Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  It had been so long, this war. So much was wrecked and broken; impossible even to imagine what peace might be like.

  She turned to the others, lifted her hands and voice. "Good people," she said, in a clear carrying tone. The murmur and rustle died, leaving the earth-deep crash-crashcrash of the shells. This is work for a priest, it isn't my place, she thought for a helpless second. Then: Take up your cross, Marya Sokolowska, and follow Him. There were too few clergy left in Poland, too few religious of any land. Nation and Church had always been intertwined in this land where the Madonna was Queen; the Germans knew it, and they had been unmercifully thorough.

  "Good people, have courage." We are all going to need it. Especially those of us who have to make a diversion, risking Polish lives so that those Germans can escape. "God is with us, God is our strength. Let us pray."

  "Out, out, everybody out!" Then, as if realizing the futility of English in this Polish village, the voice switched to rough pidgin-German. "Raus, out! Against the wall, Hande hoche, hands up. Move, move, move!"

  Marya stood, spat to clear her mouth of the dust, shook her head against the ringing in her battered ears. The shelling had been over for half an hour now, and she had been waiting for something like this since the last crackles of small-arms fire had died down. She blinked up the stairs at the helmeted silhouette and leveled rifle, raised her skirts slightly in both hands, and climbed. "I am coming," she called in German. "Do not shoot."

  The Draka soldier backed into the center of the church as the Poles emerged, fanning them against the wall with the eloquent muzzle of her rifle. Another stood closer, prodding air with his bayonet.

  "Over against the wall, face to the wall, go, go," he barked, and caught her by one arm. Marya jerked against the hold, felt a prickle of cold at a grip as immovable as a machine's. Coughing, blinking, the surviving villagers climbed the stairs and filed through into the central nave of the church. What had been the nave; there were gaping holes in the ceiling, whisps of smoke from the rafters, more holes in the walls, and the stained-glass windows had been sprayed as glittering fragments over rubble and the splintered wood of rood-screen and pews. The hand released her with a shove that sent her staggering, and Sister Marya walked through debris that crunched and moved beneath her feet, toward the cluster of Draka soldiers by the door.

  Draka. She had never seen one… pictures, of course. A few reliable books, but it had been a long time since anyone with any sense believed what they read in newspapers and magazines. They were standing spread about the shattered doors, helmeted heads scanning restlessly back and forth, quartering the ruined interior of the church. Mottled summer-pattern camouflage uniforms… helmets like shallow round-topped buckets with a cutout for the face, flared. Automatic rifles hung across their chests by assault-slings, most with machete-like blades in sheaths across their backs. She stepped closer, out of the spreading crowd along the south wall, and the heads moved toward her with a motion like gun-turrets. Marya swallowed dry fear and continued, movements carefully slow and non-aggressive.

  Four of them. One with chevrons on his—no, her arms.

  "Halte," the woman said. To her companions: "Check if thissun's carryin'."

  One of the troopers swung behind her. A hand gripped the heavy fabric between her shoulderblades, lifted her effortlessly into the air. The nun closed her eyes and forced herself limp as another frisked her with brisk efficiency.

  "Nothin' but penguin meat under here," he said. "Haunches like a draft-horse."

  Marya barely had time to stiffen her legs as the soldier released her; she landed staggering. The Draka decurion had removed her helmet to reveal a sweat-darkened mop of carrot-colored hair, cropped short at the sides and back; salt ran in trickles down into the narrow blue eyes that blinked thoughtfully at her. A pair of dust-caked goggles hung loose around the soldier's muscled neck; her face was pale and freckled across the eyes where the rubber and plastic had covered it, coated with streaked dirt below. A flower had been painted around one eye, incongruous yellow and green… The nun could see the cords in her forearms ripple as she flicked a cigarette from a crumpled pack in the web lining of her helmet.

  A finger stabbed out to silence Marya, and the Draka looked up to the gallery that ran about the interior of the church, four meters up.

  "Y'all finished?" she called to the two troopers.

  "Ya, nothin', dec," one called.

  "Down."

