Hells march, p.34
Hell's March, page 34
Followed by Lieutenant Barca, and Willis, of course, Lewis moved away from the discussion to stand by Varaa and Samantha. They were clutching the rail and staring ahead, ignoring the creatures under debate. Lewis could see a small dust cloud as a strengthening breeze blew it across the water.
“Mr. Anson is pressing farther forward today,” Samantha observed, the dust likely rising from his scouting force.
“Yes. I asked him to.”
Samantha glanced around, then looked at him. “And it seems dear Leonor has joined him.”
Lewis sighed, knowing where this was going. “I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy her company. I do quite a lot. But as convinced as she is to the contrary, I don’t need her protection. I’m fully capable of looking out for myself.”
Samantha giggled and waved her fan. “She’s not the only one who feels that way, you know.”
“True,” Varaa said, blinking amusement, but her tone was quite serious. “Your safety is important to the army. It trusts you to use it well and give it victory.” She lowered her voice. “Not even the great Har-Kaaska enjoys that kind of confidence anymore,” she confessed. “So just imagine how fearful the troops would be, all of them on this great expedition, if something happened to you. Do you think Har-Kaaska could pull them through? Colonel Reed?” She shook her head.
“They could, with the help of you and Anson,” Lewis countered.
Varaa mulled that. “Perhaps. But they wouldn’t have the same confidence when we meet the Doms. Only you’ve ever beaten them.” She grinned. “So the whole army appreciates the . . . attention the lovely, lethal Leonor Anson heaps upon you. You should not send her away.”
“She’s used to protecting her father too, you know,” Lewis said dryly. “I thought she might enjoy the opportunity to do that for a change.”
“And I’m sure she does,” Samantha agreed. “But there may not be anyone who’s perceived by most to need that protection less.”
“Do you think that?” Lewis pressed.
Samantha sighed. “No. Giles is a very capable warrior. I’m not sure one could properly define him as a ‘soldier,’ like you or my father, but he’s also the most horrible, frustrating man, given to taking outrageous chances. I personally feel better with Leonor at his side, to temper his . . . immoderate impulses. But we’re not talking about me.”
“I am,” Lewis denied, then gently smiled. “I’m not generally one to ask personal questions. I could say I wasn’t raised that way, but that isn’t true,” he added with the usual trace of bitterness that came with any reference to his upbringing. “It’s just the way I am.”
“Always polite,” Samantha agreed with an eye roll.
“Not to me,” Willis mumbled, barely audible. Of course he was eavesdropping—he always did, just as he always made little comments.
Deciding to change the subject for a moment, Lewis turned to Barca. “And what of you, Lieutenant? Have you decided to join Mr. Hudgens’s battery? You excelled in training, and he genuinely wants you as a section chief. First Sergeant Petty has been doing a good job, but his other duties have fallen to others. In addition, he’s not interested in becoming an officer, nor would the battery be best served if he did. Good first sergeants don’t grow on trees, you know.”
“And lieutenants do.” Barca chuckled.
“Not good ones.”
Barca hesitated. “I’d like to join the artillery,” he confessed. “I actually feel drawn to it. On the other hand, if my work’s been acceptable, I’m almost equally drawn to remain on your staff.”
“More than ‘acceptable,’ ” Lewis assured, “and I’d miss you. But I want you to do what you want. You’ve earned it.”
“You know the composition of Hudgens’s First Section,” Barca temporized, “so you know my leaderships may cause problems, right when we need their best performance.”
Lewis nodded grimly. “Gun Number One—and its crew. As I understand it, however, you’re well-liked by Gun Number Two.” There were no secrets of that sort in the army. “Good men and bad.”
“Perhaps,” Barca conceded, “but all good artillerymen. I’ll give it more thought, if I may.”
