Marching Through Georgia

by S. M. Stirling

  "Now," he said, turning to the cohortarch. "Dale?"

  "It's all a little, well, static, isn't it?" The ex-cavalryman paused. "Besides your skulkers in the woods, I'd say you need a mobile reaction force to maneuver in the rear, once they're fixed against your fieldworks."

  Eric nodded. "Good, but we don't have any reserve left for that…"

  Dale examined his fingertips. "Well, old man, I could run a spot down the road, conceal my vehicles, then—"

  Eric shook his head. "Nice of you to offer, Dale, but you're needed back above. That's going to be a deathride, and… I've got an idea.' He looked around the circle of faces. "Tell you later if it works out. No— Let's do it, people; let's move."

  There was a moment of silence, of solemnity almost. Then the scene dissolved in action.

  Eric turned to the old man. "Hadj, those prisoners the Germanski were holding behind the hall—they are not of your people?"

  The Circassian came to himself, blew his nose in the sleeve of his khaftan and shook his head.

  "They are Russia—partisans, godless youths of the komsomol from the great city of Pyatigorsk that the Czars built, when they took the hot springs of the Seven Hills from my people. Even so, we would not have betrayed them to the Germanski with the lightning, if they had not demanded food of us that we did not have. There are more of them westward in the hills; many more. The garrison came here to hunt them." He bowed. "Lord, may I go to tell my people what you require of them?"

  Eric nodded absently, tugging at his lower lip, then smiled and turned for the alley leading past the town hall.

  Sofie trotted at his side, a quizzical interest in her eyes; her tasks would not be needed immediately, and a matter puzzled her. Eric was moving with a bounce in his stride; his eyes seemed to glow, his skin to crackle with renewed vitality. She remembered him at the loading zone, quiet, reserved; in the fighting that morning, moving with the bleakly impersonal efficiency of a well-designed machine. Now… he looked like a man in love. Not with her, her head told her. But it was interesting to see how that affected him; definitely interesting.

  "Centurion," she said. "Remember Palermo?"

  "What part?"

  "Afterward, when we stood down. That terrace? We were talking, and you told me you didn't like soldiering. Seems to me you like it well enough now, or I've never seen a man happy."

  He rubbed the side of his nose. "I like… solving problems. Important ones, real ones; doing it quickly, getting people to do their best. And understanding what makes them tick, getting inside their heads. Knowing what they'll do if I do this or that… I've even thought of writing novels, because of that. After the war, of course." He stopped, with an uncharacteristic flush. Sofie was easy to talk to, but that was not an ambition he had told many. Hurriedly, he continued: "Marie's a crackerjack sapper. I had some of the same ideas, but not in nearly so much detail. And I couldn't organize so well to get them done."

  "But you could organize her, and the ragheads, and whatever these 'russki partisans' are good for." She smiled at his raised brow. "Hell, Centurion, I may not talk their jabber, but I know the word when I hear it. I can see all that's part of war." She frowned. "And the fighting?" Draka were supposed to like to fight; more theory than fact. She didn't, much; if she wanted to have a fun-risk, she'd surf. Yet there was a certain addiction to it. You could see how the combat-junkies felt, and certainly the Draka produced more of them than most people, but on the whole, no thanks. This had been hairier than anything before, and she had an uneasy feeling it was going to get worse.

  "We're of the Race: we have our obligations."

  There was no answer to that, not unless she wished to give offense. For that matter, there were many who would have stood on rank already.

  "Think we'll have time to get all this stuff ready?"

  "I don't know, Sofie," he said simply. "I hope so. Before the real attack, anyway. We'll probably get a probe quite soon. With luck…"

  Senior Decurion McWhirter cleared his throat. "Say, sir, what was it you used on the old raghead? Thought he was a tough old bastard, but he caved in real easy."

  "I used the lowest, vilest means I could," Eric said softly. The NCO's eyes widened in surprise. "I gave him hope."