  The Draka soldiers walked to the railing of the gallery and casually over it. One landed facing the Polish villagers along the wall, rifle ready; the other grunted slightly as the thirty-pound weight of the rocket-gun across his shoulders drove him into a half-crouch.

  The NCO turned to Marya, spoke something in a horribly mangled Slavic that sounded as much Ukrainian as anything else.

  "Your pardon, ah, sir," she replied, in precise British-accented English, keeping her head and eyes down. There was a string of… yes, ears hanging from the woman soldier's belt. Dried and withered, some still fresh enough to show crusts of blood. Danger, hideous danger, and to her flock as well. Marya had only been in the village a few months. Most of that in hiding, until it was clear whether the new German regime's offer of amnesty was genuine, but they were hers, both as the only representative of the Church and agent for the Home Army.

  "It talks," the Draka said, in mild wonder, drawing on the cigarette. There was a short high-pitched scream from behind Marya, from the Poles. The NCO looked up sharply, and walked past the nun with a brisk curse as Marya spun on one heel.

  The soldier who had landed facing the villagers was pulling a girl out of the line by her hair. Walking out, rather, with one gloved hand locked in the tow-colored mass spilling out of her kerchief; a toddler ran after her, beating small fists on the soldier's leg and yelling red-faced. The trooper grinned, scooped up the child and dumped him in another woman's arms.

  "Hold the brat," he said.

  The mother screamed again as his hand gripped her dress at the neck and pulled, the heavy coarse wool stripping away like gauze as the Draka worried her free of the homespun. There was a growl from the villagers, and the other trooper standing near swung her Holbars back to quiet it. Then the decurion was behind the would-be rapist.

  "Goddamit, Horn-dog!" she shouted, and swung her boot in a short arc that ended in a solid thump against his buttocks. The man spun, snarling, then straightened as the NCO continued the tongue-lashing.

  "We're here to pen this meat, not hump it. Freya's tits, Horn-dog, yo' keep thinkin' with yo' dick an' we all gonna get kilt. Y'wanna ride that pony, come back an' get it after we're stood down."

  "Ah, dec—" The Polish girl scuttled past him, weeping, rags of her dress held over her breasts.

  "Shut the fuck up, dickhead!" She shook her head, muttering: "Men, all scrotum an' no brain." To Marya: "All right, penguin"—the nun puzzled at the word, then remembered the black-and-white of her habit— "what's down in the crypt?"

  "A few sick and wounded. German soldiers, but they are unarmed and—"

  "Good," the Draka grunted. She drew a grenade from her harness, a stick-grenade with a globular blue-painted head, and tossed it spinning underhand to the woman who stood by the door to the cellar. That one caught it out of the air with a quick snapping motion, pulled the tab and dropped it down the stairs. She kicked the heavy trapdoor down with a hollow boom that almost hid the thump and hiss of the detonation below.

  "Shee-it, be mo' careful with them-there things," she added nervously to the section-leader.

  "It heavier than air," the decurion replied, and continued to Marya: "Nerve gas."

  The nun started with shock, and missed the next few words. Her mind was with the helpless men below, the sudden bone-breaking convulsions, death like a thief in the dark.

  "… Find the rest." The decurion stepped closer and slapped her across the face, hard enough to start her nose bleeding. "Wake up, bitch. Ah said, is this lot all of "em?"

  "No… no,
sir. There are others, many others; they have dug shelters under their houses."

  "Sa. Can yo' talk 'em out? We's sure not goin' down lookin'." Unspoken: Otherwise we'll blast or gas anything belowground.

  "Yes! Yes, please, they are harmless people."

  "People?" the Draka grinned. "Wild cattle, masterless an' fair game. Yo! Meatmaker!" The woman who had gassed the cellar raised the muzzle of her assault rifle in acknowledgment. 'Take Horn-dog 'n this wench, check with the Tetrarch, 'n then talk the rest of the meat out of their holes. She can translate. Get 'em all back here. Ifi'n she starts fuckin' around, expend her an' the locals both. Speakin' a fuckups. Horn-dog, remember this is still combat even if they ain't shootin'."

