The Ground War Begins
"We'll let them come to us, and show us what they've got." That's what General Pak was supposed to have said, or words to that effect.
1st Battalion had moved into position in the middle of the night, and the Jerries, with their trenching tools, had dug like badgers. (What Jerries knew as "badgers" weighed upwards of forty pounds and dug out any whelping dens they found, whatever lived there.) In the forest edge, the top two feet of soil was thick with tree roots that had to be cut first, but once through that, Esau and Jael had really made the dirt fly. Made a foxhole to be proud of! Eight feet long and six deep, with the required firing step. Then he'd built a little roof over one end-sections of young trees, overlaid with bark he'd stripped from a large tree, covering it all with dirt from the hole. At the other end were three dirt steps they could use to get out in a hurry. He'd driven long stakes into the bottom, to keep the steps from breaking down.
Now they stood on the firing step, waiting. Behind him, wilderness stretched all the way to the Ice Sea. He'd seen it on a monitor, while riding down in the shuttle; a view he'd never imagined when he'd lived on this world. In front of him was a broad field, way bigger than any he'd seen before on New Jerusalem. Green with some crop he didn't recognize-something the Wyzhnyny had brought with them. About knee-high just now.
The Wyzhnyny didn't farm the way his people had, who needed lots of woods for each farm. In the older settled districts the rule was at least one acre of woods for every three or four acres of field and pasture, depending on fertility. Enough to grow back, each year, all the wood you cut that year. Trees needed for building-logs, and for splitting out planks, roof shakes, and everything else needed. But especially for firewood, to take you through the long winters-a pile the size of the house. And logs and poles for fence rails. His dad had said about 8,000 rails for forty acres, plus replacements.
Esau didn't doubt the number. He'd sawed and chopped and split enough just in his own few years. But the Wyzhnyny had cleared away the farm woodlots. Didn't need them, apparently. Seemed they liked open ground best.
Ordinarily, Esau preferred to meet trouble at least halfway, but it was a mile or so across to the next good cover. It was hilly over there-maybe sinkhole country-not suited for farming. They'd been told it was where the Wyzhnyny would attack from. He sure as heck wouldn't want to cross a half mile of open ground with people shooting at him.
What he and his folks were waiting for was a whole new level of trouble. And a chance to learn what they were up against before they went charging into something. Even after Pastor Luneburger's World, where they'd trained and trained, supposedly doing everything they'd do here. Done it by day and by night, in heat and in cold, hungry, wet, and sleepless.
But two main things were different: on Luneburger's they hadn't killed anyone, and nobody'd tried to kill them.
Excepting Moses Wheeler, who'd murdered poor Spieler-shot him from behind-and the miserable dog turds back on Terra that'd sabotaged batches of stuff. Grenade detonators, power slugs… and parasails, particularly Isaiah Vernon's. "Sabotage." It'd been a new word to Esau. Sergeant Hawkins said it was supposed to be done with now. Things got inspected in the making, the packing, and the shipping, and the "saboteurs"-the people to blame-got caught and put in jail.
Now the getting ready was over. Somewhere off across that field was a whole army of Wyzhnyny, wanting to kill all the human beings they could. Including himself. They'd already disappeared the seventy percent of the human beings that chose to stay. They'd included just about all the older folks, and most of the younger with families of children.
And not satisfied with killing everyone, they'd knocked down and burnt every building, their foundation stones cracked and scattered. Or so the army said.
When he'd been a child, Speaker Motley had taught them the Testaments. And one thing he'd stressed was that the Lord God claimed all vengeance for himself alone. Which doesn't leave much for us, Esau told himself. But it seemed to him the Lord wouldn't hold it against him for feeling satisfaction whenever his blaster cut down a Wyzhnyny. And he intended to cut down a lot of them.
Standing beside her husband, Jael Wesley thought not of killing but of dying. Not morbidly or fearfully though. In his Contemplations on the Testaments, Elder Hofer had described Heaven as a place of perfect justice and grace and love. In the lowest realm of Heaven-what some called Purgatory-angels helped the newly dead confront the wrongs they'd done, and those done to them. Helped them learn to truly forgive, themselves as well as others, with complete responsibility and love, till they became angels themselves. Then they moved higher, learning from more experienced angels of the splendors of Heaven's higher realms, growing in godliness, readying themselves to join the archangels.
