[What Might Have Been 03] Alternate Wars Read online

  But Europe was going to be a bitch.

  Author’s Note

  The specific depictions of Franklin D. Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Simon Bolivar Buckner, plus attribution of various offstage activities to Douglas MacArthur, Malemute Red, and Averill Harriman, are fictitious. As are the other characters in this story.

  The ACS Aleutian cable, however, did move a great lot of secure message traffic.

  WHEN FREE MEN SHALL STAND

  Poul Anderson

  Clouds hid that dawn, prolonging night toward endlessness. A wind arose. At first it went sultry as the air had lain, then slowly cooled, strengthened, loudened. River smells mingled with those of town, of smoke, kitchens, warehouses, wastes, horses and their droppings, men and their sweat. A few early, heavy raindrops fell down the wind; thunder grumbled afar.

  Blind where they waited, troopers shifted in their saddles, muttered among each other, passed forbidden flasks from hand to hand. Hoofs stamped on pavement, bits jingled, leather creaked. Here and there a cigar or a pipe made a flickery red star. They should have had real stars above them, to pale before an honest morning. Instead, rue de Bourgogne hemmed them in darkness, which a few gleams from shuttered windows only seemed to deepen, and doors were barred against them.

  They were bold men in the Appomattox Horse, Indian fighters, their oldest bearing scars and memories of the First French War; they had been at the forefront of the assault that cleared the way into New Orleans; but James Payne could well-nigh feel the morale draining from them. He sensed it in himself. So did his mount. It became a mute contest to hold the both of them steady.

  “Sir,” he heard at his elbow, “ain’t they never goin’a start? Must be past six by now.”

  “Shut up, Sergeant,” Payne snapped.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Hollis was a dependable man. That he had spoken at all was a bad sign.

  “First light sooner by canal,” said Hog Eye on the lieutenant’s left. Fewer walls to shut it out, a shimmer on the water, maybe the coal glow of enemy campfires.

  Payne’s mind flew homeward—sunrise silvering the woods along the Blue Ridge; Harpers Ferry, where the rivers meet and the rapids run white, Mary Elizabeth Dodge and words spoken in a rose garden…

  Guns crashed him back. Did he hear bugles and shouts? Suddenly the wind was full of brimstone. “Jesus Christ!” Hollis yelled. “They’re goin’!” The whole platoon cried aloud.

  “Hold tight,” Payne ordered.

  How had daybreak so sneaked and pounced? All at once he picked shadows from the murk, gleam off carbines and drawn sabers, then shapes, ornate grilles edging balconies, then colors, blue tunics and caps, sky still dark and formless but ever more mercury glints of rain. His pulse thuttered, his head felt curiously light. When he spoke, he heard the voice as a stranger’s. “Have y’all forgotten? We move when Lee has the Frenchies’ full attention. Remind our boys. Pass the word along.”

  Those in earshot nodded and obeyed. A shiver went through the ranks, as far down the street as they filled it. Firmness followed. Good men, thought the remote calm part of Payne’s awareness. Not yet blooded to this kind of warfare, where gallantry isn’t enough; but ready to learn it.

  Have I learned it? Me, twenty-five years old, no, young? Awful young to die. Lord Jesus, into Thy hands I give myself. Forgive me my trespasses. Don’t let me be afraid. Watch over Mother and everybody. Please. Amen.

  Flame lifted above roofs and exploded on high. A rocket. The signal. “We’re off, Sergeant,” Payne said.

  He touched spurs to his horse. Traveler nickered and broke into a ringing trot, left on rue d’Orleans, on toward the rampart. The gate there swung wide. As he went between its blockhouses, he glimpsed a cannoneer, who waved. The Stars and Stripes flapped wildly from a staff. Thunder rolled more and more often, louder now than the racket of combat.

  The new defenses beyond were all too near, hastily thrown together when the fresh enemy troops appeared, barely sufficient to repel three assaults. Payne rode among fascines and gabions—trenches were no good in this swampland—into the open.

  Glancing battleward, he saw only smoke and confusion through the hardening rain. If everything went as it ought to, Captain Lee’s sortie had drawn the Imperials toward it, for he led the main squadron, and this might well be the start of an effort to break out. It wasn’t, of course. The besiegers were too many, too well armed and well established. The maneuver was simply a massive feint, which was to end in withdrawal back into town—cover for the real mission, which belonged to Payne’s enlarged platoon.

