Men of War (7 page)

The ground ahead was open and flat, the second enemy line now clearly visible as a rough slash in the ground a quarter mile ahead. The plan called for the ironclads to lead a direct assault and overrun the position, supported by Hornets and ground troops armed with rocket launchers. By the time they approached the strongest defenses, the third line a. mile farther back, Jack’s airships were to have landed, rearmed, and returned to plaster a mile-long stretch of trenches with over four thousand gallons of flaming benzene. But at this moment the key to the plan was to keep moving, to keep the Bantag off-balance and running until their supply depots to the rear were overrun and destroyed.

Flashes of light were igniting from the second trench line, and bullets and mortar fragments started to ping against the armor. Cracking open the top hatch, he stuck his flare pistol out and fired, sending up the green signal indicating he was across the Bantag riverfront position. A second, then a third ironclad crept into view on his right, the turret of one turning, the machine’s commander sticking a hand out of the firing slit to wave.

Timokin grinned.
Mad fool, I’ll put you on report for that once we get this over with,
he thought, trying to remember the name of the young lieutenant aboard the St. Galvino. The lead company started to form around him, deploying out to either side. A rocket slashed past his turret, startling him. He caught a glimpse of a Bantag launcher team falling back into a trench, torn apart by the fire of the ironclad to his left.

Cautiously he reopened the hatch and stuck his head out for a quick look around. Nearly a dozen machines were up, hundreds of infantry deployed into the trenches behind him. There was no telling what the hell was going on to either flank, but straight ahead the way looked clear. He saw a regimental standard, a brigadier’s guidon beside it. Catching the general’s eye, he motioned forward; the brigadier waved in agreement. Back on the shoreline he saw more waves of the flimsy canvas boats coming in, some of them bearing mortar and rocket-launching crews. A Hornet flashed overhead, Gatling gun roaring, tracers tearing into the position forward. The sun broke the horizon straight ahead, silhouetting the enemy line.

July Fourth, 
he thought. The Yankees put great store in that day; Independence Day they called it. It was also the anniversary of the Battle of Hispania. He had been too young to fight in that one.
Will this day be as glorious?
he wondered. He felt a moment’s hesitation. Somehow the shoreline felt secure, a haven to pull back to, where you couldn’t be flanked, but he knew the thought was senseless. The whole plan, a plan which he had helped to design, was predicated on speed. Cut through the lines of defense, get into the open country, and slash down to their major rail depot and destroy it. Victory was five miles ahead, and the longer he waited, the more remote the chance of grasping it.

Reloading his flare pistol, he fired it again, rapidly reloading and firing off yet another shell, the signal that he was moving on the second line.

He slipped back down into his turret, slamming the hatch shut.

“Engineer, full power; driver, straight ahead!”

* * *

“I’m going over,” Pat announced.

Andrew stood silent for a moment, leaning over, eye glued to the tripod-mounted telescope staring intently toward the ruins to Capua on the east bank and several miles downstream.

“The message dropped from Petracci was on the mark,” Andrew announced. “There’re definitely plumes of smoke over there.”

“Well, we did expect some sort of countermove,” Pat replied. “It’s less than two dozen ironclads. Timokin can handle that.”

Andrew stood back up, stretching, trying to ignore the occasional shell that hummed overhead. In the two hours since the beginning of the attack they had forced a lodgment nearly two miles across and in some sectors were already through the third line. Considering the nature of the assault, casualties had been light, so far twenty-five hundred. Marcus had already gone forward, insisting over Andrew’s objections that he should be up forward with his boys from 9th Corps.

The first of the pontoon bridges was nearly completed, and he watched for a moment as his engineer troops, laboring like a swarm of ants, anchored the last boat in place, while half a regiment of men armed with picks and shovels worked to cut down the low embankment on the east side and fill in the labyrinth of trenches just beyond. A column of infantry, rifles and cartridge boxes held high overhead, slowly wended their way across the river at a ford, a long serpentine column of blue standing out boldly against the muddy brown river.

