The men laughed, some of them lowering their muskets as if ready to break ranks and join in a general gab session with Kal, who seemed more than happy to oblige.

Vincent cleared his throat sharply, looking at the men, and they snapped back to attention, eyes straight ahead. Kal looked back at Vincent and nodded.

"My son-in-law here is reminding me that we've got another meeting. I'll try to find you men later and we'll talk some more about the old days at the tavern and what was her name ..."

"Zvetlana," one of the men whispered, and the line broke into appreciative chuckles.

Kal smiled and looked at Vincent.

"Never say that name around my wife," he said with a conspiratorial wink, and the men laughed even louder.

"All right, my general, we're off," Kal said, and taking Vincent by the arm, he continued down the line, nodding at the men, who were now openly smiling.

Reaching the entry into the vast tent, Kal finally let go of Vincent's arm.

"I've got to go over and see Gates," the president said with a sigh, as if he was silently wishing that he could take the rest of the afternoon off, go back to his peasant friends, and wander off for a drink. "He wants to try this new thing he and Emil created that makes pictures without painting or drawing."

"A daguerreotype?"

"I don't know what its called. He's already made some pictures of the men here. You sure it won't steal your soul?"

Vincent smiled and shook his head. "It's safe."

Kal nodded as if still not assured. "We'll talk later, son." He hugged Vincent, looking into his eyes as if probing for some lost essence, and then left him.

Vincent looked about. The tent, he suddenly realized, had belonged once to Muzta Qar Qarth, and had been retrieved from the flood at the end of the war. It was more than a hundred feet across and was supported in the center by a pole as thick as a ship's mast. The sides were rolled up to let the breeze in. It was packed with the entire higher command of the Army of the Republic along with a sprinkling of Roum officers who were with a division of Fourth Corps and had seen good service in the withdrawal from the Potomac. At the sight of Vincent, the Roum officers started toward the line of men who were following him, eager to see their comrades who were on Vincent's staff. To one side he saw Marcus and Julius, who had arrived the day before for a private meeting with Andrew and Kal. Marcus, seeing Vincent, nodded a friendly greeting, which Vincent knew was genuine. The two had become far closer in the last several months, somehow recognizing a kinship of suffering that had helped to shape them into men impervious to pain.

Vincent drifted through the crowd, which was heavily spiced with the faded and often patched blue uniforms that denoted old veterans of the 35th Maine and 44th New York. He nodded an almost friendly greeting to Andrew Barry, who so long ago had been his sergeant in Company A and was now a corps commander. Twenty-six of them were now generals, and over sixty commanded regiments as lieutenant colonels. By a curious custom, since Andrew refused to promote himself, the rank of colonel was now held by only one man on this world. A fair percentage of the rest of the men from the old Union Army were in staff positions, technical or administrative jobs, either civilian, like Gates as newspaperman and Webster as secretary of the treasury, or military, like Ferguson as chief of the ordnance development department.

And of the six hundred and thirty two who had come through on the Ogunquit, Ogunquit, nearly two hundred and thirty were dead, forty more were permanently disabled and retired, twenty were insane from the shock of all that had happened, and sixteen more were suicides. Thirty-one others, the sailors from the nearly two hundred and thirty were dead, forty more were permanently disabled and retired, twenty were insane from the shock of all that had happened, and sixteen more were suicides. Thirty-one others, the sailors from the Ogunquit, Ogunquit, commanded by Cromwell, were somewhere in Cartha under the traitor Hinsen or dead. Half of us gone, Vincent thought-Malady, Kindred, Houston, Dunlevy, the two Sadler brothers, and of course Hans Schuder. In actual battle casualties of killed, wounded, and missing the regiment and battery had sustained more than one hundred percent losses, some of the men having been wounded two or three times, many of them adding on to injuries endured against the rebels. We're using ourselves up, our bodies wearing down, he thought, looking around the room, seeing more than one empty sleeve, scarred face, eye patch, or slow stiff walk. commanded by Cromwell, were somewhere in Cartha under the traitor Hinsen or dead. Half of us gone, Vincent thought-Malady, Kindred, Houston, Dunlevy, the two Sadler brothers, and of course Hans Schuder. In actual battle casualties of killed, wounded, and missing the regiment and battery had sustained more than one hundred percent losses, some of the men having been wounded two or three times, many of them adding on to injuries endured against the rebels. We're using ourselves up, our bodies wearing down, he thought, looking around the room, seeing more than one empty sleeve, scarred face, eye patch, or slow stiff walk.

