Einar did not move. As long as his body stayed very still, the knee that had been shattered by the sniper's bullet did not make him faint. He could feel the blood runneling down his face from the spot where he had bitten through his lip the last time the leg had jerked. It would be the bayonet wound in the stomach that killed him, though.
He struggled not to laugh: it was very bad when he did that. A flare had gone off just as the last Fritz charge crested the ridge, too late for either of them to alter lunges that had the weight of a flung body behind them. Just time enough to see each other's faces with identical expressions of surprise and horror; then, his bayonet had rammed into the German's throat, just as the long blade on the end of the Mauser punched through his uniform tunic right above the belt buckle. It had been cold, very cold; he could feel it, feel the skin parting and the muscle and crisp things inside that popped with something like a sound heard through his own bones. Then it had pulled free as the Fritz collapsed, and he had watched it come out of him and had thought how odd, I've been killed as he started to fall. That was very funny, when you thought about it. Unlikely enough to be killed with a bayonet; astronomical chance for a Draka to lose an engagement with cold steel. Of course, he had been very tired…
Light-headed and a little sleepy, as he was now. He must not laugh. The stomach wound was death, but slowly; just a deep stab wound, worked a little wider when the blade came out. Not the liver or a kidney or the major arteries, or he'd be dead by now. The muscles clamped down, letting the blood pool and pressure inside rather than rush out and bring unconsciousness as the brain starved. But there were things in his gut hanging by strained threads.
It was very bad when he laughed.
And he was very sleepy; the sound of the firing was dimming, no louder than the rain drumming on his helmet…
He rocked his ruined leg, using the still-responsive muscle above the tourniquet. The scream was probably unheard in the confusion of battle; he was very alert, apart from the singing in his ears, when the second decurion crawled up beside him, the teen-aged face white and desperate in the dying light of the flare.
"Sir. Pederssen and de Klerk are expended, the mortar's outa rounds, they're working around the flanks, an' we can't stop the next rush what'm I supposed to do!" The NCO reached out for his shoulder, then drew his hand back as Einar slapped at it.
"Get the fuck out. No! Don't try to move me; I can feel things… ready to tear inside. I'd bleed out in thirty seconds. Go on, burn boot, go man, go."
The sounds died away behind him; the buzzing whine in his ears was getting louder. Nobody could say they hadn't accomplished the mission: the Fritz must have lost a third or better of their strength, they would never push on farther into this wet blackness with another ambush like this waiting for them. A hundred dead, at least… Somehow, it did not seem as important now, but it was all that was left.
The flare light was dimming, or maybe that was his eyes. Maybe he was seeing things, the bush downslope stirring. Clarity returned for a moment, although he felt very weak, everything was a monstrous effort. No choice but to see it through now… Oh, White Christ, to see the desert again … It would be the end of the rains, now. A late shower, and the veld would be covered in wildflowers, red and magenta and purple; you could ride through them and the scent rose around you like all the gardens in the world, blowing from the horizon. No choice, never any choice until it's too late, because you don't know what dying is, you just think you do…
Einar Labushange raised his head to the sights of his rifle as the.SS rose to charge.
* * * *
"Ah. Ah. Ahhhhhaaaaa—"
It was amazing, Trooper Patton thought. The German impaled on the stake still had the strength to moan. Even to scream, occasionally, and to speak, now and then. Muzzle flashes had let her see him, straddling as if the pointed wood his own weight had punched into his crotch was a third leg. Every now and then he tried to move; it was usually then that he screamed. The bodies behind him along the trail were still; she had put in enough precautionary bursts, the trail was covered with them, and a big clump back down the trail about twenty meters. That was where the rocket-gun shell had hit them from behind, nicely bunched up and focused on the fire probing out of the night before them.
