The Domination

Chapter Seventeen

NORTH CAUCASUS, NEAR PYATIGORSK

APRIL 14, 1942: 0800 HOURS

Johanna blinked. I’m alive, she thought. Fuckin’ odd, that.

There was not much pain, no more than after a fall from a horse or surfboard, apart from a fierce ache in her neck. But there was no desire to move anything, and she was hot.

She blinked again, and now things came into focus behind the blue tint of her face shield. The wreck of the Lover’s Bite was pitched forward, down thirty degrees at the nose over some declivity in the ploughed field. She was hanging limp in the safety harness, only her buttocks and thighs in contact with the seat. Her view showed a strip of canopy with blue sky beyond it, the instrument panel, the joystick flopping loosely between her knees. And her feet, resting in a pool of fuel that was up to her ankles where they rested on the forward bulkhead by the control pedals. The stink of the fuel was overwhelming; she coughed weakly, and felt the beginnings of the savage headache one got from breathing too much of the stuff.

Flames licked at the corner of her vision. She swiveled an eye, to see the port wing fully involved, roaring white and orange flames trailing dirty black smoke backward as a steady south wind whipped at it. The engine was a red-metal glow in the center of it, and . . . yes, the plane was slightly canted down to that direction, that was lucky, the fuel would be draining into the flames and not away from it.

Feeling returned; fear. She was sitting in a firebomb, in a pool of high-octane, surrounded by an explosive fuel-air mixture. Probably no more than seconds before it went.

Got to get out, she thought muzzily. Her left hand fumbled at a panel whose heat she could feel even through her gloves, looped through the carrying strap of the survival package. Her right was at her shoulder, pawing at the release catch of her harness. Good, she thought. It opened, and her body fell, head slamming into the instrument panel.

* * *

Consciousness returned with a slam against her ear and a draft of incredible coolness. A hand reached down and lifted the helmet from her head.

Voices speaking, as she was lifted from the cockpit; in German, blurred by a fire that roared more loudly as the canopy slid back. She felt disconnected, hearing and thought functioning but slipping away when she tried to focus, as if her mind were a screw with the thread stripped.

“The pilot’s alive . . . Mary Mother, it’s a girl!” A young man, very young. Bavarian, from the sound of his voice; a thorough knowledge of German was a family tradition among the von Shrakenbergs.

Girl, hell, Johanna thought muzzily. She was new enough to adulthood to be touchy about it. Two years since I passed eighteen.

“Quick, get her out, this thing’s ready to blow.” An older voice, darker somehow, tired. Plattdeutsch accent, she noted no pf or ss sounds.

“I can’t—her hand’s tangled in something. A box.”

“Bring it, there may be documents.” That would be her survival package, rations and map, machine pistol and ammunition.

The cold air brought her back to full awareness, but she let herself fall limp, with eyes closed. The younger man braced a boot on either side of the cockpit, put his hands beneath her armpits, and lifted. She was an awkward burden, and the man on the ground grunted in surprise as his comrade handed her down and he took the weight across his shoulder. She was slim but solid, and muscle is denser than fat. He gave a toss to settle her more comfortably, and she could feel the strength in his back and the arm around her waist, smell the old sweat and cologne scent. Her stomach heaved, and she controlled it with an effort that brought beads of sweat to her forehead. He might suspect I was conscious if I puked down his back. She had her “passport” pill, but one could always die.

The German carried her some distance, perhaps two hundred meters; she could see his jackboots through slitted lids, tracking through the field, leaving prints in the sticky brown-black clay. Camouflage jacket, that meant SS. The hobnails went rutch on an occasional stone, slutch as they pulled free of the earth; the soldier was breathing easily as he laid her down on the muddy ground beside the wheels of some sort of vehicle. Not roughly, but without any particular gentleness; then his boots vanished, and she could hear them climbing into the . . . it must be a field car of some sort; her head had rolled toward it, and she could see the running board dip and sway under the man’s weight.

The other soldier hurried up, panting, his rifle in one hand and the sheet-metal box of her survival kit in the other. Johanna could feel him lean the weapon against the vehicle and begin to speak. Then there was a crashing bang, followed by a huge muffled thump and a wave of heat. Light flashed against the side of the scout car, and heat like lying too close to the fireplace, and a piece of flaming wreckage sliced into the dirt in front of the wheels.

“Just made it,” the man in the car said. Johanna let her eyes flutter open, wishing they had taken the trouble to find a dry spot; she could feel the thin mud soaking through her flight suit, and the wind was chill when it gusted away from the pyre of her aircraft. Sadness ran through her for a moment. It had been a beautiful ship . . .

It was a tool, and tools can be replaced, she chided herself. The young soldier was kneeling and leaning over her, face still a little pale as he turned back from the blaze to his left. That might have been him . . . Nineteen, she thought. Round freckled face, dark-hazel eyes and brown hair, still a trace of puppy fat. A concerned frown as he raised her head in one hand and brought a canteen to her lips. She groaned realistically and rolled her head before accepting the drink; the water was tepid and stale from the metal container, and tasted wonderful.

That let her see his companion. Another dish of kebob entirely, she thought with a slight chill. Stocky and flat-featured, cropped ash-blond hair over a tanned square face, in his mid-twenties but looking older. He was standing in the bed of the car, a little open-topped amphibian with balloon wheels, a kubelwagon, keeping an easy all-corners watch. The campaign ribbons he was wearing on the faded and much-laundered field tunic told a good deal; the way he moved and held the Schmeisser across his chest told more. Most of all the eyes, as he glanced incuriously her way: flat, empty, dispassionate. Familiar, veteran’s eyes, the thousand-meter stare, she had been seeing it now and again all her life and it always meant someone to watch out for. People to whom killing and dying were neither very important any more . . .