"Have a drink, me bucko."

Vincent looked up to see the flowing red mutton-chops and mustache of Pat O'Donald looming up before him.

"I thought this was an official staff meeting, which means no drinking," Vincent said as Pat looked around with a conspiratorial gaze while pulling a flask out of his breast pocket.

"Laddie, the old Army of the Potomac was the hardest-drinking army in history-hell, we didn't start to win until that bastard of a drunk took over. We're just carrying on military tradition, we are, especially with these Rus so willing to join in."

Vincent had heard rumors about the transformation of Pat since the death of Hans, how the man had gone for weeks without a single tear, nor even a nip. It was almost comforting to see him lapse back into his old form, at least for today, and he felt a quiet satisfaction as well that Pat now viewed him as a social equal in the club of killers.

Taking the flask, he ignored Dimitri's cold stare and downed a hard gulp, feeling the pleasant warmth spread out as the vodka did its work, no longer choking and burning him as it once had.

Pat took the flask back, took another swig, then corked it and returned it to his pocket.

"When this cruel war's over I'm going to see to it that we get some proper whiskey made up again. They've got barley on this bloody world, and I've even heard that where them Maya folks are back to the west they've got corn as well. We'll run a rail line out that way, teach 'em how to make stills, and get some trade going."

"When this cruel war's over your drinking days are done," Emil Weiss said, coming up to Pat and pulling the flask from his pocket. "I didn't patch that hole in your stomach up to . . ."

"I know, I know, damn ya " Pat said, and the two fell into squabbling over possession of the flask.

Vincent drifted away and stood in silence near the center of the yurt, his staff standing respectfully behind him. The commander of Sixth and Seventh Corps absently fingered his goatee, hat pulled low over his eyes. No one approached him.

Andrew Lawrence Keane stood in silence as well near the far side of the yurt, watching Vincent. Sheridan to my Grant, Andrew thought. Grant the butcher, who could lose ten thousand in one futile charge at Cold Harbor. Sheridan, who could remorselessly ride up the Shenandoah Valley destroying everything. The younger model of Andrew, but Andrew's heart had somehow been burned out of him. Something had died when he had shot the Merki hanging on the cross in the forum of Roum, as if he had shot the God he had once so fervently believed in and had filled his soul with emptiness.

He knew the emptiness-it had tried to creep into him more than once-but Hans or Kathleen had always pulled him back from the edge. And Hans was gone. He smiled sadly. No, he was not really gone; somehow he could almost sense Hans still alive inside of him, in the same way that a father always lives inside the soul of his son even after he is gone.

And Kathleen, she was always there as well, her wonderful lilt of a brogue coming out in moments of anger, and in those wonderful moments of passion too. When he felt his soul emptying, she put the touch of life back into him, a phenomenon he had believed would never come to him, not after what his fiancee had done to him back before the war. Kathleen had reached even deeper, and it was for her and for their daughter more than everything else that he continued to fight. He felt the burden of an entire nation, and of all of humankind on this planet, resting upon his shoulders. As surely as he lived, or died, the fate of the Rus, the Roum, and yes, the Cartha and all the others was somehow bound up with him in a strange mystical cord that pulsed with life and blood, with passions and dreams of freedom.