  The decurion jabbed Marya in the stomach with her own weapon. "Yo" hear?" A nod, and she gave the nun another slap across the face, stunning her and wheeling her half around. The gunshot sound echoed through the ruined church, amid a dead silence broken only by the naked girl's sobbing.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Bettah. Tell these-here't' sit, facin' the wall. Hands on heads. Anybody moves, we kill 'em; any resistance, we kill 'em all. Do it, bitch."

  "What's that?" the one called Horn-dog said.

  Marya turned with the basket in her hands, willing the fluttering in her stomach to quiet. This was the last house, a Jewish merchant's before the War; the cellar had been crowded. And the stores had been there, just enough time to get what she needed, passed to her in the dark and confusion.

  O Jesu, O Maria, she thought. I had to set the timers by touch, please let them be right. Mechanical timer, improvised, needing only a strong shake to start its count-down.

  "Food," she answered. "Fresh bread, from this morning. Cheese, sausage, vodka. For your officer."

  "Hnnn," he said, reaching under the cloth and pulling out a small round loaf of bread, tearing at it with square white teeth. His other hand closed on her breast, kneading and pinching at the nipple through the heavy serge cloth. Marya clenched her teeth to endure the pain passively, the anger like the flush of fever; the man had been putting his hands on her all through the hour it had taken to clear the village, her thighs and buttocks and breasts would be covered with bruises tomorrow. And he would have thrown her down and taken her if the other soldier had not been present to hold him to his work.

  Fear seasoned the rage. He was a big man, two inches over six feet and twice her weight, but that was not all; she had seen him open doors by slamming a fist through solid pine planking, kill a resisting villager by crushing in his head with the edge of one palm. Stronger than any man she had ever met, and more than strong, quicker than a cat and as graceful. She knew that Draka were trained to war virtually from babyhood in military boarding schools, but meeting the results in the flesh was something else again. Compared to these the Nazis were nothing, cheap reproductions from a cut-rate plant, a child's flattery, a slave's imitation.

  The other soldier came back into the kitchen, kicking a splintered chair aside through a rutching of shattered crockery. She sneezed at the dust; the air was heavy with it, murky with the dim twilight; a basket of eggs had smashed in a corner some time ago, adding its tinge of sulfur to the reek.

  "Right, all clear," the woman soldier said. Her hand blurred, and came away with half of the bread the man had been eating. "Now we report." She looked at the hand mauling the nun's bosom. "An' no, we cain't take time off until we do. Shitfire, Horn-dog, y' got laid jus' last night, wait half an hour, hey?"

  "Some's need it more than others," he said, releasing Marya and shoving her toward the door. "Yo" gets it by killin', Meatmaker."

  She shook her head. "Yo' check the basket?"

  "Shorely did."

  "Well," she continued amiably. "Horn-dog, yo're as good a fightin'-man as any of us in the Tetrarchy—when somebody's shootin' at yo'—an' yo've been in it from the start, an' yo's still a private. Gotta learn more self-control, my man, iffin' yo' wants to make monitor. Sides, thissun isn't even good-lookin'."

  "Never had me a penguin before," he said. They walked through into the gardens, feet sinking into the sandy dirt and sparse grass.

  "Just another wench, when yo've gotten her stripped an' spread." She kicked Marya lightly in the leg. "Hey, wench. Yo' been tupped any?"

  The nun clenched her hands into fists inside the voluminous sleeves of her habit. "No, sir," she ground out.

  "So, Horn-dog: mutton this old, still virgin, she'll have a cunt like concrete an' a cherry made a' rhino-hide." A section of Draka came trotting down the laneway. Meatmaker hailed them: "Bro's, seen Tetrarch de la Roche?"

  "With the Cohortarch, sis. North a ways; past the jungleboys' bridge a bit, laager. Cain't miss it."

  The vehicle park had been established just north of the little stream, in a stretch of green common. A sprawl of more substantial houses lay to the north, probably the homes of the little town's professionals, a few traders, perhaps a doctor and notary; the manor of the local landlord beyond that. The heat of the day had faded to a mild warmth, and the soft pink glow on the tops of the poplars was dying; the wind blew in from the northwest, smelling of green and dust, spicy. The first stars were out, over toward the east; the glow of burning Warsaw was brighter, its smoke a black stain spreading like an inverted triangle against the constellations.

