You expected masters to be fierce, to take the land and the girls and swing the knout on any who opposed them, but it was not often that a
hokotl
, a peasant, had the opportunity to eat like a Party man.
Urra Drakanski
, he thought, stuffing bars of chocolate into the pockets of the fine rainproof cape he had been given, and hefting the almost-new
Germanski
rifle. Powerful masters for all that their women were shameless, masters who would feed a useful servant well: better than the Russia, who had been bad in the White Czar's time and worse under the Bolsheviki, who beat and starved you and made you listen to their godless and senseless speeches as well. The
Germanski
… He grinned as he followed the new lords of Circassia up the rough ladder, conscious of the rifle and the sharp two-edged khinjal strapped to his thigh. It would be a
pleasure
to meet the Germanski again.
The cold rain
beat steadily on the windscreen of the Opel three-ton truck, drumming on the roof and the canvas cover of the troop compartment behind. Standartenfuhrer Felix Hoth braced himself in the swaying cab and folded the map; the shielded light was too dim for good vision anyway. For a moment he could imagine himself back in the kitchen of his father's farm in Silesia: on leave last month, with his younger sister sitting in his lap and the neighbors gathered around, eating
Mutti's
strudel at the table by the fire while sleet hissed against the windows. His bride-to-be playing with one of her blonde braids as he described the rich estates in the Kuban Valley that would be granted after the war.
Vati
had leaned back in the big chair with his pipe, beaming with pride at his officer son, he who had been a lowly
feldwebel
through the Great War…
I could never tell them anything
, he thought. How could you talk to civilians about Russia? Reichsfuhrer Himmler was right: those who bore the burden of cleansing the Aryan race's future
lebensraum
bore a heavy burden, one that their families at home could not hope to understand.
Enough. I defend them now
. If Germany was defeated, his family would be serf plantation hands. Or—he had been in Paris in 1940, doing some of the roistering expected of a soldier on leave. One of the
Maisons Tolerees
had had a collection of Draka pornography; it was a minor export of the Domination, which had no morals censorship to speak of. He felt his mind forming images, placing his fiancee Ingeborg's face on the bodies of the serf girls in the glossy pictures; of his sister Rosa naked on an auction-block in Rhakotis or Shahnapur, weeping and trying to cover herself with her hands. Or splayed open under a huge Negro Janissary, black buttocks pumping in rhythm to her screams…
He opened the window and the lever broke under his hand; cold wet wind slapped his face with an icewater hand that lashed his mind back to alertness. The convoy was travelling barely faster than a man could run, with the vehicles' headlights blacked out except for a narrow strip along the bottom. Thirty trucks, four hundred
panzergrenadiers
, half his infantry, but he had left the tracked carriers behind. Too noisy for this work, and besides that they ate petrol. The supply situation was serious and getting worse: Draka aircraft were ranging as far north as the Kuban, meeting weakening resistance from a Luftwaffe whose fighters had to work from bases outside their enemy's operational range. The oil fields at Maikop were still burning, and the Domination's armor had taken Baku in the first rush…
It can still come right
. Despite his losses so far, shocking as they were; if he could get this force up on the flank, they could carry the village in one rush at first light. It would be a difficult march in the dark, but his men were fresh, and as for the Draka… they had no mechanical transport, no way to get down from the village in time even if they knew of the attack, which was unlikely in this night of black rain. He turned his head to look behind. There was little noise: the low whirring of fans ramming air into the steam engines' flashtube boilers, the slow
shuusss
of hard-tired wheels through the muddy surface of the road; all were drowned in the drumming of rain on the trees and wet fields. Not very much to see either, no moon and dense overcast.
I can't even see the ground
, he thought.
Good
. No that it was at all likely the Draka would have an; sentries here; it was ten kilometers to Village One in a straight line. It was tangled ground, mostly; heavily wooded, and the invaders were stranger here, while the Liebstandarte had been stationed in the area since the collapse of Soviet resistance in Caucasia back in November of 41.