The surviving canvas boats were now being used to ferry boxes of ammunition, mortar and rocket-launching crews, medical supplies, and even barrels of fresh water since the day promised to be hot and with all the dead and refuse littering the river Emil had issued the strictest of orders against using it. Andrew looked over his shoulder to where a casualty-clearing station was already at work. Those who could survive the trip were loaded into ambulances for the hospital train that would have them back to Roum before noon.

Casualties had been heavy in the first two waves, nearly fifty percent of the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 9th Corps had gone down. He kept trying to console himself that the losses had just about been what was expected, but it was small solace for the nearly twenty-five hundred dead and wounded. He thought of the review held just a week ago, remembering faces, wondering which of them had been part of the sacrificial offering.

Andrew looked over at Pat. “I’m going with you. Hans, you stay here at headquarters.”

“Now, Andrew, we agreed on this,” Pat protested.

Andrew nodded, forcing a smile. It was more than just being at the front, getting close to get a feel for what was going on, and to inspire the troops. Ever since his wounding, only a few miles from this place, he had not been under heavy fire. Inwardly he was terrified; it was hard not to jump every time a mortar shell slipped overhead or a bullet snapped past, and this was the rear line. He had to see for himself if he could take it.

He looked over at Hans. His friend was staring at him appraisingly. Pat had turned as well, arguing his point to Hans, trying to get the old sergeant major to agree that Andrew had to stay back from the fighting. Andrew knew that Hans understood the real reason he had to cross over that river. Hans wordlessly nodded an agreement.

“Well damn all,” Pat growled. “Don’t blame me if you get your fool head blown off.”

“What about you then?” Andrew asked. “What about your fool head?”

“Bullet hasn’t been cast yet,” Pat replied with a twinkle in his eyes, backing down front the argument.

Leaving the top of the bunker, Andrew motioned to his orderly, who was holding the bridle of his favorite old mount, Mercury. He rubbed the horse’s nose, then shook his head. No, it would be hot up there, and Mercury was getting on in years. Besides, after all the campaigns together he wanted him to survive this one.

“Bring up another mount,” Andrew said.

“Can’t risk your old horse but it’s all right to risk you, is that it?” Pat asked peevishly.

“Something like that.”

Andrew swung up awkwardly into the saddle of a massive mare, a mount bred from the horses captured in the Tugar Wars. It was nearly the size of a Clydesdale, typical of nearly all the mounts in this army—and damned uncomfortable, he thought as he picked up the reins and nudged the horse down toward the nearest ravine.

Reaching the edge of the shallow gorge, he hesitated for a second. Even though the engineering troops had cut a road into the side of it, it was still a steep descent. Then he urged the horse forward, falling in with a column of infantry, noticing by the red Maltese Cross on their slouch caps that they were men of the 1st Division, 5th Corps.

“Hot up there, sir?” one of the sergeants asked, looking up nervously at Andrew.

“We got a firm foothold, Sergeant. Ninth Corps is driving them.”

“Well that’s a switch,” came a comment from the ranks.

Andrew continued forward, ignoring the insult, even though Pat turned, ready to offer a good chewing out. There was still some bad blood between the Rus and the Roum Corps, especially toward the 9th and 11th, which had broken during the siege. It was part of his reasoning for giving the assault job to the 9th, a chance to clear their reputation and break the jinx.

Strange, he thought; back with the old Army of the Potomac the 9th had been jinxed there as well, damn good fighting men but something always seemed to go wrong for them.

Reaching the bottom of the ravine he followed the contours of the twisting washout. Wreckage littered the rocky sides, broken equipment, empty ammunition boxes, a scattering of dead who had been caught by the Bantag counterbarrage. The last turn in the ravine revealed the river straight ahead.

It was said that whether you were winning or losing, the rear area of a battle always looked like a disaster, and he hesitated for a moment, steeling himself while taking it all in.

Shattered canvas boats littered the shoreline, dozens of bodies, and parts of bodies lay along the beach or floated in the muddy water, washed back up to shore by the slow-moving current. Fragments of bodies, blackened by fire, were plastered against the side of a ravine, most likely what was left from a caisson igniting. The air was thick with the stench of muddy water, powder smoke, and that unforgettable clinging smell of death, a mixture of excrement, vomit, and raw open flesh. In another few hours the cloying stench of decay would be added until finally one would feel as if he could actually see the hazy green smell of death.

