.45 Caliber Soul
Chapter 7 – Night ReconaissanceSilesia, near the Moravian border, is pretty country, with forested hills sloping down from the divide between the Danube and Oder river watersheds. If you ever feel like taking an extended backpacking tour of the area, I have some advice for you. Go in the summer. Don't go in March. In March, the weather is cold, with a lot of rain and mud and occasional snow, which makes for tough going—especially if, like us, you cut across country instead of following roads or trails.
Another recommendation: take a really good map and a decent GPS unit so you don't get lost.
I didn't have a GPS, of course, and I didn't have a good map. The map I had was accurate only in a very generalized sense; seventeenth-century folk cartography was casual about things like scale and spatial relationships and terrain contours. We were never lost, exactly, but if we were out of sight of a major landmark like a bridge or village, I had only the vaguest idea where I was, and no way to plot an easy route through the terrain.
We bedded down for the night in a sheltered spot on the west side of a lightly-wooded ridge. On the east slope, the woods gave way to a broad valley of open pastureland. There was a town about a mile and a half away, with a road running through it parallel to the watercourse, which may or may not have been the same village depicted on the map in our approximate position. The town looked deserted, but I didn't want to take a chance that it was occupied by hostiles—or that the hostiles would come trucking along the road at some point—so we were giving it a wide berth. I wanted to stay on the reverse slope from the town so we could have a campfire without it being seen from the town or the road.
Mitsurugi built a fire, and we ate some dinner—more of that mystery-meat substance in a form approximating beef jerky, and some dark bread. Raphael fed Mr. Ed and did whatever scheduled maintenance you do on horses; then he and Mitsurugi did a little practice swordfighting. Zelenka was crabby, she'd been cooped up on Sister Nadeza's back all day, and Talim was trying to settle her in for the night.
By now it was getting dark. I wanted to go eyeball the town again, to see if it was occupied. Call me paranoid if you like, but when you're in a war zone, it always pays to be a little wary. The reason they call it 'war' is because someone's out to get you. "Anyone want to come with me?" I asked the adults.
"I'll go with you," said Xianghua. She'd been running through a sequence of martial arts moves, with a couple of the kids watching her.
If you have to make a dismounted reconnaissance of a wooded slope in the middle of Silesia on a damp March evening, you could do worse than to have someone with you who knows how to handle a sword. It didn't hurt that she was pretty and hand an attitude. "You're hired."
We started picking our way up to the crest of the hill. "It's so dark," Xianghua complained, "so hard to see where you are going."
"Don't keep looking back at the campfire," I said. "Your eyes will dark-adapt faster if you avoid looking at bright lights."
She giggled softly. "That is like you, Seamus," she mused. "You are always—so serious, like the master who taught me the art of the sword."
We were almost to the top of the hill. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
"No, it's not, not really." There was something in her tone of voice I wasn't quite understanding. Was she teasing me again, or trying to tell me something? Had I offended her? Did she still like me?—
Dumb dumb dumb dumb DUMB! Here I was, acting like I was thirteen and trying to get a date for the church festival. That kind of distractedness is not good for one's life expectancy when on a dismounted reconnaissance in bandit country. I wanted to yell at myself: Pay! Attention! To! The! Mission! Soldier!—and maybe that way you can survive long enough to ask Xianghua out afterward.
We made our way over the crest and down the other side. The slope was steep in places, and we took our time descending; there was no sense taking a tumble and hurting ourselves. We were also as quiet as we could be. Seventeenth century armies weren't exactly known for their skill at stealthy night operations, so the risk of meeting a patrol was fairly low—but every step was still taking us closer to the bad guys.
Suddenly, Xianghua stopped. "I hear something," she whispered.
I heard it, too. Something behind us, stumbling through the forest. I whirled around and pointed the .45 in the direction of the sound. I heard Xianghua's blade being drawn. She pressed against my back, sword at the ready.
A dark shape moved against the trees. It didn't seem tall enough to be a man. I held my fire.