But it was their two faces that dwelled within him, his hopes and dreams for their survival that moved his heart the deepest. He had thought often of that and found it to be a powerful thought. So many years ago he had joined an army to fight for an abstraction, a word called union, and a concept of freedom for a race of people of which he knew not a single one by name. He would have willingly died for that; he almost had at Gettysburg.

Now the stakes were far more than Gettysburg and he was the one who would decide the hows and wheres of the fighting. This was no honorable fight as he had known on earth, with rules and even a deadly yet at times almost friendly respect between the two sides. This was brutality of war at its raw edge, a war of massacre, torture, assassination, a primal fight for survival by both sides, for he knew that just as he was fighting for the continuation of his race, so ultimately were the Merki fighting for their survival.

He looked about the room at all his young men, and more than a few old ones as well. When eyes locked for a second there was respect, awe, and from his old comrades of the 35th a deep affection that only soldiers who have served so long together can truly understand. Yet what moved him to continue the fight more than anything else was what he had seen only minutes before as he had slipped out of the small home in the city which served as his private dwelling. Kathleen had dozed off, exhausted after being called out in the middle of the night to try to save a boy brought in with a gut wound from a dropped musket. She had saved him, repairing the damage, and had stayed in the hospital till the afternoon, seeing after her other patients and then going the rounds with the score of doctors she was responsible for training.

She had fallen asleep with Maddie curled up beside her for her afternoon nap. The sunlight had streaked in low, filling the bedroom with a soft golden glow that always seemed to have a special warmth to it in the late days of spring. Their soft rhythmic breathing was the only sound in the room, the rumble and turmoil of war somehow hushed. He had felt tears come to his eyes as he had watched them sleeping, the sleep of innocence and of exhausted compassion. If need be he would die to save that, to save that for everyone, to save it for his own daughter so that someday, years from now, she might know such gentle peace as well.

He looked back at Vincent, who stood alone, and he felt a lingering sadness, remembering the young boy who had cried when he first confessed that he had killed a man. War burns the soul, but for this one the scars had fused into a cracked and twisted mass of pain.

"Everyone's here now."

Pat was by his side.

"How'd Vincent seem to you?"

"He'll be a killing devil when the mischief starts," Pat replied.

Andrew nodded to Bob Fletcher, who had been in charge of food supplies and now doubled as chief of staff with Hans gone. Fletcher went up to the low dais at the back end of the yurt, and as he stepped up behind the podium the conversation in the tent started to drop away.

"All right, dammit," Fletcher growled in his barely understandable Rus, "let's get started."

Appreciative laughter echoed in the tent, and the crowd of several hundred officers moved to the rough-hewn benches set up in a semicircle around the podium and the rough canvas map stretched out behind it.

The Roum officers moved to the back section of the yurt, where a translator stood ready to repeat what was being said. Andrew moved swiftly up to the podium, the call for attention sounding out sharply, and the men fell silent, standing up stiffly. He motioned with his one hand for Father Casmar to come up and join him.

The prelate of the church stepped up to the dais, and all in the room, Rus, Yankee, and even Roum, lowered their heads. Smiling in his usual affable way, the priest blessed them, then patted Andrew on the shoulder and withdrew without any fanfare.

Coming from a very Yankee New England, where suspicion of popery was something of a past time, the men of the 35th had taken to the prelate of the Church of Rus with a surprising and genuine affection. Not once had he ever attempted to proselytize, and he had gladly participated in the dedication of the various churches and small chapels that the men had erected back in Suzdal. Quite a few had gradually drifted into the Rus Church, especially the Catholics of the heavily Irish 44th New York, seeing in Perm just another name for God, and it was obvious just who Kesus was. The memory of early Russian Orthodoxy, with a good smattering of Slavic paganism, had survived in the thousand years since the Rus had first arrived on this world. Father Casmar had fully accepted Saint Patrick as a saint, and a green icon of the protector of Ireland had soon appeared on the church walls along with a stained-glass window of a shamrock to replace a window in the cathedral blown out in a bombing raid.