  "Odd how long the light lasts after sunset, Johnny," Tanya murmured. After ten, and still not full dark. "Might like to try an' paint it." They had been switched down to Inactive status, ready-reserve and available in a crisis, but otherwise only expected to guard their own perimeter. The High Command would move them back when the transport situation improved.

  She called down past her crossed legs into the interior of the tank: "Sue, the camera, hey?" A protesting mutter; the gunner, for reasons of her own, preferred to sleep on the reclining couch beside the weapon. The heavy Leica was tossed up through the hatch and she snatched it out of the air, a little resentful of the carelessness. Barring some Russian icons, this was the best piece of loot she had come by in the last year, taken from the corpse of a Fritz military correspondent.

  Sue might be less surly about it… Of course, it was a private matter, and so outside rank. Ah well, at least in the Citizen Force I'm not expected to hold the troops' hands while they get ready for bed. Janissaries had to be watched over constantly.

  Tanya stood, focused, quartered the horizon in a swift click click click until the roll was finished. Then she laid the instrument aside, relaxed, tried to open herself to the scene; the record could never be more than a prompt, to help the heart see again and the fingers interpret. Even now they itched for the feel of the materials, worn brushes, smooth nubbliness of canvas, her nose for the smell of linseed-oil and turpentine. But first you had to get out of the way, let the moment just be, a perfect thing out of time. It proved difficult, even once she had let her mind sink out of the iron analytical command-logic mode.

  "Sort of a shimmerin', these summer evenin's," the infantry Tetrarch said, leaning one elbow back against the barrel of the coaxial grenade launcher. He twisted his face back up over his shoulder to look at her, a pale glimmer of blond hair and teeth in what was quickly becoming full dark. "Good subject… Plannin' on another Archon's Prize?"

  How to paint it, ahhh… Sunsets had always been a favorite of hers; there was an inherent sadness to them, a melancholy. But this was different, without the harsh-edge sharpness of the Levant where she had been raised. A long way from home. Memories intruded, of other evenings. Home, Syria Province, sunsets so different, swifter, more…

  … dramatic, yes, that's the word. Images flitting. School, that had been an old monastery up in the Lebanon range, renovated after the conquest. That evening with her first lover, Alexandra… Freya, was that a decade ago now? So alien, that creature-self of fifteen years. Just a day like so many others, yet still unbearably vivid with the intensity that only great happiness or perfect despair can lend to recollection. Bright dust and sweat in the palaestra, back to the baths an
d companionable gossip among their classmates, then a ramble hand-in-hand through the nature-preserve outside the walls, winding tiny wild hyacinths into each other's hair.

  Memory: the room, and the pale blue flowers against a foam of dark curls, that javelin leaned carelessly by the windowledge, a loose thong casting a black shadow on the cream silk coverlet. Laughing amber eyes in the tanned young face, pale rose-colored wine in the cup they shared, the taste a little too sweet, fingers touching on the cool glass. Through the window, the huge slope of the mountains in tawny-gold rock and pine and greengrey olives, falling away beyond to a sea like a dark-purple carpet thread-edged with white surf. The sun hovering, a giant disk of hot gold at the head of a flickering bronze highway on the water. Smell of lavender and bruised thyme…

  Damn. She should be thinking of new subjects. And too much nostalgia verged on self-pity, a despicable emotion.

  Tanya paused a moment, shook herself back to the present, made a dismissive gesture. "Oh, the Prize," she said. "Balclur knows, all that thing does is ruin yo' reputation with everyone worth listenin' to; yo' should see the crowd a' antiquated fuzzles on the panel of judges." Long surging roar from the crowd and the hard prickle of the gold laurel wreath—"I'm thinkin' of givin' up pure landscape anyways. Worked out. Contemplatin' a series on the War; not battle scenes, just, ahhhh, things that have the essence of it, eh? Direct experience—" She stood and stretched. "Speakin" of which, yo' bunkin' alone tonight, Johnny?"