Marching Through Georgia

by S. M. Stirling

  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 tra
ils 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.

  "Wonder about Poles having this conversation in 1939, or Russians last year," Schmidt said, exhaustion bringing out the slurred Alsatian vowels. "They had to hold, everything depended on it. But they didn't hold."

  "They were our racial inferiors! The Draka are Aryans like us; that is why they are a threatl The Leader himself has said so."

  Schmidt looked at him with an odd smile. "The Draka aristocrats are Nordic, yes, Herr Standartenführer. But they are a thin layer; most of the Domination's people are Africans or Asians. Most even of their soldiers and bureaucrats, at the everyday level: blacks, mulattoes, Eastern Jews, Arab Semites, Turks, Chinese, a real schwarm. Would that not be an irony? We National Socialists set out to cleanse Europe of fuden and slavs and gypsies, and it ends with the home of the white race being ruled and mongrelized by chinks and kikes and Congo savages—' He laughed, an unpleasant, reedy sound.

  "Silence!" Hoth snapped. The other man drew himself up, his eyes losing their glaze. "Schmidt, you have been a comrade in arms, and are under great stress; I will therefore forget this… defeatist obscenity. Once! Once more, and I will myself report you to the Security Service!"

  Schmidt swallowed and rubbed his hands across his face, turning away. Hoth forced himself back to calm; he would need a clear head.

  And after all the man's from Alsace—he's an intellectual, and a Catholic, he thought excusingly. A good fighting soldier, but the long spell of antipartisan work had shaken him, the unpleasant demands of translating Party theory into practice. Combat would bring him back to himself.

  He swung back into the radio truck and laced the panel to the outside, clicking on the light. This was going to be tricky; it was all a matter of time.

  * * * *

  This is going to be tricky timing, Eric thought as they reached the edge of the clearing. Even trickier than threading their way through the nighted bush; they had followed the Circassian blindly, had dodged aside barely in time and lain motionless in a thicket of witch hazel as a long file of Germans went past. One of them had slipped and staggered; Eric had felt more than seen the boot come down within centimeters of his outstretched hand. He heard a muttered scheisse as the SS-man paused to resettle his clanking load of mortar-tripod, then nothing but the rain and fading boots sucking free of wet leaf mold. He felt his face throb at the memory of it, like a warm wind; the rich sweet smell of the crushed brush was still with him. Extreme fear was like pain: it fixed memory forever, made the moment instantly accessible to total recall…

  The native hunter crept up beside him and put his mouth to the Draka's ear; even then, Eric wrinkled his nose slightly at the stink of rotten teeth and bad digestion.

  "Here, lord." His pointing arm brushed the side of Eric's helmet, and he spoke in a breathy whisper. Probably not needful, the rain covered and muffled sound, but no sense in taking chances. "The road is no more than five hundred meters that way. Shall I go first?"

  "No," Eric said, unfastening the clasp of his rain cloak and sliding it to the ground. "You stay here, well need you to guide us back. In a hurry! Be ready."

  And besides, it isn't your fight. Except that the Draka would let his people live and eat, if they obeyed. He brought the Holbars forward and jacked the slide, easing it through the forward-and-back motion that chambered the first round rather than letting the spring drive it home with the usual loud chunk. Safety or no safety, he was not going to walk through unfamiliar woods in the dark with one up the spout… Soft clack-clicks told of others doing likewise.

  His mouth was dry. How absurd, he thought. His uniform was heavy with water, mud and leaves plastered on his chest and belly, and his mouth was dry.

  A brief glimpse of yellow light from downslope to the north. Sofie slapped his ankle; he reached back to touch acknowledgement, and their hands met, touched and clasped. Her hand was small but firm. She gave his hand a brief squeeze that he found himself returning, smiling in the dark.

  "Stay tight, Sofie," he whispered.

  "You too, Eri—sir," she answered.

  "Eric's fine, Sofie," he answered. "This isn't the British army." Slightly louder, coming to his feet: Ready."

  He crouched, eyes probing blindly at the darkness. Still too dark to see, but he could sense the absence of the forest canopy above; it was like walking out of a room. And the rain was individual drops, not the dense spattering that came through the leaf cover. Ripping and fumbling sounds, the satchelmen getting out their charges. Why am I here? he thought. I'm a commander, doing goddam pointman's work. I could be back in the bunker, having a coffee and watching Sofie paint her toenails. His lips shaped a whistle, and the Draka started forward at a crouching walk. Their feet skimmed the earth, knees bent, ankles loose, using the soles of their feet to detect terrain irregularities.

  Nobody's indispensable, another part of his mind answered. His belly tightened, and his testicles tried to draw themselves up in a futile gesture of protection against the hammering fire some layer of his mind expected. Marie can handle a fixed-front action as well as you can. And you've been expecting to die in battle for a long time now.

  But he didn't want to, the White Christ be his witness.

&
nbsp; Eric's step faltered; he recovered, with an expression of stunned amazement that the darkness thankfully covered. He grunted, as if a fist had driven into his belly.

  I don't, I truly don't, he thought with wonder. Then, with savage intensity: There are hundreds within a kilometer who don't want to either. He was acutely conscious of Sofie following to his right. You still can, and everyone with you. Carefull.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "… never regretted my articles. I was not among those who sentimentalized our arrangement with the Orate, or imagined that it was a true alliance of mutual interest and shared values like that with Britain or the new Indian government History is something that tends to be re-edited in the light of current needs, particularly when politicians and their journalistic flacks are involved; to understand what was done, we must make an effort of the mind to recapture what was felt at the time. Otherwise, we lend ourselves to witch-burnings like the late, unlamented Senator from Wisconsin's hunt for 'Drak-symps' in high places.

  What is most difficult to remember is that in the 30's. even the early 40's. nobody was afraid of the Draka. Our bipolar world, divided between the Alliance and the Domination, was a nightmare that only a few radicals could imagine, just as the balance of terror under the shadow of Oppenheimer's sun-bomb and Clarke's suborbital missile was an idea a few scientifiction writers played with. Perhaps our own racial prejudices were at fault In the nineteenth century abolitionists and humanitarians complained, but who was willing to spend blood and treasure to save Africa from the Domination? It was only negroes falling under the yoke, after all. In the Great War it was only Asians, "wogs" (or only Bulgarians and Slavs, on the fringes); if most of the public in North America or Western Europe thought of it at all. they assumed the Domination was no more than a harsher form of colonial imperialism. That the Draka would bring the rule of plantation and compound, impaling stake and sjambok to the European heartlands of Western civilization, was unthinkable.