He straightened in the saddle, moving his mount out of the way as the infantry column, without hesitating, splashed into the river by columns of fours, holding rifles and ammunition pouches, haversacks filled with rations over their heads. A line of cavalry were deployed downstream, ready to fish out any man who might lose his footing and go under.

Andrew rode along the edge of the water, heading up to the next ravine, where the pontoon bridge was going in. A mortar shell whistled overhead, impacting against the top of the cliffs that rose up on his left, sending down a shower of rock fragments and dirt. He tried not to flinch, and then looked over sheepishly at Pat.

“You’ll get the nerve back,” Pat said softly, “I was the same way after I took that ball in the stomach.”

Andrew nodded, saying nothing. Straight ahead, the bridge was rapidly taking shape. The last boat had already been anchored, and stringers between the boats were nearly halfway across the river, the crews working feverishly to anchor the heavy timbers to the reinforced gunwales of the pontoon boats. Dozens of men, most of them stripped to the waist, were hauling up the four-by-ten planks, which were laid across the stringers and serve as the roadbed. Once completed, the heavy artillery, a second regiment of ironclads, and hundreds of tons of supplies could be rushed forward.

Turning his mount, Andrew splashed into the river, the water surprisingly cool as it spilled into his boots. The mare surged forward, stepping nervously for footing as they reached the middle of the river, Pat at his side.

Fifty yards downstream an artillery shell slapped into the water, raising a geyser. He studiously ignored it, keeping his eyes on the far shore. His mount shied nervously, nearly throwing him as it quickly sidestepped. A body, which the horse had trod on, tumbled up out of the murky water, then sank, dragged back down by the weight of the pack harness that had three close-support rockets strapped to it.

He said nothing, wondering about the human packhorse who had drowned thus. He tried to make a mental note, to balm his soul, that if there was another river assault, the first waves were to go in with rifles and personal ammunition only. But then how many die because of no close-in rocket support … again the equations of death.

They finally gained the shore. The litter there was far worse than the west bank. Dozens of waterlogged assault craft, which had barely made it across, lay abandoned, many of them bloodstained, bodies still inside. Scores of dead littered the embankment, dead twisted into every impossible angle the living could never assume, bodies torn by rifle shot, shells, fire, tangled in with the Bantag who had defended this position. Casualty-clearing stations, marked with green banners, were packed, the seriously injured men being sorted out for the trip back across the river by boat, the less seriously injured and those who were doomed being detailed off to wait until the pontoon bridge was finished.

As he rode up over the embankment the roar of battle seemed to double. Straight ahead was obscured in yellow-gray clouds of powder smoke and dust, the front line dully illuminated by flashes of gunfire and the sudden flare of another load of benzene dropped by an Eagle.

Ghastly weapon
, he thought as he rode up over the forward line of Bantag trenches and saw where such a strike had incinerated dozens, their giant bodies curled into fetal balls, a few outstretched, blackened clawed hands raised to the heavens in a final gesture of agony. The stench was horrific, and he struggled not to gag.

“Bloody bastards, good to see ’em like this,” Pat snapped. Andrew looked over at his old friend and said nothing. No, the hatred was far too deep to express pity, to wonder if there was any sense of humanity in these creatures. Interesting that he had chosen that word in his thoughts …
humanity. Does it mean I consider them to be human? Strange, old Muzta of the Tugars, I had shown him pity, spared his son, and he in turn spared Hawthorne and Kathleen, even went over to our side in the Battle of Hispania and turned the tide of battle. He’s most likely a thousand miles east of here by now, but if I saw him, I would offer him a drink from my canteen. Yet still I hate his kind in general.

Don’t think about this now, he thought. There’s a war to be fought.

He turned away from the trench, dropped the reins of his mount, and awkwardly scanned the action with his field glasses. The ground was too bloody flat, hard to get above the fight and get a feel for it. It seemed to be spread out in a vast arc sweeping a mile or more to the north, then several miles in from the river, and then arcing back around into the ruins of Capua.