Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  To work. She turned to the serfs. "Relax," she said. "Yo're goin' to be livin' under my roof the rest of your days; get used to talkin' to me. Relax."

  The nun already had, a schooled implacable calm that would waste no energy. Twenty-seven, she thought. Probably too old to ever be completely tamed. A pity; she was brave and intelligent, the most difficult type to train, but the most valuable if you could. Chantal was easier to read and would be easier to handle, in the long run: a fiery type full of hatred. Tight rein and rope, spur her and let her break heart and spirit against it. Tanya considered her more carefully, and called up memories from the inspection at Lyon; sullen pouting mouth, full dark-nippled breasts, tucked-in waist; round buttocks and thighs, and a neatly thatched bush. Lush little Latin bunch of grapes, she thought consideringly; at the best age for her type, too—the bloom went quickly. And just the sort of filly Edward likes to ride. I'll remind him when she's had a few weeks to rest up; a little regular tuppin' and a few babies could be just what's needed to get her tamed down and docile.

  "Well," she said. "Jules here understands the workin's well enough; just doesn't have the energy for it. He'll stay to show you the books for a week or two; an' yo' can come to me or Mastah Edward with problems. Here."

  She walked to one side of the room, where bamboo-framed maps were hinged along one edge to the wall, and began flipping through them like a deck of cards.

  "These are overhead maps of the plantation, done up from aerial photographs an' the old French survey-maps; shows all the field-boundaries, crops, buildin's, an' so forth. An' this"—she swung open the stack to expose one in the middle—"is how it'll look in fifteen years, when we've finished. The ones in between are year-by-year plans for the alterations." They clicked by, movement like a time-exposure photograph. Fields flowed into each other, and new hedgerows ringed them, arranged into a simpler pattern of larger plots. Internal roads snaked out from the manor and its dependencies; watering-ponds and stock dams; the scatter of farmsteads and hamlets vanished, consolidated into a large village to the southeast of the Great House, except for a tiny clump at the north end of the map, where low hills marked the boundary of the property.

  "Bourgueil," she said. "That's the old winery an' the caves they used for storage. Those hillsides are the best fo' quality vines."

  A quick riffle past the maps. "So, with these we can tell what's to be planted, where, at any given time, what buildin' projects are to be completed when, an' so forth. Now, these show the manor, Quarters and outbuildings; as they were when we arrived, then at six-month intervals, up to completion in five years or so. Thisshere is an overall view of the Loire Valley, from Decize to the sea, markin' the boundaries of the plantations and where the towns and cities will be." It was an emptier landscape than the present, the scatter of smaller towns gone, the woods spreading farther.

  "Over here," she continued, "are the personnel files. Complete personal records on every serf, updated monthly or as needed. This set with the combination lock contains the passes serfs have't carry off the property. These are the supply ledgers…"

  Marya sat and strained to absorb the information; it would be best to be efficient. The accounting system was well organized, easy to understand. Very routinized, designed to function almost automatically once the decision-makers had set a policy.

  "… an' these-here are the inflow-outflow ledgers," Tanya concluded. "Mostly from the Landholders' League, that's the cooperative agency; we send them bulk produce, they process an' market it; we order supplies an' tools, they deliver. Debits an' credits're automatic 'n itemized, sent round from League regional HQ in Tours. Over time, we'll most likely have other outlets; estate-bottled wine an' fresh produce direct to restaurants an' suchlike." She sketched in the other equipment: the photo-reducer to prepare microfilms for storage and the appropriate governmental agencies, the teleprinter, the brand-new photocopier.

  "Now," Tanya said, "I, my husband, or one of the overseers will generally be spendin' a few hours a day in here, but you two'll be doin' most of the routine work—I may buy another clerk if it piles up. The headman down in the Quarters has two bookkeepin' staff of his own, an' they'll be coordinatin' with you. Detailed check by one of us once a week, and the League audit is twice yearly. You work eight to seven, half-hour for lunch—it'll be brought up—five days and a half-day Saturday with the usual holidays; as long as the work gets done, we're pretty relaxed."