“Ach,” the young SS trooper was saying, “she’s just a young maiden—”

Not since I was fifteen, or thirteen if you count girls, she thought, wincing in half-pretended pain and taking inventory. Good, everything moving. She accepted another sip of the water.

“—and of fine Nordic stock, just look at her, even if they’ve cut that beautiful blond hair so short. And look,” he indicated the name tag sewn over her left breast, “ ‘Johanna von Shrakenberg,’ a German name. What a shame, to be fighting our own stock; and a crime, to expose a potential Aryan mother to danger like this.” He clucked his tongue, tsk-tsking.

Why, you son of a bitch, Johanna thought indignantly as the fingers of her right hand curled inconspicuously to check the hard lump at her wrist. Ignore the one holding her . . . the other SS trooper was keeping up his scan of the countryside around them, eyes scanning from far to near, then moving on to a new sector. They flicked down to her for an incurious second, then back to look for danger.

“Don’t like von types,” he grunted.

Johanna groaned again, and let her eyes come into focus, reaching a hand up to the young Bavarian’s shoulder as if to steady herself. He patted it clumsily, and put away the canteen.

Are these people total idiots? she wondered. The way they were acting . . . Almighty Thor, they hadn’t even searched her . . .

She smiled at the young soldier, and he blushed and grinned in return.

“Do you speak German?” he asked. “Chocolaten?” He began to fumble a package of Swiss bonbons from his breast pocket. Johanna took a deep breath, pushed pain and fear and battering out to the fringes of her mind.

“Perfectly,” she whispered in the same language. “And no, thanks.” He leaned close to hear, her left hand slid the final centimeter to his throat. Thumb and fingers clamped down on the carotid arteries; the soldier made a single hoarse sound as what felt like slender steel rods drove in on either side of his larynx. She jerked forward savagely and he followed in reflex, falling over her on his elbows; otherwise half his throat would have been torn free. Johanna ignored the ugly, queasy popping and rending sensations beneath her fingers; her hands were strong, but surely not strong enough to punch through the neck muscles. She hoped not.

Her right hand flicked. The knife came free of the forearm sheath and slapped into her hand in a single practiced movement, smooth metal over leather rubbed with graphite. Just barely into her palm, her fingers almost dropping the leather-wrapped hilt. She was still groggy; the loss of speed and coordination was frightening.

Damn worse than I thought! went through her as she turned the point in, poised, thrust. The knife was more delicate than the issue model Jamieson tucked into her boot, hand-made by Ildaren of Marrakesh, a slender-edged spike of steel fifteen centimeters long. It slid through the tunic without resistance, through the skin, slanting up under the breastbone and through the diaphragm with a crisp sensation like punching through a drumhead. Up into the heart, razoring it in half, then quarters as she wrenched the weapon back and forth in the wound. The youngster’s face was less than the breadth of a hand from hers, close enough for her to smell the mints on his breath. His eyes and mouth jerked open, shut, open again in perfect circles, like a gaffed fish; she could see the pupils dilating. No sound, even though the tongue worked in the pink cavern of his mouth. Her free hand slipped from his throat to his chest to hold the twitching, juddering body off hers as she wrestled with the knife.

For a moment the fierce internal spasm of the German’s muscles clamped the blade tight but it was narrow and supernally sharp. The steel slid free. With it came a warm rushing tide that flowed over her breasts and stomach, and the seawater smell of blood. The man’s eyes rolled up and glazed as the dropping pressure in his veins starved the brain into unconsciousness. Johanna’s knife hand moved, flipping the blade and taking a new hold on the point, three fingers and a thumb. Her arm moved it under the sheltering corpse above her, her face tracking like a gun turret for the next target.

The other SS panzergrenadier was intent on his surroundings. You did not survive a year on the Eastern Front by being careless, and there were too many clumps of forest within rifle range. Not that a partisan needed trees; they crept through grass or scrub like lice in the seams of a uniform worn too long, almost impossible to exterminate. Alertness was second nature; he could check for movement and breaks in the pattern while thinking of other things. Women, schnapps, how home leave was a waste of time, the front was home now . . . He looked down at his partner’s body, bent over the prisoner’s, giving one last shiver and then going limp. The Draka slut’s eyes were on his over Lothair’s shoulder, fixed and glaring, lips rucked back from her teeth. He frowned. That was not like Lothair; little bastard thought he was Siegfried . . .

He opened his mouth, began to speak. The body was tossed aside, there was a glint of steel . . .

“Lothair, what’re you screwing arou—”

Johanna knew the throw had gone wrong even as she wrenched the dead German’s body aside, using it for leverage as her right arm snapped across and up. The hilt had been touching her left ear; the motion ended with her arm extended toward the standing SS man. Even caught by surprise he was too fast, crouching, turning, the muzzle of his submachine gun coming up in a smooth controlled arc as his words turned into a formless shout of rage. The Draka could see his finger tightening on the trigger as the knife turned, room for four rotations in the five meters between them.

I never trained with a wet knife and gloves! something within her wailed. The position’s wrong, the sun’s behind him, my head hurts, it isn’t fair. Flick-rolling, ignoring the jagged pain that ripped up between her shoulders at the sudden motion, curling her feet beneath her, a no-hold leap with arm outstretched and fingers curled back to strike with the heel of the hand. Impossible. Too slow.

