Battle Hymn (28 page)

"What about the train up ahead?" the engineer asked.

"We can't stay here!" He pulled out his map and examined it intently. "There's a siding twenty miles up the line."

"He'll be past there before we make it," Gregory announced, coming up to join Hans.

"We can't stay here," Hans snarled. "Unless that bastard behind us is a complete fool, he'll come in here slow, expecting us to throw the switch. They must have armed warriors on that train, and we've yet to get our people ready to fight. We run for the siding and just hope to get there first."

The insistent whistle of the train behind him now echoed clearly, and Hans could see the engine light and its reflection shimmering off the rails.

The crew in the woodlot worked furiously, the logs slamming against the iron side of the tender.

"Yakazk?"

Startled, Hans saw a Bantag coming toward them out of the shadows.

Hans unslung his rifle and leveled it. The Bantag stopped, wide-eyed, and started to turn around.

His finger edged against the trigger, then stopped. A shot would stir them all to instant action. One of them yelling and hollering might be dismissed as a drunk, gaining them crucial seconds.

The Bantag continued to back up, his expression terrified.

Hans grinned at him, taking pleasure in seeing the fear in his eyes.

"I'm letting you live, you bastard," Hans snapped. "Now go tell your friends about it."

With a wild scream the Bantag turned and started to run.

Not sparing him a second thought, Hans said to Alexi, "Let's get the hell out of here! Signal Ketswana!"

Alexi leapt down into the cab, the wood crew still working with a frenzy as the engineer gave three short blasts on the whistle, then slammed the throttle in, setting the wheels to spinning.

Hans looked back anxiously. The approaching engine couldn't be more than half a mile away. Suddenly he remembered the telegraph line and started to curse himself until he saw someone sliding down the nearest pole. Gregory had obviously detailed someone off.

The train lurched forward with a shudder, and Ketswana came racing down the platform. "We threw the switch, and bent part of the mechanism!"

Hans climbed up onto the engine, Ketswana following. A rifle shot snapped past. Now Hans could see Bantag pouring out of the yurts at the camp. More shots echoed, and from the boxcar behind him a scream erupted.

Bantag came boiling down the hill, but as the train pulled out, half a dozen shots from the boxcars dropped several of them.

"Pour it on, Alexi!" Hans shouted. "Everything we've got."

"You know, if we don't get there first, we could very well have a head-on."

"What the hell?" Hans snarled. "There's worse ways of going!"

Ha'ark leaned out of the cab and saw the sparks showering up from the retreating engine, less than a quarter mile away. His train lurched to a stop and he hopped down, while several of his guards raced forward. He walked over to the switch with one of the engineers.

"How long to fix this?"

The engineer looked at him wide-eyed.

"How long?"

"Shortly, my Qarth. Shortly. But we should get water and wood. It's more than eighty miles to the next supplies."

Ha'ark uttered a curse and strode over to the station and watched as several cattle were driven up the side of the water tower to raise the spout so the precious liquid would not drain away.

In the cabin he saw the headless body of a warrior sprawled on the floor.

Damn fool, asleep, most likely.

Guards ran past him in the darkness, not even aware of who he was. Ten minutes, more like fifteen, before they could get under way again. Too much lead time and they'll be able to stop and smash a switch or tear up a rail.

He grabbed one of the guards running by. "Rails, do you have any extra rails, tools, spikes here?"

The guard pointed off into the shadows. "On the other side of the spur."

"Damn it all, load some of that equipment on one of the cars."

The guard hesitated.

"My Qarth, the switch is fixed," the engineer shouted.

The guard looked at Ha'ark, wide-eyed, and started to bow low.

"Damn it, just get to work!" Ha'ark roared. "I want a work crew that knows how to repair track going with us—cattle or warrior, I don't care."

The guard saluted and ran off as Ha'ark, still cursing, watched the escaping train recede into the distance.

"Land ahead," Feyodor announced.

Mumbling a curse, Jack sat up and rubbed his eyes. A loud snoring rumbled above him in the upper berth. When he kicked the sagging hammock swaying just over his head, the snoring stopped.

