Nature seemed to be allied with the invaders. The channel was unnaturally smooth and the winds were slight the day the enemy landed. For five days, the weather conditions held. At the end of that time, the enemy had established a beach-head five miles wide and five miles deep. To accomplish this, they had sacrificed 20,000 men.
A New Cretan army landed on the southern Irish shore and advanced rapidly, again with disproportionate casualties.
Then, winter struck. It was such a winter as Two Hawks had never known. Within a month, the two islands were covered with great drifts of snow. The arctic winds howled down from the north; the temperature dropped to 30 below. Two Hawks shivered and dressed in polar bear furs. Yet this was only the beginning. Before winter was finished with its icy rage, the thermometer would be the equivalent of minus 40 degrees fahrenheit.
He thought that surely the fighting would stop now. Nobody could carry on efficiently—if at all—in this frozen hell. But the invaded and invader alike were used to the severity. They fought on, and where armored cars and trucks bogged down, men on skis or snowshoes pulled toboggans of supplies. Men fell and were buried in the snow. Mile by bloody mile, the Perkunishans claimed Blodlandish territory, and near winter’s end were holding the white lands which corresponded to the Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire of Earth 1’s England.
By then, Two Hawks had twenty monoplanes, all armed with machine guns and with skis for landing gear. He had trained four young men to fly, although in this cold it was difficult even to get the motors to start. The four then became instructors. By the spring thaw, the Lyftwaepon had a hundred fighter planes, a hundred and fifty pilots, and two hundred students.
Espionage informed Two Hawks that Raske had five hundred first-line craft and 800 qualified pilots.
It was then that he got the idea for his self-propelled icesleds. Why not build a vehicle that moved on runners and was propelled by an airplane motor? A fleet of such could operate on the frozen surface of the straits and channel. It could cut up the lines supplying material to the invading forces. If enough supplies could be destroyed, the Perkunishans on the island would find themselves short of food and ammunition when the spring thaw came. The waters between mainland and island would be unnavigable at that time. Before the waters were fit for renewal of supply, a big push by the Blodlandish could destroy the food-short, ammunition-short, personnel- short enemy.
His suggestion was rejected. The High Command thought the idea was too radical. Two Hawks told the Command he did not understand their pig-headed blindness. His only answer was a savage lecture on keeping his place. Old Lord Raedaesh, a stiff old man with bushy white whiskers and eyes pale and cold as sea-ice, delivered the lecture. Raedaesh had made it plain from the start that he regarded Two Hawks as an upstart who was not quite sane. He had opposed the use of the newfangled flying machines for anything other than observation purposes. If it had not been for the orders of the Shof, Raedaesh would never had permitted this wasting of men and materials for such nonsense.
Two Hawks listened until he could control himself no more. Interrupting Lord Raedaesh, he pleaded with the others to listen to him. The iceboats could do more than cut off the enemy supply lines. They could destroy the entire Perkunishan navy. The ships were all in icelocked harbors, and the Blodlandish knew where each was. A fleet of iceboats could cross the ice, even into the North Sea and Baltic, and could torpedo every immobile dreadnought and cruiser, destroyer, troop ship, supply ship.
Now was the time to act, this day, before the spring thaw started. The propellers and motors of his planes could be mounted on the iceboats. These would carry a crew, machine guns, torpedoes, even small cannon. Iceboats to carry commando troops could be built. If the idea sounded fantastic, a desperate situation demanded desperate action.
Lord Raedaesh, his face scarlet, thundered at him to get out of the council room. He was to get back to his flying toys and his unsportsmanlike rapid-fire weapons. Let him not dare to annoy the High Command any more with his madman schemes.
Trembling, inwardly raging, Two Hawks obeyed. He could do nothing else. Returning to his house, he told Kwasind, “I’ll adopt a what-the-hell attitude. Laugh at Raedaesh and his fellow asses. After all, they’re just being human, that is, living fossils, stupid tradition-shelled turtles. They are no different from their counterparts on my Earth, past and present. Kwasind, I could tell you the history of man’s stupidity on Earth, especially the stupidity of the typical military mind. You’d be shocked.”
“The Blodlandish don’t have a monopoly on stupidity, arrogance, or rigidity,” Kwasind said. “Have you heard the latest?”
New Crete and Perkunisha were at war. The New Cretan forces in Ireland had depended largely upon their ally to supply them during the winter. But the Perkunishans had been very tight-fisted with the supplies. They gave the excuse that they were having enough trouble providing for their own troops. The Shofet of New Crete had seen the real reason behind his ally’s action. Although Perkunisha had pledged Ireland as a prize of war, it wanted the island for itself. If the New Cretans were defeated and Perkunisha had to take over, Perkunisha could claim Ireland by right of conquest.
The Shofet had accused his ally of betrayal. The arrogant Perkunishans reacted violently and swiftly. Even now their Mediterranean fleet and troops in south Rasna were fighting their former allies.
“They think they can take on the whole world,” Kwasind said. “Now, they go too far—I hope. That’s not all, you know. Perkunisha has demanded that Ikhwan hand back the African colonies it’s occupied. And it’s also told Ikhwan to stay out of western Dravidia. If Ikhwan doesn’t obey, Perkunisha will declare war on them.”
“What’s the Blodlandish government doing about this? Ikhwan has a powerful navy, probably the most powerful, now that the Perkunisha had lost so many ships. If the Ikhwan would become allied to us...”
“They won’t. Obviously, they plan to let Europe tear itself apart. Then they’ll move in. You watch.”
“It’s Fimbulwinter,” Two Hawks said. “Gotterdammerung. The Twilight of the Gods.”
But the winter passed without the end of the world. The snows melted; mud had its fun with the armies that tried to slog through it. The Blodlandish were well entrenched in strategic positions, their cannons in place. The Perkunishans had to haul their big artillery wherever they were needed. Since the few paved roads on the island had been blown up by the retreating Blodlandish, the invaders had to build new ones. This took time, and their armies bogged down.
The Blodlandish Air Force had its first big engagement with the enemy planes, 20 miles south of Bammu. Although outnumbered by ten craft, the Blodlandish fought fiercely. They lost six planes and sent twelve enemy down in flames. Two Hawks was flying that day because he believed his men needed an experienced combat man with them.
The fliers, based on the northern side of the capital city, flew ten sorties that day. Two Hawks went up a second time, leading fifty planes in an attack on the enemy field closest to the front lines. The twenty planes on the ground, all hangars, a bomb dump, and four anti-aircraft posts were destroyed. For two weeks, the Blodlandish flew from dusk to dawn. They lost heavily in the many dogfights over Bammu, since the Perkunishans were intent on destroying the islanders’ air effectiveness. Fortunately, the full weight of their enemy’s air arm was not brought to bear against them. Espionage said that Raske had wanted to use every plane he had in the campaign, but the High Command had vetoed this. Half went to fight against the New Cretans; only a fourth were being used on the island.