  Chapter Ten

  From the beginning, sheer size was a driving factor in the evolution of the Domination. The Dutch colony which Admiral Cochrane seized in 1779—essentially, the modem Western Cape Province—was larger than France. By 1783 the Crown Colony was the size of all Western Europe; during the 1790's slaving bases and settlements were driven up the "eastern reach" to Zanzibar and Aden, and 1800 saw the conquest of Egypt and Ceylon. Inland labor raiders, ranchers, planters and prospectors leapfrogged each other In quest of workers, grazing, water and minerals; the arid climate and the large size of the initial land grants combined to keep settlement thinly spread.

  Communications—of troops, administrators. Information, goods—were a problem that could only increase with time. The continental interior was almost completely lacking in useful waterways, and the plateau was everywhere fringed with mountains. Stark necessity made roads and harbors a priority, and engineering schools were founded to provide experts to direct the forced-labour gangs. Cold mining paid much of the costs, and the steam engines Imported to pump out shafts and crush ore suggested a means around the weaknesses of animal transport Richard Trevithick's experimental locomotives (1803) and steam cars (1806) encountered none of the resistance that vested interests produced in Europe; not only Draka prosperity, but survival itself depended on swift transport A precedent was established for the research projects which produced the first successful dirigible airships in the 1880's…

  ―200 Years: A Social History of the Domination, by Alan E. Sorensson. Ph.D, Archona Press, 1983

  Village One, Ossetian Military Highway April 14, 1942: 0700 Hours

  The partisans were being held in what looked to be a stock pen—new barbed wire on ancient piled stone. A walking-wounded Draka trooper stood guard; the German formerly assigned to that duty was lying on his back across the wall, his belly opened by a drawing slash from a bush knife and the cavity buzzing black with flies. The prisoners ignored him; even with Eric's arrival, few looked up from their frenzied attack on the loaves of stale black bread that had been thrown to them. One vomited noisily, seized another chunk and began to eat again. There were thirty of them, and they stank worse than the rest of the village. They were standing in their own excrement, and half a dozen had wounds gone pus-rotten with gas-gangrene.

  They were Slavs, mostly: stockier than the Circassian natives, flatter-faced and more often blond, in peasant blouses or the remnants of Soviet uniform. Young men, if you could look past the months of chronic malnutrition, sickness, and overstrain. A few had been tortured, and all bore the marks of rifle butts, whips, rubber truncheons. Eric shook his head in disgust; in the Domination, this display would have been considered disgraceful even for convicts on their way to the prison-mines of the Ituri jungles or the saltworks of Kashgar, the last sink-holes for incorrigibles. Anybody would torture for information in war, of course, and the Security Directorate was not notable for mercy toward rebels. Still, this was petty meanness. If they were dangerous, kill them; if not, put them to some use.

  One thick-set prisoner straightened, brushed his hands down a torn and filth-spattered uniform runic and came to the edge of the wire. His eyes flickered to the guard, noted how she came erect at the officer's approach.

  "Uvana hchloptsi, to yeehchniy kommandyr," he cast back over his shoulder, and waited, looking the Draka steadily in the eye.

  Eric considered him appraisingly and nodded. This one, he thought, is a brave man. Pity, we'll probably have to kill him if the Fritz don't do us the favor. Aloud: "Sprechen zie Deutsch? Parlez vous Francais? Circassian?"

  A shake of the head; the Draka commander paused in thought, almost started in surprise to hear Sofie's voice.

  "I speak Russian, Centurion," she sai
d. He raised a brow; everybody had to do one foreign language, but that was not a common choice. "Not in school. My Pa, he with Henderson when the Fourth took Krasnovodsk, back in 1918. He brought back a Russia wench, Katie. She was my nursemaid, an" I learned it from her. Still talk it pretty good. He just said: 'Watch out, boys, that's the commander."

  Sofie turned to the captives and spoke, slowly at first and then with gathering assurance. The Russian frowned and waved his companions to silence, then replied. The ghost of a smile touched his face, despite the massive bruise that puffed the left side of his mouth.