“Please do. Still,” Lewis continued, looking back at Samantha, “while we’re discussing the organization and opinions of the army, I’ll point out that the consensus is that you and Mr. Anson have come to an understanding.” Samantha Wilde was a formidable woman in many ways, and her beauty and bold personality even intimidated Lewis when they first met. On one hand, that was understandable. His experiences with women had largely been unfortunate. The ones from “acceptable” families his brutal father insisted he court had been, as a rule, either weak-willed and vapid or capricious and conniving, determined to dominate him to their ends. As a result, with a few exceptions, he’d grown to disapprove of them all. Then, here, on another world, he met Samantha and Leonor, not to mention Sira Periz and countless Uxmalo and Ocelomeh women unlike any he’d met: strong-willed but sensible, full of life and interesting, honest, forthright, and formidable in other ways he admired. And the fact that two of them came from the same world he did proved not all the ones “back home” were “bad.” It was as if he’d discovered real women for the very first time. Many of his men had Uxmalo sweethearts, even wives by now, but there hadn’t been time for him to explore that discovery very far as yet. . . . In any event, he’d become close friends with Samantha and learned early on that she had her eye on the indomitable Ranger—and she believed Leonor had her eye on him.
“That’s true,” Samantha revealed without hesitation, then flashed a smile. “I told you we would. I never expected the lengths I’d have to go to secure it from him, however. And I didn’t just come out here for that,” she defended. “My work in Uxmal was done, and Sira Periz is quite capable of standing on her own. I actually began to suspect she preferred that I come out here so her people would see that themselves.” She waved her fan. “I was no use to anyone there and thought I’d be a help to Dr. Newlin.”
“Well, you were right about that. The two of you together have done more to untangle our logistics concerns than any dozen before you,” Lewis confirmed. “But, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s the nature of your understanding with Mr. Anson?”
Samantha rolled her eyes again. Lewis suspected she did that better, with more meaning, than anyone alive. “We’ll be married”—she held up a hand—“when the war is over.” She snorted. “My God, that may be years! I’m close to thirty, you know. He’s in his late forties! I’m quite sure there will never be children,” she fumed. “How he can ever expect me to wait . . .” She stopped and looked at Lewis with a long-suffering sigh. “But I shall, of course, and so you see why I’m satisfied that your lethal little bodyguard should guard his body from time to time.”
“She’s not my . . .” Lewis began, and Samantha fluttered her fan at him.
“Oh, please. You may not have claimed her, but she belongs to you, body and soul. I’d get used to that if I were you and stop pretending otherwise. Doing so only tortures you both—and everyone around you.”
* * *
“Up ahead,” Leonor said, rising slightly in the saddle on the back of her local horse, named “Sparky,” and tilting her hat to the front. “Group movement in the brush at the edge o’ the clearin’. Could be predators puttin’ the sneak on those big devils over there.” She tilted her head to the left, where a herd of long-horned, bony-frilled beasts grazed contentedly, seemingly oblivious to their column of mounted Rangers and lancers. “Or maybe they saw us an’ skedaddled,” she allowed. “Could be somethin’ else, though. I thought I caught a flash o’ somethin’ shiny.”
As they had every day, Anson’s Rangers and Lara’s lancers were scouting the riverbank ahead of the plodding barges while Burton’s dragoons stayed roughly even with them a bit farther out. Nobody was much worried about the north side of the river, since very few people lived over there. At least there weren’t any villages or towns on that side between Cayal and Campeche. Small scouting parties of Kisin’s Holcanos kept pace to the north just in case. The arrangement allowed the various groups, even the barges, to observe the widest area while remaining within reach to support one another if they ran into trouble. The screen’s task was simpler and safer than it would’ve been if the army were on foot, and they all moved as quickly as if everyone was mounted.
“Seen it already,” Giles Anson replied, squinting slightly at the brush she’d indicated, barely two hundred yards ahead. The forest beyond had thickened again, and the rising sun flooded it with shadows. “Might just be more o’ those poky-faced boogers fixin’ to come out for breakfast too. We’ll check it out.” He paused and turned to look at his daughter. “Not that I’m complainin’, girl, but why’re you doggin’ me, today?” He grinned. “Colonel Cayce get fed up with your jabberin’?”
Only long exposure to the sun (and her Mexican mother) kept Leonor’s face from reddening under the sweat already sheening it. It was going to be another hot, humid day. Besides, both of them knew that if anything about her company bothered Lewis, it wasn’t that she talked too much. She’d come a long way since they wound up on this world but still felt . . . uncomfortable with casual conversation. Especially around someone like Samantha Wilde, who could talk so easily about anything. Compared to her, Leonor was practically mute unless she had something important to say. She wasn’t the least bit shy about speaking up then, but she certainly didn’t “jabber.” “Matter o’ fact, I’m ‘doggin’ ’ you for Mistress Samantha’s sake,” she replied a bit defiantly. “She worries when you go off castin’ about by yourself.”
