Free Terrible Swift Sword by William R. Forstchen Page B

hell of a lot less than if we hadn't put in clean water and sewers."
    "No one's doubting your efforts, doctor," Kal said gently. "We couldn't have accomplished what we have without your work."
    "I was just pointing out a fact," John replied. "Nothing more, doctor."
    Emil said nothing, but Andrew could see that his old friend somehow took disease as a personal affront.
    "For artillery we have three hundred and ten light four-pound guns, a hundred and twenty twelve-pound Napoleons, and twelve guns of the new ten-pound Parrott-rifled pieces, firing percussion shells."
    "For the navy and coast defense we've got forty-two of the seventy-five-pound carronades, twenty long seventy-five-pounders, the captured pieces from Cromwell's fleet, and fifty of the swivelmounted four-pounders for the galleys.
    "We've mounted sixty of the four-pounders and a dozen Napoleons on carriages with high elevation to use against the balloons; in a pinch we could remount them for ground work.
    "We're turning out just under two hundred Springfield-type rifles a day, and another two hundred smoothbores of the old flintlock variety on the old assembly line in Rus. The Roum works are just starting up a couple dozen smoothbores a day, and two four-pounders a week. That should really pick up in the next month."
    "Totals?"
    "Just under twenty thousand percussion rifles firing our old .58-caliber minie balls, another forty thousand flintlocks converted to .69-caliber minie ball rifles, and thirty thousand flintlock smoothbores. If we hadn't lost nearly eight thousand guns in the naval battles we'd be in a lot better shape."
    "It's not bad," Andrew said. "Enough for sixteen divisions, five and a third corps, along with garrison troops and home guard militia."
    "Still, that will only leave us ten divisions for this front," Andrew replied. "We need to keep a full corp of three divisions stationed in Roum, in case they hit from that direction, and a corp in reserve in Suzdal to move either east or west. That's sixty thousand men for a hundred miles of front. They'll still outnumber us nearly six to one out here."
    "Another month will give us another corp," John replied.
    "Barely trained," Hans interjected, and he looked over at Dimitri.
    "We have nearly forty thousand men in training." Dimitri said. "Not more than ten thousand have weapons at the moment—the field batteries are practicing with logs mounted on wagons. It'll be at least two months before the 7th Corps can be sent up."
    "They won't give us the time—we heard the reports from Hamilcar." Andrew said, nodding over to the Cartha commander, who, though he had learned some Rus, turned inquisitively to his translator at the mention of his name.
    "Within the month," Hamilcar said haltingly in Rus, "when horses can eat grass here. They will ride immediately after the next moon feast; the Moon of New Grass Riding, they call it."
    At the mention of the moon feast the group fell quiet, each now knowing the details as told by Yuri to Andrew. Andrew looked over at Hamilcar. Perhaps fifty thousand of his people would die that night.
    "They have the damn air machines to keep tabs on us, and we don't," Pat said, a note of bitterness in his voice.
    "We'll get to that later," Andrew said, aware that Chuck and Jack had been taking far more than their fair share of criticism on that score.
    They had grown complacent, expecting to have the technical edge on their opponents, and the fact that the enemy had been able to launch balloons that could not only fly, but could travel at will in any direction, had left all of them in a state of shock.
    Throughout the winter, whenever the weather was good and the wind was down, Merki air machines, ugly cigar-shaped vessels, had roamed the sky at will, keeping watch on the building of the fortifications and repeatedly bombing Suzdal. The first attack, only a day after the victory over the Oqunquit had made a shambles of the powder mill, and the repeated air assaults, though more of a