Conflagration

Chapter One CORDELIA Lady Cordelia Blakeney tightened her hold on the gray gelding. The horse could sense the excitement. Its ears twitched, its head nodded, and the animal snorted and dug divots from the already trampled turf with its front hooves. The reins were tautly looped between her gloved fingers, in which she also clasped her silver-mounted crop. She hardly expected to need the whip, however. Despite the gelding, the horse had spirit, and was more than ready to run, given the slightest chance. She had been particular in her selection of a mount. The lieutenant in charge of the remuda had been told to put her on a gelding for her own safety, but a bribe of folded banknotes to the groom made sure it was one with some fire remaining in its blood. "Easy, boy, easy." All around her, horses and men were galvanized by an abrupt departure from the routine into which both had fallen during the previous two weeks. The sun was high in the sky, but the Army of Albany had halted. The long columns of infantry and cavalry, men and munitions, machines, wagons, and heavy guns no longer moved south, as they had done for the last fifteen days. Instead, they stood and waited, as mounts grew skittish and a collective excitement mounted. Gallopers and runners came and went, while flankers and outriders moved in close. In the ranks, the swaddies and sloggers exchanged speculation and rumor, while the engines of the motorized vehicles idled, coughed, and belched exhaust. The mounted scouts had returned that mid-morning, confirming the reports already relayed by wireless from the airships. The enemy, in full retreat all the way from Richmond, had finally stopped, and looked to be turning, preparing to face their pursuers. Simultaneously, much further to the south, reinforcements had been observed, coming at a forced march from the Mosul beachhead in Savannah where, three years earlier, the hordes of Hassan IX had first landed in the Americas, bent on invasion and conquest. The battle that both sides had been anticipating all winter appeared to be upon them. "Easy, easy." Cordelia did her best to gentle the restive horse, while shading her eyes from the sun and gazing with extremely mixed feeling at the low, wooded hills that formed their immediate southern horizon. The trees were green with first spring leaf. The Virginia countryside surged with unfolding life, but the Albany advance had intruded into this season of growth with khaki ranks of marching soldiers and their trucks and automobiles, the belching steam of fighting machines, and the unnatural insect-noise of the airborne biplanes that buzzed overhead on their mysterious missions. The fresh April grass had been churned under the hooves of two thousand horses, and the boots of more than ten times that number of men, and then double-gouged by rubber tires, wooden wheels, and iron caterpillar tracks. The only excuse that Cordelia could make to the Goddess for the way in which they were despoiling the newly unfolding year was that the Army of Albany was not the first to make its mark. They were only following the scars of destruction already left by the hordes of the Mosul Empire, as they pulled back after spending a grim winter under an intermittent barrage of Albany rocket bombs, starving in the bunkers and trenches they had dug in the frozen ruins of Richmond, the same city the invaders had themselves burned to the ground just two years earlier. This trail left by the enemy was more, however, than just the imprint of boots and wheels and the hooves of war horses. The withdrawing Mosul had marked their passage with all of the debris of desperation and defeat. Abandoned equipment, burned-out and broken-down vehicles, plus the bodies of the dead or scarcely living, who had been unable to march or even crawl any further despite the commands of their officers, or the barks, kicks, and bFarren, Mick is the author of 'Conflagration', published 2006 under ISBN 9780765313638 and ISBN 0765313634.