Anson snorted. With the arrival of 2nd Division, his three mounted regiments, not counting the Rifles, were stronger than ever. Their baggage and support was on the river with everyone else’s, but he had six hundred dragoons, nearly seven hundred lancers, and almost a thousand “Rangers” (still largely Ocelomeh, but now with a few Holcanos attached), to “protect” him, not to mention Boogerbear, Ramon Lara, and another score or so of the toughest, most experienced mounted fighters he’d ever known. Even Coryon Burton and a number of his dragoons were in that category now, regardless that almost half carried the same captured Dom muskets cut down to “musketoons” as the bulk of his Rangers and Lara’s lancers.
He frowned slightly, thinking of that. Burton’s a good ’un, an’ turned the dragoons—a branch many, especially Rangers, held in low esteem before the old war—into hard-ridin’, thoughtful, frontier fighters. But the “new” percussion caps for their Hall carbines are a mixed blessin’. Sure, they’d fire the weapons, but apparently the women and kids who made them back in Uxmal thought, “If a little of the explosive compound in the little copper cap is good, a touch more must be better.” The result was a growing fear among some dragoons to use their quick-firing Halls because of the distracting, sometimes painful little bombs that went off in their faces when they did, often sending sharp shards of copper into their supporting hands, or even their cheeks. The cup in the hammer face generally protected their aiming eyes, but their marksmanship had been so degraded, Anson suspected most just closed their eyes to shoot. Even Burton can’t do much about that, he thought. Fortunately, they’d discovered the problem while integrating and training all the dragoons at Cayal, and the complaint went back up the semaphore line. The next batch of caps should be better. In the meantime, though . . .
He returned his thoughts to Leonor—and Samantha. “I guess she’d worry, some. Doesn’t know me like you do. Boogerbear!” he called out louder. “Detail a squad—better make it a platoon—to swing in behind the edge o’ them trees ahead. Somethin’s in there. Flush it out.” Boogerbear merely nodded and spun his large, striped horse named Dodger before galloping back along the twin column of twos. Nearing the distant rear, he called out for a platoon of Teniente Espinoza’s lancers to peel off and follow him. (Boogerbear never “detailed” someone else to fight.) The lancers did as they were told without hesitation, pausing only to hand their lances off to men riding beside them. “Halt the column, Capitan Lara,” Anson called. Lara passed the command to the bugler.
The huge, somewhat round-backed beasts in the clearing weren’t happy about that. Large heads with intimidating lances of their own over bony eye ridges looked up in annoyance when the bugle sounded, and their apparent displeasure increased as the long line of men and horses, possibly just single, strange-looking creatures to their nearsighted vision, came to a halt. The closest in the herd were about sixty yards away, however, and their impressive array of weaponry was principally defensive. The things only became aggressive—quite suddenly and astonishingly so—when an imaginary line, about thirty or forty yards away, was crossed. Otherwise, they avoided confrontations. That didn’t stop the bulls from grumbling and hooting loudly in tones much like the bugle, but they started to edge away.
Anson pursed his lips and glanced at his daughter. “I s’pose Samantha told you we agreed to get married when the war’s over. Sorry. Meant to tell you myself. What do you think?”
Leonor sighed, a little angrily. “You’re a grown-up man, Father. Don’t matter what I think—”
“But it does,” he interrupted. “It’s just been the two of us so long—well, Boogerbear an’ Sal too, I guess—but after losin’ your momma the way you did—”
“You can’t just keep livin’ for me, Father. I’m grown-up too,” Leonor interrupted in turn. She lifted her chin. “I miss Momma every day, though hard as I try, I can only conjure the slightest notion what she looked like in my mind. I still feel her in my heart, but can’t hardly see her anymore.”
“I see her every day, in you,” Anson said simply.