"Amazing," she muttered. Her voice sounded distant and tinny in ears that felt hot and flushed with blast; she wished the cold rain would run into them. Amazing that nothing had hit him. There was a pile of spent brass and bits of cartridge belt by her left elbow, some still noticeably hot despite the drizzle, and two empty drums; the barrel of her rifle had stopped sizzling. She thought that there was about half of the third and last ammunition canister left, seven or eight bursts if she was lucky and light on the trigger. Cordite fumes warred with wet earth, gun oil and a fecal stink from the German, who had voided his bowels as he hung on the wood. Uneasily, she strained her battered ears. She and Huff had been reverse-point; the plan was that they would block the trail, the Fritz would pull back to spread out, and then the rest of the lochos would hit them, having let them pass the first time to tempt them to bunch. It had worked fine, only there was no more firing from farther north. Glimpses had been enough to estimate at least a tetrarchy's-worth of dead Fritz; the other six troopers of their lochos couldn't have killed all the rest, so…
"Huffie."
"Ya?"
"Yo' thinkin' what I—"
They had both risen to hands and knees, when Patton stopped. "Wait," she said, reaching out a hand. "Give me a hand, will yo'?" She felt in the darkness, grabbed a webbing strap and pulled the other soldier toward the trail. Outstretched, her hand touched something warm and yielding; there was a long, sobbing scream that died away to whimpers.
"What the fuck yo doin'?"
"Lay him out, lay him out!" Patton exclaimed feverishly. And yes, there was a tinge of light. Couldn't be sunlight, the whole action was barely ten minutes old. Something was burning, quite close, close enough for reflected light to bounce in via the leaves. "Easy now, don' kill him. Right, now give me yo' grenades."
There was a chuckle from the dim shape opposite her. The German was crying now, with sharp intakes of breath as they moved him, propped the stake up to keep the angle of entry constant, placed the primed grenades under his prone body, wedging them securely. The flesh beneath their fingers quivered with a constant thrumming, as if from the cold. Huff paused as they rose, dusting her hands.
"Hey, wait. He still conscious; he might call a warnin'."
Patton looked nervously back up the trail. If the Germans had spread out through the bush to advance in line, rather than down the trail… but there was no time to lose. It depended on how many of them were left, how close their morale was to breaking. "Right," she grunted, reaching down and drawing the knife from her boot. The Fritz's mouth was already open as he panted shallowly; a wet fumbling, a quick stab at the base of the tongue, and the SS trooper was forever beyond understandable speech.
The cries behind them were thick and gobbling as the pair cautiously jog-trotted down the trail.
"Fuckah bit me,' Patton gasped as they stopped at a sharp dip. There was running water at her feet; she rinsed her hands, then cupped them to bring it to her lips. Pure and sweet, tasting of nothing more than rocks and earth, it slid soothingly down a sore and harshened throat.
"Never no mind; this's where we supposed to meet the others." Again, they exchanged worried glances at each other without needing to actually see. The ambush force was supposed to pull out before they did; that was the only explanation for the silence. Or one of only two possible explanations…
To the south there was a multiple crash, as of grenades, then screams, and shouts in German.
"Shit," said Huff. There had been seven of them in the lochoi assigned to this trail… "Like the boss-man said, mind in gear—"
"—Ass to rear. Let's go."
* * * *
Silently, the two Draka ran through the exploding chaos of the vehicle
park. Eric had tasked the satchelmen in general terms: to destroy the SS trucks, especially fuel or munitions carriers, or block the road, or both, whichever was possible. Most of the satchelmen had run among the trucks with a charge in each hand, thumbs on the time fuses, ready to switch the cap up. Get near a truck, throw the charge, dive out of the way…
Trooper McAlistair shoulder-rolled back to elbows and knees, bipod unfolded, covering the demolition expert's back. Blind-sided chaos, she thought. Feet ran past on the other side of an intact truck; she snap-shot a three-round burst and was rewarded with a scream. That had not been the only set of feet; without rising she scuttled forward, moving in a leopard crawl nearly as fast as her walking pace, under the truck and over the sprattling form of the Fritz, who was clutching at a leg sawn off at mid-shin. She rolled again, sighting, wishing she was on full-auto as she saw the group rounding the truck. Six. Her finger worked on the trigger, brap-brap-brap, tracer snapping green into their backs; one had a machine gun, a MG42. He twisted, hand clamping in dying reflex and sending a cone of light upwards into the grey-black night as the belt of ammunition looped around his shoulders fed through the weapon, then jammed as it tightened around his throat, dropping him backwards into the mud. The overheated barrel hissed as it made contact with the wet soil, like a horseshoe when the farrier plunges it from the forge into the waiting bucket.