  A smile. "If it doesn't get done, there are punishments rangin' from bendin' bare-ass over a chair fo' a few licks with a belt to things yo'd really rather not know about." She pointed a finger at Marya. "Yo're in charge; that makes yo' respons'ble for errors by Chantal as well as yore own. Chantal, remember your sister; both of you, remember that you could be scullions or fieldhands." A warmer expression. "That's the pain side; if things go well, plenty of, hmmmm, incentives. Not least, smooth-runnin' plantation easier for everybody, serf an' free alike."

  As she turned to go, Marya spoke.

  "Mistress?" The Draka stopped glanced her way. "What is that?" She pointed; a plinth, waist-high, covered with a white cloth.

  "Ah, one of mah attempts at sculpture. 'Bout finished."

  The Draka pulled the cloth free. Beneath was the model of a tank, about a meter long. Painted clay, the nun assumed, although it had the authentic dull-grey and mottle sheen of armor plate in camouflage markings. A Hond III, a squarish rectangle of sloped plates with a huge oblong cast turret—one of the midwar models, judging by the sawtooth skirting plates protecting the suspension; a commander's craft, from the extra whip antennae bobbing above the turret. A very good model. Detailed down to the individual shells in the ammunition belts of the machine-gun pod over the commander's hatch, cool brass gleams. And it showed combat damage, one of the forward track-guards twisted and torn, gouges, mud and dust spatters on the unit insignia of the Archonal Guard, and…

  The nun's face went white with the shock of recognition. Tanya's was fluid with surprise for an instant, and then she stepped forward to pull off the Pole's kerchief. Snapping it through the air she held it over Marya's head, imitating the wimple of a nun's habit.

  "Almighty Thor," she said wonderingly, shaking her head. Marya stared at her with mute horror. "We've met. Ahhh… '43, late summer. That village—"

  Chapter Eight

  … very different from the precocious—perhaps even precious—early landscapes of the Syrian Meditations exhibition, with their brilliantly executed but rather stereotyped pastoral and Classical echoes. Better even than the Alexandra Portraits: the delicate treatment and range of color could scarcely be bettered, but the subject— young love—is a strictly limited one. Shadow of the Horsemen represents a new departure. Bombarded as we are with works on the theme of the Eurasian War this may seem a paradox. But the Shadows collection is sui generis, and likely to remain so amid the flood of painterly veterans that threatens to drown the galleries for the next generation. The flat, static—one might almost say hieratic— treatment the avoidance of the usual pre-coded combat themes with their pre-packaged emotional responses, all argue that something important has happened to this artist For the most part the treatment of color also lacks the lushness characteristic of the Portraits and Meditations groups, and the compositions themselves are less consciously structural… a second Archon's Prize for von Shrakenberg is definitely in order, if only to remind our other painters that realism does not necessarily mean a conventional approach.

  Shadow Of The Horsemen:

  A Review

  By Phyrros Mckenzie

  Central Gallery Magazine

  Archona Press. 1947

  KALOWICEMAZOVIA,

  GOVERNMENT-GENERAL OF POLANDAUGUST 17, 1943.

  Warsaw was burning. The cone of it was a ruddy glow on the darkening eastern horizon, matching the huge copper disk of the setting sun in the west. Even at this distance the firestorm gave a smoky taste to the wind, a hint of that sulfur-tinged darkness, the taste of death. The flicker
and rumble of artillery were feint, no louder than the hiss of grainstalks against the steel flanks of the Draka armor hull-down on the low crest overlooking the village. Four dozen of them, squat massive shapes in mottled green-yellow camouflage paint with the mailed-fist symbol of the Archonal Guard Legion stenciled on their bows. Their engines thrummed, the roar of free-piston gas generators blending with the power-turbine's hum. Air quivered over the exhaust-baffles on their rear decks, and the whip-antennae swayed erratically in the breeze.

  Loki take the heat, Cohortarch Tanya von Shrakenberg thought, and rubbed a gloved hand over the wet skin of her neck. She glanced back over the rear of the command tank, through the narrow gap left by the hatch cover poised over her head like a steel mushroom-cap.

