"Patrol's in," she said. He remembered she had a habit of brevity, for which Eric was thankful; waking quickly was an acquired and detested skill for him. He sipped; it was hot, at least. Actually not bad, as coffee; a lot closer to the real thing than ration-issue wine.
McWhirter was awake, over in his corner, back to the wall, head bent in concentration over tiny slivers of paper that his fingers creased and folded into the shapes of birds and animals and men… not the hobby he would have predicted. A muttering at his feet. Sofie lay curled beneath the planks that supported the static set, headphones clenched in one sleeping hand and head cradled on her backpack, machine pistol hanging by its strap from one corner of the table. A foot protruded, its nails painted shocking-pink; he grinned, remembering the disreputable and battered stuffed rabbit he had glimpsed at the bottom of her rucksack. She slept restlessly, with small squirming motions; for a moment her nose twitched and she rubbed her cheek into the fabric.
Now, I wonder
… he thought.
Have I been avoiding Citizen
women because I don't think I'm going to live or is that an
excuse not to give any more hostages to fortune
?
He shook his head and turned back to Neal. "So, what's it like out there—"
A gloved hand swept the blanket-door aside, letting in a draft of colder air from cellars not warmed by body heat as the command bunker had been. The figure behind was stocky, made more so by the dripping rain poncho and hood; her Holbars was slung muzzle-down, and it clicked against the stone as she leaned her weight on one hand and threw back the hood. She had a square face, tanned and short-nosed, pale blue eyes and irregular teeth in a full smiling mouth, sandy-blond hair plastered wetly to her forehead.
"Sir, it's just such a fuckin'
joy
out there, what with bein' dark laak a coal mine, about 6 degrees C, an' the gods pissin' down our necks an' branches a'slappin' us in the face, we just naturally cannot
contain
our urge to roll nekkid in th' flowers, laak-so it was Saturday night at the Xanadu in Shahnapur.Sir.
She reached behind her and pulled a native forward by his elbow; the Circassian was young, and unlike most of the villagers his sopping rags were what remained of native garb rather than a European-style outfit. One of the hunters they had been promised… painfully thin, huge dark eyes hollowed in a face that quivered and chattered its teeth with the cold. Then the eyes bulged at the sight of Sofie Nixon sitting up naked to the waist and lighting a cigarette.
"An" this-here's one of yo' tame ragheads. Says laak he's heard somethin'."
Eric yawned, stretched, snapped his fingers to attract the man's attention. "You saw the greycoats?" To Neal, in English: "I think monitor Huff could use a cup, too, trooper."
The Circassian swallowed and bowed awkwardly. "Not saw, lord, but heard. Down below, where the trail crosses the third hill, before the hollow: many of the—" a Slavic-sounding word Eric did not recognize. Tyansha had been the child of Circassians settled in Turkey, descendants of refugees from Russian conquest, chieftains and their followers. The tongue she had taught him was more formal and archaic than the Russian-influenced peasant dialect spoken here.
Eric made a guess. "Steam wagons—carts that go of themselves?"
The Circassian nodded eagerly.
"Yes, lord. Many, many, but not of the ones with the belts of metal that go around and around."
Treads
, Eric's mind prompted. "They stopped?"
A quick nod. "Yes, and then the engines became quiet, but there was much talking in the tongue of the
Germanski
. Perhaps three hundreds, perhaps more." A sniff. "Germanski are always talking, very loud, also they make much noise moving in the woods."
"Do they, now," Eric mused. Then: "McWhirter." The NCO
looked up, his hand slowly closing to crush the delicate figure of a flying crane. "My compliments to Einar, and 2nd tetrarchy ready on the double.
La jou commence
."
Sofie had risen, yawning, and was stamping her feet into her boots to the muttered complaints of nearby sleepers.
"No need to go out in the wet," Eric said. "I'm just taking the 2nd. Einar's sparks can handle it."
"Nah, no problem," she replied, with a shrug and a slight sideways jerk of the head. "Wallis c'n handle this end, we'll need somebody listenin'…" She prodded a recumbent figure with a toe. "Hey, skinny, arse to the saddle, ready to paddle."
There was a slight, rueful smile on her face as she turned away to check her weapons and strap an extra waterproof cover on the portable set.
And someone has to look after you, hey
?