She'd never been able to envision what it would be like, but it seemed fitting, and she had no doubt it was true. Some did doubt. She'd had it in strictest confidence from a girlhood friend who'd doubted. Miriam had stayed behind during the evacuation, and was almost surely long-since murdered. Doubt had been a burden to Miriam, but Jael was sure her friend was in Heaven. Knew it without question. Miriam had always treated people with love, except sometimes her wretched brother, who bedemoned her whenever the notion took him. He'd be dead now too, unless he left in one of the evacuation ships.
It'll be interesting to die, Jael thought. But she was in no hurry. A person was born to live their life as best they could. Live it through, and die when it came time. She smiled. Her time was not yet. She and Esau were supposed to have children, bring them up in love, send them on their way with joy, and see her grandchildren through their childhood. Being a man, Esau had the advantage there. On New Jerusalem, pregnancy and childbirth taxed a woman sorely, and not many lived to see their grandchildren grow up. She would though; loving and spoiling them. She felt sure of it.
Isaiah Vernon waited in the forest shade. The day was warm, and the breeze that rustled the leaves overhead didn't visit down among the trunks. Sitting in the shade meant his cooling system didn't have to work hard.
They'd arrived near the end of the season known as "greening," when the new growth was burgeoning, and thunder showers were most frequent. We're lucky the weather was good when the marine squadrons were doing their work, he told himself. The rumor was, today would be the day the Wyzhnyny would attack. Then he'd learn what war was really like, and whether they-organics, bots, the army-were as good as they needed to be.
Probably more than anyone in the division, it seemed to him, he had a perspective on being killed. Been tested, proved, and come through cleanly, to be reprieved almost after the fact.
He looked back to their first months in training. The prospect of killing had begun troubling him sorely. He'd known the stories of Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus and others who'd won victories for the Lord. Fighting, killing, being killed. Without them, the worship of Jehovah probably would have died out, and the Hebrews as a people might easily have disappeared, ceased to exist. Then there'd have been no Jesus. But at least some of those Hebrew heroes had been harsh ruthless men, lacking the love that Jesus came to teach. Strange men to serve the Lord. And what of the sixth commandment? "Thou shalt not kill!"
Some said that didn't apply to the Wyzhnyny; that they had no souls. Isaiah didn't believe that for a minute. Except for the number of limbs, they were too much like human beings. Like the Assyrians and Romans-human beings who didn't know Jesus.
He could have asked his questions of Speaker Spieler, but it had seemed to him the speaker would only tell him what he already knew, resolving nothing.
One hazy autumn evening at Camp Stenders, he'd taken his misgivings to Sergeant Hawkins, who'd told them to let him know if they had problems. The Sikh would have a non-Christian perspective, but Isaiah couldn't doubt his Christian compassion. And it seemed to him that what Hawkins had to say might fit with the teaching of the Lamb of God.
He could remember that evening clearly and in detail. It wasn't so far back, if you didn't count the time in stasis on the way to New Jerusalem, but it seemed longer than it was. That was before his body'd been killed-before he'd wakened in a bot body. There'd been a knee-high railing protecting the little patch of lawn in front of the orderly room. He and Sergeant Hawkins had sat down on it in the thickening dusk, and he'd described his problem.
After he'd finished, he'd waited. Sergeant Hawkins had sat gazing northwestward, where the dark gray sky was smudged with the last dusky red of sunset. Had sat there for perhaps a minute without talking. When finally he spoke, it was quietly. "Yeah, I can see how that might trouble you. Try this out for fit. The human species has all kinds of people, right?"
"Yessir."
"Some of them are pretty good people, but don't have much tolerance for those who openly disagree with them. They might be good friends-even fiercely loyal friends-but they're intolerant. Do you know people like that?"
Isaiah had smiled. "It sounds like my older brother. Father was at wit's end sometimes, when Peter got in fights. Started fights! All in the service of what he thought of as right. Peter must have averaged a fight a week. I don't think Father had ever been in a fight in his life."
He hadn't been in one himself, he realized. Not even close. He'd never thought about that before.
"So your father was more-Christlike than your brother?"
Isaiah chuckled ruefully. "I'd say so. Yes."
"So if the Lord was going to choose one of them to fight a battle… "
"But the Lord doesn't need someone to fight for him! He's God! He can do whatever he pleases." Even as he said it though, Isaiah realized how many Bible stories-Old Testament stories-told of God sending men to fight his battles.
