The farther east they traveled, the more difficult it was maintaining air cover since the airships now had to fly nearly a hundred-mile round-trip before getting into action. The continual flying and fighting of the, last three days was undoubtedly taking a toll on maintenance as well; there were long stretches of time now when no airships were overhead.
He thought about school, so many years ago, at the old Oak Grove in Vassalboro. Memory of Plutarch and the last campaign of Crassus against the Parthians. Much the same, the circling riders. Only two differences, though. The first, his force had gunpowder. But the disturbing second one, unlike Crassus, who actually outnumbered the Parthians, he was facing odds of maybe six to one, the only thing holding them back the ironclads and the Hornets circling overhead.
His driver below turned slightly, and Vincent looked forward again, where several men, dead infantry, lay twisted in the high grass. He hated leaving them to the bastards. A scattering of dead Bantag and horses were in the grass as well, having tried to dispute the possession of the ridge when the head of the column had swept it half an hour ago.
They pushed on, a gust of dry wind from the west blanketing him in a choking cloud of smoke from the ironclad’s exhaust stack. Coughing, he waited for it to clear. A courier came out of the smoke, reined in beside his machine, and rode at a slow canter, keeping pace.
Vincent returned the salute and took the note. Still perched atop the turret he unfolded the paper, ignoring the occasional hum of a bullet snapping past.
It was from Gregory, riding at the head of the column, announcing that water had been sighted. He shaded his eyes and looked back to the west. Still a couple of hours of sunlight. There was no need to look at the map, another watercourse was still five or six miles beyond. According to the map that was also the head of the Bantag rail line, which was being constructed from the Great Sea. A Hornet had flown all the way east earlier in the day and dropped a message that two Bantag transports were off-loading land ironclads and additional troops. Two Hornets had been lost trying to strafe the ships and locomotives, and the equipment was being loaded onto several trains, but had yet to move out.
Well, that is what we wanted, he realized. But still it was a chilling thought that somewhere up ahead a warm reception was being planned.
He knew the men were getting tired, they’d been on the march for nearly fourteen hours, a hard thirty miles that day, a little more than halfway to the coast. They’d still have to dig in once stopped for the night. The enemy would come to them. It was best to have the boys as rested as possible for the next day.
“Tell General Timokin to hold at the stream. Tell Stan to halt the corps as well and dig in. Whether we take the railhead today or not doesn’t really matter; they’ll just simply off-load farther back.”
He could sense the boy’s disappointment as he shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, then saluted and spurred his mount forward.
He looked out at the circling host. After months in the siege lines they had to be exhausted as well. No, they won’t press it yet, they’ll wait for ironclads to come up. Then there’ll be hell to pay.
The aerosteamer touched down lightly, bounced once, then settled back down, quickly rumbling to a halt.
Jurak pulled open the hatch and swung down, barely acknowledging the bows of the aerosteamer ground crew. It was an out-of-the-way position on the northeast shore of the Great Sea, near the realm of Nippon, a little more than halfway to his destination. The only purpose for the station was to act as a refueling depot for the occasional aerosteamer flying the great route from the realm of the Chin, northward to Nippon, then northwest, skirting the flank of the Sea, then finally to turn straight west to the front, now three hundred leagues away. He regretted not setting up stations on the western and eastern shore of the Sea, so one could simply fly across the water, but after too many of the precious ships had disappeared making the transit, Ha’ark had forbidden such overflights, and he had never bothered to rescind the ban.
As it was he had witnessed firsthand the wisdom of that choice. Thirty leagues back one of his two escorts had simply quit, an engine shutting down, the aerosteamer spiraling down to a semi-crash landing along the rail line that ran the length of the northern shore.
“Any messages?” he shouted, looking over at the station commander, who stared at him as if he was a god who had tumbled from the sky.
A sheaf of papers was pressed into his hand, and he scanned them, yet again cursing the fact that the script of his own world had not been introduced rather than the damnable writing of the Rus.
So it was Huan after all. He had at least guessed right on that; otherwise, this trip would be a foolish waste. He jotted down half a dozen messages on a pad of rice paper, tore them off, and handed them back to the station commander. Without a word, he looked back at his pilot.
“How are the engines?”
“My Qar Qarth, they need work.”
“Can they take us to the next stop?”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, damn all, tonight. We’ll have moonlight, just follow the damned rail line. We’re almost around the Sea. The rail line will turn southeast down toward Nippon. It’ll be open steppe soon.”
The pilot said nothing.
“Shouldn’t we wait for our escort?” He nodded toward the small dot that was now winging in from the west.
“He can catch up. Let’s be off.”
Grabbing a waterskin and satchel of dried meat offered by a trembling cattle slave, Jurak returned to the air machine and climbed in, impatiently waiting for the pilot, who checked as the last of the tins of kerosene was loaded into the fuel tank.
The pilot finally climbed back through the hatch and before it was even closed Jurak leaned over and pushed in the throttle lever, propellers stuttering up to a blur. Turning back out onto the grassy strip, they took off, clearing the towering trees at the far end of the field, heading back for a moment toward the setting sun. Banking hard over, they continued to climb, Jurak catching a glimpse of the Sea off the starboard side. Straight ahead he could see where a shallow arm of the ocean finally played out into a bay ringed with low hills, a place where a year ago the first actions of the campaign had been fought in a vain attempt to lure the Yankees eastward before the attack across the ocean came two hundred leagues to the west.
Huan. The war had leapt all the way back to there. Chaos all the way from Xi’an to Huan, half a dozen factories in enemy hands. A mob though. A disorganized mob led at best by two or three hundred trained troops. They still most likely thought that there was only one rail line. The one that ran from Huan to Xi’an. With luck they didn’t know that throughout the winter and into early summer he had pressed the completion of the second line, the one that ran northward out of Huan, up to Nippon, and then finally connected to the route the Yankees had been cutting along the northern shore of the Great Sea. And on that road, even now, he had reversed every train, over thirty of them carrying two entire umens of troops who had been sent back after the siege of Roum to refit and train with the newest weapons.
It had been his plan to keep them in reserve at Huan, an inner warning perhaps that the vast encampment areas for the old, the young, and the females, more than three hundred thousand yurts spread in a vast arc across hundreds of leagues between Huan and Nippon, were too vulnerable.
Pat O’Donald furiously shredded the paper, tearing it in half, then again, and yet again until it was nothing more than confetti. Rick Schneid, his second-in-command for the Capua Front, said nothing, having read the note over Pat’s shoulder.