The armor and self-propelled artillery would be moving up later, now that they had paths cleared through those damnable air-sown plastic mines. Everybody would be with them, down to the clerks and bottle-washers, everybody who could carry a rifle with only the communications personnel and walking wounded left in Pyatigorsk. Everything would be in place by dawn.
"It should be…" he muttered, risking a quick flick of his light.
"Yes, that's it." A ruined building-the Ivans had put up a stand there last year. Nothing much, no heavy weapons; they had simply driven a tank through the thin walls. A suitable clearing; and the trail over the mountain's shoulder started here He twisted to thrust his arm past the tilt-covered cab of the truck and blinked the light three times.
The paratroop boots hit the pavement with a steady
ruck-ruck-ruck
as 2nd Tetrarchy ran through the steady downpour of rain. It was flat black, clouds and falling water cutting off any ambient light—dark enough that a hand was barely a whitish blur held before the eyes, invisible at arm's length. Equipment rustled and clinked as the Draka moved in their steady tireless lope, rain capes flapped; Eric heard someone stumble, then recover with a curse:
"Shitfire, it dark as Loki's asshole!"
"
Shut the fuck up
," an NCO hissed.
The tetrarchy was running down the road in a column four abreast, spaced so that each trooper could guide himself by the comrades on either side, with the outside rank holding to the verge of the rushed-rock surface. There was a knockdown handcart at the rear, with extra ammunition and their two native guides, who had collapsed after the first three kilometers; they were hunters who had lived hard, but their bodies were weakened by bad food and they had never had the careful training in breathing-discipline and economical movement that the Citizen class of the Domination received. It was hard work running in the dark; moving blind made the muscles tense in subconscious anticipation, waiting to run into something. The ponchos kept out the worst of the rain, but their legs were slick with thin mud cast up from the rutted surface of the road, and bodies sweated under the waterproof fabric until webbing and uniforms clung and chafed; they were carrying twenty kilos of equipment each, as well. Nothing unbearable, since cross-country running in packs had been a daily routine from childhood and the paratroops were picked troops unusually fit even for Draka.
"Lord… lord…" one of the Circassians wheezed. Eric whistled softly and the tetrarchy halted with only one or two thumps and muffled
oofs
proclaiming collision. The native rolled off the cart, coughed, retched, then wormed through to the Draka commander.
The Centurion crouched and a circle of troopers gathered, their cloaked forms making a downward-pointing light invisible.
The sound of his soldiers' breathing was all around him, and the honest smell of their sweat; they had covered the ten klicks of road faster than horse cavalry could have, in a cold and damp that drained strength and heart—after a day with a paradrop, street combat, hours of the hardest sort of labor digging in, then another battle and barely four hours'sleep. Now there would be more ground to travel, narrow trails through unfamiliar bush, with close-quarter fighting at the end of it… only Draka could have done it at all, and even they would be at less than their best.
Well, this was war, not a field problem in training. The enemy had been rousted out of bed, too, but they had spent the trip from their base in dry comfort in their trucks; not fair, but that was war, too.
He rested on one knee, breath deep but slow, half regretful that the run was over. You could switch off your mind, running; do nothing but concentrate on muscle and lung and the next step…
"Here," the panting local said. "Trail—" he coughed rackingly.
"Trail here."
White Christ and Heimdal alone know how he can tell
, Eric thought.
Years
of poaching and smuggling, no doubt
. He shone the light on his watch, estimated speed and distance, and fitted them over a map in his mind. Yes, this would be where the road turned east.
"Einar. Straight west, split up and cover the trails. If they're moving troops in any number they'll probably use all three.
Everybody: do
not
get lost in the dark, but if you do, head
upslope
and wait for light if the Fritz are between you and the road. Otherwise, back to the road and burn boot up to the village."
The lanky tetrarch shrugged, a troll shape in the darkness.
"No wrinkles, we'll kill 'em by the shitload and send them back screamin' fo' their mommas." To his troops: "Lochoi A an' B with me, and the mortar. Huff, yo' take C an' the rocket gun. Hughes, run D up to that little trail on th' ridge.
Go
."