"True, as far as it goes," Hawkins replied. "But I'm thirty-one years old, and I haven't seen much evidence of God taking direct personal action in human conflicts. Looking back at history, I can name a number of powerful rulers-let alone other people-who did terrible things over many years. In the twentieth century alone there were two rulers each of whom executed millions of people, or starved them to death. And caused the deaths of millions more in what came to be called the Hitler War. If God was inclined to act personally, surely he'd have stopped them. Sent down a bolt of lightning to fry them, or just not let them choose to do such things.
"Instead, one of them, named Hitler, decided he wanted to conquer the other one, named Stalin. So he invaded Stalin's country, the biggest country on Terra. And Stalin gradually wore him down. It was a worldwide war, with most nations involved on one side or the other, but Hitler couldn't have been stopped if it hadn't been for Stalin, who was probably as evil as he was."
Hawkins paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully. It seemed to Isaiah his sergeant wasn't really sorting his thoughts. More like he was figuring how to put them.
"So I don't think God acts directly," the sergeant said at last. "I think he lets humans of good will work things out the best they can. At least that's what Gopal Singh taught. In the case of Hitler and Stalin, there were two other powerful rulers, named Churchill and Roosevelt, who helped Stalin when he most needed it. Even though they both knew and feared Stalin, too. But stopping Hitler seemed more urgent."
The names had meant nothing to Isaiah. Terran history hadn't been taught on New Jerusalem, only some of the lessons learned from it. He wondered if Elder Hofer had learned some of them from the Hitler War. He must have known about it; he'd lived back in the 21st and 22nd centuries. Back before ever his people emigrated.
Sergeant Hawkins had grinned at him then. "I got carried away talking," he said. "What was your question again?"
"Uh… about killing. It feels like a sin to me, war or not, and I'm supposed to do a lot of it when we get back to New Jerusalem." He'd paused. "And I'm not sure I can do it."
"Umm. As a child, did you ever do anything wrong?"
"Yes I did, but mostly in my mind. I got angry more often than anyone suspected. A time or two I even cursed. Within the privacy of my mind, I even did acts of violence and lust. But never in physical action, except the sin of Onan, and even in my mind probably not as much as lots of folks. I believe I was born with a softness of spirit."
Again the sergeant had chuckled. "In Sikh schools we're taught that Jesus of Nazareth said `You must be born again' to see the kingdom of God. In the Gopal Singh Dispensation, we believe that people really are born again. Again and again, mostly not recalling our earlier lives. Born again to live in all kinds of circumstances, good and bad. Male and female. Sometimes doing really cruel things, and gradually developing a sense of responsibility for them. Until in time we learn not to do them anymore. Except in extreme situations, like some wars." He grinned at Isaiah. "It's my impression that you're an old experienced soul, who just now happens to be wearing a young body."
Isaiah's thoughts returned to the now, and he looked down at his new body. His bot body: large, hard, and fearfully strong. If he were inclined to violence, it would be a terrible body. But maybe violence was all right, in the service of God.
That wasn't what Sergeant Hawkins had been leading up to though, because he'd gone on speaking. "There are souls of all ages," he'd said. "All a part of the One, some call it the Tao, others the All-Soul. You say God. And mostly, I suspect-mostly it's younger souls who take up the sword, for good or bad. During the Hitler War, I suspect the generals on both sides were mostly souls who'd lived enough lives to feel sure of themselves, but not enough to be seriously troubled by killing. Bad men and good men, but none of them Christlike."
Isaiah had frowned thoughtfully. "Jesus got mad once," he said. "Violent. He shouted at the money changers in the temple, tipped their tables over and ran them out."
"Well then," the sergeant had said, "you've answered your question yourself, haven't you?"
He'd nodded, but not very confidently. It had seemed-still seemed-there was more to it than that. "I guess I pretty much have," he'd answered.
Hawkins had laughed, a friendly, sympathetic sound. "We're human beings. Strictly speaking, there's not too much we can be entirely sure of. Not even those of us who feel absolutely sure. But the One doesn't hate us or punish us for making mistakes. We do what seems right to us, make our mistakes as many times as necessary, and learn from them."
The sergeant had gotten up then. "I guess we've looked at your question about as well as we can right now," he'd said. "Sooner or later we'll get it solved, maybe on New Jerusalem, or maybe between lives."
They'd separated then, Isaiah going to the hut. He'd told Sergeant Hawkins things he couldn't have dreamed of telling anyone before. When he'd been eleven New Jerusalem years old, his father had taken him aside and spoke to him about the sin of Onan, and told him that in God's eyes it was a very small transgression, when done privately. As if to set his mind at ease. But he'd never expected to tell anyone about it; surely not till he had a son of his own.
