There was a stony silence, as the leaders of Century A realized that they had just been condemned to death, then a sigh of acceptance. The warcar commander looked slightly abashed.
“ ‘The first casualty of war is always the battle plan,’ ” Eric quoted.
“Well!” the cohortarch concluded cheerfully. “Now to the good news. That air strike on your friends down the road in Pyatigorsk came off splendidly, according to the reports; also, they seeded a good few butterfly mines between thence and this, to muddy the waters, as it were. What’s more, we captured just about everything in the Liebstandarte divisional stores intact, apart from their armor—hence the two antitank pieces. Russian originally, but quite good. And all the other stuff you requested, blessed if I know what that food and so forth is for, but . . .
“Also, they’re putting in a battery of our 107 howitzers just up the way a piece, so you should have artillery support soon, and some Fritz stuff—150s. I brought along the observer. As to ammunition, there’s plenty of 5mm and 15mm, but I’m afraid we’re running a bit short of 85 and 120; we’ve already had an attack in brigade strength with armored support. They’re desperate, you know.”
Aren’t we all, Eric thought and turned to the trucks, absently slapping one fist into his palm as he watched the unloading. It went quickly, aided by the two laborers in the rear of each vehicle; they were of the same breed as the drivers handcuffed to the steering wheels—sullen, flat-faced men in the rags of yellow-brown uniforms.
“Ivans?” he asked.
“Oh, yes; we, hmmm, inherited them from the Fritz.” A snort of laughter. “Perhaps, if we’re to do this often, they and we could set up a common pool?”
Even then, there was a chuckle at the witticism. Eric’s eyes were narrowed in thought. “Surprised you got them to drive that fast,” he said.
“Oh, I made sure that they saw explosives being loaded,” Dale said. He grinned wolfishly: his family might be from the Egyptian provinces, where a veneer of Anglicism was fashionable, but he was Draka to the core. “It probably occurred to them what could happen if we stayed under fire long. ‘Where there’s a whip, there’s a way.’ ”
“And there’s more ways of killing a cat than choking it to death with cream,” Eric replied and turned, pointing to the combat engineer. “Marie, what do you think of this place as a defensive position?”
“With only Century A?” She paused “Bad. These houses, they’re fine against small arms, but not worth jack shit against blast—no structural strength.” Another pause. “Against anybody with artillery, it’s a deathtrap.”
“My sentiments exactly. What about field fortifications?”
“Well, that’s the answer, of course. But we just don’t have the people to do much,,,”
He chopped a hand through the air, his voice growing staccato with excitement. “What if you had a thousand or so laborers?”
“Oh, completely different, then we could . . . you mean the natives? Doubt we could get much out of them in time to be worthwhile.”
“Wait a second. And stick around, Dale. I need that devious brain of yours. All right.” Eric turned from his officers. His finger stabbed at the Circassian. “Old one, how many are your people? Are they hungry?”
The native straightened, met gray eyes colder than the snows of Elbruz, and did not flinch. “We are two thousand, where once there were many. Lord, kill us if you must, but do not mock us! Hungry? We have been hungry since the infidel Georgian pig Stalin—” he spat “—took our land, our sheep, our cattle, for the Kholkohz, the collective; sent our bread and meat and fruit to feed cities we never saw.” The dead voice of exhaustion swelled, took on passion. “Then the Germanski war began. He took our seed corn and our young men—those that did not flee to the mountain. This they called desertion, the NKVD, the Chekists, they killed many, many. What is it to us if the infidels slay one another? Should we love the Russki, that in the days of the White Tzar they did to us what the Germanski would do to them? Should we love the godless dog Stalin, who took from us even what the Tzars left us—freedom to worship Allah?”
He shook a fist. “When the Germanski came, many thought we would be free at last; the soldiers of the gray coats gave us back our mosque that the Chekists had made a place of abomination. I hoped that God had sent us better masters, at least. Then the Germanski of the lightning came and took power over us—” he drew the runic symbol of the SS, and spat again “—and where the Russki had beaten us with whips, they were a knout of steel. They are mad! They would kill and kill until they dwell alone in the earth!”
He crossed his arms. “We are not hungry, lord. We are starving; our children die. And now we have not enough to live until the harvest, even if we make soup of bark—not unless we eat each other. What is my life to me, if I will not live to see my grandson become a man? Kill us if you will; thus we may gain Paradise. We have already seen hell—it is home to us.”
Eric smiled like a wolf, but when he spoke his voice was almost gentle. “Old man, I will not slay your people; I will feed them. Not from any love, but from my own need. Listen well. We and the Germanski will do battle here; we and they are the mill, and your people will be as the grain between us. Of this village, not one stone will stand upon another. Hear me. If all those of your people who can dig and lift will work for one day, the others and the children may leave, with as much food as they can carry.
“If they labor well, and if twenty young men who are hunters and know the paths and secret places of the wood stay to guide my soldiers, then by my father’s name and my God, if I have the victory, I will leave enough food for all your people until the winter—also cloth and tools.”
Much good may they do you once the Security Directorate arrives, his mind added silently. Still, the offer was honest as far as it went. The Domination of the Draka demanded obedience; its serfs’ religion was a matter of total indifference, and a dead body was useful only for fertilizer, for which guano was much cheaper.
The Circassian patriarch had not wept under threat of death; now he nodded and hid his face in a fold of the ragged kaftan.
“Plan,” Eric snapped. The tetrarchy commanders and the visiting cohortarch had their notebooks ready. There was silence, except for the scrunch of the commander’s soft-treaded boots on the gritty stone of the square. “We have to hold this town to hold the road, but it’s a deathtrap.
Look at how we took it. Marie, I just secured you about 1,500 willing laborers; also some guides who know the way through that temperate-zone jungle out on the slopes. Over to you.”
She stood, thoughtful, then looked at the crude map of the village, around at the houses. She picked up a piece of charcoal, walked to the wall and began to sketch.
“The houses’re fine protection from small arms, as I said, but too vulnerable to blast. So. We use that.”
She began drawing on a stucco wall. “Look, here at the north end, where the highway enters the town. A lane at right angles to it on both sides, then a row of houses butting wall to wall. We’ll take the timber from the Fritz stores, some of it, whatever else we can find—corrugated iron would be perfect—and build a shelter right through on both sides, and knock out the connecting walls. Then we blow the houses down on both; knock firing ports out to command the highway. Those Fritz-Ivan 76.2mm antitank, they can be manhandled—you can switch firing positions under cover, with four feet of rock for protection. Couple of the 15mms in there, too.”
The charcoal revealed, in diagrams, a schematic of the village. Her voice raced, jumping, ideas coalescing into reality.