The troopers sorted themselves into sections and moved off the road, the Circassians in the lead, an occasional watery gleam of light from a flashlight: nobody could be expected to walk over scrub and rock-strewn fields in
this
. Rain hid them quickly, and the woods would begin soon after that.
Dense
woods, with thick undergrowth.
Eric waited by the side of the road as the columns filed past, not speaking, simply standing present while they passed, dim bulks in the chill darkness; a few raised a hand to slap palms as they went by, or touched his shoulder. He replied in kind, with the odd word of the sort they would understand and appreciate, the terse cool slang of their trade and generation: "Stay loose, snake."
"Stay healthy for the next war."
The gods would weep
, he thought. If they didn't laugh. The only time they could be themselves among themselves, show their human faces to each other, was when they were engaged in slaughter. The Army, specially a combat unit up at the sharp end, was the only place a Draka could experience a society without serf or master; where rank was a functional thing devoted to a common purpose; where cooperation hased on trust replaced coercion and fear.
And how we shine, then
, he thought.
Why couldn't that courage and unselfish devotion be put to some
use
, instead of being set to digging them deeper into the trap history and their ancestors had landed them in?
At the last, he turned to the command tetrarchy and the satchelmen from the combat engineers.
"Follow me," he said.
Felix Hoth watched the last of his grenadiers vanish into the blackness. This close to the trees the rain was louder, a hissing surf-roar of white noise on a million million leaves, static that covered every sound. The trails would be tunnels through the living mass of vegetation, cramped and awkward—like the tunnels under Moscow.
Blackness like cloth on his eyeballs,
crawling on knees and elbows through the filthy water, a rope
trailing from his waist and a pistol on a lanyard around his
neck
… He jerked his mind back from the image, consciously forcing his breath to slow from its panting, forcing down the overwhelming longing for a drink that accompanied the dreams.
Daydreams, sometimes, the mind returning to them as the tongue would obsessively probe a ragged tooth, until it was swollen and sore. But Moscow, that was more than six months gone, and the men who had fought him were dead. He would kill the dreams, as he had killed
them
—shot, suffocated, gassed, or burned in the sewers and subways of the Russian capital.
This
battle would be fought in the open, as God had meant men to fight.
And this time he would win. The troops he had sent into the woods were heavily burdened, but they were young and fit; they would be in place on the slopes overlooking Village One by dawn, plentifully equipped with mortars and automatic weapons, and the best of his snipes with scope-sighted rifles. The Draka in the village would be pinned down, there were simply not
enough
of them to hold a longer perimeter. The other pass, the Georgian Military Highway, was nearly clear. He had had radio contact with the units over the mountains, they were pressing the Draka paratroops back through the burning ruins of Kutasi; they were taking monstrous casualties, but inflicting hurts, too, on an enemy cut off from reinforcement. The Janissaries were at their rear, but once in the narrow approaches over the mountains, they could hold the Draka forever. Perhaps negotiate a peace; the Domination was known to DC cold-bloodedly realistic about cutting its losses.
The trucks had laagered in the clearing, engines silent. The air smelled overwhelmingly of wet earth, a yeasty odor that overrode burnt fuel and metal. Only the drivers remained, mostly huddled in their cabs, a platoon of infantry beneath the vehicles for guards, and the radio-operator. The bulk of the regiment would be here in a few hours; pause here to regroup and refuel, then deploy for action. Wehrmacht units were following, hampered by the hammering the road and rail nets were taking, but force-marching nonetheless. He would roll over Village One, and they would stop the Draka serpent.
"We must," he muttered.
"Sir?" That was his regimental chief of staff, Schmidt.
"We must win," Hoth replied. "If we don't, our cities will burn, and our books. A hundred years from now, German will be a tongue for slaves; only scholars will read it—Draka scholars."
"I wonder…"
"What?" The SS commander turned his light so that the other's face was visible; the wavering grey light through the wet glass of the torch made it ghastly, but the black circles under the eyes were genuine. There had been little sleep for Schmidt these past twenty hours: too much work, and far too much thought.