Einar Labushange's tetrarchy had drawn the ready-reaction straw that night; most of them had been sleeping with their boots on, in a cellar with a ladder to the surface. Several rolled out of their blankets as he ducked into the cellar, assault rifles ready even before full consciousness. The tetrarchy commander smiled without humor; there were merits to sleeping with your rifle, but he hoped nobody was doing it with the safety off and the selector on full-auto.
"On your feet, gun-bunnies!" The rest woke with a minimum of grumbling, shrugging into their equipment, handing around cups from the coffee urn one of them had prepared and using it to wash down caffeine pills and the inevitable ration bars and
choko
, sweet chocolate with nuts for quick high energy. Being a paratrooper was less comfortable than being in a line unit. Most Citizen Force units had attached serf auxiliaries who handled maintenance and support tasks; the air-assault troops had to do for themselves in the field, but nobody grudged taking their turn.
A half-second slowness from lowered blood sugar could kill you, and a body needed care to perform at full stretch.
"Right, shitcan the 15," Einar said, and the team with the heavy machine-gun gratefully let it drop back onto the tripod they had been preparing to disassemble. The soldiers were shadows in the dim gleam of a looted kerosene lamp; the light of the flame was soft, blurring through dusty air full of the muffled metallic clicks and snaps of gear being readied. "Just one of the rocket guns; other team, hump in the mortar. Oh, and this-here is goin' to be close-in work, just us and some satchelmen from Marie's bunch; black up." The soldiers broke out their sticks of greasepaint.
He turned as Eric ducked through the hole in the wall. With him were five of the combat engineers, the Circassian, his signaler and the two sticks of rifle infantry from the H.Q.
tetrarchy. The dripping form of Monitor Huff followed, moving over to rejoin her lochos.
"Also, it rainin'," he added, breaking out his slicker and turning it out to the dark-mottled interior: better camouflage at night than the dirt-and-vegetation side. There was a chorus of groans.
Eric threw up a hand and grinned. "Nice to know y'all happy to see me," he said dryly. "Gather round." McWhirter stepped through the ragged "door" and spoke.
"Go with Cohort. Got a good mapref—good enough for a blind shoot."
The Centurion nodded without turning, crouching and spreading a map on the floor. The helmeted heads leaned around, some sitting or kneeling so that the others could see; there were thirty-three troopers in a Draka tetrarchy at full strength, and 2nd tetrarchy had only had three dead and five too hurt to fight. Eric pulled the L-shaped flashlight from his webbing belt, and the fighting knife from his boot to use as a pointer. "Right. Our trusty native guide—" He pointed back over his shoulder with the knife, glanced back and saw the man shivering, then switched briefly to Circassian: "
There is coffee
and food in the corner; take it, I need you walking
."
"Our trusty native guide informs me that he heard vehicles.
And Fritz voices." The knife moved. "
Here
. See, this valley we're in is shaped like a V down to here. Then it turns right, to the east, and opens out into rolling hill country. Foothills." The point stabbed down. "Right
here
, right where the valley and road turn east, is a
big
hill, more like a small mountain, with low saddles on either side. The road goes east, then loops back west through this valley—and it passes only two klicks north of the big hill, the loop's like a U on its side with the open end pointing west, so.
And
that
—" his knife pointed at the large hill "—is where Ali Baba here heard the Fritz trucks."
"Another attack up the valley?"
Eric shook his head. "On a narrow road, over uncleared minefields, in the dark? Besides, they were transport, not fighting vehicles, stoppin' and disembarking troops." The blade moved again, tracing a path around the shoulder of the hill, then south up the west side of the valley to the mountainside where the paratroops had landed. "
That's
the way they're going to come, and on foot. The natives say this side of the valley is easier: lower slope, more trails, some of which the Fritz will know since they've been here six months. Then they'll either try to take us from the rear, or wait until their armor arrives tomorrow morning."
"How many, sir?"
Eric shrugged. "No telling; all they can scrape up, if their commander is as smart as I think. There was a regimental
kampfgruppe
, about four cohorts' equivalent, down in Pyatigorsk. The Air Corps reported hitting 'em hard—"
"Probably meanin' they pissed on 'em from a great height,"
someone muttered. Eric frowned at the interruption.