The knife had been aimed at his throat; an eye shot was impossibly risky in the circumstances, the ribs armored the heart, a stab wound in the gut took too long to kill a gunman whose weapon could rip you open. Her own error and the German’s speed placed it just below his pelvis, in the meaty part of the upper thigh near his groin. He twisted; the startled yell of pain and the first pecka-pecka-pecka of the Schmeisser were simultaneous. The aim was thrown off: craters in the mud, chopping into the other SS man’s body in dimples of red and tattered cloth, an impact on her foot that flung her sprawling from the beginnings of her leap. And saved her life; the shots whipcracked the air over her head as her shoulder thudded into the man’s stomach. Pink-ting as rounds punctured the thin metal of the vehicle’s hood and struck something solid beneath.

“Frikken hund!” the German screamed, in rage fueled by pain. His wounded leg slammed the dashboard and buckled, and he pitched on his back, bracing his elbows wide to prevent himself from falling into the narrow well in front of the seats. The knob of the gearshift struck him in the lower back, and for a moment his body dissolved in a liquid flash that seemed to spread through every nerve, a web extending to his finger tips.

Johanna bounced as her torso struck the trooper and the kubelwagon’s door, resilient flesh and metal absorbing her momentum and throwing her back, tuck-rolling as she fell, curling forward to cast her weight against the fall. A quarter of a forward roll and it was a crouch, facing the kubelwagon again and two meters away. No sign of the SS man; he could be out, she could have time to stop and pick up a weapon and finish him. Or the Schmeisser might be rising, about to clear the side of the vehicle and kill her. Training deeper and faster than thought made her decision, and the long muscles of her thighs uncoiled like living springs.

Half a second. That was a long time in personal combat. Her body was parallel to the ground for an instant, and her hands slapped down on the top of the scout car’s door. She pivoted, legs together swinging wide and high over the windscreen—movements etched into her nerves by ten thousand hours of practice in gymnasium and salle d’armes. Legs bend, a quick hard push off her hands, and she was rotating in midair. There was a moment when she seemed to hang suspended, combat adrenaline slowing the instant to a breathless pause, like the endless second at the top of an Immelman or the crest of a roller coaster. She came down on the SS man knees-first as he struggled up on one elbow, eyes wide with shocked surprise.

The breath went out of the soldier with an explosive whuff! as one knee rammed home into the pit of his stomach. Her other came down painfully on the receiver of the Schmeisser, slid; then she was on him, the weapon trapped between their bodies, one of his arms immobilized by the strap. They grappled, snarling, the Draka gouging for the nerve clusters; she could feel the man’s muscles coiling and bunching, forcing him upward from the awkward slump into the gap between seat and dashboard. Johanna arched herself against the panel behind her and pushed him back; one hand fell on the hilt of the knife in his thigh, and she jerked it free. A harsh gasp broke the struggling rasp of his breath, and he bucked in a convulsive twist that left them lying face to face on their sides across the seats. The SS man’s palm slapped onto her wrist as the point of her knife drove for his face.

His right hand, the arm stretched across his body; the outer arm was still trapped at the elbow by the sling of his machine pistol. Useless, he kept the left fist flailing at her hip and ribs in short punishing arcs but the seatback protected her vulnerable spine and kidneys. Johanna’s right arm was free, and she had solid bracing to push against; the German had leverage against him, and his grip on her wrist was reversed, weak, the thumb carrying the whole weight of her arm and body. The knife hung trembling above and between them, a long spike, motionless save for the quiver of locked muscle, slow red drops spilling down on the German’s face. Johanna’s was close enough to catch the spatter, close enough to smell the garlic and stale beer on his breath and the harsh musk of male sweat. To see the eyes widen in surprise as the blade jerked forward a fraction, and hear the quiver in his breath as he halted it again.

Never wrestle with a man: the instructors had told her that often enough. They simply had stronger arms. It didn’t make much difference in block-and-strike fighting—if a blow landed on the right place just hard enough that was all she needed, and if she missed it didn’t matter how hard she punched the air.

She jerked a breath in, clenched down and forced it out with the muscles of the gut, where strength comes from. Felt it flow into her arms, felt her face fill with blood and saw traceries of vein across her eyes.

How many hours at school, swinging the practice bar and the weights, squeezing the hand-spring? Waking stiff and sore despite the saunas and massage, rolling out of bed for the morning set of chin-ups . . .

Her heart beat in her ears. Her left hand forced its way between their bodies; no chance of getting it free for a strike or eye-claw, but . . . Johanna’s thumb forced its way into the sweat-wet warmth of the German’s armpit. Into the nerve cluster where the arm meets the shoulder, just above the beginning of the bicep. Pushed.

Her enemy made a sound, something halfway between a yelp and a snarl. The grip on her wrist was weakening, slipping, the German’s arm bending back, faster as the angle changed and cast the whole strain on his forearm. Johanna wrapped one leg around the man’s and heaved, twisting him onto his back and rising to throw her weight behind the knife. It crept into her sight; first the point, and then the crusted blade itself. Then their hands, his bare and dusted with freckles and sun-bleached hairs like gold wires, her fingers slim and night-black in the thin kidskin gloves; and the pommel of the knife, steel showing through the rawhide binding. She willed force into knife hand and thumb; the German’s eyes widened as the steel touched his throat and he began to buck and twist, frantic; screamed once as all the strength left his arm and the knife punched down.

