The Gods of War Read online

  Gordon already knew who the probable ringleaders were; he arrested them instantly, and clapped them into irons. Then he announced that he and his bodyguards were leaving for Quinsan; they would pause halfway, and anyone who did not answer at afternoon roll-call would be dismissed.

  Most of them answered at roll call. The others would not be missed.

  A Taiping general named Ching had defected to the Imperialists. Governor Li knew just how formidable he had been as an enemy, and gave him general's rank, and an Imperial army. At Quinsan, General Ching determined to attack the eastern gate. Gordon disagreed—the eastern gate was the most strongly fortified, and the western gate would be the Taipings escape route to Soochow, where a larger Taiping garrison waited. So Gordon left Ching to attack the eastern gate and took the Hyson and his gunboats toward the western gate. Before he arrived, though, the Taipings proved him right—they began to march out through the western gate. Gordon fired a few shots, left half his army to guard the gate and keep the rebels penned, then set off after the retreating Taipings. As darkness fell, he gave up the chase and turned back; but as his gunboats approached the western gate, gunshots battered at his ears. As he came up to the half of his army left on guard, he saw a huge mass boiling out through the western gate—all the rest of the Taiping garrison trying to break through his lines in a body and retreat to Soochow, eight thousand strong.

  It sickened him, but Gordon was outnumbered more than two to one. He gave the orders; the Hyson's cannon boomed, and the howitzers echoed her. Shot and ball tore apart the Taiping ranks. They broke and ran every which way—but they did not retreat back into Quinsan.

  Gordon fired, and fired again and again, sickened by what he knew he was doing, but seeing no alternative—any other course of action, and the Taipings would have swept his little army away. All through the night his guns pounded; finally, Taipings began to go back into the city.

  Dawn showed him a field of corpses.

  Gordon knew that his men regarded their base in Sungkiang as their haven for rest and recreation, most of it immoral and all of it damaging to discipline—so he set up a now headquarters in Quinsan. The men didn't like it; the first time he ordered parade, the artillery regiment stayed in their quarters. They did, however, send a message threatening to turn their guns on their European officers, and on any of the Chinese enlisted men who sided with Gordon.

  That was flat-out mutiny. Gordon knew better than to try to laugh it off. He ordered the artillery men out and lined them up, his officers around them with their weapons cocked and ready.

  "Who dreamed up this treacherous notion of blasting away us officers?" Gordon demanded.

  The artillerymen glanced at the Europeans who held their guns at the ready, but no one answered.

  Gordon's jaw firmed. "I will have one man in every five shot for mutiny!"

  A mournful groan rose from the ranks.

  One corporal in the front row was groaning louder and faster than any. Gordon stepped forward, seized the man, and spun him out of ranks toward his own bodyguard. "Shoot him!"

  Two of Gordon's men pinned the man's arms and forced him to his knees. A third drew his pistol, pointed it at the man's heart, and fired.

  The groaning ceased. The artillerymen stared in shock.

  Gordon surveyed them, his face grim. "You are all under arrest! Give me the ringleader's name within the hour, or I shall carry out my threat and execute every fifth man!"

  The ringleader was delivered up and executed within the hour. But the next morning, there were many fewer men on parade, and by the end of the week, two thousand of Gordon's troops had deserted.

  After all, if there was to be no loot, no rape, and only pay that was late—why stay?

  Gordon understood only too well. He wrote to Li, complaining that the Imperial paymasters had fallen behind in paying the troops, and resigned the command of the Ever-Victorious Army. So saying, he bade farewell to his troops and returned to Shanghai.

  There, he found out that Burgevine had recruited hundreds of rascals and defected to the Taipings.

  Gordon went back to Quinsan immediately, sure that if he were not there to hold them, the remnants of the Ever-Victorious Army would follow Burgevine into the enemy camp.

  But the Taipings' doom was clear for all to see now, and the Ever-Victorious Army had no wish to die with them, or with its old commander. Finally, two months later, Gordon's pickets brought in a peasant with a secret message: Burgevine had not been greeted with delight by the Taipings, and had not been appointed to a high post. He asked Gordon's help in escaping.

