—one foot skidded out from underneath her in a patch of blood. The floor slammed into her back, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. She saw lights before her eyes, and knew the knife would come down before she could recover.
"Shto," a cool voice from behind her said. "Ruki verch, Sergei." Then purling Russian syllables, meaningless. A woman's voice, with crowd-mutter behind her. And a very meaningful metallic click—the safety of a pistol being flicked off. The man before her kept his involuntary crouch, and pain-sweat dripped into his thin black beard; he licked blood off his lips as he dropped the knife and put his open hands above his shoulders, speaking in a wheedling tone. The woman's voice cut him off sharply, a sneer in it.
Johanna rolled out of the line of fire and came erect. She stood, slipping the knife back into its sheath as she took a careful step to the side, slowly, hands well out and empty. Turned slowly also, in a position where she could see her opponent as well as the door. She was not going to turn her back on that sort of strength—not until she knew what the score was.
At first the woman in the doorway was nothing but a silhouette, surrounded by sun-dazzle and haze. Then her pupils adjusted, her body lost the quivering knowledge of steel about to slice into vulnerable flesh. Tall, was her first thought; about the Draka's own height. Long straight hair the color of birchwood, gathered in a knot at the side of her head. Open coat, fine soft-tanned sheepskin edged with embroidery and astrakhan, reaching almost to the floor. Pressed-silk blouse, tailored pleated trousers rucked incongruously into muddy German boots a size too large and stuffed with straw. Young, was her next impression. Not much more than the Draka's own age. Pale oval face, high-cheeked in the Slav manner, but not flat. High forehead, eyes like clover-honey, straight nose, full red lips drawn back slightly from even white teeth. Broad shoulders emphasized by the coat; full high breasts above a narrow waist; hips tapering to long dancer's legs…
With a Walther P-38 in one elegantly gloved hand, pointed unwaveringly at the other Russian's face.
Interesting, Johanna mused. That is a seven-hundred-auric item, if I ever saw one. A thought crossed her mind: if they both came through this alive, it would be almost a charitable act to acquire…
The pistol swiveled around to her. Johanna considered the black eye of it, followed up the line of the arm to meet the amber gaze. Then again, no. Definitely not. This is not someone to whom I can imagine saying "lie down and play pony for me." Pity. Lovely mouth, really.
"Valentina Fedorova Budennin," the woman said. "Once of the Linguistic Institute, now of the partisan command, and just out of Pyatigorsk. At your service, although you seem to need less rescuing than Dmitri led me to expect." Astonishingly, she spoke in English, almost without accent except for a crisp British treatment of the vowels. "Air Corps, I see. You may have paid me a very pleasant visit yesterday, then." She smiled, an expression which did not reach her eyes.
"Pilot Officer Johanna von Shrakenberg," the Draka said, keeping the surprise out of her voice. "Believe me, the effort was appreciated. Although," she frowned, "this is the second time today I've survived because somebody assumed I was a harmless idiot. Not complainin' about the results, but it's damned odd."
"Ah." The smile grew wider, but remained something of the lips only. "That would be because you are a woman. I have been relying on men underestimating me because of that for some time; the more fools, they." The Russian woman called over her shoulder. "Ivan!" and a sentence in her own language. A stocky Russian walked in with a Fritz machine pistol over his shoulder and… a Draka field dressing on one side of his face, nobody else used that tint of blue gauze.
To Johanna: 'This will seem odd, but I think I have a man here who knows your brother. We should talk." Her gaze went back to Sergei, backed against the wall, eyes flickering in animal wariness. "After we dispose of some business." The pistol turned back and slammed, deafening in the enclosed space. A black dot appeared between the big Russian's eyes, turning to a glistening red. The impact of his falling shook the floor.
* * * *
It was much later before Ivan and Valentina could talk alone, low-voiced before the fireplace of the hut, ignoring the bodies at their feet.
"Impressive," Ivan said, nodding to the door. Johanna had gone for a tactful walk, while they considered her advice.