The clouds in front of the moon thinned out, and the ambient light got a little brighter. I could see our visitor more clearly now. He had four legs and antlers. It was a deer, or an elk, or whatever other large undomesticated herd animal they have in Silesia.
I relaxed and started to put my gun away. "Can it hurt us?" Xianghua asked. Guess they don't have deer or elk in her part of China.
"No," I whispered back. "Just hold still a minute and he'll move on."
I felt something warm and wet on my cheek. It was only then that I realized that Xianghua had her left arm wrapped around my waist. I looked at her. She had that mischievous smile. "Did you just kiss me?"
She did it again, on the lips this time, then let go of me. "We have to be going," she said. She released her grip and began working her way downhill again, leaving me standing there feeling like I was thirteen again.
I got my mind back on business and caught up to her. After probably another ten minutes of trudging, we reached the edge of the woods. We were pretty far down the slope, so we didn't have quite the commanding view of the town that I'd had earlier in the day from the crest. Still, there was no mistaking what I saw. The buildings were dark, but there were a dozen or more fires ringing the town.
A military unit was encamped there. Probably not friendlies.
We watched the fires burning for a while. We could hear occasional noises from the camp—a shout or two, a horse whinnying—but the rest of the countryside was silent. Probably cav, but they didn't seem to be out patrolling—thank God for small favors.
I turned to Xianghua. "Let's head back," I whispered.
In the pale, cloud-filtered moonlight, I saw her eyes go wide. "Seamus!" she whispered loudly, a note of fear in her voice.
I looked back at the town. There was a bright purple-orange light source in among the buildings. Bright enough that you could see detail on the things the light shone on. Way too bright and steady to be a fire, and the wrong color besides. Just looking at it gave me the creepin' willies—the major, big-time, get-me-out-of-here, I-want-my-mommy kind of creepin' willies.
I remembered what Father Jan had said. About how the local bad-guy had gotten worse recently: I sense that he no longer acts out of his own greed and malice, but as an instrument of another whose evil is greater than his.
Whatever that light was, it for sure looked evil enough. Like the Devil Himself, or at least someone on his senior management team.
If I were back in Afghanistan, I could get on the radio to our artillery, or have the wing-wiper call in some tac air, and make it go away. Would've been nice to have that capability now.
"What is that?" Xianghua asked, sounding like she was afraid I might know the answer.
"I don't know," I whispered back, "but I think it means we need to get out of here."
We double-timed our way back to where the others were encamped. Raphael and Mitsurugi were sitting up by the fire, keeping watch while the others slept on the ground in a loose circle of blankets. "What is it?" Raphael asked.
"There's a good-sized mounted unit encamped over in that town," I said, "and they don't look like they're on our side." I didn't want to go into detail about the weird glowing purple-orange light, at least not in front of the kids, so I left it at that. "If they send mounted patrols out at first light, they'll be right on top of us. We need to beat feet right now. Get the kids loaded up,"—three or four of them were already gathered around, drawn by the commotion—"douse the fire, crank up the horse, and we're out of here."
We spent all night moving along the ridge, staying on the reverse slope from the town. That took us about ten degrees north of our base course for an unknown distance. At first light, we found ourselves emerging from the woods into open pasture. The ridge faded out about three or four hundred yards north of our position. There was a moderate fog which kept visibility down to around five hundred yards.
I looked at my companions. The adults, the kids, even Mister Ed, all looked like they were ready to wilt—except Zelenka, who was sound asleep in the carrier on Talim's back. "Let's rest up here a bit," I said. "Raphael, how about you and me go up on the ridge and get a better idea where we are."
We crept cautiously up to the crest. The hill fell away steeply on the other side, and the fog was a bit denser there. There seemed to be a stream, or at least a gully, to the northeast, at the limit of our vision. Most likely, there was an up-slope on the other side of it. I didn't like the idea of crossing open country in broad daylight, but we could probably get over that stream and onto the opposite slope well before the fog burned off.
I was about ready to start back down when we heard hoofbeats. About a dozen mounted men emerged from the fog. They spotted us, and turned to ride at us, sabers drawn.
Hostiles, no question about it.
. . . to be continued . . .