It had the suddenness of pushing at a stuck door and then having it open all at once; the point went through with no more effort than pushing a lump of meat onto a skewer around the fire at a braai-party. Her weight came down on the hilt and the blade sliced through the thick neck, like the upper blade of a pair of scissors; she collapsed forward into a bright spray of arterial blood, breathed it in with her first sobbing inhalation and threw herself back, sitting on her heels astride the still-quivering body and coughing, retching up and spitting out a mouthful of thin bile. And wiping at the blood: blood on her hands, in her eyes, in her hair, running down in sticky sheets over her face and neck and under her flight suit to join the cooling, tacky-thick mass from the younger German. Blood in her mouth, tasting of iodine and iron and salt; she spat repeatedly as she forced her breathing to go slow and deep, suppressing the instinctive but inefficient panting.

There was a sharp hiss, as the bullet-punctured flashcoil of the kubelwagon’s boiler released its steam and joined the stink of overheated metal to the fecal odor of death. With floodgate abruptness feeling returned, overwhelming the combat concentration. Fear first, cold on the skin, and a tight prickling up from the pubis. She looked down at the dead German; he had been so strong, quick too. She could never have taken two Draka like this, but this one had had potential, far too much.

His head lolled, opening the great flap of muscle and skin, blood still welling. How much blood there was, and tubes and glands showing . . . she glanced away. Physical sensation next: the ache in her head, a dozen minor scratches and bruises where her body had been hammered against projecting metal. They had gone unnoticed in the brief savage fight, but now the abrasions stung with salt sweat and blood, and the bruises ached with a to-the-bone sick feeling that meant they would turn a spectacular green and yellow in a day or two. And one knee was throbbing every time she moved it, where it had come down on the machine pistol when she landed on the Fritz.

Johanna looked down over one shoulder at her foot. No pain there, she thought dazedly. Or at least none of the pain that a real wound would cause, just another ache. One heel of her boot had been torn off, left dangling by a shred of composition rubber. “Never bet on the horses again, woman, you’ve used it all up,” she muttered to herself.

A shout brought her head up, and she clutched at the wheel against a wave of dizziness. A line of figures was trotting toward her from the copse of forest to the east, twenty of them. They were still five hundred meters away, but they looked too ragged to be Fritz, and German troops would have come up in a vehicle, anyway. Russians, then; the situation reports had mentioned partisan activity. They might be hostile, or not. The German yoke had lain heavy here, and she had two very dead Fritz for credentials. On the other hand . . . as the saying went, nobody loved the Draka. Russians least of all, after the bite the Domination had taken out of the lands east of the Caspian back in the Great War; and there had been a generation of border clashes since. A Russian young enough to be in the field now had probably been brought up on antiDraka propaganda and atrocity stories, at least half of which were true.

A heavy, weary annoyance seized her for a moment. “Mother Freya,” she said to herself, scrubbing a forearm over her lips again. “I really don’t want to be here.” Not so much the fear or discomfort, they were bearable, but she definitely did not want to be here in this cold and foreign place, covered in blood and sitting on a corpse. “I want to be home.” Rahksan giving her a massage and a rubdown with Leopard Balm liniment and a cuddle, twelve hours’ sleep, waking up clean and safe in her own bed with her cat on the pillow, with no dangers and nobody telling her what to do . . . “ ‘Nothing’s free, and only the cheaper things can be bought with money’; you never said a truer word, Daddy.”

She stood, feeling the raw breeze as her breathing slowed. One hand clenched on the other. Time enough to move when the shaking stopped.

The partisans came up in a wary half-circle as Johanna finished strapping on the gear from her kit, murmuring and pointing as they reconstructed the brief fight. None of them was pointing a weapon at her: she recognized “Drakansky” among the liquid Slavic syllables, and wary sidelong glances. That was reasonable enough; she must look a sight, with drying blood matted in her hair and smeared about her mouth. From the way some of them leaned into the kubelwagon and then glanced back at her, fingering their necks, she imagined they were speculating that she had torn out the second SS trooper’s throat with her teeth; it was obvious enough that neither of the Germans had been shot. There was awe in the glances, too, at the woman who had climbed out of a burning plane and killed two armed soldiers of the SS elite with her hands . . .

She ignored them with studied nonchalance as she slipped a magazine into the grip of the machine pistol, clipped the bandolier to her belt and tossed back two pills from one of the bottles; aspirin, for the pounding ache between her eyes and the stiff neck and shoulders. Limping as little as her bruised foot and the missing heel would allow, she walked over to the corpse of the young Fritz on the ground. There were already flies, crawling into the gaping wound in his stomach and across dry eyeballs frozen in a look of eternal surprise. The heavy smell of excrement brought the bile to the back of her throat as she flipped his rifle up with a toe and tossed it to a startled Russian.

They never mention the smell of shit in the old stories, she thought, fighting down the vomit. Maybe they had tighter assholes in the days of the sagas. Johanna did not consider herself more squeamish than the average Draka, but there was nothing pleasing about looking at the ruin that had once been a person. Once, with an adolescent’s fascination for horrors, she had gone to the public execution ground in Hyancitha, the market town nearest Oakenwald, to see a serf broken on the wheel and impaled for striking an overseer. Once had been enough.

Enough. She had an audience, and upchucking with buck fever was not the way to impress them. Not that this was the first time she had killed, but aerial combat was a gentleman’s form of killing. You didn’t have to see the results of it; they fell out of the sky in a convenient and sanitary fashion and you went home . . . Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to reach out, grasp the ear, make a quick slash. Her blade was still sharp enough to cut gristle with two drawing strokes . . . The grenade in the German’s boot went into hers, and she walked grimly over to the scout car and repeated the docking process, a little frightfulness was always good for a first impression, or at least so the textbooks said. Cleaning and sheathing the knife, she looked back once; for an outlander, that Fritz had not been bad at all. It was going to be an expensive war if there were more like him.