"The Draka did not get where they are by accident," Valentina said, seating herself and crossing one leg elegantly over another. "Which leaves the matter of your decision. There are two alternatives: to attack Pyatigorsk while the Germans are occupied, or to strike at the rear of the SS column attempting to clear the pass."
"What do you think we should do, Valentina Fedorova?" Ivan asked, feeling with his tongue for the loose tooth. Truly, it was a little better, and the gums had stopped bleeding. Amazing things, these vitamin pills.
The woman shrugged. "Whatever helps that Draka officer you spoke to; it is our best chance. Finding his sister here," she shrugged. "Well, the truly impossible thing would be a world in which the unlikely never happened."
"Best chance for us, but what of the Revolution? The Party? Russia?"
She turned her head and spat, lofting the gobbet across the room to land on the dead NKVD agent.
"The Revolution and the Party are as dead as that dog. Stalin killed them, but the corpse-lover kept his mother aboveground until Hitler came with a shovel. Do not delude yourself, Ivan Desonovitch, the way that one did."
The partisan commander looked down, fiddling with the strap of his Schmeisser; it was more comfortable than meeting the woman's eyes. "And our people?"
Valentina sighed, rubbing two fingers over her forehead. "The narod, the Russian people… we survived Genghis Khan and the Tatar yoke; we endured the czars, the boyars… we can outlive the Draka, too." She smiled coldly. "My grandmother was a serf; a nobleman in St. Petersburg pledged her for a gambling debt, and bought her back for two carriage horses."
"We could fight them!" He laid an encouraging hand on her shoulder, then snatched it back with a muttered apology as she froze in distaste.
Valentina shook her head. "We fought the Nazis, my friend, because they would not only have enslaved us, they would have killed three-quarters of us first whether we fought or not. I did not lie on my back for that mad dog Hoth for six months without learning something of them! If the Draka win, and we try to fight on here, at first there would be partisans, yes." She paused to kick the dead Sergei and spit again, in his face. "Then only bandits like this dead Cossack pig, preying on their own people because it was easier. In the end, hunted animals, eating roots and each other in the woods until the Draka killed the last one; and our peasants would be glad, if it gave them a chance to work and eat and rear their children without the thatch being burnt above their heads."
She turned on him, and he shrank slightly from the intensity of her. "No, Ivan Desonovitch, we shall retreat because that is the way to work and fight for our people; retreat to the Americans, who will fight the Draka someday, because they must. If there is a hope that our people may be free, that is it." She laughed, chillingly. "Free. For the first time. Everything possible must happen in the end, no?"
Chapter Eighteen
"In the end. I was left with nothing but fading memories and the stereotypes of popular culture to build the father in my head. Yet however tempting, the strutting uniforms and sinister drawls of Hollywood's Draka never seemed enough; cutout shapes against a background of sun-bomb missiles and jets and nuclear submarines prowling the Atlantic. All my life I had been conscious of the layers of consciousness itself: there was the me I had shown to my schoolmates, the me my adoptive parents knew, the surfaces and masks I showed to friends and lovers, the fragments of self that became the characters of my work. There was even a me kept for New York editors, almost as deep as the one I saved for my agent None of them was the me to whom I spoke in darkness, the secret self that said 'I am I.' Yet all of these, roles, masks, fragments, were me to the people who saw them; all
of me. And I was those masks while I wore them; they were… partial things, but not lies. The single thing that has always stood in my memory as the bridge between childhood and maturity, the gap between myself-as-l-am and the young alien whose memories I bear, was the realization that this was as true for others as myself. That was the beginning of all my art and my deepest contact with my father. There was a time when I collected his photograph obsessively: newspaper clippings, from the back-jackets of his books, plastered over the walls of my Manhattan loft Yet it was a line from one of his works that made him real to me. as the images could not 'A man's mind Is a forest at night' Was he the man who had owned and used my mother, and discarded me as an inconvenience? Or the father who loved her. and me enough to risk life and reputation to give me freedom? Both, and neither; we cannot know each other, or ourselves; there is no knowing, only an endless self-discovery, 'often as painful as collisions in the dark, truths rough as bark and sharp as thorns. Knowledge is a journey; when it ends, we die.'"
