Rosenblum, his sniper rifle slung, stood on the deck of the grounded tenar. “We’ve got a live one here,” he announced, unslinging the rifle. “Firing one round.”
“Wait,” ordered Benjamin, not quite certain as to why he hesitated. Possibly he just wanted to see one of the hated invaders in agony. He threaded his way among the mostly still-prostrate Poles; then joined the sergeant at the alien’s sled.
Looking down he saw a badly, almost certainly mortally, wounded God King, leaking its life’s blood out onto the deck. The alien moaned, eyes open but poorly focused. From somewhere on the sled itself came the chittering, squealing, snarling and grunting sounds Benjamin presumed to be the aliens’ tongue.
“Pity the creature doesn’t speak Hebrew, or we Posleen,” Rosenblum observed.
At that the tenar’s grunting and squealing redoubled for something over a minute. When it subsided the machine announced, “I can now.”
It was too late, and the exhaustion of combat too profound, for Benjamin to be surprised at this. It had been a war of wonders all along, after all.
Instead he asked of the alien machine, “What is this one saying?”
“The philosopher Meeringon is asking you in the name of the Path and the Way to end his suffering.”
“Philosopher?” Benjamin queried. “Ah, never mind.” He thought for a minute or two before continuing, “Tell this one we will grant his request… for a price.”
The Israeli waited while the machine translated. “’The demand of price for boon is within the Way,’ Meeringon says.”
“Good. Ask Meeringon, ‘Why?’”
The body of the mercifully killed God King cooled beside the tenar; Benjamin had been as good as his word.
“Go back to the boat,” he ordered Rosenblum. “The machine says it will carry you without problem. Once there use the boat to get to the friendly side. Don’t risk trying to cross on this machine; they’ll blast you out of the sky on sight. When you get there, find someone higher up than me. Pass the word of what the Posleen have in store. Set up a retrieval for these civilians if you possibly can. We should be along in a couple of days.”
“Sir, you really should be going, not me. You can explain this better.”
Benjamin took a look at Maria and her mother, then swept his gaze across the other Poles. “Sometimes, Sergeant, one really must lead from the rear. Now go.”
Just my fucking luck, thought Rosenblum, standing in the freezing fog in a trench on the Niesse’s western bank. Just my luck to run into these fucks. Though he shared the basis of the uniform with the German SS, he did not share a language and felt an almost genetic hatred of them.
Still, he had to admit the bastards were polite, sharing their food and cigarettes with the half-frozen Jew with the Mogen David on his collar rather than their own Sigrunen. Another SS-wearing man entered the trench. The Germans seemed both pleased and anxious to see the man appear from the fog.
Thus, unable to communicate with the Germans, Rosenblum was surprised when he heard the new arrival say, in perfect Hebrew with just a trace of accent, “My name is Colonel Hans Brasche, Sergeant. What news have you from the other side?”
Interlude
All along the front the fighting had died down. Only at the river’s edge in Mainz was there any appreciable combat action, a steady stream of reinforcing men and aliens butchering each other among the ruins. In part this was due to separation of the combatants by the River Rhine’s broad swift stream. More of it was due to simple exhaustion, and the gathering of what strength remained for the final battle.
On the west bank, the Posleen put much of their strength into building simple rafts of wood to be towed across by the tenar of their God Kings. Along the eastern bank, the Germans and what remained of European forces under their command worked frantically in the winter-frozen soil to create a new defense in depth for the anticipated assault.
On the other side of Mainz from the river, thresh and captured threshkreen were gathered in a mass. All along the Rhine, smaller groupings of thresh were gathered outside of artillery or patroling range, one group behind each planned crossing point.
Only three bridges remained undestroyed over the great river. To the north stood one, guarded by the fortress Ro’moloristen called, after the human practice, “Eben Emael.” To the south, at the newly German again city of Strasburg, old fortresses held the People at bay. In the center, at Mainz where human and Posleen remained locked in a death grip, the bridges also stood.
Ro’moloristen had gifted his chieftain with a different stratagem for each.
Chapter 17
Headquarters, Commander in Chief-West, Wiesbaden, Germany, 1 February 2008
The twenty-year-old-appearing Mühlenkampf did not quite catch the self-imposed irony. Ten years ago, he thought, selling used cars at the sprightly age of ninety-eight, I would have enjoyed this. Now I am just too old.
For the word had come down, from the Kanzler through his chief of staff, Generalfeldmarschall Kurt Seydlitz, that the former CiNC-West was deposed and that he, Mühlenkampf, was to relinquish command to his own exec and assume control of the battle in the west.
Mühlenkampf, personally, thought this unfair. The former commander had held the Siegfried line inviolate for longer than anyone should have expected. That this defensive belt had ultimately fallen was due to nothing more than the sheer weight of numbers the alien enemy had thrown against it. Further, the new field marshal doubted he — or anyone — could have done any better.
In deference to his new position, Mühlenkampf had relinquished his SS uniform and donned the less ornate but more traditional field gray of the Bundeswehr. Gone were his Sigrunen, gone his black dress.
Well, no matter. My old comrades have their symbols back; their pride, traditions and dignity restored. What does it matter to me? I wore the field gray for many years before I joined das Schwarze Korps.
Rolf, the aide de camp, interrupted Mühlenkampf’s reveries. “Field Marshal, you have an appointment in half an hour, at the field hospital for Charlemagne.”
There were no longer enough French soldiers left to keep the hospital filled. Instead, German wounded were being sent for what care and restoration could be provided. Some wore field gray, others the black of the SS. Isabelle found she did not much see a difference. They bled the same color, the same color as had the French soldiers she had cared for. Some wept with pain while others bit through their own tongues to keep from crying out. Perhaps the black-clad ones wept a tiny bit less, but if so she could not perceive much difference.
The sufferer was the age of her own son, Thomas — fifteen or perhaps sixteen at most. Black clad he was, with a black-and-silver Iron Cross already glittering by his pillow. Below that pillow the boy’s body stopped about two feet short of where it should have.
Some Boche high muckity muck had come by that morning and pinned it by the legless boy. Isabelle had understood not one word that had been spoken, though she had seen the beginnings of tears in the too-young Boche general’s eyes.
She barely understood the semi-intelligible moans of the boy now. Only, “Mutti, mutti,” came through clearly.