The satchelman had not been idle on the other side of the truck. The target had been especially tempting, an articulated tank-transporter with a specialized vehicle aboard; that was a tank with a motorized drum-and-chain flail attached, meant for clearing mine fields before an attack. The charge of plastique flashed, a pancake of white light beneath the transporter's front bogie. All four wheels flew into the night, flipping up, spinning like coins flicked off a thumb. The fuel tank ruptured, spreading the oil in a fine mist as the atomizer on a scent bottle does to perfume. Liquid, the heavy fuel was barely flammable at all without the forced-draft ventilation of a boiler. Divided finely enough, so that all particles are exposed to the oxygen, anything made of carbon is explosive: coal dust, even flour.
The cloud of fuel oil went off with the force of a 155mm shell, and the truck and its cargo disintegrated in an orange globe of fire and fragments that set half a dozen of its neighbors on fire themselves. The crang blasted all other sound out of existence for a second, and echoed back from hills and forest. Most of the truck's body was converted into shrapnel; by sheer bad luck a section of axle four feet long speared through the satchelman as a javelin might have, pinning him to the body of another vehicle like a shrike's prey stuck on a thorn. Limbs beat a tattoo on the cab, alive for several seconds after the spine had been severed; there was plenty of light now, more than enough for the Liebstandarte trooper to see the bulge-eyed clown face that hung at his window, spraying bright lung-blood from mouth and nose beneath burning hair. Since the same jagged spear of metal had sliced the thin sheeting of the door like cloth and crunched through the bones of his pelvis, he paid very little attention.
Tee-Hee McAlistair flattened herself; the ground rose up and slapped her back again as the pressure-wave of the detonation passed. For an instant, there was nothing but lights and a struggle to breathe. Above her the canvas tilt of the Opel truck swayed toward her, then jounced back onto its wheels as the blast proved not quite enough to topple it past the ballast-weight of its cargo. Vaguely, she was conscious of blood running from ears and nose, of a thick buzzing in her skull that was not part of the ratcheting confusion of the night battle. That had been a much bigger bang than it was supposed to be. Doggedly, she levered herself back to her feet, ignoring the blurred edges of her sight. The buzzing gave way to a shrilling, as needles seemed to pierce slowly inwards through each ear. The satchelman—
"Shitfire, talk about baaaad luck," she muttered in awe, staring for an instant across the hood of the truck at the figure clenched around the impaling steel driven into the door. That drooped slightly, and the corpse slid inch by inch down the length of it, until it seemed to be kneeling with slumped head in a pool that shone redly in the light of the fires. Behind, the transporter was a large puddle of fire surrounded by smaller blazes, with the flail tank standing in the middle, sending dribblets of flame up through the vision slits in the armor. As she watched, a segment of track peeled away to fell with a thump, beating a momentary path through the thick orange carpet of burning oil.
A burst crackled out of nowhere her dazzled eyes could see, ripping the thin sheet metal of the truck's hood in a line of runnels that ended just before they reached her.
"Gotta get out of the plane a'fire," she said to herself. It was strange, she could hear the words inside her head but not with her ears… Turning, she put her foot on the fender of the truck and jumped onto the hood, then the cab roof, a left-handed vault onto the fabric cover of the hoops that stretched over the body of the truck. That was much more difficult than it should have been, and she lay panting and fighting down nausea for an instant before looking around.
