“We haven’t heard from them in years; they might very well be back at it,” Hans replied.
“I’m not sure. They learned our humanity-that changed it.”
“And you believe this Jurak?” Hans asked heatedly. “Of course not. He and I both know one clear point. This is a war of annihilation. After all that has happened, it is impossible for this world to contain both of us. Anything he offers is the convenience of the moment to buy breathing time, to split us apart.”
“I wish we did have a year’s breathing time,” Vincent interjected.
“It’d be a year’s breathing time for him, too, and never at the price of losing the Roum.”
“Andrew!”
Surprised he looked up to see Kathleen standing in the doorway, face red, breathing hard, as if she had been running.
“What’s wrong?” and for an instant he thought it was something with the children.
“You’re all right, thank God.”
“What?”
“Someone just tried to assassinate Kal!”
Andrew was out of his chair, followed by Hans and Vincent. He suddenly realized that the clamor outside the building had risen in volume, and with the door open, the shouting in the corridors was audible as well.
“Where is he? Is he all right?”
“In his quarters; Emil was sent for and I followed.” Furious that he hadn’t been told immediately Andrew pushed through the growing turmoil in the hallways, shoving his way past the crowd in the old audience chamber and back around to the rear of the building and the private apartments. Andrew caught a glimpse of Tanya, Kal’s daughter and Vincent’s wife. Crying she ran up to Vincent, who swept her up under his arm, shouting questions.
Andrew forced his way through the troops assigned as the presidential guard and into the bedroom. Emil looked up angrily from the side of the bed and for a moment Andrew froze at the sight of the black frock coat, covered with blood, lying crumpled on the floor, the battered stovepipe hat beside it, just above the brim an ugly blood-soaked gash cut along the side. Kal, eyes closed, features pale, was lying on the bed, the pillow beneath him stained with blood, his wife kneeling on the other side, crying hysterically, Casmir behind her, hands resting on her shoulders.
For a flash instant he remembered a nightmare dream of years ago in which he had seen his hero, Abraham Lincoln, in the same pose, dead from an assassin’s bullet.
“Out, all of you out!” Emil shouted.
Andrew did not move.
Emil rose from the side of the bed and came up to him.
“Please, Andrew, I need his wife out of here; if you go, she’ll follow with the others.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t there,” Emil said wearily. “Casmir said they were walking across the plaza when a shot was fired from atop the church. Thank God at the same instant someone called his name and he started to turn. The ball creased his head. He might have a fractured skull, I’m not sure, but I’ve seen worse who lived.”
“But he’s unconscious,” Vincent said nervously.
“Hell, you’d be, too, if someone cracked the side of your head like that. Like I said, I’m not sure if it’s fractured. I just want quiet in here, so please leave.”
Andrew nodded, withdrawing, motioning for Casmir to follow. The priest gently guided Tanya out with him, her cries echoing in the hallway, creating a dark tension that was ready to boil over as everyone was asking who and why.
Andrew caught the eye of the captain of the guard and motioned him over.
“Secure this building, Captain. Six guards on this door, then sweep the building, everyone outside, send them home or, if they live here, they’re to go to their rooms and stay. Send a messenger over to the barracks of the Thirty-Fifth, mobilize them out, secure a perimeter around this building and Congress.”
“There’s no need to surround Congress.”
It was Bugarin, features flushed with excitement. “Senator, as commander of the military I am responsible for security, and I ask you not to interfere.”
“And it sounds like it could be the start of a coup to me, Colonel.”
“Follow your orders, Captain,” Andrew snapped. “Report back to me within a half hour.”
“I said there is no need for this now.”
Andrew finally turned back to face Bugarin.
“I’ll be the judge of that, sir.”
“The culprit has already been caught.”
“What?”
“And hung by the crowd outside; it was a Roum soldier.”
“Merciful God,” Andrew whispered in English.
Though all urged him to launch the attack, still he refused, counseling calm, the gathering of strength before the final unleashing of the storm.
“As your own ancestor Vigarka once declared, ‘When the portal of victory appears open, gaze twice before entering.’ ”
Jurak saw several of the clan leaders nodding in agreement, chant singers who stood at the back of the golden yurt exchanging glances of pleasure that their new Qar Qarth could so easily quote from the great history of the ancestors.
“We know we have destroyed three of their umens,” and as he spoke, he pointed to the Corps commanders’ guidons hanging from the ceiling of the great yurt, shot-torn and stained regimental flags by the dozens clustered around them.
“That leaves but three on this front; surely our twenty-five umens can overwhelm that,” Cavgayya of the 3rd umen of the black horse replied.
“Yes, we can overwhelm that, but why spend so needlessly of our sacred blood. More than fifty thousand yurts mourn their sons and fathers from the war before the great city of the cattle. Though we won this battle, still another fifteen thousand mourn. Our seed is not limitless like that of the cattle; each of your lives is precious to me.”
Again he could see the nods of agreement. Ha’ark had been a profligate with the lives of the Bantag. It wasn t just the fifty thousand before Roum, it was another seventy thousand casualties to bring the army to Roum, nearly a third of their total strength of warriors lost. Yes, he suspected he could break through even this evening, but let it simmer just a bit longer, he reasoned. Keep the pressure on with raids, shows of strength. And most of all let the dozens of new ironclads, that even now were being sent to Xi’an and from there shipped across the Great Sea, come up to the front. Then he would launch the final push.
But perhaps that might not even be necessary, he thought with a smile. Their will is cracking.
“There shall be time to finish this war forever and with but a few more drops of blood compared to the buckets spent already.”
Chapter Five
Suzdal was seething with rumors of plots and counterplots as Andrew stepped out of his simple clapboard house on the village square, the guards standing to either side of his porch snapping to attention.
After the battle against the Tugars, and the destruction of the lower quarter of the city, the men of the 35th had been given this section of the city as a place to live, and there they had built a fair replica of a New England town square, complete with Presbyterian and Methodist churches, a monument in the center of the square to the men who had come to this world, and a bandstand, where in the brief periods of peace, evening concerts had been held.
Andrew allowed himself the indulgence of a cigar while Hans, hands in his pocket, leaned against a pillar of the porch, anxiously looking around for a place to spit before settling on a bare spot of ground next to a bush covered with exotic yellow flowers. Emil came out a moment later, slapping his stomach.
“First halfway decent meal I’ve had in days,” Emil announced.
Andrew smiled. How Kathleen had managed to scrounge up a piece of corned beef and what passed for cabbages on this world was beyond him. Upstairs he could hear the children settling into bed, and again he felt guilt for not going upstairs to spend a little time, to play with them and forget, but too much had happened today, and there was still more to be done.