  Grinning, she switched back into English. "Yfl, he understands. Says I've got an old-fashioned Moscow accent, like a boyar, a noble. Hey, Katie always said she was a Countess; maybe it was true." A shake of the head. "S'true she was never much good at house-work, wouldn't do it. Screwing the Master was all right, looking after children was fine, but show her a mop and she'd sulk for days. Ma gave up on trying…"

  Actually, the whole Nixon household had been fond of Ekaterina Ilyichmanova; with her moods and flightiness and disdain for detail, she had fitted in perfectly with the general atmosphere of cheerfully sloppy anarchy. Sophie's father had always considered her his best war souvenir and had treated her with casual indulgence; she was something of an extravagance for a man of his modest social standing, and her slender, great-eyed good looks were not at all his usual taste. Sophie and her brothers had gone to some trouble to find their nursemaid the Christian priest she wanted during her last illness, and had been surprised at how empty a space she left in the rambling house below Lion's Head.

  Eric nodded thoughtfully. "Good thinking, Sofie. All right… ask him if there are more like him in the woods, and the villages down in the plains."

  The Russian listened carefully to the translation, spoke a short sentence and spat at the Draka officer's feet. Eric waved back the guard's bayonet impatiently.

  "Ahhh—" Sofie hesitated. "Ah, Centurion, he sort of asked why the fuck he should tell a neimetsky son-of-a-bitch anything, and invited you to take up where the fornicating Fritzes left off.' She frowned. "I think he's got a pretty thick country-boy accent. Don't know what a neimetsky is, but it's not nohow complimentary. And he says it's our fault they're in this mess anyway."

  Eric smiled thinly, hands linked behind his back, rising and falling thoughtfully on the balls of his feet. There was an element of truth in that; the Stavka, the Soviet high command, had never been able to throw all its reserves against the Germans with the standing menace of the Domination on thousands of kilometers of southern front. And the Draka had taken two million square miles of central Asia in the Great War, while Russia was helpless with revolution and civil strife; all the way north to the foothills of the Urals, and east to Baikal.

  Fairly perceptive, the Draka officer thought. Especially for a peasant like this. He must have been a Party member. The flat Slav face stared back at him, watchful but not at all afraid.

  Can't be a fool, Eric's musing continued. Not and have survived the winter and spring. He's not nervous with an automatic weapon pointed at him, either. Or at the bayonet, for that matter; the damn things were usually still useful for crowd control, if nothing else.

  "Stupid," he said meditatively.

  "Sir?' Sofie asked.

  "Oh, not him; the Fritz. Talking about a thousand-year Reich, then acting as if it all had to be done tomorrow…" His tone grew crisper. "Ask his name. Ask him how he'd like to be released with all his men—with all the food they can carry, a brand-new Fritz rifle and a hundred rounds each."

  Shocked, Sophie raised her eyebrows, shrugged and spoke. This time the Russian laughed. "He says he's called Ivan Desonovich Yuhnkov, and he'd prefer MP40 submachine guns and grenades. While we're at it, could we please give him some tanks and a ticket to New York, and Hitler's head, and what sort of fool do you think he is? Sorry, sir."

  Eric reached out a hand for the microphone, spoke. Minutes stretched; he waited without movement, then extended a hand to Sofie. "Cigarette?" he asked.

  Carefully expressionless, she lit a second from her own and placed it between his lips. Well, the iron man is nervous, too, she thought. Sometimes she got the feeling that Eric could take calculated risks on pure intellect, simply from analysis of what was necessary. It was reassuring that he could need the soothing effect of the nicotine.

  The other partisans had finished the bread. They crowded in behind their leader, silent, the hale supporting the wounded. A mountain wind soughed, louder than their breath and the slight sucking noises of their rag-wrapped feet in the mud and filth of the pen. The eyes in the stubbled faces… covertly, Eric studied them. Some were those of brutalized animals, the ones who had stopped thinking because thought brought nothing that was good; now they lived from one day… no, from one meal to the next, or one night's sleep. He recognized that look; it was common enough in the world his caste had built. And he recognized the stare of the others—the men who had fought on long after the death of hope because there was really nothing else to do. That he saw in the mirror, every morning.

  A stick of troopers came up, shepherding a working party of Circassian villagers, and the American war correspondent. The Circassians were carrying rope-handled wooden crates between them; Dreiser's face had a stunned paleness. Well, he's seen the elephant, Eric thought with a distant, impersonal sympathy. There were worse things than combat, but the American probably wasn't in a mood to be reminded of that right now. The crates were not large, hut the villagers bore them with grunts and care, and they made a convincing splat in the wet earth.

