"Hot work," Heinrich said, propping himself up on his elbows. "Ah, I expected that."
More and more Imperials were filtering up, taking cover behind the piles of dead horses and men, working around the edges of the Land regiment. Steam hissed from the safety cap on the top of the jacket of the machine gun in front of the knoll; a Protege soldier rose to fetch more water and pitched back with a grunt like a man belly-punched, curling around the wound in his stomach. He sprawled open-eyed after a second's heel-drumming spasm, and another rose to take his place. The Chosen gunner wrapped her hand in a cloth and unscrewed the cap. Boiling water heaved upward and pattered down on the thirsty soil, disappearing instantly and leaving only a stain that looked exactly like that left by the soldiers blood. Soldiers poured their canteens into the weapon's thirsty maw, and the gunner took the opportunity to switch barrels.
"Sir! Hauptman Fedrof reports enemy moving to our left in force-several thousand of them. Infantry, with guns in support."
Jeffrey saw Heinrich frown, then unconsciously look behind to where the supports would be coming from. . if they came.
"Move one company of the reserve to the left. Refuse the flank, pull back a little to that irrigation ditch and laneway. Tell the mortars to fire in support on request. And Fahnrich Klinghoffer, get me a report on our ammunition reserves."
"Hot work," Jeffrey said.
* * *
"Watch it!" John barked involuntarily as the left wheels of his car nearly went into the ditch.
The refugees were swarming on both sides of the road, trampling through the maize fields on both sides and gardens. Every once and a while they surged uncontrollably back onto the roadway, blocking the westbound troops in an inextricable snarl of handcarts, two- and four-wheeled oxcarts, mule-drawn military supply wagons, guns, limbers. .
"Take the turnoff up ahead," he said, as the vehicle inched by a stalled sixteen-pounder field gun.
The gun had a six-horse hitch, with a trooper riding on the off horse of every pair. They looked at him with incurious eyes, glazed with fatigue, bloodshot in stubbled, dirt-caked faces. The horses' heads drooped likewise, lips blowing out in weary resignation. From the looks of them, the men had already been in action, and somebody had gotten this column organized and heading back towards the fight. For that matter, there were plenty of Imperial soldiers in the vast shapeless mob of refugees heading eastward away from the fighting-some in uniform and carrying their weapons, others shambling along in bits and pieces of battledress, a few bandaged, most not.
The car crept along the column, the driver squeezing the bulb of the horn every few feet, heading west and towards the blood-red clouds of sunset. It was risky-the chances of meeting an officer who wasn't particularly impressed with the son-in-law of the war minister increased with every day, and a car was valuable, even one with hoof-marks in the bodywork.
Better than going the other way. When he was heading away from the fighting, the refugees kept trying to get aboard. It was really bad when the mothers held up their children; a few had even tried to toss the infants into the car.
They turned up a farm lane, over a low hill that hid them from the road, past the encampments of the refugees; some were lighting fires, others simply collapsing where they stood. The sun was dropping below the horizon, light turning purple, throwing long shadows from the grain-ricks across the stubblefields. The lane turned down by a shallow streambed, into a hollow fringed with trees. An old farmhouse stood there, the sort of thing a very well-to-do peasant farmer would have, built of ashlar limestone blocks, with four rooms and a kitchen. Outbuildings stood around a walled courtyard at the back; a big dog came up barking and snarling as the car pulled into the stretch of graveled dirt in front of the house.
Two men followed it, both carrying shotguns. One shone a bull's-eye lantern in John's face.
"You are?" the man behind the lantern said.
"John Hosten," he said.
"Arturo Bianci," the man with the lantern said. His hand was firm and callused, a workingman's grip. "Come."
They went into the farmhouse, through a hallway and into the kitchen; there was a big fireplace in one end, with a tile stove built into the side, and a kerosene lantern hanging from a rafter. Strings of garlic and onions and chilies hung also; hams in sacks, slabs of dried fish scenting the air; there were copper pans on the walls. Four men and a woman greeted him.
"No more names," John said, sitting at the plank table. "This group is big enough as it is, by the way."
Silence fell as the woman put a plate before him: sliced tomatoes, cured ham, bread, cheese, a mug of watered wine. John picked up a slab of the bread and folded it around some ham; it was an important rite of hospitality, and besides that, meals had been irregular this last week or so.
"We wondered if you could get through, with the refugees," Arturo said slowly, obviously thinking over the implications of John's remark.
"Fools." Unexpectedly, that was the woman; she had Arturo's looks in a feminine version, earthy and strong, but much younger. "Do they think they can run faster than the tedeschi? All they do is block the roads and hamper the army."
John nodded; it was a good point. "They're afraid," he said. "Rightly afraid, although they're doing the wrong thing."
"Not only them," Arturo said. "Our lords and masters have-" he used a local dialect phrase; John thought he identified "sodomy" and "pig," but he wasn't sure. "You think we will lose this war, signore?"
"Yes," John confirmed. "The chances are about-"
92 %, ±3, Center said helpfully.
"— nine to one against you, barring a miracle."
The other men looked at each other, some of them a little pale.
"I don't understand it-we are so many, compared to them. It must be treason!" one said.
"Never attribute to treason or conspiracy what can be accounted for by incompetence and stupidity," John said.
Arturo rubbed a hand over his five o'clock shadow, blue-black and bristly. The sound was like sandpaper.
"I knew we had fallen behind other countries," he said. "I have relatives who moved to Santander, to Chasson City, to work in the factories there. I might have myself, if I had not inherited this land from my father. That was why I joined the Reform party"-somewhat illegal, but not persecuted very stringently-"so that we might have what others do, and not spend every year as our grandfathers did. I did not know we had become so primitive. These devil-machines the Chosen have. ."
"Their organization is more important, their training, their attitude," John said. "They've been planning for this for a long time. Your leadership has what it desires, and just wants to keep things the way they are. The Chosen. . the Chosen are hungry, and eating the whole world wouldn't satisfy them."
Arturo nodded. "All that remains is to decide whether we submit, or fight from the shadows," he said. "We fight. Are we agreed?"
"We are agreed," one of the men said; he was older, and his breeches and floppy jacket were patched. "But I don't know how many others we can convince. They will say, what does it matter who the master is, if you must pay your rent and taxes anyway?"
The woman spoke again. "The Chosen will convince them, better than we."
The men looked at her; she scowled and banged a coffee pot down on one of the metal plates set into the top of the stove.
"It is true," Arturo said. "If half of what I have heard is so, that is true."
"It's probably worse than what you've heard," John said grimly. "The Chosen don't look on you as social inferiors; they look on you as animals, to be milked and sheared as convenient, then slaughtered."