Maybe the sergeant didn't know what the sin of Onan was; probably he didn't. But even if he did, it had seemed to Isaiah the sergeant wouldn't think ill of him for it.
He remained a little uncomfortable with what his sergeant had said about living a whole string of lives though. It seemed-heretical. But Jesus had said, "You must be born again." It seemed there was more than one way of taking that. And in a way, it kind of fitted with some of the things Elder Hofer had taught. Though he didn't think Elder Hofer would much like the idea.
During the months since then, it seemed to Isaiah that somehow or other that conversation had defanged the issue of killing Wyzhnyny, because it no longer really troubled him. He still wondered now and then-maybe feeling a little discomfort-but it didn't plague him now.
A sudden booming snagged his attention. Artillery fire. The surveillance buoys had reported that the Wyzhnyny had quite a bit of artillery left, here and there. Probably hidden from the Dragons. The army didn't much use artillery, unless you counted field mortars and tanks. Mostly it depended on aerial attack to deliver destruction behind hills and the like. He wondered if War House was going to regret that.
Then his lieutenant's voice spoke in his sensorium. "Load up, men. Time to get your feet wet."
To Isaiah, the command produced a sensation like he'd felt when they'd loaded on the floater for their first parachute jump: a sinking feeling in the belly, even though he didn't have a belly any longer. As his long metallic legs strode up the ramp of an APF, he heard the artillery's followup sound: the crashing of shells much nearer than the guns that fired them.
Lord God, he prayed silently, let me do what is right in your eyes.
When the booming reached Esau Wesley, he knew what to expect. Actually he knew and he didn't. Live fire exercises, with the rush of rounds passing overhead, and buried explosives simulating shell bursts, had given them a notion of it, but they weren't the same thing. He realized that before the first rounds struck. Stepping down from the firing step, he crouched in the bottom of the foxhole, Jael beside him. This is it! he thought. The games are over! The thunder of howitzers told him-that and Jael's wide eyes, and Captain Mulvaney's calm voice in his ears.
Then the shells arrived, the noise indescribable. Many exploded in the treetops. Wood and shell fragments whirred and whistled, thudded and slapped. Dirt flew, hissing. The couple ducked under their little roof. The ground shook, and now Esau was glad for all the tough woody roots; they helped keep their foxhole from caving in on them. Jael's eyes were no longer wide. They squinted, perhaps against flying dirt, perhaps in response to the noise, the violence.
He read her lips. "Blessed Jesus," she murmured, then said nothing more. The shells kept arriving, roaring. After the first salvo, they arrived more irregularly. Along the line, the sound was a steady roar, but the nearer explosions were sometimes overlapping, sometimes single. Esau spit dirt. Heard a scream. A tree crashed down. "Medic!" someone cried. Captain Mulvaney's voice spoke in his ear, in his skull: "Listen up, B Company. They're sending out armor-tanks and APCs. Stay down, ready on my command. Blastermen, fix bayonets."
As squad leader, Esau was no longer its slammerman. He slipped his bayonet over the studs of his blaster barrel and clamped it firmly. Then, unable to resist, he stepped out and popped a peek over the berm. What he saw riveted his attention. The tanks, those still coming, were already halfway across, riding their AG cushions, their antipersonnel slammer pulses invisible in the sunlight. Other tanks had stopped, more or less askew. He saw one take a heavy trasher pulse and hit the ground skidding, plowing dirt. No one emerged from it. Close behind came the APCs. He became aware of Jael tugging at him, and ducked down again, staring at her. "Good lord!" he said. "What a sight!"
She did not rise up to see, simply looked anxious. Captain Mulvaney's voice spoke in their ears again. "B Company, on your firing steps!" Esau stepped onto the firing step again, hardly able to restrain himself, wishing he still carried a slammer instead of just a blaster. The line of tanks, much thinned, was about a hundred yards short of the forest. An angled file of killer craft swept across the field, armored belly turrets laying trasher fire on the tanks. Which kept coming, those that could. Another file of aircraft followed. Not many tanks were left, and a number of APCs sat smoking.
"B Company, fire!" Mulvaney almost shouted it, excitement in his voice. "Give 'em hell! Wipe 'em out!"