―Daughter to Darkness: A Life, by Anna von Shrakenberg, Houghton & Stewart, New York. 1964
Village One, Ossetian Military Highway April 17, 1942: 1300 Hours
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH. CRASH— The shells were falling at three-second intervals. The bunker vibrated with every impact, stone and timber groaning as they readjusted under the stress, ears popping in the momentary overpressure. Dust filtered down in clouds that coated mouth and nose and lungs with a dryness that itched; the blue light of the lamp was lost in the clouds, a vague blur to eyes that streamed water, involuntary tears. The wounded satchelman in the corner was breathing slowly, irregularly, each painful effort bubbling and wheezing through the sucking wound in his chest. Eric sneezed, hawked, spat, wiped his eyes on his sleeve and looked about. There were nearly twenty crowded into the room besides the wounded, mostly squatting and leaning on their weapons; one or two praying, more with their eyes shut and wincing as the hammerblows struck the rubble above. More waited, locked in themselves or holding hands.
Sofie knelt by the communications table, fingers working on the field telephone. "Sir, can't raise bunker four, it's not dead, just no answer."
Eric sneezed again. "Wallis! Take a stick and check it out. If Fritz is in, blow the connector passage."
Five troopers rose and pulled their kerchiefs over mouth and nose, filing over to the door. They moved more slowly than they had earlier. Exhaustion, Eric thought. Not surprising; the shelling had started well before first light. An attack at dawn, three more since then, each more desperate than the last. Combat was more exhausting than breaking rock with a sledgehammer; the danger-hormones of the fight-flight reflex drained the reserves down to the cellular level.
And when you got tired, you got slow, you made mistakes. The cellars had saved them, let them move through the village under cover and attack where they chose. But there was only so much you could do against numbers and weight of metal; they were killing ten for one, but there was always a Fritz number eleven. The casualties had been a steady drain, and so had the expenditure of fungibles, ammunition, explosives, rocket-gun shells. That last time, the Fritz had come down the holes after them, hand-to-hand in the dark, rifle butt and bayonet, bush knife and boots and teeth… if there had been a few more of the SS infantry, it would have been all over. The Draka garrison of Village One was running out, out of blood and time and hope.
"Lock and load," Wallis said, and there was a multiple rattle as bolts were drawn back and released. They vanished, heads dipping below the ragged stone lintel, like a sacrificial procession in some ancient rite.
Eric reached for his canteen, trying to think over the noise that hammered like a huge slow heart. The dark closed in; they were listening to that heartbeat from the belly of the beast. The war had become very small, very personal.
Gods and demons, aren't the bastards ever going to run out of ammunition? It was heavy stuff falling —150's and 170's, long-range self-propelled guns. As beyond any countermeasure as weapons mounted on the moon would have been, turning the village above into a kicked-over mound of rubble, raising and tossing and pulverizing the stone. Splinters of steel, splinters of granite, fire and blast; nothing made of flesh could live in it. Just keeping lookouts up there under shelter was costing him, a steady trickle of casualties he could not replace.
There was a stir. Something different, in the private hell they had all come to believe was timeless. It took a moment for the absence to make itself felt; the lungshot sapper had stopped breathing with a final long sigh. After a moment Trooper Fatten released her friend's hand and crawled over, to shut the man's eyes and gently remove the canvas sack of explosives that had been propping up his head and shoulders.
Let something happen, he prayed. Anything.
"Third Tetrarchy reporting—"
He snatched at the handset, jamming a thumb into his left ear to drown out the noise. Third Tetrarchy was holding the trenchline west of the village, or was supposed to be; the connection had been broken an hour ago. There was as much at the other end, but…
"… hold, can't hold; we're being overrun, pulling back to the woods. Stopped the infantry but the tanks are through, no antitank left, they're into the village as well—" The line went dead again.