The partisans had come a little closer; their weapons held ready but not immediately threatening; there were about twenty of them, incredibly filthy, ragged, armed with a motley collection of Russian and Fritz weaponry, with a lean starved ferocity about them. None of them seemed to have blanched at the ear collection; from the look of it, affection for the Fritz in general and the SS in particular was running low in this part of Russia. They stank, with a smell of unwashed filth and the sour odor of men who have not had a good meal in a very long time. She walked toward them, and suddenly it was all she could do not to laugh and skip.

Alive, suddenly bubbled up within her. She felt a giddy rush of sensation, the blood cooling and drying on her chest, mild spring air, bright morning sunlight and the sweet vanilla-green scent of flowering oaks from the copse at the top of the hill ahead of her. Feelings pushing at her control: tears, affection, incredibly a sudden rush of sexual arousal. Freya, what a time to feel horny, she giggled to herself, and then it faded out into a vast well-being. Fighting down the smile that threatened, she walked through the partisan line. Their leader seemed to be a thin man with no front teeth and a long scar where one eye should be; he had been waiting for her to stop and speak, and her steady pace threw him off his mental center, as if he had reached the bottom of a stairwell one tread too soon.

PD, she thought. Psychological dominance, keep ’em off balance. It might not work, but on the other hand . . . Every moment of my life from now on is a bonus. She waited until the partisans had walked after her toward the woods for a good ten meters, until she could sense their leader about to reach out and touch her sleeve. Then she turned, pulled the grenade from her boot, yanked the tab and tossed it up in the air, caught it as the Russians dived flat with a chorus of yells and threw it back toward the Fritz scout car.

Perfect. The throw felt right, a smooth heavy arc that her mind drew to the target. Suddenly, she could do no wrong: the stick grenade pinwheeled through the air and dropped neatly into the kubelwagon’s front seat. She stayed casually erect, hands on hips, tapping a foot to time the fuse. One . . . two . . . three . . .

Whump! Stamped-steel panels blew out of the German car, and the doors sprang open and stayed that way, sprung on their hinges. The body was flung out of the front seat to land a few yards away; flames began to pool and lick beneath it as the fuel tank ruptured. Johanna glanced from it to the shattered, burning framework of the Lover’s Bite. Turnabout’s fair play, she thought, and looked to the figure at her feet. The partisan leader had been holding his tattered fur cap down around his ears with both hands. Unclenching hands and eyes, he looked up at her with the beginnings of anger. The fragments of casing could have been lethal, if the grenade had not fallen into something that absorbed them.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” she asked calmly, narrow blonde head tilted to one side, an eyebrow elegantly arched.

“Crazy devil woman!” he began in an understandable pidgin of that language, then continued more slowly. “Ja, ein wenig.” Yes, a little. Strange things were happening, the partisan thought, since the Draka had attacked the neimetsky. Ivan escaping certain death over in the village on the highway, calling them all together . . . Caution was always wise, and at least there was an opportunity to shovel his intimidating whatever-she-was onto somebody else’s plate. “My name Dmitri Mikhaelovitch Belov.”

“Good,” Johanna answered, with cool friendliness. “Then take me,” she tapped a foot lightly against his shoulder for emphasis, “to your leader.”

It took them most of a day to reach the guerilla rendezvous. Hard marching through increasingly rugged hills, always south toward the snowpeaks of the Caucasus. Forest closed in until they were always under cover, diving for thickets when aircraft snarled by overhead; Johanna watched a dogfight far above with a sudden thick longing that was more than fear and aching feet and the strain of keeping up a show of tireless strength for her escort-captors. Tiny silver shapes, wheeling in the sad blue light of early evening. That was where she belonged . . .

Or with Tom on the sheepskins in front of a crackling fire, she added to herself as they waded through a stream whose iciness spoke of a source in melting glaciers. Thick woods now, huge moss-grown beeches and oaks, a carpet of leaves and spring wildflowers and occasional meadows where the scent grew dizzying. Simple enough to ignore the blisters in boots never designed for walking; her well-fed fitness made the march easy enough. Surprising that these scarecrows could set a pace that pushed her even a little, even still feeling the mild concussion from the crash. But then, anyone who had stayed alive and under arms in Russia for the last year or so was going to be a real survivor type.

A break in the bird chorus warned them to go to earth just after cautiously crossing a rutted “road,” and they laid up in the undergrowth while a column of German half-tracks and armored cars thundered by. There was little chance of discovery, with the speed the Germans were making; also, they seemed to be primarily worried about the sky above them, had probably chosen this trail precisely because it had branches meeting above it.

After that the partisans seemed to relax, an almost subliminal feeling. Their weapons still stayed at the ready, and nobody spoke; the fieldcraft was not up to Draka standards, but far from bad.

Probably the noisy ones all died this last year, she thought. Dmitri tapped her on the shoulder, indicating a cleft in the hill up which they toiled.

“Fritz never come this far,” he whispered. “This place.”

A sharp hail brought them to a halt, and suspicious figures appeared out of the woods around them. The partisans who had found her engaged the others in a lengthy question-and-answer session; this group seemed marginally less ragged and better armed, and it included several women as tough-looking as any of the men. Johanna could puzzle through a simple Russian sentence, if it was written in Roman script; this rapid conversation left her with no more than the odd word—“Drakansky,” “Fritz,” “Aeroplane.” Pretending boredom, she split the cellophane cover on a package of cigarettes, tapped one out, lit it with her American Ronson.

