Once an Eagle (68 page)

The Japanese were up, on a command; up and running toward them, their rifles swinging like scythe handles. He raised his pistol and fired—heard at the same instant a deep, blasting roar. Tommy gun. One of the Japanese lurched into a silly pirouetting skittering dance and fell, then another; the remainder broke and ran and the gun followed them, struck them down.

Looking back he saw Lin Tso-han crouched with several others, firing in short, clean bursts. He jumped to his feet and ran forward; the nearest of the Japanese was not twenty-five feet away. He bent over and unhooked the soldier's belt with its boxlike brown leather cartridge pouches and buckled it on above his own, then picked up the Arisaka rifle.

“Ts'an Tsan, are you unhurt?”

He nodded. “Where did they come from?”

Lin shrugged. “They must have sent out a patrol on this side at the same time the main body set out after F'eng. The unexpected. War is full of the unexpected.”

“Yeah,” Damon muttered. He was shaking now, and out of wind. He slung the long-barreled rifle.

Lin was watching him, frowning. “Ts'an Tsan—”

“You'll want it, won't you?” he answered defiantly. “Another weapon. Isn't that what you're after? I'm taking it with me.”

Lin scuffed one foot, then grinned his comical Groucho Marx grin. “That is inconsistent with your status as military observer.”

“How true.”

They walked quickly over to P'ei. The boy was dead; the bullet had passed through his skull above the ears. Damon gazed at the smooth, round face; with his eyes closed, the lips faintly curled, the boy seemed to be smiling slyly—as though in quiet glee at having escaped the bitter cold, the meager rations, this interminable war that had never been declared. “He's so young,” Damon murmured half-aloud, and the thought chilled him: he had never thought that of any soldier he'd seen killed in combat.

Down at the Japanese command post everyone was moving with haste, lashing boxes of medical supplies to packboards or rigging lines around them. Two men came out carrying the Nambu, which looked wicked enough with its heavy corrugated barrel and the curious tilted boxlike hopper fixed on one side of the breech. Six-point-five millimeter; and no problems about belts or faulty linkage—just keep dropping five-shot rifle clips into the hopper. Darned clever, these Japanese. Still sweating from the close call he watched them hurrying. And now they were going to carry these medical supplies and captured weapons away with them, in addition to their meager personal gear; up one mountain and down another …

He stepped into the command post: a welter of smashed furniture and strewn papers, dead bodies sprawled under tables and chairs. In one corner there was a little commotion; he moved up to the knot of men, and stopped. The hardbitten old officer they called Lao Kou was lying very still, his face slick with sweat. What looked like a series of shadows was gliding out from under his back and buttocks.

Damon turned away and went outside again, into the cold night. The sense of alienation, of sheer uselessness was immense; he kept opening and closing his hands. A man he hadn't seen before, a farmer in a sheepskin vest and cloth trousers, was talking to Lin Tso-han, who was listening, his face stern. He spoke rapidly to two of his officers, then gave the command: “Tsou pa!” and here and there other voices took up the cry softly:

“Tsou pa!…
Tsou pa!
…”

“What is it, Colonel?” Damon said.

Lin looked at him as if he'd forgotten his existence. “Japanese. Only five li from here. We must move quickly.” He went into the post and gave an order, and the soldiers who had been inside came tumbling out and started forming up with their loads. Damon followed Lin inside. The Commander had knelt over Lao Kou and was asking him something.

“Mei yu pan fa,” the old man muttered, his lips barely moving. “Mei yu fa-tzu …”

The Observer caught the phrase. “What's impossible?” Lin looked at him, his face flat and utterly remote. “Nothing.”

“
What
can't be done? Can't you rig a stretcher for him?” Lin looked at him without answer; outside there was the clink and rustle of the column moving out. Damon stared at the Colonel. “—You're not going to leave him here, are you?”

“Go out and take your place in the column, Ts'an Tsan,” Lin said.

“What? Look, for Christ sake—”

Lin came to his feet.
“Fu tsung ming ling!”
he said tightly; then, in French: “You will obey orders. Now, go!”