  Behind them trails stretched two kilometers south to the woodlot where the unit had last paused. Broad parallel stripes where the treads had pulped grain and stalk into the earth, arcs and circles across the rolling plain showing where the fighting vehicles had maneuvered. Ten minutes of combat, and the taste of it was still in her mouth, salt and iron and copper, acid in the stomach, ache in the muscles of neck and back. Training helped, prahna-breathing and muscle control, the simple knowledge that the job had to be done whatever the state of your emotions… and still, every time, you knew a little something was gone. A little of whatever it was that kept you functioning while you waited for the armor to buckle under the brute impact of an antitank shell and send spalls flying like supersonic buzzsaws, for the millisecond flame of exploding ammunition, for the slower trickle of burning fuel as you hammered at a jammed hatch. You survived, and lost a little of yourself from within, and knew that one day if you kept coming the well would be dry…

  The German armor was scattered back there among the ruined corn, burning with the sullen flicker of diesel oil in circles of blackened straw, or frozen with only the narrow entry hole of a tungsten-carbide penetrator rod to show reason for immobility. The pakfront of Fritz antitank guns had been dug in along the crest of this… not really a ridge, more a gentle swelling.

  The Cohortarch shook her head; they were expecting to lie low as their armor pulled back past them to the village, then hit the Draka tanks as they pursued, no doubt. A good trick, but one she had met before; the Fritz were like that, fine tacticians but a little inflexible. Artillery to suppress the antitank, then a slow advance to force the Fritz armor to engage at ranges where Draka APDS shot would punch through German tanks the long way. Bodies lay hidden in the tall grain or draped around shattered half-tracks; her infantry had hunted them down from the turrets and firing-ports of their combat carriers. Two Draka Hond III's remained, victims of shells fired point-blank through the thinner armor of flank and rear, the blanket-shrouded corpses of their crews showing victory could kill you as finally as defeat.

  Moisture trickled out of the sodden lining of the communications helmet as Tanya turned from the wreckage to her rear and made a slow scan of the wheatfield ahead.

  The thick armor of a Hond soaked up heat like a sponge under direct sunlight. There was a lot of that in the Polish summer, and she would swear firing the main gun racked up another five degrees with every round. The ventilation fans continued their losing battle; the Baalbeck Belle had been buttoned up for more than ten hours, in the line for over a month with scant time for anything but essential maintenance. The inside of the tank was heavy with the smells: lubricant, burnt propellant and scorched metal, old sweat; an empty shell-casing off in one corner of the turret-basket was half full of urine with a couple of used menstrual pads floating in it… She ignored it, as she ignored the salt-itch of her unwashed uniform and the furry texture of her teeth and the ground-glass feeling under eyelids from too little sleep and too much exposure to abrasive fumes.

  It could be worse, she mused, glancing down at the swivel-mounted map tray on the left arm of her reclining seat, past it into the white-painted gloom of the tank's interior. There was not much open space; the huge breech and recoil-mechanism of the main cannon cut the turret's interior nearly in half, flanked on either side by the coaxial machine-gun and grenade launcher. Dials, gauges and armored conduits snaked over every surface; the gunner lay to the right of her weapon, nearly prone on a crashcouch that raised her head just enough to meet the padded eyepiece of episcope and sights. Behind the gunner's head was the sliding armor plate door that blocked off the ammunition stored in the turret bustle, ready to the hand of the loader on his swivel-seat below.

  Economy of space was the formal term; it took considerable training to move even in a stationary tank without bruising yourself, and there was barely enough open space to tape snapshots of her husband and children below the vision blocks of the commander's cupola. Still, better than the infantry…

  Could be much worse; the Fritz could be using nerve gas again. Which would mean everybody into those damned rubber suits, and that would mean casualties from heat-prostration, even among Draka.

  She rapped the heel of one hand against the pressure plate beneath the vision-blocks, and the hatch cover snapped upright with a sough of hydraulics. The lift-brace-step motion that left her standing on the turret deck with boots astride the hatch was nearly as unconscious as walking, after two years in the field. Wind blew into her face as she raised the field glasses, warm and dry, dusty and much, much cleaner than the air in the tank; the sodden fabric of her overalls turned cool as the moving air let sweat evaporate.

