Hells march, p.37
Hell's March, page 37
A short distance from where some barges remained tied and the ground had been churned to a muddy morass, the shoreline rose too high and steep to lay ramps. There the grass was thick and deep and Hanny found a lone figure sitting up, hat cocked back, arms crossed over his chest. The shape was distinct enough that he didn’t need the better light from the much higher moon to tell he’d found Hahessy. Climbing the slope, he stopped behind the big man, sitting on his blanket in the grass.
“Away wi’ ye, er I’ll throw ye in the water fer the fishes, I will,” Hahessy rumbled without turning.
Hanny hesitated, wondering how to respond. He considered saying something sarcastic or just sitting down himself, but the tall grass was full of biting insects, and the mosquitoes caused him enough misery. Finally, he just sighed and looked out at the river. “I couldn’t sleep either,” he said.
Hahessy turned his head slightly. “Young Corp’ral Hanny, is it? Aye. Well, I’ve slept all I care to already, an’ couldn’t care less about ye.”
“Don’t much care about anyone, do you, Hahessy?” Hanny countered. “Anyone or anything.”
“Little er none a’tall,” Hahessy cheerfully agreed. “Now off wi’ ye, er I will toss ye to the fish!”
“Don’t care much for yourself either,” Hanny persisted.
Hahessy said nothing for a long while after that, just sitting and staring at the water. Finally, he whooshed out a long breath. “Ye’ve got guts, Corp’ral Hanny, I’ll give ye that. Always have. An’ ye’ve the right of it too: I care little more what happens to me’sef than to you. Neither of us has much of a chance, I’m thinkin’.”
Hanny crouched down beside the big man. “Maybe not,” he said. “I try not to think about the fix we’re in. A rabid enemy that wants to wipe us out, monsters that want to eat us.” He chuckled. “It’s not what I thought it would be like to be a soldier.” Hahessy made no response to his weak joke, and he went on. “Anyone alone on this world wouldn’t have a chance at all. But we are soldiers. Colonel Cayce saw to that—that we’d stay soldiers and stay together. That gives us a chance, don’t you see? Working together with our fellows and the troops we’ve helped train, we do have a chance to live, even win. . . .” He gestured around. “Sitting alone, out in the weeds, even the blasted chiggers can eat us up.”
“Ha!” Hahessy barked. “So ye think all it takes is an army, all workin’ together, do ye? Well, an army’s made up o’ men, each as different from the other as can be.” When he continued, it was like a different man talking. His tone was as harsh as usual, but his signature Irish accent somewhat faded. “I’ve been a soldier nearly all me life. Why, ye might ask? Because I’m Irish. If yer the son of a tenant farmer, a Son of the Shamrock too, not born ta some contrived pet peerage bribed with land stolen from better folk—an’ ye want ta eat—why, there’s little real choice but ta take the king’s shilling. Ta fight for a king an’ parliament that thinks you’re no better than an animal. Less valuable than a horse.”
Hahessy smoldered over that for a moment, then said, “Still, I took the damned shilling an’ fought men of every color all over the world, whoever the damned king pointed me at. Black Asantis in West Africa, bloody brown Marri tribesmen—do ye even know who Asantis an’ Marris are? I didn’t. An’ I never did know why. Usually kicked our arses too, an’ our useless, senseless, gentlemen officers respected ’em more than their own soldiers.” He spat. “I got ta thinkin’ maybe it’s because, unlike the Irish, they did kick their arses.”
He pulled some grass and wadded it into a ball. “Me enlistment up—oh, no, I wouldn’t run, an’ where to, I ask ye, in those hellish places?—I took me discharge. I would’ve gone home, but then where would I be? Ireland was even hungrier than when I left.” He finally turned to look straight at Hanny. “I went to America instead. There, I thought, things’d be different. Men from all over go there. The ‘land o’ opportunity’!” he mocked. “The British hate ye, but ye whipped ’em so they respect ye.” He shook his head. “But the Irish have it no better there than at home. No work, no respect, no opportunities if ye haven’t the money ta leave the city. An’ no money without resortin’ ta crimes that’ll get ye hung.” He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “I went back in the army. Irish’re still animals ta the ‘gentlemen’ officers in the American army. ‘Unfit fer anything under heaven’ is the oft-quoted line, er ‘not a bad fellow, though an Irishman.’ Still, an Irish soldier who knows how ta soldier can get promotion in time. It took me, a fightin’ man already, five years ta make sergeant.” He briefly glanced at his sleeve where his stripes used to be. “One drunken night ta be a private again.”