"Gentlemen, we've got a lot of ground to cover in the next day, so I suggest we get straight into it."

The tent was silent except for the high distant thumping, the sound of an aerosteamer making its way westward on a reconnaissance flight up to Suzdal.

"Tomorrow will mark the end of thirty days since the death of Jubadi, Qar Qarth of the Merki. I thought it best that we try to gather together now, since I doubt if we will have a chance to do so again in such a relaxed fashion until this war is finished."

The men stirred. They all knew that the strange truce, which had given them a precious month, was about to end, but it was still hard to hear it so plainly spoken. Within a matter of days they would again be fighting for their lives.

"I just want to take these few moments to go over our plan of action in general terms so that all of us can see what will happen. Later you'll meet with your separate corps commanders to review things in detail. I know you do not want to face what I'm presenting now, but there is no other way."

He paused for a moment to look over at Kal. His old friend had stood shocked when he first told him of what he planned to do, and he was still sickened by it.

"I know all of us had hoped to hold them here in front of Kev, and perhaps we can, but I doubt it."

"But to lose all of Rus?"

A brigade commander stood up, looking up angrily at Andrew. His defiance caused a stir through the meeting.

"It's my land too," Andrew replied, his voice controlled, yet conveying that nothing would now change his mind. "My child was born in this land, Suzdal was my city, the soil of Rus gave all of us life. But I have no desire to have my scorched bones buried in it."

He hesitated for a brief instant.

"At least not until I am a very old man."

A soft chuckle echoed, easing the tension but not breaking it.

"Tomorrow the Merki will bury their Qar Qarth.

They can move fifty or more miles a day starting the following morning, which means in as few as four days they will be here."

He pointed back to the first map, lines in red drawn in to mark the probable advance routes of the Merki columns. From here all the way back to the approaches to Vazima, every road was laden with traps, the wells were filled with rocks, the bridges were burned, the river fords were sprinkled with submerged stakes, trees were felled to block roads going through forests. Campfires at night were enlivened with laughter over some of the tricks that had been laid out. Barely a poisonous snake could now be found in the wild in all of Rus after word had spread about one angry peasant who had caught several of them and put them inside a barrel that looked like it might contain food. His trick was now imitated in nearly every barn throughout the country. Beehives had been rigged to fall over or burst open, and wasp nests had been placed under overturned buckets next to wells that looked like they still might have water.

The thirty days had given them the chance to go back and do the damage, and also to retrieve quite a few thousand tons of food that had been abandoned in the initial evacuation. Seed stocks had even been retrieved as well and shipped to warehouses in Roum or moved up into the northern woods and hidden away for if and when they ever returned. The last of the peasants who had been moving east on foot had been sent on to Roum. Even now, crews were working to tear up the track starting east of Vazima, working backward toward Roum. At a hundred tons to the mile, several trainloads a day were now heading back east, the precious metal heading to the cannon and rifle works or stockpiles to be used for emergency repairs.

They had pulled it off. And it was still not enough.

"What we've done, surely it will slow them down," the brigadier replied.

Andrew looked over to Bob Fletcher, who stood to one side of the dais. He came up to join Andrew.

"You know that victualing the army is my job," Bob said, speaking slowly to choose his Rus words carefully. "We can surmise certain things about their forces from our own experiences."

He stepped back to the map and with upraised hand pointed across the length of Rus.

"Our land between the sea and the forest, from the Neiper to here, is something over thirty thousand square miles, just about the same size as Maine.

"For the last thirty days, the Merki have been moving their people up the roadbed of our military railroad, and up the old Tugar road, as you used to call it, west of the Neiper. Those bastards have been forced to funnel several million of their people and at least a million and a half horses and maybe upward of half a million head of other animals up those two paths. From what Bullfinch's ironclad reconnaissance up the Neiper has told us, they're still at it and most likely will be for another month.

