Terrible Swift Sword by William R. Forstchen Read Free Book Online Page A

of the Suzdalian and a couple of the Yankee sailors went with them. They went south, and have not been heard from. Jubadi was furious."
    He paused for a moment.
    "He killed five thousand who lived along the waterfront as vengeance."
    Too bad they didn't run north, Andrew thought. The engines in Cromwell's boats, though crudely made, were of a solid design. Again he cursed the man for holding back his knowledge when it was needed the most.
    "Cromwell? What ever happened?"
    "Moon feast. It was said he died well."
    Andrew said nothing. Though a traitor, he could pity anyone doomed to such a fate. Even though driven against his will, Yuri was a traitor as well. He had to be totally loyal, elsewise they would have slain him years ago. Twenty years with them must have left their mark.
    "We've had too many traitors," Andrew said softly, looking straight into Yuri's eyes.
    "Use me, and I will tell you what they fear. I will tell you of Jubadi, of Vuka, of Shaga, and of Tamuka."
    The names, rattled off, sounded dark and full of menace, and he suddenly realized just how little he really knew of his enemy. They were a faceless mass, a dark seething entity of dread, like the shadowy demons of the apocalypse. Yet he knew nothing of them—who they truly were, how they thought, and what they dreamed. This was the first voice out of that darkness that might tell him.
    He knew as well that not one of the Rus he had spoken to this evening had said a word of trust for this man. A few remembered him from before his disappearance, a merchant despised even then. A man now with the scent of burned flesh on his lips.
    A man who had betrayed his own kind to save his life, a life thus rendered worthless and without hope of redemption. The more humane demands were simply to drive him out, but all the Rus, even Kal, wanted the punishment for a runaway pet: cut his tongue out, jam it down his throat, and tie him to the city wall as he choked to death. It was the old punishment set down by the Tugars and Merki for a runaway, yet it also spoke to a dread of one who had lived so long with the hordes that he might now have become like them and turned traitor to his own race.
    Again there was the silence, the clock ticking out the seconds, the minutes, and hours until the horde would return. Outside, the cold autumn rain sounded softer, different, and he looked out the window to see the first heavy flakes drifting down, freezing against the glass.
    He looked back at Yuri.
    "Sit down, Yuri Yaroslavich. We need to talk."
    Chapter 1
    "My dearest love, your precious daughter and I are thinking of you longingly."
    He smiled at the memory of her letter. When he was still a professor at Bowdoin he would have scratched "longingly" out from any student's paper. But from Kathleen it was endearing.
    Six weeks now, or was it seven? He could hardly recall the days since he had last sat before the fire, holding Maddie in his arms, Kathleen by his side, the fire crackling before them.
    Longingly.
    A gust of icy wind swept across the open steppe, driving needlelike slivers of frozen rain before it. Mumbling a curse, Colonel Andrew Lawrence Keane pulled his battered kepi down low over his eyes. Damn hats, they never were worth anything. Whatever fool back in the War Department had authorized them for the Union Army had never stood out in a driving rain, or marched beneath a blazing Virginia sun. He had never been a stickler over regulation uniforms, and most of the men from the 35th Maine had tossed the ridiculous cap aside at the first opportunity, adopting the broad-brimmed, high-crowned Hardee, which did a splendid job of keeping rain, snow, and sun off of one's face. But as the commander of the regiment he had always complied with army regulations, even here. Old habits certainly die hard, he thought, with a sad shake of hishead. Now he was Secretary of War and Vice-President of the Republic of Rus, and yet still he wore the old battered uniform of a colonel in the Union