grin crossed Gregory's features. "I can live longer without it."

Hans nodded, trying to smile. Though Gregory was still only in his mid-twenties his hair was already thinning and streaked with gray. Like all the prisoners, he had pale, almost translucent features from the overwork and the fear.

"I'd better get off the floor. Try and get an extra watering crew working for those poor devils in the treadmills, and the same for the puddlers. See if you can get to Tamira over at the cookhouse for some extra bread. These poor bastards are ready to pass out."

Even as he spoke, he kept his gaze locked on Karga. A work crew staggered past him, hauling baskets of charcoal. A woman with a small child clinging to the hem of her tattered dress staggered and fell, spilling several pounds of charcoal on the floor.

With an angry roar Karga was on her, his whip cracking. The woman tried to get to her feet and then went back down under the blows.

Karga reached down, picked her up with one hand, and then flung her to the floor again. She lay unconscious, the child screaming with terror.

"Kesus save her," Gregory whispered, "that's Lin's wife and child."

Hans sprinted forward. "Karga, she's exempt!" he snapped. "She's the wife of my food overseer. She is exempt!"

Karga turned with an angry snarl. "Then he is not doing his job properly," he announced with a sardonic laugh. "Otherwise we would not be behind. She deliberately dropped her charcoal to slow down the work. She goes to the pit. If there is one response, it is you, Hans. This is payment to me for the disgrace of not making your people work."

"Karga!"

A muscular black arm came around Hans's throat, pulling him back. Struggling, he looked over his shoulder and saw Ketswana, the foreman of number three furnace, with Gregory at his side.

Hans struggled to break free as Ketswana covered his mouth with his free hand.

"For Perm's sake!" Gregory hissed. "Interfere and he'll take a dozen more. Don't!"

Karga looked toward Hans, his eyes glowing with a fiendish light as the number four furnace cracked open and a torrent of molten iron poured out.

"Get him out of here!" Gregory hissed.

The towering Zulu dragged the kicking Hans toward the number three furnace, his screams of rage muffled as Ketswana held him tight.

He could see Karga throw the woman over his shoulder and start for the door that all who worked in the foundry, prisoner and master, called the Gate … it led to the slaughter pits outside the factory.

The woman revived and started to scream. But her cries were not for herself … for Karga was taking her child as well. In that moment all that Hans feared, all that he raged against boiled over. The child was old enough to know what was about to happen, but still she clung to her mother's side, even as her mother screamed and tried to push her away. Karga reached down and scooped up the child.

The sight of the child broke something in Gregory, and he almost stepped forward.

"Don't," Ketswana hissed. "He has laid his hand upon her. She is now for the pit. Nothing will stop him."

For an instant, in the shadows, Hans saw the child look back at him, and in her gaze he almost sensed relief before she was lost to view in the swirling smoke. Yet again he felt the emotion within start to boil over, as if a dam were about to burst.

He struggled for control, not to break, not to let the tears of anguish and pain explode. He stopped fighting against Ketswana's grip and felt the giant behind him loosen his hold.

All around him the laborers had stopped, watching Karga disappear. Then their gaze came back to rest on him. Though they were under his protection, he could sense the accusation, the frustration, the hollow sense of defeat. Two of their own had been dragged away. Even at this moment the blade was being drawn across their throats. Ultimately he could do nothing to protect them. They were all dying, they were already dead, and he could do nothing to save them.

"Damn it!" Hans roared. "Keep working or he'll take more."

Shaking, he looked at Gregory. "Where's Lin?"

"Still in the food warehouse outside the gate."

He knew he should meet him when he finally came in. He should be the one to break the news.

"Post a watcher, tell me when he's back in the camp. I should tell him."

"Let me do it, Hans."

He shook his head. "No, it's my fault. It's my burden now."

I am in hell …

He looked up at the Zulu and the dark men of his work crew on the number three furnace. Though he had fought for the Union and had seen the black soldiers of the Army of the Potomac die by the thousands at the Battle of the Crater, still there had been something that had once made him feel uncomfortable in their presence. That discomfort had long since disappeared. The brotherhood of slavery had released him from it. Somewhere south of the Cartha realms there was a black nation who were masters at ironworking. Ketswana, who was the leader of the fifty men and women that the Bantag had brought here, was now his most trusted lieutenant.

"Your rage will get you killed, my friend," Ketswana said softly, the gentleness of his voice a strange incongruity coming from the six-and-a־half-foot giant.