Esau rested his blaster on the berm and sought targets. The artillery had stopped, but Wyzhnyny tanks continued to pump heavy trasher bolts into the forest. Wood still flew; branches and treetops still crashed down. The APCs had also thinned, and as if on signal, stopped sixty to eighty yards away. Wyzhnyny poured from them-real Wyzhnyny! Others, from crippled APCs, were already coming on foot, running at speeds a human couldn't hope to match, firing their blasters with a sweeping motion from what might be thought of as their waists. Esau had set his for semiautomatic. He fired aimed fire, almost every shot a mortal hit. When he paused to insert a fresh power slug, he saw Jael firing aimed fire too. She'd become skilled with the blaster-not as good as he was, but good.
All along the line, Wyzhnyny kept coming. A running Wyzhnyny launched himself to clear the Wesleys' foxhole, his blaster muzzle swinging toward them. It had no bayonet. Esau squeezed off a bolt that tore the Wyzhnyny open, spraying them with fluids and tissue. The alien landed behind them in a heap. Another lay on its belly-blood flowed from its neck, red blood!-its torso upright, swinging its blaster toward them. Too high; Esau fired back as pulses passed barely overhead.
They kept coming, coming. Another flight of friendly aircraft swept the field, and another, and another, killing, but the attackers did not pause. Esau half heard fighting behind him. Those who'd broken through had been engaged by reserves.
"Trasher crews! Trasher crews!" This in a voice new to Esau. "Our own armor is moving in from the north, with camouflage fields and red pennants. Don't shoot the good guys! More Wyzhnyny armor is coming, all of it tan."
That was nothing Esau needed to worry about. He kept firing, glad he'd started with a full bandoleer of power slugs. This wasn't likely to stop for a while.
The bot APF had settled through a hole in the canopy about three hundred yards back from the forest edge, and unloaded its five-bot squad. They were somewhat back from where the shells were landing, except for the occasional long round. Their built-in radios told them the first wave of Wyzhnyny was halfway across the field. The bots didn't immediately run to engage them. No foxholes waited to shelter them-bot tactics centered on high mobility-and they were too few to waste.
Instead they waited till the barrage stopped, then started toward the fighting at a lope. Their camouflage fields hid them better than any fabric could. Again they paused, near the end of 1st Battalion's battle line, but still back within the woods. The line was anchored by a battery of antiarmor trashers, themselves well armored. They'd waited to fire till the barrage lifted, to avoid the special attention they'd otherwise have drawn. Now they were firing trasher pulses at Wyzhnyny tanks and APCs.
The bots stayed where they were. Sergeant Ali Al-Daiyeen was in touch with the battery CO, and with Division's G-2B, which monitored constantly the input from the surveillance buoys. The order to move would come from them.
And come it did. The battery had been flanked, with Wyzhnyny in the woods behind it. Now the bots moved, running smoothly. A dozen or more Wyzhnyny had sheltered behind standing and fallen trees, and were shooting at the battery, suppressing protective fire from its dug-in blastermen. Another twenty or more had begun moving along behind the Jerrie defense line, attacking foxholes with blasters and grenades.
"We'll handle them," Al-Daiyeen radioed back. "Tell your people to keep firing. We'll be fine." Then, to his squad, "Podelsky, you and I'll take the skirmish line. Vernon, you three take out the Wyz moving west. Go!"
Isaiah and his two loped off, eyes seeking. Seconds later they saw the other Wyzhnyny, kneeling behind trees, firing at the foxholes, forcing their occupants to keep their heads down while grenadiers moved in, crawling on their bellies like dogs.
"Get 'em!" Isaiah said. They moved in, firing both clamp-ons: the right-arm blaster, and the left-arm, short-barreled slammer. The Wyzhnyny who survived that first burst of fire responded sharply and violently. Isaiah felt pulses strike his armored body, and ignored them, striding along the line, pumping short bursts, unaimed but accurate. Shortly the Wyzhnyny were all dead or dying.
"Anyone damaged?" he called. None were. "Ali," he said, "we're done here. Where next?"
"Back where we were before. I'll let G-3 know we're available."
Running to rendezvous, Isaiah felt a sense of accomplishment. He'd killed half a dozen at least, and it felt right.
General Pak's HQC-1 had lifted to thirty miles. He'd asked Tech how high he'd need to be to keep from being spotted by Wyzhnyny on the ground. Assuming their fixed flak installations had been taken out by the Dragons. Fifteen miles ought to do it, Tech had answered, depending on how good Wyzhnyny field equipment was, and how much they had on their minds. It turned out that fifteen miles wasn't enough, but given the power of his viewing equipment, Pak could see well enough from thirty.