That brought attention—a circle of faces, bearded and desperate; she handed the package to Dmitri. He seemed to be expanding on the subject of the strange Draka, rather like a man who had brought home some dangerous exotic and called his friends around to see the basilisk, the more so as she sensed him a stranger here. Even the ear-cropping devil woman who tore out Fritz throats was not as interesting as tobacco, though; hands mobbed him, clawing. Dmitri shouted, and then used the butt of the rifle to restore order and hand the cigarettes out in halfs and quarters.

“No smoke for long,” he said, puffing happily as they walked toward the steep path up the cliff. “For Fritz only, eh? Always vodka while potatoes is, but no rhakoria. Dasvedanya!”

The hollow inside was crowded despite covering several thousand square meters, and Johanna guessed that this was a gathering of several bands, more than its usual population. Bluffs and dense forest surrounded it and the scattering of lean-tos, tents and brush shelters.

Cooking fires were few and carefully smokeless, but otherwise the scene was a cross between the military and the domestic; there were even a few silent children, if no toddlers. Murmurs ran among them, and a steady stream began moving toward the party walking through the entrance. Johanna’s eyes moved in on a face whose slight smile remained fixed, noting the dug-in machine guns farther upslope, slit trenches and the absence of stench that told of good latrine discipline, several mortars and stacked ammunition, a knocked-down heliograph set . . .

And one solid log-and-stone hut, the door opening to show a bearlike figure with dramatic crossed cartridge belts across a bulging stomach, belt full of daggers, baggy trousers and black astrakhan-wool cap . . . Dmitri snapped a salute, then continued his animated speech to the gathering crowd, full of hand gestures, swooping like planes, teeth worrying an imaginary neck.

Well, if it isn’t Boris the Cossack, Terror of the Steppe, Johanna thought, glancing aside at the hulking figure by the hut. With a slight chill; there was no foolishness in the narrow black eyes. A figure in a patched but recognizable Soviet uniform followed the huge man: pale intelligent face and long thin hands. Green tabs on the collar. NKVD, she thought. Oh, joy.

The big man rumbled a question; his face was round and puffy, but strong with thick red lips. Dmitri answered, then seemed to be arguing; there were murmurs from the crowd around them, until the big man turned on them and roared. That quieted most; when the man with the green tabs spoke, it grew silent enough for Johanna to hear breathing, and the whistling wind through the leaves.

Dmitri turned to her unhappily. “This,” he said indicating the man with the bandoliers, “Sergeant Sergei.” Another rumble from the hulk. “Pardons, Comrade Colonel Sergei Andropovitch Kozin.” A frightened glance. “With . . . helpings-man? Ah, aide, Comrade Blensikov. Comrade Colonel is being our leader—” he used the literal German term, führer, with a slight emphasis “—while our commander, Ivan Yuhnkov, was prisoner of SS. Commander Ivan—” using the Russian word kommandyr “—is becoming here again in charge soon now, has called all First Partisan Brigade to meet him here.”

Johanna pursed her lips, feeling sweat trickle down her flanks from her armpits. Her back crawled with the consciousness of so many about her: wild serfs, strange ones, not domesticated, and armed . . . And these two were not going to be rhinoed that easily. She forced her perceptions into action, to see them as individuals, reading the clues of hands and face and stance. The tool that speaks can also think, she reminded herself. You’re supposed to be more intelligent—outthink them!

It was not comforting. The big one was an animal, and the bug-under-the-rock type a fanatic. From the signs, a smart fanatic. But . . . this was like running down a steep hill. If you kept running, you might fall on your ass; if you tried to stop, you certainly would.

“Tell them,” she said in neutral tones, “that I will speak to this Commander Ivan, when he comes.”

Dmitri translated, his ravaged face becoming even unhappier. “They . . . they saying you talking to them, now, in khutzba, in hut.” He held out his hand. “Gun?”

Too many of them out here, she thought with tight-held control. Brushing him aside, she followed the NKVD officer into the hut, blinking at the contrast between the bright sunlight through the leaves outside and the gloom of the interior. That deepened as the other man filled the door, swung it to behind him with a heavy thud. He did not bother to shoot home the bar.

The interior of the hut smelled rank, like an animal’s den, but with an undertone of clean wood. Johanna breathed deep and slow, needing the oxygen and the prahnu-trained calmness that the rhythmic flexing of her diaphragm produced. It would all depend on . . .

The thin man seized her, hands on her upper arms, thumbs digging into her shoulder blades, trying to make her arch her chest out. She let the muscles go limp under his grip, the shoulders slump. There was no fear now. Ju, went through her. Go with. The big man stepped close, very fast for someone his size; he must be twice her weight easily, and there was plenty of muscle there. A hand clamped painfully on her breast, kneading and twisting; another behind her head, pulling her mouth up to meet his. The smell of him filled her nostrils, strong, like a mule that has been ploughing in the sun. The two men crowded her between them; they must be expecting her to try to kick shins like a child.

Is everybody outside the Domination a complete idiot about immobilizing an enemy? she thought in momentary wonderment. Her arms could not move forward or back to strike . . . and did not need to. Instead her elbows punched out, away from her sides. The NKVD officer found his grip slipping; instinctively raising his own stance, he found himself pushing down on her shoulders rather than gripping her upper arms. The Draka’s own hands shot down to clasp the fabric of the Cossack trousers; she let her knees go limp, and pulled herself downward with a motion that drew on the strength of back and stomach as much as arms. The thin Russian found the rubbery muscle and slick fabric vanishing from his hands, bent to follow them. His forehead met his comrade’s descending kiss with a thock of bone on teeth that brought a roar of pain from the giant.