  Or so the plan read. The lieutenant felt a grimace in his mouth. He wasn’t a West Point man, but his officers in the reserve corps at William and Mary had been, and high among their maxims stood: “The first casualty of any battle will probably be your battle plan.”

  No matter. His duty was plain. The troop was deploying as it emerged, forming a blunt wedge for him to lead, to drive.

  “Yonder,” said he whom they called Hog Eye, and pointed. Payne’s gaze followed the buckskin-clad arm over two miles or more. At the end of blurred vision he made out a house half wrecked, and a vague bulk that might be his target.

  Must be. Hog Eye would know. The Cherokee had led the scouts who first warned that the foe were dragging a monster gun into position. (“Barged across the river, upstream of here,” General Houston had concluded. “They can’t bombard from that side; the town’s shore batteries command it. But landward they’ll have the range of us, and knock our works down in two–three days, I reckon. Less’n we can discourage ’em. Y’all game?”)

  “Bugler, sound the advance. Trot.”

  “Sir.” The notes soared.

  Water splatted dirty, hock-high. You couldn’t make better speed through this mud, not unless you wanted to wear your horses out. Crecy, Agincourt. Save their strength for the final charge. But how nightmare-slowly you rocked forward. A row of cypress, bearded and gloomy; ruts alongside a rail fence; the house growing clearer ahead, its forlorn chimney, the cannon on a carriage that could have borne stones for a pyramid, its mule train, men in formation, rifles, muskets, whatever they had, flash, flash, flash, an Imperial standard sodden above them, nearly as mired as they….

  “Full charge.” Payne drew his revolver.

  Spurs, muscles astrain between thighs, thud and splash, crack-crack and bee-buzz, somewhere a scream, Hollis’s saddle vacant, but now in at them, onto them, ride them down!

  A man fired at Payne, missed, raised his bayonet, and braced himself. His face gaped through the rain, a boy’s face, the barest dark fuzz on its olive skin, Spanish, most of the Imperial force hereabouts was actually Spanish, not French or Creole, don’t plunge against that point. The revolver bucked in Payne’s grip. The boy’s face erupted, dissolved, splashed. He fell, and Payne felt hoofs break ribs.

  The Americans were among them, firearms emptied, sabers free. Some of the enemy drew wicked broad knives and tried to hamstring the beasts that ramped above. Payne spied Hog Eye in action. The Indian didn’t whoop or anything; he worked, silent, wielding his blade as methodically as though it were a scythe. Otherwise the melee was a whirling fever-dream.

  Which broke.

  Payne stared around him. Surviving hostiles were in panic flight, every direction. Wind hooted, rain hissed, like silence’s voice. The thunder seemed far away, too. Louder were moans and screams off the ground, from men who maybe knew why they had been torn and horses that did not. The horses threshed horribly. Whenever lightning leaped, puddles sheened muddy red.

  Payne realized he had been an engine, a harvester. He changed it into another kind of machine, a chess automaton such as he’d read about. Hollis was down, but Martin rode in that place. “Sergeant, put this artillery out of commission,” Payne directed.

  “Sir!” Teeth gleamed in glee. Martin brought his gasping mount around and barked orders. His gang already knew what to do. A spike was insufficient; besides, this turned out to be
one of the new percussion-fired pieces. Cram the damned thing full of its own powder from breech to muzzle, cut the carriage till the mouth was in the earth, lay a fuse, touch a match, and skedaddle.

  Payne rode about, seeing to the care, of his wounded, the recovery of his dead. Losses weren’t as bad as they might have been. Where was Hog Eye? Off on his own, no doubt. No matter what unit you attached them to, Houston’s redskins gave strict heed to none but the Raven. How did the diversionary skirmish go? No telling. There was only the remote coughing of it, overridden whenever the thunder sounded.

  Abruptly, freakishly, the rain paused. From the saddle Payne saw over miles of grass and marsh, from the Mississippi and the steeples of New Orleans clustered behind its walls, to the glimmer on Lake Pontchartrain. He saw soldiers, toys at their distance, quick-step by hundreds from the misty edge of sight. Cavalry covered their flanks, and fieldpieces trundled after. A little nearer, Lee’s squadron was disengaging to retreat.