"Whoo, awesome." The whole cluster of Fritz vehicles was burning; there was a fuzziness to her vision, but only the outermost line near the road was not on fire. There was plenty of light now, refracted through the streaked-crystal lines of the rain; muzzle-flashes and tracers spat a horizontal counterpoint to the vertical tulip shapes of explosions and burning vehicles, all soundless as the needles of pain went farther into her head. It occurred to her that the Fritz must be shooting each other up—there were more of them and the Draka had gotten right into the position. That would have made her want to giggle, if her ears had not hurt so much; and there seemed to be something wrong with her head, it was thick and slow. She should not be watching this like a fireworks show. She should…
* * * *
One of the trucks pulled out of the line and began to turn back onto the road; its driver executed a flawless three-point and twisted bumping past the guttering ruin of the first to be destroyed; other explosions sounded behind him, nearly as loud. The actions of hands and boots on wheel and throttle were automatic; all the driver could see was the fire, spreading toward him: fire and tracers probing out of the unknowable dark.
Tee-Hee reacted at a level deeper than consciousness as the truck went by. Kneeling, she raked the body of it with a long burst before leaping for the canvas tilt. The reaction almost killed her; it calculated possibilities on a level of performance no longer possible after blast-induced concussion slowed her. Her jump almost failed to reach the moving truck, and it was almost chance that she did not slide off to land in the deadly fire-raked earth below. She sprawled on the fabric for an instant, letting the wet roughness scratch at her cheek. But her education had included exhaustion-drill—training patterns learned while she was deliberately pushed to the verge of blackout, designed to keep her functioning as long as it was physically possible at all. Crawling, she slithered to the roof of the driver's cab and swung down, feet reaching for the running board and left hand for the mirror brace to hold her on the lurching, swaying lip of slick metal.
That seemed to clear her head a little. Enough to see the driver's head turning at last from his fixed concentration on the road and escape; to see the knowledge of death in his widening eyes as she raised the assault rifle one-handed and fired a burst through the door of the cab. His lips shaped a single word: "nein."
The recoil hammered her back, bending her body into an arch and nearly tearing loose the left-hand grip. Then she tossed the weapon through the window and tore the door open, reaching in and heaving the dying German out; pulling herself into the cab with the same motion, hands clamping on the wheel. She took a shaky breath, wrenched it around to avoid a wreck in her path.
"Freya, what's that stink?" the Draka soldier muttered, even as she fumbled with the unfamiliar controls. It was still so hard to think; out to the road, then shoot out the wheels. Grenade down the fuel pipe. Block the road, back to the woods, where was the throttle… Not totally unfamiliar; after all, the autosteamer ha
d been invented in the Domination, the design must be derived… there!
Shit, she thought, slewing the truck across the narrow road. There was a steep dropoff on the other side, this should slow them a little once she popped a charge to make the hulk immovable. Literally. I'm sitting in what the Fritz let out. White Christ have mercy, I'll never live it down!
At that moment, the SS trooper fired his Kar-98 through the back of the cab. It was not aimed; there was no window, and it was the German's last action before blood loss slumped him back onto the bullet-chewed floorboards. Chance directed it better than any skill; the heavy bullet slapped the Draka between the shoulder blades; she pitched forward against the wheel, bounced back against the back rest, then forward again.
But I won, was her last astonished thought. I can't die, I won.
* * * *
Eric felt the German's impact like a flash of white fire across his lower back and pelvis. Then there was white fire, dazzling even though his head was turned away: explosion. Eric's bruised face was driven deeper into the rocky earth; his tongue tasted earth and the tenderness of grass. Fists pounded him, heavy knobby fists with thick shoulders behind them, driven without science but with huge strength into back and shoulders, ringing his head like a clapper inside the metal bell of helmet that protected neck and skull. His conscious mind was a white haze, disconnected sense-impressions flooding in: the breathy grunts of the man on his back as each blow slammed down; the bellows action of his own ribs, flexing and springing back between knuckles and ground; shouts and shots and some other, metallic noise.
Training made him turn. That was a mistake; there was no strength in his arms; the movements that should have speared bladed fingertips into the other's throat and rammed knuckles under his short ribs turned into feeble pawings that merely slowed and tangled the German's roundhouse swings.
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