Johanna found herself squatting, her knees between the big Russian’s straddled legs, her face level with the long swelling of his erection. There were several means of disabling a large, strong man from that position; she chose the most obvious. Her hand dropped to the ground, clenched into a fist, punched directly up with a twist of hip and shoulder, flexing of legs, hunnnh of expelled breath that put weight and impact behind it. The Russian would probably have been able to block a knee to the groin while she was standing; against this, there was no possibility of defense. The first two knuckles of her fist sank into his scrotum, with a snapping twist at the moment of impact that flattened the testicles against the unyielding anvil of his pubic bone. He did not scream; the pain was far too intense for that. His reflex bending was powerful enough to send his comrade crashing into the bunk at the rear of the cabin, and he staggered away clutching his groin and struggling to breathe through a throat locked in spasm.

Johanna flowed erect, turning. The NKVD man turned out to be a fool, after all: he staggered to his feet and threw a punch at her head, rather than going for his gun. She relaxed one knee, swaying out of the fist’s path; her right palm slapped onto his wrist, drawing him farther along . . . pivot on the heel, straddle stance . . . throw the weight into it . . . her left elbow drove into his side just below the armpit, with the force of his own momentum behind it. Her left arm went tingling numb, but she heard something snap audibly, felt bone give under her blow. She kept control of the Russian’s arm, bent, twisted, heaved. His body left the ground, began a turn, ran into the door three-quarters of the way through it. Something else snapped, and he went limp to the split-log floor.

One down, the Draka thought, turning again. The machine pistol was out of immediate reach on her back . . . and the giant was coming at her again.

She blinked, backing, almost frozen with surprise. He was moving with one hand pressed to his groin, as if he could squeeze out the pain, but the other held a knife, a khidjal, held it as if he knew how to use it. His face worked; he spat out a broken tooth, grinning with a blood-wet mouth in an expression that was nothing like a smile. The knifepoint made small circles in the air.

Johanna snapped out her own, hilt low, point angled up. Left hand bladed, palm down, shuffling back in a flat-footed crouch. This was not good. The Russian had a full ten centimeters’ advantage of reach and there was no room to maneuver, the whole Loki-cursed hut was only four meters on a side, and the knife was not a weapon to duel with. It was fine for surprise, good for an ambush in the dark, but in a straight-on knife fight the one who ended up in the hospital was the winner.

What do I do now? she thought. Then: Kill or die, what else?

The Cossack straightened a little and came in. The blade moved up, feinting a thrust to the belly, and his left hand reached going for a hold. Stupidity again, still trying to subdue her. She spun, slashing, and the blade sliced up the outside of the other’s arm from wrist to elbow. Cloth parted under as the edge touched meat, cutting a long, shallow gash. The giant roared and attacked, thrusting and slashing in deadly earnest this time.

Some far-off portion of her mind wished for a heavier blade; the narrow steel strip she carried in her wrist sheath was a holdout weapon, without the weight for a good cut. There are few places on a human body where a stab is quickly disabling, and none of them is very vulnerable at arm’s length to an alert opponent. To kill quickly in a knife fight you must slash, cut every exposed surface to ribbons and rely on blood loss to knock the other out.

That seemed unlikely. A long blade and longer arm were reaching for her life, and she backed, parrying steel-on-steel, the most difficult of all defenses, drawing out the exchange until an opening let her sideslip past the Russian and back into the center of the room. The effort had been brutal; she stood and breathed in deep careful motions, eyes never leaving her opponent’s. He waited for an instant, face gone blankly calculating, even the pain in his crotch forgotten. The three-second passage had let them feel each other out; Johanna knew that she was more skilled with the knife, and faster—just enough to compensate for the cramped quarters and her enemy’s longer reach and heavier knife—and she would have less margin for error. Desperation surged; could she reach the gun before . . .

Her back was to the door as it opened, forcing the limp body of the NKVD man aside. Light speared in, taking the huge Russian in the eyes, and he squinted, peering. Then his face changed, first to a fresh rage, then sudden fear. Johanna almost had him then, and his recovery cost him a cut across the face. Johanna bored in, knocked his knife wrist aside with a bladed palm, skipped her left foot forward and flick-kicked. The toe of her boot landed solidly under one kneecap, and there was a tearing pop as cartilage gave way; she spun back out of reach as he bellowed and tried to grapple. The Russian stayed on his feet, but his face was gray and all the weight on one leg. Now to finish it: she came in low and smooth and fast, and—

—one foot skidded out from underneath her in a patch of blood. The floor slammed into her back, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. She saw lights before her eyes, and knew the knife would come down before she could recover.

“Shto,” a cool voice from behind her said. “Ruki verch, Sergei.” Then purling Russian syllables, meaningless. A woman’s voice, with crowd-mutter behind her. And a very meaningful metallic click—the safety of a pistol being flicked off. The man before her kept his involuntary crouch, and pain-sweat dripped into his thin black beard; he licked blood off his lips as he dropped the knife and put his open hands above his shoulders, speaking in a wheedling tone. The woman’s voice cut him off sharply, a sneer in it.

Johanna rolled out of the line of fire and came erect. She stood, slipping the knife back into its sheath as she took a careful step to the side, slowly, hands well out and empty. Turned slowly also, in a position where she could see her opponent as well as the door. She was not going to turn her back on that sort of strength—not until she knew what the score was.