  "Bill,' the Draka said. "What's your government's policy on Russian refugees?"

  Dreiser gathered himself with a visible effort, watching as Eric reached up over his left shoulder and drew his bush knife. The metal was covered in a soft matte-black finish, only the honed edge reflecting mirror bright. He drove it under one of the boards of a crate and pried the wood back with a screech of nails.

  "Refugees? Ah…" He forced his thoughts into order. "Well, better, now that we're in the war." He shrugged distaste. "Especially since there isn't any prospect of substantial numbers arriving." Relations with Timoshenko's Soviet rump junta in west Siberia were good, but with the Japanese holding Vladivostok and running rampant through the Pacific, the only contact was through the Domination. Which visibly regarded the Soviet remnant as a caretaker keeping things in order until the Germans were disposed of and the Draka arrived. Attempts to ship Lend-Lease supplies through had met with polite refusals.

  A few wounded and children had been flown out, over the pole in long-range dirigibles, to be received in Alaska by Eleanor Roosevelt with much fanfare.

  "Back before Pearl Harbor, they wouldn't even let a few thousand Jews in. Well, the isolationists were against it, and the Mexican states, they're influenced by the Catholic anti-Semites like Father Coughlan."

  "Sa." Eric rose, with a German machine pistol and bandolier in his hands. "Those-there are Russian partisans there in the pen, Bill. The Fritz captured 'em, but hadn't gotten around to expending them. Take a look."

  Eric heard the American suck in his breath in shock, as he stripped open the action of the Schmeisser. Not bad, he thought, as he inserted a 32-round magazine of 9mm into the well and freed the bolt to drive forward and chamber a bullet. Not as handy as the Draka equivalent; the magazine well was forward of the pistol grip instead of running up through it; it had a shorter barrel, so less range, and the bolt had to be behind the chamber rather than overhanging it. Still, a sound design and honestly made. He took a deep breath and tossed the weapon into the pen.

  The partisan leader snatched it out of the air with the quick, snapping motion of a trout rising to a fly. The flat slapping of his hand on the pressed steel of the Schmeisser's receiver was louder than the rustling murmur among his men; much louder than the tensing among the Draka. Eric saw the Russian's eyes flicker past him; he could imagine what the man was seeing. The rifles would be swinging around, a
ssault slings made that easy, with the gun carried at waist level and the grip ready to hand. The troopers would be shocked, and Draka responded to shock aggressively. Especially to the sight of an armed serf, the very thought of which was shocking. Technically the Russians were not serfs, of course, but the reflex was conditioned on a deeper level than consciousness.

  You did not arm serfs. Even Janissaries carried weapons only on operations or training, under supervision, were issued ammunition only in combat zones or firing ranges. Draka carried arms; they were as much the badge of the Citizen caste as neck tattoos were for serfs: a symbolic dirk in a wrist sheath or a shoulder-holster pistol in the secure cities of the Police Zone; the planter's customary sidearm; or the automatic weapons and battle-shotguns that were still as necessary as boots in parts of the New Territories. A Citizen bore weapons as symbol of caste, as a sign that he or she was an arm of the State, with the right to instant and absolute obedience from all who were not and power of life and death to enforce it. There was no place on earth where free Draka were a majority: no province, no district, no city. They were born and lived and slept and died among serfs.

  They lived because they were warriors, because of the accumulated deadly aura of generations of victory and merciless repression. Folk-memory nearly as deep as instinct saw a serf with a weapon in his hands and prompted: kill.

  Training held their trigger fingers, but the Russian saw their faces. Sweat sheened his, and he kept the machine pistol's muzzle trained carefully at the ground.

  And yet, the weight in his hands straightened his back and seemed to add inches to his height.

  "Khrpikj djavol," he muttered, staring at Eric, then spoke with wonder.

  "Ummm, he says yo' one crazy devil, Centurion," Sophie translated. "Maybe crazy enough to do what you promise." She gave him a hard glance, before continuing on her own: "Yo' might just consider it's other folks' life yo' riskin', too, sir. I mean, he might've been some sorta crazy amokker."