Eric Flint: Ring of Fire III

Every day seemed to pass in gray colors. She was losing her hopes for simple contentment as surely as she’d lost her hopes for marriage, for children, for joy, for pleasure. She’d begun to think about suicide, from time to time. So far the residue of her Catholic upbringing kept her shying away from the idea. But she thought that eventually her faith would die also. She felt like a walking corpse, stumbling toward a grave that she simply hadn’t seen yet.

But she would see it some day, she knew. Probably before she saw her thirtieth birthday.

She knew her birthday, at least. Many people didn’t. February 11th, less than a month from now.

She wouldn’t be able to celebrate it, though. Von Troiberz disliked birthdays also, even his own. She wasn’t sure why. She thought it was probably because the colonel had lost whatever capacity he’d ever had to enjoy a day just because it was a day to enjoy. And so he found it irritating to have others expecting him to celebrate. So might a man who has lost all sense of taste react when people urge him to eat a cake.

If she wasn’t too tired, maybe she’d be able to have her own private little celebration. Just by herself. There still wouldn’t be any flowers she could pick yet, though. Even the crocus wouldn’t come up until March.

She’d often wished her birthday had been in April or May. Maybe then her life would have turned out differently. She liked to think so, anyway. There was still some small, not-quite-dead-and-buried part of Ursula Gerisch’s soul that thought most of her life’s trajectory had been the result of misfortune and happenstance. Not all, no; she accepted that she bore some of the guilt. But on her best days she thought-well, mostly she just wondered-about someday being able to find a new course for herself.

A peculiar sound coming from somewhere outside finally penetrated her bleak thoughts. Ursula realized that she’d been hearing it for some time but hadn’t paid attention. It had gotten quite loud, by now.

She found a clean portion of the bedding and wiped the tears from her face. Then she rose from the bed and went to the window.

The sight beyond, in the glow of sunset-even in January, it seemed warm-was the most wonderful she could remember seeing in years. The one thing in the past three days that had brought some happiness to her was seeing those incredible flying machines in the sky.

They were so big! Yet not frightening. Not to her, at least. Many of the soldiers were scared by them, but she wasn’t. Where they saw monsters in the air, she saw gigantic puppies.

She liked puppies. She liked dogs, too. They smelled nice to her, even if some people didn’t think so.

She’d have kept a dog except the colonel didn’t like dogs either.

And now there were three of them! All at once, in a line, one behind the other. She’d only seen one at a time, up until now.

They were coming in her direction, too-right at her, it seemed. And because they were approaching from the west, the setting sun lit up their huge, swollen bellies. She could easily see the boats that hung below them, with their noisy machines that apparently made them fly. She could even see people clearly, looking over the side of the boats.

They were quite low, she suddenly realized, much lower than she’d ever seen one of them come down before. They couldn’t be more than six or seven hundred feet high, maybe even less.

Suddenly, for the first time in years, Ursula was filled with excitement. She had to see them better! From outside, not through a small grimy window. It was a cheap window, too, which made everything look distorted.

She glanced at the colonel. Von Troiberz was sprawled on the bed, snoring heavily. He’d come to bed drunk, as he usually did. Nothing would wake him up except the clap of doom.

Splendid. If he were awake, he’d undoubtedly forbid her to go outside. Moving quickly, Ursula put on her clothes and shoes, wrapped a cloak around her, and left the room.

In less than a minute she was outside. But the tavern door opened into a small courtyard surrounded by buildings. She couldn’t see any of the ships from here. So, she hurried through the gate and out onto the village’s main street.

But the street was narrow and the buildings alongside it just as tall. Frustrated, she looked around and saw a meadow in the distance, perhaps twenty yards beyond the last building. She could get there in a couple of minutes, if she hurried. The soil would probably be icy, but she had good shoes. It was the one piece of apparel she owned that the colonel had been willing to spend some money on.

She got there in a minute and half. Looking up, she saw that the first ship-they were huge, now, huge — had come right overhead.

This was so marvelous! For the first time since childhood, she started jumping up and down with glee, clapping her hands.

Then, frowned. Not worried yet, just puzzled. Why were they dropping things from the boats? They looked like jugs or some sort of pottery.

Understanding came, and she made a small moue of disgust. Thank God she’d gotten out of the village! It was going to stink in a few seconds.

She was a little sad, though. A little upset, too. She wouldn’t have thought that people who could do such a wondrous thing as fly through the air would be so petty and spiteful that they’d drop their chamberpots on their enemies.

Ursula couldn’t help but giggle, though-and then realized that might be the first time she’d done that in years, too.

Colonel Johann von Troiberz was in for a rude awakening. He was about to get shat upon by leviathans.

Ursula was wrong. Colonel von Troiberz did not get a rude awakening.

He didn’t wake up at all. The tavern was one of the first buildings hit by the firebombs and it was hit by no fewer than four of them-two dropped by the Albatross, and one from each of the airships that followed in the bombing run. Within less than five minutes, the building was an inferno. Von Troiberz had been so drunk when he fell asleep that he died of smoke inhalation without ever regaining consciousness.

Most of the soldiers in that building died. Only five made it out alive, and two of them died immediately thereafter when the eaves of the tavern collapsed on them while they were still in the courtyard.

The very worst casualties were inflicted on the soldiers two buildings over. There were eleven of them crowded into that house. It had been the “party house,” where those soldiers went who were in the mood to carouse-and they’d started carousing before noon. Only one survived and he suffered horrible burns that left him badly scarred.

Within fifteen minutes, the entire village was on fire. Almost three dozen cavalrymen had been killed, twice that many injured-and the stables were burning too. Luckily for the horses, a sober and conscientious sergeant had raced about unlocking all the doors in time for most of the beasts to escape.

Having made their escape, though, the horses were in no mood to stay in the vicinity of the holocaust. They scattered across the countryside, leaving all but nine cavalrymen stranded on foot.

In January. In the Little Ice Age. As night was falling. Most of them without having had time to don heavy clothing. A number of them bootless. And with nowhere nearby to spend the night indoors that wasn’t smoldering.

Some of the men just wandered off, but most of them gathered together near the village when the fires began dying down. Their commanding officer was nowhere to be seen, and neither were the two captains who had been with them. Of the officers who’d been in the village, only three lieutenants were left.

After some discussion, they agreed that the best course of action was to join Colonel von Schnetter’s infantry. Insofar as they knew where that camp was located, a subject on which there was considerable dispute. The lieutenants, in particular, were quarrelsome men. In the end, three different parties went their separate ways.