At first the woman in the doorway was nothing but a silhouette, surrounded by sun-dazzle and haze. Then her pupils adjusted, her body lost the quivering knowledge of steel about to slice into vulnerable flesh. Tall, was her first thought; about the Draka’s own height. Long straight hair the color of birchwood, gathered in a knot at the side of her head. Open coat, fine soft-tanned sheepskin edged with embroidery and astrakhan, reaching almost to the floor. Pressed-silk blouse, tailored pleated trousers tucked incongruously into muddy German boots a size too large and stuffed with straw. Young, was her next impression. Not much more than the Draka’s own age. Pale oval face, high-cheeked in the Slav manner, but not flat. High forehead, eyes like clover honey, straight nose, full red lips drawn back slightly from even white teeth. Broad shoulders emphasized by the coat; full high breasts above a narrow waist; hips tapering to long dancer’s legs . . .

With a Walther P48 in one elegantly gloved hand, pointed unwaveringly at the other Russian’s face.

Interesting, Johanna mused. That is a seven-hundred-auric item, if I ever saw one. A thought crossed her mind: if they both came through this alive, it would be almost a charitable act to acquire . . .

The pistol swiveled around to her. Johanna considered the black eye of it, followed up the line of the arm to meet the amber gaze. Then again, no. Definitely not. This is not someone to whom I can imagine saying “Lie down and play pony for me.” Pity. Lovely mouth, really.

“Valentina Fedorova Budennin,” the woman said. “Once of the Linguistic Institute, now of the partisan command, and just out of Pyatigorsk. At your service, although you seem to need less rescuing than Dmitri led me to expect.” Astonishingly, she spoke in English, almost without accent except for a crisp British treatment of the vowels. “Air Corps, I see. You may have paid me a very pleasant visit yesterday, then.” She smiled, an expression which did not reach her eyes.

“Pilot Officer Johanna von Shrakenberg,” the Draka said, keeping the surprise out of her voice. “Believe me, the effort was appreciated. Although,” she frowned, “this is the second time today I’ve survived because somebody assumed I was a harmless idiot. Not complainin’ about the results, but it’s damned odd.”

“Ah.” The smile grew wider, but remained something of the lips only. “That would be because you are a woman. I have been relying on men underestimating me because of that for some time, the more fools, they.” The Russian woman called over her shoulder. “Ivan!” and a sentence in her own language. A stocky Russian walked in with a Fritz machine pistol over his shoulder and . . . a Draka field dressing on one side of his face, nobody else used that tint of blue gauze.

To Johanna: “This will seem odd, but I think I have a man here who knows your brother. We should talk.” Her gaze went back to Sergei, backed against the wall, eyes flickering in animal wariness. “After we dispose of some business.” The pistol turned back and slammed, deafening in the enclosed space. A black dot appeared between the big Russian’s eyes, turning to a glistening red. The impact of his falling shook the floor.

It was much later before Ivan and Valentina could talk alone, low-voiced before the fireplace of the hut, ignoring the bodies at their feet.

“Impressive,” Ivan said, nodding to the door. Johanna had gone for a tactful walk, while they considered her advice.

“The Draka did not get where they are by accident,” Valentina said, seating herself and crossing one leg elegantly over another. “Which leaves the matter of your decision. There are two alternatives: to attack Pyatigorsk while the Germans are occupied, or to strike at the rear of the SS column attempting to clear the pass.”

“What do you think we should do, Valentina Fedorova?” Ivan asked, feeling with his tongue for the loose tooth. Truly, it was a little better, and the gums had stopped bleeding. Amazing things, these vitamin pills.

The woman shrugged. “Whatever helps that Draka officer you spoke to; it is our best chance. Finding his sister here,” she shrugged. “Well, the truly impossible thing would be a world in which the unlikely never happened.”

“Best chance for us, but what of the Revolution? The Party? Russia?”

She turned her head and spat, lofting the gobbet across the room to land on the dead NKVD agent.

“The Revolution and the Party are as dead as that dog. Stalin killed them, but the corpse lover kept his mother aboveground until Hitler came with a shovel. Do not delude yourself, Ivan Desonovitch, the way that one did.”

The partisan commander looked down, fiddling with the strap of his Schmeisser; it was more comfortable than meeting the woman’s eyes. “And our people?”

Valentina sighed, rubbing two fingers over her forehead. “The narod, the Russian people . . . we survived Genghis Khan and the Tatar yoke; we endured the tzars, the boyars . . . we can outlive the Draka, too.” She smiled coldly. “My grandmother was a serf; a nobleman in St. Petersburg pledged her for a gambling debt, and bought her back for two carriage horses.”

“We could fight them!” He laid an encouraging hand on her shoulder, then snatched it back with a muttered apology as she froze in distaste.

Valentina shook her head. “We fought the Nazis, my friend, because they would not only have enslaved us, they would have killed three-quarters of us first whether we fought or not. I did not lie on my back for that mad dog Hoth for six months without learning something of them! If the Draka win, and we try to fight on here, at first there would be partisans, yes.” She paused to kick the dead Sergei and spit again, in his face. “Then only bandits like this dead Cossack pig, preying on their own people because it was easier. In the end, hunted animals, eating roots and each other in the woods until the Draka killed the last one; and our peasants would be glad, if it gave them a chance to work and eat and rear their children without the thatch being burnt above their heads.”

She turned on him, and he shrank slightly from the intensity of her. “No, Ivan Desonovitch, we shall retreat because that is the way to work and fight for our people; retreat to the Americans, who will fight the Draka someday, because they must. If there is a hope that our people may be free, that is it.” She laughed, chillingly. “Free. For the first time. Everything possible must happen in the end, no?”