The shout bounced off the walls, startling him back to awareness of self. There was a tinkling, a stab of pain in his right hand; he looked down to see the snifter shattered in his grasp, blood trickling about glass shards. He brought his focus back to his father. “I hold you responsible,” he finished softly.
Karl’s eyes held his. Love? What do you know about it—you’re a child. It’s something to be done, not talked about. Aloud: “God’s curse on you, boy; pregnancy isn’t an illness—she had the same midwife who delivered you!” He fought down anger, forced gentleness into his voice. “It happens, Eric; don’t blame it on me because you can’t shout at fate.” Sternly: “Or did you think I told them to hold a pillow over her face? She knew your interests, boy, better than you did; she never stepped beyond her station. Are you saying that I’d kill a von Shrakenberg serf who was blameless, to punish my own child?”
“I say—” Eric began, and stopped. His father’s face was an iron mask, but it had gone white about the nostrils. Something inside him prompted sayitsayitsayit, a hunger to deliver the wound that would hurt beyond bearing, and he closed his lips by sheer force of will. Blood-kin or not, no one called Karl von Shrakenberg a liar to his face. Ever.
“I say that I had better leave. Sir.” He saluted, his fist leaving a smear of blood on the left breast of his uniform tunic, clicked his heels, marched to the door.
Karl felt the rage-strength leave him as the door sighed closed. He sagged back into the chair, leaning on the desk, the old wound sending a lance of agony from hip to spine.
“What happened?” he asked dully. His eyes sought out a framed photograph on the desk—his wife’s, black-bordered. “Oh, Mary, you could have told me what to say, what to do . . . Why did you leave me, my heart? This may be the last time I see him alive—John and—” His head dropped into his hands. “My son, my son!”
Chapter Six
OSSETIAN MILITARY HIGHWAY, SOVIET GEORGIA
APRIL 14, 1942: 0500 HOURS
Eric stood, the steel folding stock of his rifle resting on one hip, looking downslope. The forest was mostly below eye level from the plateau where the paratroops had landed. Black tree limbs twisted in the paling moonlight, glistening with frost granules, the first mist of green from opening buds like a tender illusion trembling before the eyes. Breath smoked white before him; the thin cold air poured into his lungs like a taste of home. Yet these mountains were not his; they were huger, wilder, sharper. To the east across the trough of the pass the peaks caught rosy light, their snowcaps turning blood red before his eyes.
“Right,” he said. The tetrarchy leaders and their seconds were grouped around him, squatting and leaning on their assault rifles. It had taken only a few minutes to uncrate the equipment and form the Century: training, and a common knowledge that defeat and death were one and the same.
“First, two minor miracles. We hit our drop zone right on; so did Cohort, chiliarchy, and legion.” Southward, higher up the slope of the pass, man-made thunder rolled back from the stony walls. “So, they’re engaging the main Fritz units farther up. Should go well, complete strategic surprise. Also, the communications are all working right for once.”
There were appreciative murmurs. Vacuum tubes and parachutes simply went ill together, and fragile radios had cost the experimental paratroop arm dearly earlier in the war. Experience was beginning to pay off.
“Which is all to the good; we aren’t fighting Italians anymore. In fact, there seem to be complete formed units up there, not just the communications and engineering personnel we were hoping for. Now for the rest of it. The gliders with the light armor came down perfectly—right into a ravine. Chiliarchy HQ says they may be able to put a rubble ramp down for some of it; take a day, at least.” There was a collective wince. He went on: “No help for it. Right.”
He pointed downslope; they were high enough to catch glimpses of the road over treetops still black in the false dawn. Morning had brought out the birds, and a trilling chorus was starting up. The troopers waited quietly below, a few smoking or talking softly, most silent.
“That track, believe it or not, is the Ossetian Military Highway, half the road net over the mountains.” He gestured southward with his mapboard. “The rest of the legion is up there, fighting their way into Kutaisi and points back toward us.”
His hand cut the air to the north. “Down there, the Fritz armor is regrouping around Pyatigorsk. We’re not sure exactly what units—the Intelligence network is shot to hell since the Fritz got here and started liquidating anything that moves—but definitely tank units in strength. If they’re up to form, we should be getting a reaction force pretty damn quick.”
The Centurion’s next gesture was due east, to the unseen S-curve of the two-lane “highway” that hugged the mountain slope on which they stood. “And a kilometer that way is Village One. Dense forest nearly to the road. Stone houses, and a switchback starts there. Our objective. Tom?”
“I head up the road, cross above the village, spread 1st Tetrarchy as a stop force.”
“And don’t let them get past you into the woods. Marie?”
“15mms and the 120mm recoilless along the treeline; mortars back; flamethrower and demolition teams to key off you and move forward in support.”
“Einar, Lisa, John?”
“Left-right concentric, work our way in house-to-house. You coordinate on the rough spots.”
“Correct. Any questions?”
Tetrarch Lisa Telford shifted on her haunches. “What about locals?”
“Ignore them if they’re quiet. Otherwise, expend ’em. Synch watches: 0500 at . . . mark! Go in at 0530, white flare. Nothing more? Good, let’s do it, people, let’s go!”
The Germans in the Circassian village were wary—enough to set sentries hundreds of meters in the woods beyond the fields. Eric stooped over the body, noted the mottled camouflage jacket, glanced at the collar tabs, up at the trooper who stood smiling fondly and wiping his knife on the seat of his trousers.
“Got his paybook?” he snapped.
“Heah y’are, suh.”
Eric riffled through it. “Shit! Waffen-SS, Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler! I was hoping for a logistics unit, or at least line infantry.” The soldier had been nineteen and an Austrian; for a brief instant, the Draka officer wondered if the Caucasus had reminded him of the Tyrol. On impulse, he reached down and closed the staring brown eyes.
With luck, there were ten minutes before the Fritz noticed; they were probably expecting attack from the south. The noise there was peaking, the narrow walls of the pass channeling a rapid chatter of automatic-weapons fire as well as the boom of heavy weapons; that would be the rest of first and second Cohorts . . . or even the legion. Heavy fighting riveted the attention. Even so, the Fritz in the village had an all-around perimeter, for antipartisan defense, if nothing else.
Their CO is probably getting screams for help. They might pull out . . . No, too chancy.
Ducking through thickening underbrush of wild pistachio, he made his way toward the treeline. The sun was well up now, but the mountain beeches wove a canopy fifteen meters above, turning the air to a cool olive gloom. Nearer the edge of the woods, sunlight allowed more growth and the thicker timber had been logged off; there were thickets of saplings laced together with wild grapevines and witch hazel and huge clumps of wild rhododendron.
He dropped to his belly and leopard-crawled forward. The support teams were setting up, manhandling the tripod mounts of the heavy 15mm machine guns into position, the long, slender, fluted barrels snaking out of improvised nests of rock and bush. The heavy snick of oiled metal sounded as the bolts were pulled back. The three 120mm recoilless rifles were close behind, wrestled through by sheer strength and awkwardness; working parties clearing the way with bush knives, others following, bent under loads of the heavy perforated-shell ammunition. The infantry spread out, shedding their marching packs for combat load.