White Christ have mercy, they're sending the armor in alone through their own shellfire, rammed into him. Brutally dangerous, but it might work, the odds against a round actually hitting a tank were still vanishingly small…
"Up and at "em!" he barked, his finger stabbing out twice. "You two stay, Sofie put it on the wire, all bunkers, everybody move." The Fritz could saturate the village, then bring in sappers to pump the bunkers full of jellied gasoline, or lay charges heavy enough to bury them…
He went through the doorway with an elbow crooked over his mouth to take the worst of the dust; coughed, and felt the ribs stab pain. He was panting, and the breath didn't seem to be doing any good, as if the inside of his lungs had gone hot and stretched and tight, unable to suck the oxygen out of the air. The cellars were dim-dark, full of sharp edges and projections looming up to bruise and cut and snag. Full of running soldiers and the sound of composition-soled boots on gritty stone under the monstrous anger of the guns, sound that shivered in teeth and bone, echoed in the cavity of the lungs. As the survivors of Century A dashed for the remaining pop-up holes, Eric flung himself at the rough timbers of the ladder, running up into the narrow darkness one-handed, the other holding his Holbars by the sling, until…
"Fuck it!" he screamed, voice raw with dust and frustration. There was a section of wooden-board wall toppled over the carefully concealed entrance, and something heavier on that. He let the assault rifle fall to hang by its strap, turned, braced his back against the obstruction and his face against the stones of the wall. Took a deep breath, relaxed, drew into himself. Pushed, pushed until lights flared red behind his closed lids, pushed against the stone and his hatred of the place that held him entrapped.
"God damn!" There was a long yielding slither, and a crunch of breaking oak boards.
Then he was blinking in the light that poured through the hole, coughing again, breathing by willpower against the greater pain in his chest. Rubble had shifted, and the way was clear into what was left of the ground floor of the house. Still a roof overhead, that was good, and the row across the street was almost intact. Flash-crash and he dropped his face into the broken stone, waiting for the last of the shrapnel to ping-ting into harmlessness, then leopard-crawled into the interior of the building. Out here the shellbursts sounded harder, the edges of the sound unblurred. Impact bounced at him, lifting his body and dropping it again on hard-edged ruins. Above him the long timbers that upheld the second story creaked and shifted, their unsupported outer ends sagging further, rock and less identifiable objects hitting and bouncing around him with a patter and snak-snak.
Sunlight was blinding even with the overcast, after the perpetual night of the cellars. He glanced at his watch as the other six followed hi
m and flowed over the uneven rock to the remnant of the roadside wall; there was enough of it to make a decent firing-parapet if nothing killed them from above. 1330 hours. Early afternoon; unbelievable. A flicker of movement from the second-story rooftop opposite; good, the others were in place. Elbows and knees to the low heap of the wall; and—
—the shelling of the long-range heavies stopped.Tank guns still sounded, and the direct-fire assault weapons, the two the Fritz had left. But that was nothing, now; silence rang in his ears, muffled, like cotton wool soaked in warm olive oil. Now he could catch the background: shattered bits of wall and fires burning, mostly, a great pillar of soot-black coming from the next street over. That was where the P-12 had crashed, when the Air Corps came in to give them support against the first wave. The Fritz had 88's and twin-30mm flakpanzers high up the shoulders of the valley; the cloud cover was at five hundred meters, low level attack was suicide. They had come in anyway, with rockets and napalm; one had lost control right above the village, and the explosion had done as much damage as the Fritz shelling. Another fire in the street outside: an SS personnel carrier, simple thing, not much more than a thin steel box on treads; the 15mm slugs from the heavy machine gun had gone through it the long way. It was still burning, in the middle of a round puddle of sooty-orange flame from the ruptured fuel tanks. Probably rendered fat from the crew, too; the screaming had stopped long ago, but he was glad that the dust was cutting off most of the smell. Grit crunched between his teeth and he spat again, black phlegm.
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