  Gordon provided the men and the cover. Burgevine stepped into his tent with a wide grin to thank him, then went on to say, "Here now, we're the best two commanders in the East, and you know it. Let's make common cause, and leave these Imperials and Taipings to kill each other off! We'll take the Ever-Victorious Army to Peking, seize the Dragon Throne, and be emperors ourselves over the richest nation on earth!"

  Gordon could scarcely believe his ears. Had Burgevine s drinking finally caused him to become demented? "I must politely refuse," he said. "I am a British officer, and cannot forsake my position. But I will assist you in as many respects as I can."

  What he could do, was to give Burgevine a safe-conduct and an escort back to Shanghai—and to hand the escort a letter for the American Consul, requesting that Burgevine leave China without delay.

  Tseng Kuo-Fan's generals had pushed the Taipings back from west, north, and south; Li had pushed them in from the east, and they were crowded into Nanking, surrounded by Imperial troops. Ward's mercenary army could have been a difficult and unpredictable problem for Li, but Gordon had resolved it. Only one other city remained in Taiping hands: Soochow, on the east. Reducing it was Li's job. Gordon was eager to take the Ever-Victorious Army to capture the city, and Li was only too happy to let him.

  Gordon replaced his deserters with Taiping prisoners, who were happy to be out of prison with their heads still on their shoulders, and to have an opportunity to earn good money into the bargain. Gordon wasn't completely sure that they wouldn't go over to the enemy, so he had his officers watch them closely. Gordon's riverboats and artillery blasted his way through ranks of Taipings to Soochow, and he soon had every gate blocked.

  The Taiping officers commanding the garrison knew they had no chance left. Only one of them refused to surrender; they handled the problem neatly with a knife in his back and a sword through his neck. Then they sent word to General Ching, offering to surrender on terms. He promised to spare their lives, and those of their men. They opened the eastern gate to him, and the Imperial troops marched in. As soon as the garrison was secured, they fell to looting, including the women and girls, and butchering anyone who got in their way.

  Gordon would have none of it for the Ever-Victorious Army. He packed them aboard their steamers and went back down the canal to Quinsan, to Li's advance headquarters, where he demanded a bonus of two months full pay to replace the loot he had not allowed them to take. Li agreed to give them a single month's bonus, and invited Gordon to attend the formal surrender of the Soochow garrison. Indignant, Gordon declined—which was just as well, since Ching beheaded the nine Taiping commanders.

  For two months, Gordon wrangled with Li over this treacherous action, but Ching was too valuable to the governor, and he would not censure the former Taiping, but took the blame himself. Finally, having exonerated Gordon completely, he managed to pacify him and persuade him to aid in the steady, relentless advance on Nanking, acre by acre and town by town.

  At Kintan, Gordon finally gained part of his wish—he was hit by a bullet, but only in the leg. Then came news that a Taiping commander had sallied out of Nanking and was trying to retake Quinsan. Gordon ignored his wound and took his army east to cut off the Taiping advance. He took their flying column unaware and chased them back toward Nanking. Then he joined up with Li's troops and moved on Changchow.

  Changchow was a very tough nut to crack. His cannon
made the breach well enough—the wall crumbled under the pounding of ball after cannon ball—but the Taipings held the gap against two storming charges. On the other side of the town, Li met with similar resistance.

  Now Gordon showed his engineering skill. Under cover of night, his men dug trenches with breastworks, through which soldiers could file, safe from enemy fire, unobserved, until they spilled out only a few yards from the breach. At dawn, his artillery began a continuous bombardment which lasted all morning.