“You could’ve been hung. Other men were,” Hanny reminded.
“Aye,” Hahessy agreed. “An’ I likely deserved it. I did no killin’, an’ tried ta help stop it,” Hanny was there and remembered, “but I did start it all, didn’t I? Those fellas were just followin’ my lead. Behavior you started by standin’ up ta me, Corp’ral Hanny.”
Hanny was taken aback and felt a surge of anger. “You’re blaming your troubles on me?” he demanded.
Hahessy shook his head. “I did at first, aye. No more. Me main trouble was, after finally makin’ sergeant—an’ a mean one at that—I had almost no truck with officers. No one stood up ta me anymore. For the first time in me life I was above other men. Better. Not only better than darkies an’ injuns, but white men as well. First Germans an’ Swedes an’ bloody British immigrants, then other branches, like artillery an’ dragoons, an’ you damn Volunteers. Even other Irishmen,” he actually seemed to lament. “Long as it don’t reflect poorly on ’em, officers don’t give a shite what happens in the ranks. That meant no one who mattered looked down on me anymore, so I started lookin’ down on others. Treatin’ ’em like I’d been treated. Like I hated bein’ treated. I had power. Too much,” he lowly admitted.
His gaze had wandered off, but returned to Hanny. “I know why yer here. Come ta reason with me, have ye?” He sighed. “An’ I reckon, like the goddamn British, I’ve come ta respect ye a mite since ye licked me, in a sense, an’ I’ll hear what ye have ta say.”
Hanny was chilled somewhat to learn Hahessy saw it the same way others did. He watched him put his hands behind him on the blanket and lean back on his arms.
“All the same, I’ll warn ye, just between us: I don’t give a shite about you, nor anyone else. I don’t want a goddamn ‘friend,’ an’ I ain’t gonna change. I’ll keep on like I have and to the devil with the rest.”
Hanny pondered that a moment. A simple statement of fact. “Well,” he began thoughtfully, “I really don’t care how you feel, or if you have any friends. I do care about my friends, the section and the battery. You’re a broken spoke, Hahessy, a danger to the rest. And if you keep on like you have, you’ll get people killed who I like. Corporal Dodd’s had enough of you, so has the first sergeant, but for some reason they’ve left what happens to you up to me. I don’t know why—or why I give a damn. Maybe it’s because I saw a glimpse of a good soldier in you, once. Just once,” he stressed. “If I was smart, I’d be asleep now, tell First Sergeant Petty you’re not worth the effort. Or leave it to Lieutenant Barca to decide, if he takes the section. He’s a good man, but I suspect if you call him a ‘darkie,’ you’ll wish you were never born. He’s had further to climb than you.”
Hanny pursed his lips and slapped at a mosquito buzzing his ear. “The thing is, though, I volunteered to talk to you, so now you’re my responsibility. If you won’t change, you’re too dangerous to leave where you are.” He let Hahessy contemplate that. “Nobody else wants you, and if First Sergeant Petty throws you out, which he’ll do before we set out in the morning if I say, you couldn’t even get assigned to guarding prisoners in Itzincab. You could run”—he gestured around at the forest wilderness surrounding the camp clearing—“but you’d have to be suicidal. Big and tough as you are, out here alone you’re just a snack. Seems to me, this is your last chance to try to be a good soldier again. Not for a king who hates you or a country that might not appreciate you, but for an army that needs you and good people who don’t care you’re Irish and are relying on you to fight a real enemy as bad as or worse than any you’ve faced.” He sighed and stood. “We’ll be moving in just a few hours, to go find that enemy. You’ve got a real opportunity to prove you’re a better man than others, stripes or not, no matter where you’re from.” He actually chuckled. “In Colonel Cayce’s army, that might get you more stripes than you want. Look at Lieutenant Barca—or Captain Hudgens! He was a private, remember.”
Hahessy was looking at the water again, hunched somewhat forward now. Hanny just stood and waited. “What?” Hahessy finally snapped. “What’re ye standin’ there for? Be off with ye!”