  The Imperials had reinforcements to call on, closer than we knew about, Payne understood. More than we guessed they might. Newly ferried down from St. Louis or wherever? They’ve got the whole rest of this continent for a hinterland. Fingers closed around his heart.

  The rain returned, heavier.

  Hog Eye appeared through it, reined in, and sketched a salute. “We cut off,” he stated impassively. “Never make it back inside before they in our way.”

  “They’d surround us,” Payne’s tongue added. “We’ve got to head north, fast.”

  “No supplies.”

  “We’ll requisition what we can, and otherwise cinch our belts tight.” Why did he explain? To make it clear to himself, so he could make it clear to his noncoms? Or because this scout would eventually, if they lived, report directly to Houston? “First we’ll complete our task, demolish the gun. Then—reinforcements of our own ought to be bound here, you know We got a message off before the Impies cut our telegraph. But looks like they’ll meet still more strength than we reckoned when we called for help. They need a warnin’.”

  Maps unrolled in his mind: the narrow approaches to New Orleans between sea, lakes, and river; the military railhead at Natchez, doubtless enemy-occupied but tracks reaching east from it, a strand of the web that Andrew Jackson had decreed be spun across the States; yes, surely any relief expedition would come along it. Your job, son, is to pull what’s left of your command out of this hole and take it thataways.

  Payne straightened. Weariness dragged at his shoulders. It was a luxury neither he nor his men could afford. Martin was busy, but Corporal Bradford sat close at hand. Payne issued his orders.

  For a moment lightning whitened the Cathedral of St. Louis against a heaven where every raindrop speared incandescent. The sight blinked away amid monstrous thunder, and again candle-flame reflections curtained off most of the world beyond the glass. Though a grandfather clock declared that the sun had risen, the room continued to need its chandelier.

  The chandelier was crystal, suited to a chamber as gracious as everything else within the Cabildo. Government house, church, Presbytere, and several mansions nearby had seemed very European to Houston. They looked across rue de Chartres to the Place d’Armes and barracks, then onward to the markets, the waterfront, and the great brown river, like aristocrats, yet not without a part in the common life. Besides, here were the living links to Paris, Madrid, Rome, London. New Orleans wasn’t really a frontier settlement. Much of the land beyond might still be thinly peopled or wild, north to the Arctic Ocean or west to the Pacific; but white men had dwelt here for more than a hundred years, and in Mexico, Havana, Rio, Buenos Aires, Lima for some three hundred; and all of them acknowledged the same Emperor.

  That was a thought to daunt an American. He must not let it.

  “Difficult, waiting, no?” said Gaston Lamoureux at his back.

  Samuel Houston, major general, Army of the United States, turned from the window. “It is that,” he sighed. “A lot easier leadin’ boys out than sendin’ them. Leastways, if you’ve got any kind of spirit or, or conscience.”

  “Unsuitable for you, ’owever.”

  “Too old, you mean? Shucks, I’m only—what is it?—fifty-six.” Houston forced a smile. “Don’t need spectacles except to read and write, nor a cane or anything else.”

  “I fink not of age,” Lamoureux replied. His English, while accented, was fluent; he had been long in Dublin before they transferred him to the New World, where he regularly dealt with Americans. It was one reason Houston was glad to have him on hand. Houston’s French lessons had been few and in the far past, and until now he’d had scant practice. Service in the last big war hadn’t counted. He’d just fought then. Cherokee had remained his useful foreign language.

  “Se time ’as gone w’en ’igh commanders rode in se van,” Lamoureux went on. “You should put be’ind you all sose years of yours among se Indians.”

  “I know!” Houston strode from the window. This place was a cage, carpet, portraits, bookshelf with bust of Napoleon I enlaureled, delicate chairs, mahogany table, escritoire at which Lamoureux perched, all hemming him in.

  But it was a refuge as well. He must needs stay in the building he had made his headquarters, at least till word came about the foray. Finally he could endure the staff room no longer, silences punctuated by banalities, sense of putting on a show for an audience who expected it but had other things on their minds, same as he did. He’d given his officers an excuse and sought here, where he allowed Lamoureux to continue the historical researches that beguiled his retirement. As usual, the puckered little man was awake betimes, happy to shove codices and documents aside for some talk.