  The guns blasted from the bows of the river boats behind them, beating in a heavy rhythm, blasting Taipings back and away from the breach in the wall of Changchow. Gordon shouted and waved his cane for the bombardment to cease, then waved it overhead as he plunged ahead, limping, but leading the charge. Two thousand throats echoed his shout, and the Ever-Victorious Army plunged after him, a motley collection of Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Chinese, even a few British. As the guns fell silent, Gordon's men poured out of the trenches and through the breach as musket balls flew all about them, from the long-haired Taiping defenders on top of the wall. Men fell on each side of him, and Gordon yearned for a musket ball to strike him, but none did. Leading the charge with no weapon but his rattan cane, Gordon leaped up on the lump of rubble, his army behind him . . .

  And stopped, galvanized, staring into the muzzle of a 32-pounder cannon.

  Time seemed to stop for him; he braced himself, and a gush of relief shot loose within him, for the death he had longed for had certainly come . . .

  "We cannot have that!" Wayland the Smith reached out an unseen hand to the firing mechanism. "This son of our kind has much to do for us yet!"

  The Taiping pulled the chain, the hammer fell—and the flint broke.

  Gordon stood galvanized, the moan of fear behind him transforming into a shout of victory as his men poured through on either side of him and pounced on the gun-crew, bearing them down. Behind them, the rest of his little army streamed through the breach.

  Gordon stood like a rock around which the flow parted, going limp inside—with disappointment. He would not be relieved of the burden of life after all.

  He disbanded the Ever-Victorious Army soon after; none of them watched the armies of Tseng Kuo-Fan slaughter the tottering, starving remnants of the great Taiping army.

  As the English newspapers told it, though, Gordon was not only there—he also defeated the Taipings almost single-handed.

  Hung Hsiu-Chuan swallowed wine mixed with gold leaf, and died—but Gordon did not.

  "We have our hero made," said Tyr, "and England has followed him in their hearts. The Taipings are no longer."

  Odin nodded. "It is well done."

  In the distance, Shang-Ti lay limp and exhausted in his great golden throne—but his subordinate deities were gathering around him again.

  The mad heathen nightmare was ended; the eerie slide of sing-song speech still echoed in his head, the flames of burning villages still glared in his mind's eye; so Gordon walked by the sea at Gravesend, where the Army had sent him to build new forts that he knew very well would do nothing to protect London if a seaborne invader approached. He had told the War office of this, too, but they had ignored his advice, as his superiors always seemed to, so he was going ahead and doing his duty, and trying to get it done with as quickly as possible; but a few days into the new task, the news had come that his father had died.

  So he walked by the sea.

  In anxiety and depression, he walked through night, even though the sun was shining, looking about him for distraction, for insight. Gordon felt the old terror still lying there, knew it, and disregarded it; already he was restless, yearned for more work . . .

  And there he was, the one-handed man, bent over the simple cookfire, and the spitted haunch that revolved over it.

  How like to Father he seemed!

  Gordon stepped up by the ring of stones, looking down at the furs, at the shoulder-length hair, the bronze circlet that held it—for surely, yes, it must be bronze, and Gordon had begun to suspect who the old man must be, though he could not admit it, admit any such superstition, not he, who was so devoted to God.

  But the grizzled head lifted, the clear gaze pierced to his brain, while Gordon realized, amazed, that he did not look so old now, no, not nearly so old as he had ten years before. The old face held itself immobile, but under the long moustaches, the mouth moved and said,

  "Welcome home, Chinese Gordon."

  "Do not mock me so!" Gordon cried. "You know it was not glory that I sought!"

  "I know," the one-handed man agreed, "but your people do not. They need heroes, Gordon. You must serve them in this.'

  "I must serve none but God! I have no wish to be lionized. You know what I support!"

  "Yes—death. Are you so hungry for it, then, with your father so recently gone to it?"

  "More than ever!" How could the old man know so much about him? "If he has gone, why should I remain behind?"

  "For glory," the old man said simply, "if not for yourself, then for your God."

  Gordon met his gaze levelly. "Will He release me from the burdens of this life, then?"

  "I have told you that you shall find death in the East," the old man reminded him. "I did not say you would find it soon."

  "But how am I . . . !" Gordon bit off the cry of distress, unwilling to show any weakness.