  Still alive, she thought. On a fine summer's day, in the odd alien beauty of the Baltic twilight, like a world seen through amber honey; and it was good to feel the faint living quiver in the sixty-ton bulk beneath the soles of her feet.

  Reliable old bitch, she thought affectionately. The Belle had carried her a long way since the spring of '42. North from the Caucasus, over the Don, west across the Ukraine, through the murderous seesaw winter battles around Lwow. Wherever the Supreme General Staff thought the Domination's best armored Legion was needed… Eighteen months, a long lifetime for a tank, even counting weeks in the Legion repair-shops and a complete rebuild; there were scars and gouges on the sloped plates of the armor, two dozen victory-rings on the thermal cover of the long 120mm cannon, a Fritz skull still wearing its SS helmet on a spike welded to the fume extractor.

  The reverse slope to the village was gentle; this part of the Vistula valley was water-smoothed, sandy alluvial loam. Ripe wheat, a big field of it, fifty or sixty hectares, bordered by a row of poplars; more of those lining the country road or serving as field-boundaries beyond. The grain was overripe, gold turning brown in spots and the overburdened stalks falling in swales, and the field was scattered with wildflowers and thistles.

  Damned waste, a Landholder's corner of her mind noted. Lost if it isn't harvested soon. Three thousand meters to the north a white dirt road crossed the river that wound tree-bordered through the dry summer landscape, and the junction had spawned a straggling farm-town. Trees, unpaved streets lined with fences and gardens and whitewashed log homes, barns, a few brick structures around the flamboyantly painted stone church. Past it… heat haze and dust cut visibility, so did the long shadows of evening; woodlot, could be a manor house, hedges and gardens. Beyond were more fields, patches of forest, vanishing northward into the dusty horizon.

  Hmmmm, question is, was that half-hard feint their idea of a rearguard, or is there more in the village?

  Orders were to consolidate once she met solid resistance. Then the Janissary motorized infantry would pass through and establish a perimeter; the serf soldiers were good enough at positional warfare, and the Citizen Force legions were supposed to save themselves for shock and pursuit. It was a big war, too big to be won in a single rush; you got weaker as you advanced away from your bases, and the enemy stronger as they fell back on theirs. The Fritz had been soundly beaten east of the Vistula, but without Hitler to order senseless last stands they had withdrawn in good order, their mechanized forces screening the foot-infantry's retreat; von Mehr, the German commander of Army Group Ce
nter, was a master at luring an attacker to overextend and then catching him with a backhand stroke. It was time to halt, refit, bring up supplies for the next leap.

  It never paid to underestimate the Fritz tactically, either; Germans tended to fight by the book, but the one they used was excellent, and there could be anything ahead. Tanya tapped a meditative thumb against her lower lip, then returned attention to the hum and crackle of voices in her ears; habit strained it out, unless her call-sign came through. She keyed the intercom circuit:

  "Call to Bugeye, Sparks," she said. A click, a warble, then the sound of an airplane engine.

  "Check, Groundpound to Bugeye, that's negative on movement, over."

  "Affirm'tive, Groundpound. Nary nothin' but dead cows an' that-there wrecked convoy I spotted earlier, over."

  And the convoy had been moving away from here, northwest toward the Fritz hedgehog around Chelmno, when the ground-strike aircraft caught them.

  Worth it, she decided. Plaster the village with HE, cut in with a pincers movement, then halt. The low ground along the river would make a good stopzone. Damn, I wish I wasn't so tired, ran through her. Hard to make proper decisions when body and mind and soul together whined for rest; harder still when the lives of friends and comrades depended on it. No tremendous hurry, she reminded herself. The village looked deserted, no human movement at all, which meant everyone there had already gone to ground. She blinked again, fascinated for a moment by the quality of the light, the wash of a… faded gold? Bright, but aged somehow, as if the view had been worn down by the impress of too many eyes. Tired light.