“I want your answer,” Hanny replied just as harshly. “I said what happens to you is up to me, but it’s really up to you. What’ll it be?”
“Oh, I hate yer livin’ guts, Corp’ral Hanny,” the big man seethed, “but ye have me word I’ll try.”
“Fair enough. That’s all any of us can do,” Hanny said firmly, but he was shaking slightly. He didn’t know why. He wasn’t physically afraid of Hahessy anymore, but it dawned on him this had been his first real test as an NCO—making a man do something he didn’t want to do for the good of the rest—and he felt like he had the first time he dealt with a misfire on a cannon. The first time he was in charge of dealing with it. He knew his crew was rapidly coming to . . . love their gun, in some indefinable way. It was their collective weapon that required a team effort to tend and maintain and send each round downrange. It was becoming part of their identity. But they’d had a misfire while training outside Cayal, and their beloved “Number Two gun” had suddenly become an insanely dangerous, utterly unpredictable, monstrous thing that might go off any instant. He had to stand by and supervise while his friends gathered closely—too closely—around it to re-pierce the charge through the vent and re-prime the weapon. There was a very specific drill for that, to minimize risk, but if the gun went off during the process, at least two of his friends might be crushed or maimed by the sudden recoil, or lose a hand to the concentrated jet of flame from the vent. Hahessy reminded him of the potential menace of that misfired gun. He had to be dealt with, and Hanny was shaking with the same relief he’d felt before. At least Hahessy couldn’t see it.
But nobody loves Hahessy, he thought, and he might be even more dangerous and unpredictable than a misfire. Probably safer in the long run to transfer him, after all. Get rid of him. A suitable metaphor came to mind. Flood the tube with the sponge bucket, kill the powder, and draw and discard the round. I hope I’ve done the right thing. Turning, he walked away.
CHAPTER 19
Bugles and drums sounded reveille shortly before dawn, and tired artillerymen, Rangers, and lancers stirred and began preparations to move while cooks labored to feed them. The temporarily designated “Fourth Section” horses were finally led up by a squad of dragoons who wouldn’t be joining them. All were “new,” good-looking animals and totaled enough to hitch six to each gun and vehicle and still have some spares. That alone should’ve convinced any doubters they’d be pressing hard. Lewis and Warmaster Choon, along with Kimichin and Kisin and a small clot of warriors to “protect” them (though none would’ve been any use on horseback), joined Anson and Leonor at the head of A Company, 1st Rangers. A Company was, as usual, the first ready to move. Or so they thought. Together, they led the coalescing column through the trees to a rutted, overgrown trace of a road. There they found that Olayne’s First Section of artillery had actually been ready before A Company and was waiting to fall in behind. The next company of Rangers would follow. And that’s how the column proceeded: Rangers first, because they were better at rapid deployment and fighting in close confines, with three sections of guns interspersed among them, followed by the lancers, which were more intimidating if given the opportunity to deploy and attack en masse. The new Fourth Section was with them.
Scouts were already coming back down the road as the first rays of the sun filtered through thinning trees.
“Nothing, sir,” an Ocelomeh Ranger reported to Anson. “No people, yet,” he clarified, “but only a fool—or an army—would be up and moving at the favorite feeding time for los monstruos. We saw some of them”—he scowled—“some very big ones moving together, but we didn’t tempt them.”
“The beasts will get bigger as we move onto the plain,” Kimichin explained through Kisin, though his Spanya wasn’t much different from what most of the army spoke. “And there’ll be more of them.”
“More grass,” guessed Varaa. “More and bigger grass eaters, so bigger eaters of them.”
Lewis nodded, brows turned down in concern. “Our scouts must be extra vigilant, not only choosing the best route to avoid detection by the enemy, but to avoid the larger predators. The only thing we have that can truly discourage them is our artillery, and it can be heard for miles.”
“Keep the column bunched up tight an’ let the fellas sing,” Anson suggested. “Looks like one big, loud, critter to the boogers an’ they don’t like it. It’s worked before, an’ the fellas enjoy it.” He arched a brow. “Besides, singin’ ain’t as loud as cannon fire. Damn sure don’t carry as far.”
“We’ll do it, but not yet,” Lewis reluctantly agreed. “Thank God for chocolate caliente, but it isn’t coffee, and I really miss coffee this morning. We’ll wait until we need it before we strike up the choir.”
