“The slaves working it were kept separate. They only finished it within the last month. Nearly all the supplies were still going down to Xi’an and moving by boat-it was easier. Now for the bad news.”
He could already sense what it would be.
“First off, they built some more factories up in Nippon and put the people to work. Hans, even if we smash this place up, they’ll still be able to produce weapons.”
“We had to figure on that.” Hans sighed, trying to hide his bitter disappointment. So this would not be the crippling blow. The thought sank in with a brutal clarity that the war was indeed lost. Jurak would annihilate the Chin, perhaps stop for a while to regroup, then simply press on with the fight. He was afraid that in his exhaustion his despair would show. He lowered his head in order to hide his face.
“And Hans. Those three Chin I rounded up,” Ketswana continued, “were supposed to run a trainload of rails north this morning. They told me that even then word was already in the city that we had taken Xi’an. The Bantag were getting nervous, rounding up the families of the Chin rulers as hostages when we hit the factories west of here. That’s when all hell broke loose, and the city rioted.”
“Kind of what we figured.”
“That’s not the main point, though. These three were supposed to pull out with that load of rails when suddenly they got orders to wait in the rail yard. One of them, his brother worked on the telegraph line, said that messages were flying north, up toward Nippon, calling back two umens of troops.”
Hans tried not to react.
“We had to figure on resistance. If they only had two umens here covering their rear, we should be able to handle it.”
“Hans, two umens of troops with modern weapons. They were sent back here after the Battle of Roum to refit. These Bantag are veterans. They’re deploying north of the city right now.”
Hans looked back toward Huan. Damn all, it would have been the perfect place for a defensive fight. Like most Chin cities, it was a rabbit warren of narrow streets, laid out with no rhyme or reason. It had once housed over a million people. There was no telling how many were left after the years of occupation and slavery, but even with several hundred thousand he could have consumed half a dozen umens in a street-to-street fight.
The pillar of fire filled the night sky, a vast inferno, a city thousands of years old dying in one final cataclysm. There was a flash of guilt. He knew that everyone who had lived in that city was doomed to die. Once the war a thousand miles to the north and west was finished, everyone here would have been massacred before the Bantag moved on. Yet still, as a slave he remembered far too well the clinging to life in spite of the doom. If one more day of survival could be wrung out of existence, that was all that counted, a day of numbing agony ameliorated by a warm bowl of millet at sundown, the gentle touch of a loved one sought in the middle of the night, the prayer that the night would last forever, the dawn and the agony that came with it banished by a dream.
His coming had shattered that dream, for everyone here this was the last night, and they knew it. Come dawn two umens of the Horde’s finest warriors, battle-hardened from bitter campaigning, would be unleashed, and in their frenzy all would die.
He turned to look west, the twin rails glimmering by the firelight. He could back the train down that track right then. Fighting against despair, he tried to reason that at least they had accomplished something. It was a blow that would take months to recover from. Jurak would undoubtedly have to retreat to the Sea, perhaps even as far back as the Shennadoah or Nippon if Vincent’s mad thrust won through and thus threatened the southern flank of the Horde armies.
And then what? Ultimately nothing would change, nothing. Jurak would simply build a new war machine.
Hans squatted next to his friend, sighing with the pain as his knees creaked in protest. He looked at the three railroad men who sat hunched up in the far corner of the cab, talking in whispers with the driver of the locomotive. He caught words here and there, whispers about slaughter, death, families lost, fear.
Outside, to either side of the stalled engine, the columns of frightened refugees continued to pass, fleeing they knew not where, but trying to get out nevertheless. Again another short stab of pain.
“Hans?”
“Yeah?”
“You all right?”
“Just tired, so damned tired.”
“We’ve got to do something, you know.”
“What?” He could sense his voice breaking. His mind was clouded, and it was becoming too hard to focus.
“Come dawn they’ll attack; they’re reorganizing not five miles from here.”
“I know that.”
Ketswana spoke quickly to the locomotive engineer, motioning with his tin cup. The engineer took it, vented some more hot water, and threw some leaves in. Ketswana took the cup and pressed it into Hans’s hands, which were trembling.
Hans took a sip, set the cup down, and leaned his head back against the woodpile.
“We’ve got six hours or so till dawn,” Ketswana announced. “We have to dig in and get ready. Build a fortified line anchored on this rail line, use the factory compounds we’ve taken as bastions.”
“I know, I know,” he whispered.
So many years of struggle, so many long hard years, and now it seems to all end here. His mind drifted, the prairie, the starlit nights: Antietam, the road to Antietam, cresting South Mountain, looking back across the valley, the blue serpentine columns stretching to the horizon, afternoon sun glinting on fifty thousand rifle barrels; Gettysburg, when the sun seemed to stand still in the heavens; and these strange heavens. He looked up, the Great Wheel overhead, again wondering which star was home. To have run the race so far, so far, and now to fall at the last step and see it all washed away.
He closed his eyes, a prayer drifting through his heart, God, let this all be for something.
“Hans?”
Ketswana leaned over, a moment of fright, his hand gently touching his friend’s forehead, drifting down to his throat, feeling for a pulse.
He sighed and leaned back. Let him sleep, he needed sleep. Always trying to carry all the burden, forgetting just how many he had inspired and trained. No, let him sleep.
The engineer was looking over, and Ketswana motioned that Hans was not to be disturbed.
“Ketswana?”
He looked down from the cab. Through the confused press milling about he saw Fen Chu, one of the old guard, a survivor of the Escape.
“There’s not much left of the powder mill,” Fen reported. “All blown to hell it is.”
“The next compound?” He motioned up the tracks toward Huan.
“Told by some of the slaves that escaped that the guards started to shoot everyone, then fled. It was a cartridge factory for their rifles.”
Ketswana looked back to the west. The factory compounds were strung like beads along the track for miles, most of them basically laid out the same, brick buildings housing foundries, mills, works for cartridges, shells, bullets, rifles, artillery barrels, land ironclads … the brick building surrounded by wooden barracks for the slaves, and those in turn surrounded by a palisades, usually of logs or rough-cut planking.
Most of them were burning.
He looked back toward the city. No, that hope was finished.
South? He knew next to nothing of the land, just rumors. From his days of slavery he occasionally was allowed outside the compound on some errand, southward was nothing but open farmlands, vast rice paddies and pastures before the coming of the Bantag. Most of the farms were abandoned now. He remembered that on a clear day, from the roof of the factory one could see hills rising up, the distant hint of cloud-capped mountains beyond.
“Can’t go south,” Fen announced, as if reading Ketswa-na’s thoughts.