  "How can you walk, without your father's hand to uphold you?" The old man's gaze never wavered. "Lean upon your God."

  A huge peace flooded Gordon's soul, a well of strength brimmed within him. He stared at the old man, realizing how true his words were, how completely right. "Thank you."

  "It is as it should be. Do you still wish death?"

  The yearning blazed forth with an intensity that was almost frightening. "Yes!"

  "If you are so not for it, then, kill yourself!" It was challenge, a dare.

  Gordon stood rigid, anger in his eyes. "I cannot. Suicide is a sin; I would lose Heaven, I would go to Hell. I must be killed by another, and be killed in a worthy cause, giving my life for the welfare of others, even as Our Lord gave his for us!"

  "Then continue the hunt."

  Gordon's heart leaped. "There is quarry again?"

  "Not for England." The one-handed man glanced down at the empty fire-ring. "But for you . . . ?" He looked up again. "You will always find a way to a war. If there is none, you will make it."

  And, gaze unwavering, he faded from sight.

  Gordon stood frozen, staring at the cold ashes of the fire, feeling the chill again, but not the thrill.

  Then, slowly, he turned away to the sea, numb to the heart, realizing that his soul must have needed a great deal more healing . . .

  And sorely disappointed that the hunt was done.

  He saw the one-handed man again, fifteen years later, as he walked by the sea, newly returned from Egypt, where he had done such excellent work for the Khedive—excellent, but so well done that he had stirred up his own small war against the slave-traders who toiled their heart-sick goods across the wastes of the Sudean. But though he had found war, he had found few willing to fight him . . .

  And he had not found death.

  He walked by the water, a man in his middle years, but still hale and hearty with the iron regimen he forced upon himself—careful diet, punishing exercises. He looked up toward the rising land, and noticed a man bent over a fire. With a shock, he recognized the skins, the bronze circlet. Surely this could not be the same man, though, for he no longer seemed old, no older than Gordon himself . . .

  But the head lifted, the piercing-eyed gaze stabbed into him, and Gordon saw it was the same man.

  "Dine with me, Gordon."

  Slowly, Gordon sat by the fire. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the meat; he knew it too well, now: goat. "What of the hunt?"

  "There will be good hunting indeed. Would you be the hunter, or the quarry?"

  Gordon felt excitement surge, and an echo of the old familiar terror—bu
t only an echo, now, and his ancient greed was stronger than ever, almost desperate. "The hunter, by choice," he said slowly.

  "Do you truly care?"

  "Nay." Gordon almost smiled, discovering with surprise and delight that it was true. "So that it be for the Lord, I wish only the hunt."

  "Then you shall have it. The lion stands at bay." The one-handed man rose, and turned away.

  Gordon did not watch him go. Slowly, he took the spit from the fire.

  "Egyptians?" Sutekh spat. "These weaklings are nothing compared to the Egyptians of old! The Ansar who follow this Mahdi, now—they are worthy successors to the ancients who worshipped me as their war-god! There is so little left of their blood left, in these Turkish and Arab creatures to the north, that I have no love for them. But the Mahdi is their successor in heart, at least—worthy to follow the Pharaohs of the First Dynasty! He shall hurl your pale Northern worms out of the Nile Valley; he shall grind them to paste!"

  Tyr stood alone against Sutekh, and laughed. His good hand twitched, but Sutekh did not strike—yet.

  Gordon saw the one-handed man for the last time, as he stood on the steps at Khartoum, watching the horses and camels boil up out of the desert, their riders screaming and brandishing their swords.

  "The Khedive told you only to withdraw the troops, Gordon."

  Gordon looked up in surprise, quickly masked. "Can you walk outside England, then?"

  "It is rare that I have any wish to. You should have withdrawn the troops."

  Gordon said evenly, " England should never retreat."

  "Death is your wish, Gordon, not theirs."

  Gordon's gaze faltered. "I know. I should have sent them away, should have stood here alone—but I was sure England would send an army to bear me home, in spite of Gladstone and his Liberals!"