"—and they've been hit since, besides which we've been dropping butterfly mines. Probably lost more vehicles than men." He shrugged. "Anything up to a cohort of infantry, call it four hundred rifles and supporting weapons. It's—" he looked at his watch "—0245, they jumped off at about 0200, they're
'turtles' so, moving on unfamiliar trails in the dark, they're less than a klick into the forrest by now. Woods and scrub all the way…"
He looked up, face grim. "They're counting on us not knowing the lie of the land. We have guides who
do
, better than the Fritz.
That's worse than Congo jungle out there; so we go straight down the road, then deke left into the woods and onto the trails.
We'll split up into sections and sticks, lie up, hit, run, hit them again, then it's 'mind in gear, arse to rear."
"Sir?" That was one of the troopers at the back, a gangling, freckled young man with his hands looped up to dangle casually over the light machine gun lying across his neck and shoulders.
"Ah… this means, yo' saying, that we're goin' out on account these Fritz?" Eric nodded, and the soldier grinned beatifically.
"Brothers an' Sisters of the Race!" he cried in mock ecstasy.
"These are
great times
. Do yo' realize what this means?" He paused for effect. "For once— just like we always dreamed in Basic—just this one time in our young nearly-maggot-recruit lives, bros, we gets a chance to
kill
the sumbitch donkeyfuckahs that be roustin' us out of bed in the middle of the fuckin' night!"
The voices of the tetrarchy lifted, something halfway between laughter and a baying cheer. Eric waved his followers to silence, fighting to keep down his own smile; fighting a sudden unexpected prickling in the eyes as well. These were no unblooded amateurs; they knew the sort of blindfolded butchery he was leading them into, and trusted that it was necessary, trusted him to get as many out as could be… and god
damn
but nobody could say the Draka were cowards, whatever their other vices!
Behind him, Senior Decurion McWhirter stroked the ceramic honing stick one last time down the edge of his Jamieson semi-bowie and then slid it back into the hilt-down quick-draw sheath on his left shoulder. He remembered cheers like that…
long ago. So long ago, with his friends. Where were his friends?
Where… He jerked his mind from the train of thought; he was good at turning his mind away from things. Sometimes it squirmed in his grasp, like a throat or a woman, and he had to squeeze tighter. Someday he would squeeze too tight and kill it, and then… think about something else. The centurion was talking.
Eric jerked his thumb southwards. "Look, no speeches, I'm not going to quote that woo-woo Naldorssen at you. The rest of the Legion and our Eagle are up there across the pass, holding off ten times their number; there is a
world
of hurt coming down there, people. We've gotten off lucky because most of the
Liebstandarte
are south of the mountains, and Century A's given them a bloody nose cheap twice, because we caught them on the hop— well, what're the Airborne for? Tomorrow they'll hit us with everything and keep coming; think how we'd do it if it was our friends trapped behind this pass, eh? These aren't Draka, but they aren't gutless woppos or brainless Abduls, either. They're trying to flank us tonight; if it works we're sausage meat and the rest of our Legion gets it from behind. Hurt them, people; hurt them
bad
, it's our last chance before the crunch. Then come back walking. Bare is back without brother to guard it."
He nodded to Einar. "Now let's
do
it, let's go."
The tetrarchy commander hesitated a moment on the pole ladder. "Yo" realize, sir, it's not really needful to have the Century commander along. Or, ah, maybe we could make it a two-tetrarchy operation?"
Eric smiled and signed him onward. "Yo're from Windhaven, eh, Einar?" The other man nodded, seized by a sudden fierce nostalgia for the bleak desert country south of Angola: silver-colored grass, hot wind off sandstone pinnacles, dawn turned rose-red…
The Centurion continued: "You've trained in forest; I
grew up
in wet mountains covered with trees. Never sacrifice an edge…
We're taking one tetrarchy because if we lose it, the village can still hold out long enough to make a difference. Two, and there wouldn't be enough of us-here left to slow them even an hour come dawn, an' it's hours that'll count. This is a delayin'
operation, after all. Now, let's go."
Unnoticed in his corner, the Circassian had started and paused for a second in the process of stuffing the undreamed-of luxury of chocolate into his mouth. Stopped and shivered at the sound of the cheer, swallowing dryly. That reminded him, and he swigged down half a mugful of scalding-hot coffee before taking another bite of the bar. These
Drakanshi
were fierce ones, that was certain. Good; then they could protect what they had taken.