The trees continued to thin as the morning wore on and a vast, flowery prairie opened to the west, covered with herds of great creatures, many like none they’d seen. Eventually, the forest barely extended beyond the road and only grew thick by the river. Far to the southwest, purple mountains loomed, their shapes, size, and even distance obscured by haze. Scouts returned regularly, beginning to report people, plodding along in caravans of a dozen to a hundred.
“Do you trade much with other cities?” Lewis asked Kimichin. “Los Arboles is next, is it not? Maybe forty miles . . . roughly eleven and a half leguas?”
“We trade some,” Kimichin allowed, “but most of what’s been seen will be . . . refugiados, fleeing from the Blood Priests.”
“Could there be Blood Priests among them?” Varaa asked.
“They couldn’t pass themselves as the same people they’re with, but might pose as refugiados from villages farther along.”
“Makes sense,” Lewis said, then turned to Anson. “Time to leave the road and pick up the pace.”
Anson gazed at the prairie. “Not much to conceal us out there,” he warned, “an’ we’re liable to stampede any o’ those critters that don’t want to fight us or eat us,” he added.
Lewis smiled. “That’s why we brought Mr. Kimichin. He knows the low places and washes. As flat as it looks from here, it’s really not.”
“If you say so, Lewis,” Anson agreed doubtfully, calling for the column to veer out to the left, diving into the knee-high grass. “Scouts ahead,” he ordered. “Keep your eyes peeled for leg an’ wheel breakers, an’ low-slung predators.”
Oddly, for the most part, the open ground was smoother than the road, and the ride in the saddles—and atop hard limber chests—was easier on bottoms grown tender after so long on the river. It was dusty, of course, and that might become a problem that bandannas couldn’t solve, from a visibility standpoint, but Kimichin assured them they’d be hidden from view long before they reached the horizon. Anson remained skeptical until the village headman was somewhat startlingly proven right. Barely a mile and a half from the road was a dry, shallow river bed that seemed to parallel the much deeper Usuma behind them. It was rocky in places, but mostly fine sand with only the occasional muddy puddle.
“We couldn’t go this way in the rainy season,” Kimichin explained, “but now it’s almost better than the old road. We must have a care, however,” he warned. “Los monstruos don’t graze here, but come to the waterholes—and they travel along it, of course.” He hesitated. “And big eaters of grass eaters”—he glanced at Varaa—“are smarter than their prey. They use it to get close to them . . . so we may see more of them.”
“I knew there’d be a catch,” Anson grumbled. “Captain Olayne!” he called behind. “Bring one of your sections to the front.” He looked at Lewis. “You up for a concert yet?”
“By all means.”
The Rangers and lancers began to sing, some even managing to play along, with banjos, fifes, even drums slung alongside them on horseback. They started, as usual, with a few Uxmalo favorites with complicated if repetitive melodies, actually vaguely familiar to Ramon Lara and his handful of companions from a more modern Yucatán. But even the Uxmalos and Ocelomeh had begun to favor the more energetic and generally (though not always) more buoyant American songs. And seeing as those were often derived from older, Celtic tunes, the latter were popular as well.
As the day wore on, troopers sang the slightly modified and perhaps even more appropriate “Strike for Your Rights, Avenge Your Wrongs” set to the jaunty tune of “The Rose of Alabama.” That led to more versions of the original song with “Roses” from different places. The “Rose of Allendale” wasn’t from Allendale anymore either. Next came the “Enniskillen Dragoon,” though the subject was no longer a dragoon, nor was he from Enniskillen. “Old Rosin the Beau” went quite long, incorporating old and new lyrics, but “Old Dan Tucker” was rendered without any changes, as was the apparently universal favorite “Blue Juniata.”
The strange, fearless sounds must’ve done some good because, other than a few large, toothy creatures that peered over the edge of the bank into the dry riverbed from time to time, in more apparent curiosity than anything, they saw nothing overtly dangerous. Other beasts, usually only glimpsed, clawed and scurried up the bank and away from their approach. There were no other obvious dangers. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. The riverbed deepened and turned into mud, surrounding a thick, greenish-brown slurry swarming with insects. And all around the putrid, standing water were dozens of what looked like little caves—like giant crawfish holes.