Watching had taught him a lot. The Wyzhnyny had impressed him with their relentlessness in the teeth of heavy fire, heavy casualties. The amount of armor they'd used also surprised him. He hadn't thought so much of it would escape the Dragons and wolf packs.
In the ground fighting, his own air squadrons, armor, and antiarmor batteries, had reduced it seriously, though at greater cost than he liked to see. But War House had established the opening strategy: draw the Wyzhnyny into battle-the Wyzhnyny had taken care of that for them-and destroy their capacity to make an air and armor war of it. Turn the campaign into an infantry war, and keep War House informed in detail.
The Wyzhnyny had been onworld long enough to make major inroads in the supplies they'd brought with them. Reports from Tagus had indicated they'd begun growing crops there almost at once. That fitted his observations here. They were concentrating on self-sufficiency.
One of the Dragons had destroyed two Wyzhnyny cargo ships parked above a range of forested hills, lightering down cargo. Thick smoke had risen from the wreckage, as if they'd held something like grain and it was burning. Where were their cargos being stashed? He'd seen no buildings. Caves, perhaps? He'd look into that. And surely there'd been more than two cargo ships. Perhaps the others were hiding in warpspace.
How many supplies had been stored in the buildings the Dragons had destroyed? Hopefully the Wyzhnyny were in poor shape to fight a long ground war. At any rate they were a lot of parsecs away from their supply source, the Armada, presumably with no way to communicate with it. As for his own supply ships-hopefully they were safe.
If not… He'd handle his assignments, and hope that others handled theirs. But there were no promises.
It seemed to Esau he was a different person than he'd been when he and Jael had finished their foxhole that morning. Since then they'd fought off four attacks, each one lasting what seemed like hours. The last had come at dusk, and it was different from the earlier attacks. This time the Wyzhnyny hadn't used tanks and APCs. It was as if they'd run out. But they obviously had plenty of howitzers. Shells had come raining down on the forest's mangled edge, tons and tons of them, and everyone stayed hunkered down. Captain Mulvaney would tell them what was happening.
Mulvaney got updates from his platoon officers, and from Battalion. Battalion was in constant touch with HQC-1's all-seeing, automated command surveillance system. Which had separate channels to all regimental, battalion, and wing commands on the ground.
Esau knew none of that. He knew only what Captain Mulvaney said in his ear. Wyzhnyny infantry were coming, lots of them, on foot. No tanks, no APCs, just troops at a trot. "Six hundred yards… " Mulvaney had said. "Five hundred… Four hundred… Their artillery's quit firing! Be ready!" The roar of shells arriving cut off just after Mulvaney said two hundred. Then Esau and Jael stepped onto the firing step, spare power slugs held in their teeth for quick reloading. He barely had time to think, My God! The Wyzhnyny were coming at a hard run, a solid rank of them, unthinned by aerial attack. Neither Wesley used aimed fire now, just shifted their shoulders from side to side, pouring out deadly streams of pulsed energy in the dusk.
The Wyzhnyny had fallen like wheat before a scythe. But behind that first wave was another, and even with spare power slugs in their teeth, it took a moment to seat one.
The Wyzhnyny broke through, really broke through, because even having had replacements, quite a few foxholes were down to one man, or none at all. There were enemies on all sides, and 1st Battalion clambered out of their holes to fight. When a power slug burned out, they fought with bayonets. But not that many Wyzhnyny got through, and reserves had come up. Then some of the oncoming Wyzhnyny turned and ran, and in minutes only humans were left.
Then the reserve battalion took over the foxholes. 1st Battalion pulled back and mustered, then marched an hour northward through the forest, to where their sleeping bags and shelter tents had been stacked. The company cooks had a hot meal ready. The survivors ate, set up their shelter tents, crawled exhausted into their sacks and went to sleep.
Esau stayed awake long enough to wonder how many in B Company had died and how many were wounded. 2nd Platoon hadn't come off too badly, and he'd lost only three of ten in his squad.
Only! Give us another couple days like this, he told himself, and there won't be any 1st Battalion.
He looked at Jael, curled up already asleep. She always looked so pretty, sleeping-pretty face, sweet lips-but in the dark he could only remember them.
For the first time since childhood Esau Wesley prayed outside of church. "Oh, blessed Lord," he murmured, "don't let her get killed. If it's got to be one of us, take me. She's twice as good a person as I am, and if I lose her, I'm afraid I won't be worth shit."
Then he slept.