“An’ that prob’ly makes it even harder for you,” Leonor agreed. “Puts me a little in her place, so to speak, an’ makes it harder for you to move on. Makes it feel like she’s still sorta here. But I ain’t Momma. We lost her a decade ago for you, a lifetime for me, an’ it happened on a whole ’nother world.” She shook her head. “Long an’ far enough for you to leave your hurt behind, an’ me to bury my hate. I been workin’ on that part,” she added when she looked back to see Ramon Lara—whom she’d once hated simply because he was a Mexican soldier—and Kisin—who’d, until recently, been an even worse enemy—moving forward to join them and lowered her voice. “An’ it’s helpin’. Can’t hardly raise any o’ the same feelin’s I once had. Don’t mean they’re gone; they might never be. But I’ve found that carin’ for somebody, even the . . . careful way I do, helps bury old hurts an’ hates. I’m glad Mistress Samantha helps you with that.” She grinned a little crookedly. “Even if she ain’t like anybody I ever figured could. As for me . . . Like I said, I’m a grown woman, free to give my heart to whoever I want—whether they want it or not.” She took a long breath. “I expect you know how I feel about Colonel Cayce. . . .”
“Everybody knows that—except maybe him,” Anson retorted.
“You don’t approve?” Leonor asked. “Not that it matters,” she added. “I’ve had my own mind a long time.”
“That’s a fact,” her father agreed dryly. “But let’s see: aside from him bein’ older than you, near ten years, an’ not exactly showin’ much interest, he’s got his army an’ duty an’ cause, all more important to him than you. ‘When the war’s over’ is the least you’ll have to wait.”
Leonor nodded. “I know, an’ don’t care. An’ he does show interest, even if he fights it mighty hard. But after all the years I spent broke up an’ empty, jus’ carin’ about somebody feels pretty good. Good enough that I ain’t sure I want to risk findin’ out how he really feels about me. Does that make sense? I reckon you have it better, with someone like Samantha prob’ly carin’ more about you than the other way ’round, but I’m better off than I was, an’ for now, that’s good enough.”
Anson frowned and shook his head, preparing to say how he saw things; Lewis Cayce was a fine man, and in spite of what he said, much too smart not to have a good idea how Leonor felt. And Anson suspected Lewis returned those feelings to the extent he’d allow himself, which probably made him a much finer man than Anson because he hadn’t encouraged the girl. Anson, Leonor, Sira Periz, Har-Kaaska, Samantha, Varaa, Captain Holland, probably Colonel Reed, and maybe a dozen others were the only ones who knew Cayce’s ultimate “war aims,” and there was little chance they’d all make it through. Small chance for any of them. So who’s more honest, more honorable? He chided himself. The man pretendin’ the strong but vulnerable woman he loves is just a friend, a companion an’ fellow soldier in the cause he’s set himself, or the one promisin’ marriage when the “war’s over,” while never expectin’ to see it?
But Lara and Kisin were with them now, so that conversation, if it ever happened, would have to wait. Lara was peering at the slowly retreating herbivores, perhaps most dangerous when they felt only vaguely threatened—that thirty- or forty-yard invisible line growing closer to fifty. “You want me to deploy the lancers?” he asked.
Anson shook his head. “Too much chance one o’ them boogers’ll gore a horse an’ tromp a man. Besides, all we seen was a little brush rustlin’. Might be nothin.”
“I doubt it was ‘nothing.’ ” Kisin disagreed. His hair was spiked into a kind of crest on top of his head, and he still wore only a breechclout over his lower body, the terrible scars of a healed compound fracture of his thigh still puckered and rough. He seemed proud of the old wound. But he’d thrown away the necklace of eyes, no longer painted himself, and, like the rest of his men, now wore the dark blue jacket of mounted troops—though he’d insisted on officer’s shoulder boards. The jacket hung unbuttoned and open over his dark-skinned chest because there simply wasn’t one available that would stretch across his massive shoulders and still fasten in front. The one custom-made for Boogerbear would, and he usually only wore a vest, but he hadn’t offered it. “We’re less than a hundred leguas—three hundred of your miles—from Campeche,” Kisin continued, “and getting close to a cluster of villages our people rafting down to trade with the Doms have stopped at on the way in the past. People there are not Holcanos, but enough like us we could stop and stay with them. Trade with them.”