  Houston stopped at the table, fumbled in his breast pocket, drew out a cigar, reached for the silver box of matches. He shouldn’t smoke so early in the day, on an empty belly. He should go open the door and tell the orderly who waited outside to bring coffee. And maybe beignets; the siege hadn’t yet closed all bakeries and patisseries. No, damn it, he wanted what fire he could get, between his jaws if not his hands.

  He glowered at Lamoureux. “I’m not ignorant, whatever you think,” he said.

  The Frenchman looked straight back at him, countenance creasing multitudinously as he smiled without many teeth behind the lips. Light glistened on bald liver-spotted head and gold-framed lenses. “Certainly not. I meant simply sat time never flows upstream. You will understand. You are in fact a man of se most complex, my general, farmer, explorer, schoolmaster, Indian friend and agent, politician, soldier; and I ’ave ’eard you cite ce Iliad in as natural a fashion as a man might quote from yesterday’s newspaper. If you are no Pericles, you are at least a Lysander.”

  “Uh, thanks,” said Houston, pleased despite himself. “Though I’m not quite that ruthless, I hope. And I reckon I wouldn’t have burned Athens, either.” He grinned. “Time hasn’t diminished you any, sir, not where it comes to long-windedness.” A jape felt good.

  Lamoureux chuckled like parchment rustling. “It is se proper function of a diplomat.”

  I suppose, Houston thought. Did you welcome your assignment to New Orleans? Small use any more for diplomacy in Europe, after the Concord of Vienna, was there? But here, well, all right, Louisiana’s gone back from Spanish to direct French rule, the king of Mexico’s as much a puppet as the king of Spain or the queen of England, and so on and so forth—but here you’ve had us to deal with.

  A match scratted in Houston’s fingers. He brought it to the tobacco and drew deep. Harshness eased his heart. “Diplomat,” he said slowly. In conversation, too, was relief. “The art of gettin’ along with people.”

  Lamoureux shrugged. “As a means to an end. Alsough one does not admit sat in public.”

  Lightning glared anew; thunder boomed. Houston found a chair and sat down, mostly because it seemed impolite to keep looming over the other and he didn’t want to give offense. He wanted company, somebody to save him from fretting about the action that the storm veiled from him. “You’ve
sure been pleasant to me.”

  “You treat me kindly.”

  “I’ve no cause not to, sir. But how do you really feel? We are at war, your country and mine.”

  Lamoureux’s tone gentled, as if in compassion. “I ’ave no personal animosity. Wars ’appen. Naturally, patriotism requires I pray for your speedy defeat, but you, my general, are a chivalrous opponent. Yes, I may call you ’umane.”

  “Not much bloodshed when we took this town, no. But not much resistance.”

  Lamoureux’s calm cracked in a scowl. “You ’ave our Governor Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana to sank for sat, I believe.” He rolled the name out with sarcastic sonorousness.

  Houston couldn’t forbear to laugh. “Sure, we knew about him. His leadership was part of our strategy. Too bad he escaped, hey?”

  “Indeed too bad. I pity sem in Mexico, and selfishly wish we do not get ’im back. But helas, ’e ’as—you say?—connections.”

  “We’ll spare you that.”

  Lamoureux donned the mask of scholarly detachment. “Of course, you want to keep New Orleans and control se mout’ of se Mississippi. Se Emperor cannot permit you.”

  Houston turned serious. “Why not, really? We’d pay well. We’d make concessions. It’d be a good peace; ought to last.”

  Again, quite briefly, Lamoureux frowned. “It is painful to say, but you should know permanent peace between our nations is impossible. We can only ’ope to stay friends person by person, as ’uman beings.”

  “Why’s it impossible? I’ve heard Frenchmen call us the heirs of the English, and I don’t believe a word of it. We threw them off us way back in ’76. Besides, you’ve settled with them yourselves. Why keep old grudges?”

  “We fought sem for ’alf a t’ousand years. We would be fools to let you take seir place. It is not a matter of ’atred, I swear. Many of us like you Americans, yes, we admire you for your courage and energy.”