"Thank you," Hans sighed.

He looked past Ketswana at a gang of laborers hauling a cart loaded with freshly cast rails out of the foundry and then back at Ketswana's group, hoisting ore and charcoal into the furnace. In a flash of memory he saw the crews laboring in the foundry at Suzdal—it seemed almost like a dream now. There the laborers had been free men, working with the knowledge that their very survival depended on what they were doing; here it was the postponement of a death that was inevitable.

Why don't we all just simply kill ourselves? he wondered yet again. All we are doing is helping the bastards who are bent on destroying us, and we shall die in agony still. Why do we, why do I cling to living when death would be a release?

"That child, that poor child." Manda, Ketswana's wife, came to her husband's side. He could see the accusation in her eyes. "It's getting worse," she said. "There's no stopping it. It will get worse yet."

He knew what Gregory, his old chief of staff, was thinking. His anger was all too evident. The idea had been presented to him time and again … and always he had refused. The risks were simply too great. But now?

"When will they come for your child, Hans?" Manda asked. "Was not Lin's baby like yours?"

Her words cut like a knife into his heart. Suddenly ashamed, he turned away. Was that the restraint? Was that the reason that had compelled him to be cautious? For, after all, though Karga might drag others to the pit, Hans knew in his heart that the bastard would never directly strike at him unless he committed a grievous error. And even then, the case would go to Ha'ark before death would be inflicted.

That is how they bought me, Hans realized with a sense of inner loathing. I have become their instrument. I allow the horror to continue so that Tamira and our precious child will be safe.

He slammed his fists against the side of the furnace until blood trickled from the battered knuckles. He looked back at his friends, fearing that their eyes would be filled with contempt. Instead he saw only compassion, which made his anguish worse.

Lin's child … her look will haunt me forever, he realized. He could remember how six months back he had first held young Andrew, only minutes old, and gazed into the newborn's eyes and seen the mystery of life in them, the eternal spirit. And that same look was in the eyes of the child that knowingly had gone with her mother into the darkness.

"I'm sorry," Hans whispered, his voice thick. "For three and a half years I've tried to keep all of you alive."

He looked back across the furnace, toward the Portal of Death.

"And for what? I was a coward. I can see that now."

Manda stepped up to his side and rested her hand on his shoulder. He was startled at the understanding and gentleness that still existed in the middle of hell.

"I said no because I feared what would happen. To you, to all of you"—he hesitated, wanting to stop the words from flowing—"and to Tamira, and now Andrew."

"It will happen anyhow," Ketswana replied.

Hans nodded.

"Gregory, can you round up the people you told me about?" Hans finally whispered.

A smile creased Gregory's features and he nodded.

"Meet me in my quarters when the shift ends. Tell Karga we need to plan the work schedule and repairs."

The three gathered around him grinned, their eyes suddenly filled with hope.

"Signal the attack!"

Ha'ark Qar Qarth sat back in his chair and observed as the attack went into motion. There were no cheers at first, only the sound of a telegrapher's key clicking behind him. The Bantag warlords, arrayed in a circle a respectful distance behind Ha'ark, looked at each other in silence.

Signal rockets suddenly arced up from the left and right wings of the assault force, which was arrayed in a crescent formation across the open steppe. From the targeted Chin city, on a low plateau a mile away, a flash of light snapped atop a battlement, disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Ha'ark watched intently, counting off the time. A piercing shriek rent the air and the shot screamed past, not a dozen paces to his right. More than one of his Bantag umen commanders blanched and ducked low. Ha'ark laughed.

"Get used to the sound of it."

"My Qarth, it is my right to speak."

Ha'ark turned in his chair and looked back. It was Yugba, commander of the speckled-horse umen.

Ha'ark nodded.

"Sire, good warriors of my clan will die this day."

"The survivors will learn how not to die," Ha'ark snapped back. "Now watch and learn."

More flashes of light rippled along the battlement walls, shot screaming through the air, several of the rounds plowing bloody furrows through the ranks of the third black horse umen, which was mounted and deployed to Ha'ark's right. The commander of the umen stood silent, his eyes straight ahead.

"They're wasting ammunition at this range, but the way you have your formation deployed, the target is far too tempting," Ha'ark said quietly.

He saw, off to his left, the skirmish line of mounted warriors, now deploying across the open field, and he studied them carefully, raising his field glasses to observe the advance.