"What time is it?"

"About an hour before dawn." Feyodor nodded toward the eastern horizon.

"Lord, we made time!" Jack said. "It must be forty, fifty knots blowing up here. We're going to have to duck low for the run back."

Stefan sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"Sleep all right?" Feyodor asked. He offered a mug of steaming tea.

"Wonderful! The air up here's so clean," Stefan said enthusiastically.

"Oh, shut up," Jack growled, wrapping his hands around the mug to cut the chill. He gazed down at the tea, the question trying to form, and then finally back up at Feyodor.

"I went forward and set a kettle on the engine," Feyodor said, anticipating the question.

Jack looked out at the catwalk and shook his head. "And suppose you'd fallen? Here we'd have drifted for hours, you damn fool, before we woke up and knew you were gone."

"Look, do you want the tea or not? At least it's something hot."

Jack sipped the scalding brew, pleased that Feyodor had thought to bring along some honey to sweeten it.

"There's land ahead."

Jack crouched down and went forward. In the early light of dawn he could clearly see a low range of hills, the mist drifting through the passes and val-leys. The moment transcended all his fears. The darker shadows of tree-clad mountains to the north swept out like long fingers across the steppe. To his right the indigo blue surface of the Great Sea was capped with long rollers, kicked up by the strengthening northwesterly breeze. He knew he was gazing upon land that no free man had ever before set eyes on.

Jack settled down in his chair, taking another long sip of tea, and nodding his thanks as Feyodor handed him a buttered biscuit and a slab of cold salt pork. He chewed meditatively on the tough meat, blocking out the exuberant chatter of Stefan and Feyodor in the aft section.

He cocked his ears for each of the engines, slowly throttling them up and then back down to cruise setting. The wind gauge read just under thirty miles an hour, but with the breeze almost astern he estimated they were doing seventy or more.

A mile below, he saw a scattering of yurts and the upturned faces of Bantag looking at the strange apparition. The air was so crystal clear that he felt he could almost see the details of their faces, their openmouthed astonishment. Stretching his arm out the window, he waved and then made a rude gesture.

"Do you think we passed it during the night?" Feyodor asked.

Jack unfolded the map drawn by the naval survey that had scouted the eastern coast. For several minutes he carefully scanned up and down the coast and then examined the map again.

"I think we're about thirty miles north. That small bay that curves up into the mountains. On the map here."

He pointed at the map and then over to his left. Feyodor craned his neck to look and finally nodded in agreement.

"Let's drop her down, get out of this wind." He pointed Flying Cloud's nose down at a twenty-degree angle and went into a dive, while turning to the southwest. The wind continued to push them away from the coast and he eased in more throttle, turning into a west-by-southwest heading. Finally they started to gain and as the ship dropped below five thousand feet the wind appeared to abate so that he could finally steer southwest to maintain a southerly course.

As dawn continued to spread, the sky to the east glowed red and he could see a broad estuary coming down to the sea. A spread of white sails stood out clearly as they drew closer, running close-hauled several miles off the coast.

"Steam sloop Vicksburg," Feyodor reported, raising his telescope to sight the ship.

Jack nodded and examined the toylike ship when Feyodor passed the telescope over. It was one of the picketboats patrolling this, the outer edge of enemy territory, yet another extension of an undeclared conflict. Half a dozen settlements of what he guessed to be descendants of the Chinese dotted the eastern shore of the sea. Bantags garrisoned them, and picketboats like the Vicksburg cruised by on occasion to take a look. Bullfinch was calling for more aggressive action, cutting out raids, even arming the locals and triggering a rebellion, but Congress and the president kept overruling him. What was up the estuary was unknown, for any approach up the river was blocked by a dozen galleys based on the inner side of the bay. Today that would change.

"Stefan, time to get topside," Jack instructed. "We're in the badlands now. Keep a sharp watch. We don't know if they have any flyers, but we'd better be on the safe side."

"Aye, sir!"