He got it, then. He drew himself up and saluted smartly and said: “Yes, sir,” and turned and went out. The end of the column was already passing swiftly; he saw the Eskimo, nodded and stepped out behind him, fell into the quick, driving rhythm of the march. As they swung west across the railroad tracks he heard the shot—a muffled pop that sounded like a crushed paper bag, a child's game. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Oh—my—Jesus. What a dirty, filthy war …”

They were walking at a speed that astonished him, half-running up a slope that cut back and forth between rock shoulders. His face broke out in sweat, he lost his wind, he had a stitch in his side. Then he caught his second wind, and held it. They were moving up Wu T'ai mountain, a narrow ascending trail that led past boulders big as cattle; below them the village had already vanished in the darkness, like a toy that has sunk to the bottom of a pool.

“How far,” someone just ahead of him said. “How far to Pa-hsüeh?” and another voice answered: “Forty-seven li.”

He did some painful calculating, then. His mind, slowed by hunger and cold and the physical effort he was making, worked haltingly, like a gun whose grease has congealed. A li was one-third of a mile. So, 47 divided by three was 15⅔. Sixteen miles, nearly. But they had already done 53 li the day before, and 14 getting into position that afternoon. Which made 114 li, or—divided by three—34—no, 38 miles … But that was only Pa-hsüeh, and they had to get to Tung Yen T'o before they were out of danger. All of this at 3⅓ miles to the hour, up one mountain and down the next.

They reached the ridge, followed it for half a mile and then descended, along a twisting path strewn with stones that rolled and skittered underfoot like large malicious marbles. Once he fell, sliding on one hip, felt the hot, dry burn on his thigh. He got to one knee. Someone's arms were under his, hauling him to his feet; he glared at the Samaritan—but it was a face he didn't recognize. He muttered, “Thank you, comrade,” and struck out again, cursing savagely under his breath. The Japanese rifle bore down on his right shoulder, the lumpy cartridge pouches jostled at his hips, chafing the bone with every step. What in God's name had he picked it up for? The sling, even in this biting air, smelled queerly—of mildew and old brass and fish. Why of fish?

He was falling back. One by one they were passing him, these ragged figures in their quilted uniforms and cotton-cloth shoes, burdened with their packboards, their breath coming in quick, dry gasps. He gaped at them. It was impossible—he was a martinet about physical fitness, he'd earned the reputation of a hiker among hikers at Beyliss and on Luzon; and here he was almost at the end of the march, in danger of becoming a straggler. He, Sam Damon, a straggler …

They crossed a dry riverbed, and the dust rose in choking clouds; he could feel it on his teeth, in his throat. They climbed again, reached a flat little knoll where there had once been a dwelling or a shrine. Someone gave a command, and they sank to their knees or sprawled against the stone. Damon stretched his legs out slowly; his thighs were quivering, and the old wound throbbed. He took a sip from his canteen and it was worse than no water at all. Surely now they were safe: surely now they could rest for a time. Just sit on the flintlike stone and rest.

Lin came up, the snout of the Thompson silhouetted behind his ear, and crouched down beside two of his officers, talking low and rapidly.

“Ai-la!” one exclaimed. “Erh-pen kwei—t'a ma-ti …” and Damon smiled through his weariness. Men cursed the same way in any language. The Japanese were certainly mother defilers, any way you looked at them …

The hurried colloquy broke up, the officers rose to their feet, and the dread command came again: “Tsou pa!”

He couldn't believe it: they'd been resting three minutes, perhaps four. Trying to hold his voice even, he said, “What is it?”

Lin stopped in front of him. “Bad news, Ts'an Tsan. Japanese cavalry, coming from Hung-chou. We must really hurry now …”

Damon watched him posting a light rear guard, and then fell in again. The march ground on, at an even faster pace. He gulped down two aspirins and offered some to the Eskimo, who politely but firmly refused. They crossed another mountain, and another. He lost all track of the sequence of events, of images. Somewhere there was a narrow pass where the wind froze the sweat on his face; somewhere there was an uneven, twisting track above a gorge where a river roared densely and the spray stung his hands and cheeks; somewhere—and the sight of it had shocked him into a little transport of raging effort—a soldier had passed him, his feet making a curiously slapping noise, and looking down he had seen the man was wearing composition sandals.