"They've got to eat, and we have decided not to cooperate." He snapped out the last words, cold and angry, and there was a bristle of defiance in the room. Andrew looked at the men with pride. Five years ago they had been terrified peasants who would have lowered their heads and gone into the slaughter pits, would have offered their open barns, the years of food stockpiled for the horde's arrival.

Now they were soldiers.

"They've picked the best time to campaign, and in some ways the delay of a month has helped them in the short term. The grass here in Rus is at its richest; an acre of prime pasture can support several dozen horses for a single day's cropping.

"When the Merki advance, they'll have over a million horses with them. I estimate for right now they'll need a hundred square miles of land per day for their horses, a thousand square miles per week, that's not counting the need for water or for the food of their own army. We figure that if need be they'll start to eat their remounts to keep going."

He paused and looked back up at the map.

"In other words, for right now, their army should be able to cross Rus on a front forty miles wide, one umen per mile of front, and be able to move at nearly full speed."

"So they'll hit us with full force, then," Rick Schneid, commander of the Second Corps asked, shifting the cigar he had been half smoking and half chewing.

Andrew nodded.

"So why the hell have we been tearing up our own country?" the Rus brigade commander asked.

Fletcher smiled.

"It's what comes behind the advance. Oh, they'll move fast, all right, but I daresay that around Suzdal it's getting damned crowded and forage is short. It must be a logistical nightmare moving those people through a hundred miles of forest at most likely not more than ten to fifteen miles to the day. That entire horde will be moving behind the army, funneling through fords in the rivers, and it will be spread out wide and there'll be no willing humans to give them their food as they advance. It'll start to get tough. Those who are moving along the northern edge of the forest or down along the sea will have other problems."

He looked over at Andrew.

"Bullfinch's people will mount harassing raids. If they see a chance, they'll land some detachments, kill some, and pull back out. We've left a scattering of volunteers in the forests. They'll sweep out at night to raid and pull back in at dawn. The harassing will force them to contract in toward the center, giving them less forage."

It also meant, he realized, that he had given orders to kill Merki noncombatants. That had been a tough one, which to his surprise Kathleen had pushed for with the cold statement "They're on our land."

The land is still rich enough now to support them," Fletcher said. "However, they'll be tightening their belts a bit and going slow. The prime grazing lands used by the army will have been cropped over, and there are no stockpiles for the rest."

"Yet the army will still be here within the week," Schneid said.

Andrew nodded.

"If we tried to, we might be able to hold them here as we talked about nearly a month ago. If we could stop them for two weeks, better yet a month, they'd be in trouble, forced to disperse a good part of their horses and all remounts just to keep them alive."

He hesitated.

"However, I'm not expecting us to do that anymore."

There was a stirring in the room.

"We've got four corps here for a front of forty miles," someone from the back of the tent stated. "Hell, we tried to hold twice that length of the Potomac with only three."

"And we lost the Potomac," Andrew replied, "along with over ten thousand men, fifty-four guns, and over a million rounds of small-arms ammunition. The truth is that we have little more than three corps here after casualties over the last seventy days, and at best we took out maybe less than ten percent of their numbers."

He hesitated.

"I'm not making the same mistake twice. You men and those you command are too precious to be wasted in a futile stand here."

"We've fortified the hills out there for a month," a young brigadier said, pointing toward the White Hills, which were visible behind Andrew through the open rear flap of the tent.

Andrew nodded.

"Was that for nothing, then?" the officer continued. "The hands of my men have been bleeding since last fall with all the digging we've been doing, first on the Potomac, then the Neiper, and now here."

"And we're going to keep on digging," Andrew replied. "If digging will save lives I'll have all of you dig right down to the pit of hell.

"The Merki expect this to be our place of last stand. Their aerosteamers have penetrated this far five times over the last month, and they've seen the work we've done. They're going to come on hard and expect to wrap up this campaign in a fortnight."