Jack shook his head as the boy eagerly buttoned up his leather flight jacket, stuffed half a loaf of bread into one pocket, and tucked a flask of water in the other. Pulling his helmet on, he strapped goggles over his eyes. He opened the aft door and, reaching out, grabbed hold of the rope ladder. Hanging nearly upside down, he scrambled up the side of the ship, the wind whipping his jacket and trousers. He soon disappeared over the side.

"The boy's a natural-born pilot," Feyodor said admiringly.

"He's insane," Jack grumbled in reply, his stomach knotting up at the mere thought of hanging on the side of the ship.

A high, piercing whistle sounded next to Jack and he uncapped the speaking tube. "I'm in place, sir. It's beautiful up here," Stefan cried.

"Are you strapped in? If we start maneuvering I'm not going to have time to warn you."

"Aye, aye, sir!"

Jack shook his head again, recapped the speaking tube, and looked back to the front.

"That estuary runs southeast. I'm going to take her back up a bit. How's our fuel?"

"We're fine. Just over three quarters."

"The run back, though," Jack replied. He searched the ground below for any sign of smoke, and caught sight of a plume rising from a row of buildings near a long shed, which he suspected was for the galleys.

"Seems to be backing around to westerly down there, maybe five, ten miles an hour."

He checked his fuel gauges again. He wanted to keep a good reserve. Maybe go in for an hour or so, then come about.

Settling back in his chair, he finished his breakfast, occasionally raising his field glasses to study a detail or point out sights for Feyodor to sketch or note in the logbook. The disk of the sun broke the eastern horizon, and long shadows raced out across the steppe.

"There must be a sizable town further up this river," Feyodor said, breaking the silence of the last hour, which had been interrupted only by occasional comments from Jack to note a village or some other sight that might be significant.

Jack nodded in agreement. Dozens of boats dotted the river, and the airship had passed what looked to be two construction yards, one with a bargelike ship more than two hundred feet long sitting on the ways. A dozen more galleys were beached along by a small cove as well, and he could clearly see a throng of several thousand humans in a walled enclosure, their dark forms surging back and forth, faces turned upward at his passage.

A flash memory struck him of the burial of Jubadi and the horrific slaughter pit he had witnessed.

"I'd love to swoop down there with a load of guns, and let those poor bastards break out," Jack whispered.

Feyodor didn't reply, field glasses trained forward.

"I think that's a town up ahead." Lowering the glasses, he picked up the telescope and extended it, bracing the end of the tube on the forward railing of the window.

"Take a look," Feyodor said, passing the telescope over to Jack. It took him several seconds to focus it. Then the image snapped clear, and he whistled softly as he scanned back and forth.

"I think we'd better get a photograph of this," he said.

After a few minutes he put the telescope down and picked up his field glasses again for a broader view. He examined a shipyard for several minutes and to his horror finally realized that there were more than a dozen vessels with iron siding on the ways, black pipes sticking up through the decks. The town spread out along the riverfront, and he could clearly see gangs of laborers working in the yards. An earthen fortress dominated the yard and what looked to be artillery was mounted to fire on the river.

Feyodor unsnapped the hatch to the first camera. Sighting down, he flipped the shutter open, counted to ten, and closed it. The image would be blurry, but it should still be decipherable.

He shifted his gaze for a moment to look downstream again. The river swung at this point in a loop to the south before turning north again, so that what appeared to be another earthen fortress abutting a village that guarded the approach was in fact further away. If any ships were going to run up the river, they'd have to pass the lower fortress first.

He studied the fortress for several seconds, and then something caught his eye—a plume of smoke rising just beyond it. Thinking vaguely that something was not quite registering, he shifted his gaze away.

Then realization suddenly dawned, and he grabbed the telescope and swung it back and forth, finding the smoke for an instant, losing it, then finding it again.

"Merciful god, they've got trains."

Feyodor stood up and leaned forward with his field glasses trained on the ground.

The rhythmic puffs of smoke moved slowly beyond the ridgeline. Jack inched his telescope forward from the direction of the advancing smoke and then saw the rails, cutting through the ridge. A side track ran toward the fortress town, the other branch ran straight on into the city, which was now almost directly below.