He was beyond the sharp edge of anguish now. He had lost all sensation in his legs. They swung on and on, lifted and fell, someone else's legs entirely, his own ended in a vast area of suffering surrounding his right thigh; his kidneys ached, his head swam with fatigue; he had fallen into a stooped, slouching walk, his hands pressed against his hips and his eyes staring dully at the ground—he dreamed of water, water in rivulets and fountains and green-banked streams and still pools, of sandy beaches where he would lie for hours, sprawled under towering, lazily leaning palms … then he would become aware that he was in danger of straggling again; he would fling such treasonous thoughts out of his mind, concentrating with the fervor of an acolyte on holding this savage, impossible pace through the night cold, climbing, climbing, step on step on step in a hard fury of will …

There was a ledge that sloped out trickily, a configuration of stone like an abstracted deposition, and they were on the highest ridge of all, the wind on their left cheeks. A thread of moon lay low in the east, and the mountains rose around them—a stately, indigo sea tipped with silver. The top of the world: they were gliding along the very top of the world, far above the sordid pains and foibles of mankind, among these mountains older than time, older than passions or fears, older than the gods … He glanced behind him. Only the Eskimo, who had dropped back—out of courtesy, he knew—and Lin, and two scouts. No one had fallen behind him; no one had straggled. Sixty-eight men had marched 38 miles and fought a battle in 16 hours, and not one had fallen by the wayside. Not one. He thought of the terrible day-and-night march to Soissons in the wind and rain—he had carried someone's rifle that night, too, hadn't he? Ferguson's? No, Clay's. But men had straggled, they had fallen by the wayside. Not many, but a few. But this was farther, and harder, and performed by men in pitifully inadequate clothing and with empty bellies. Weaving on his feet, half-stupefied with exhaustion, he gazed up at the dancing wilderness of stars, the sickle of moon, seized with an exultation he hadn't felt in years. How had they done it? How had they
done
it!—every last man of them … It was fantastic. They were underfed, underclothed, underarmed—but they had something no other troops he'd ever known had, that was for sure. They had it to burn …

 

Later, at Tung
Yen T'o, beyond weariness and quite sleepless, he was writing furiously in his journal by lamplight when Lin came in. The little man's eyebrows rose and fell.

“Still up, Ts'an Tsan?” he said softly. He tossed his head in the direction of the heated k'ang where four men were huddled together, asleep. “Was there no room at the inn?”

“No, I—” Damon still felt a bit ill at ease with the Commander after the episode at Wu T'ai; he gestured vaguely. “I wanted to get it all down, as fully as I could …”

Lin stretched his arms. “Ah, the literary life.” He sat down opposite the Captain. “Perhaps you'll immortalize us in Alexandrines.”

“You ought to be …” The fervor in his voice surprised him, and he grinned to hide it. “Do you realize what you've done, your unit? Do you realize not a man dropped out of the line of march? not one? I've just been logging it. Do you realize how fantastically unique that is, after a march like this one?”

Lin nodded simply. “I have been a soldier ever since my early manhood. But this is a new army. A new world.”

“How can they do it, Colonel? What has given them such endurance, such—such sheer force …?”

“Hope.” The guerrilla leader smiled gently. “Hope, and dignity. Hope for a new China, a China free of foreign armies, foreign concessions, free of famine and ignorance and misery; and the dignity of equality.” He looked directly at Damon. “Many have said it—many lands, many leaders. But we live it.” He tossed his head toward the exhausted forms on the k'ang. “That's what they know—that some must lead and others must follow, but that leadership is an obligation and not a mark of caste. We are the only army where the officers live like the men. Where leadership is based on respect, on proved competence and only that.”

Slowly Damon nodded, thinking of Jarreyl, and Townsend back at Hardee, and Merrick, and Benoît-Guesclin. Yes, an army without caste or privilege, free of that terrible gulf of hatred, of resentment or contempt—an army without stockades. What an impossible vision …

“When you ask men to die, to endure great hardship, they have the right to know the purpose that demands that sacrifice,” Lin said softly. “They have the right to be treated like men—with all honor due them—all honor due their inextinguishable souls …” He broke off, his face all at once fearfully stern and forbidding; but his eyes glistened in the smoky orange light from the crude little oil lamp. There was a short silence while the two men looked at each other.