Marching Through Georgia (5 page)

And the first time he had been invited into his father's study to talk with the adults after a dinner party. Ruefully, he smiled as he remembered holding the brandy snifter in an authoritative pose anyone but himself must have recognized as copied from Pa's… And yet it was all tinged with sorrow and anger; impossible to forget, hurtful to remember, a turning and itching in his mind.

He looked downslope; beyond that screen of pines was a stock dam where the children of the house had gone swimming sometimes, gods alone knew why, except that they were
supposed
to use the pool up by the manor. There, one memorable day, he had knocked Frikkie Thyssen flat for sneering at his poetry. The memory brought a grin; it had been the sort of epic you'd expect a twelve-year-old in love with Chapman's Homer to do, but that little bastard Thyssen wouldn't have known if it had been a work of genius… And over there in the cherry orchard he had lost his virginity under a harvest moon one week after his thirteenth birthday, to a giggling field wench twice his age and weight…

And then there had been Tyansha, the Circassian girl. Pa had given her to him on his fourteenth birthday. The dealer had called her something more pronounceable, but that was the name she had taught him, along with her mother tongue. She had been… perhaps four years older than he; nobody had been keeping records in eastern Turkey during those years of blood and chaos. There were vague memories of a father, she had said, and a veiled woman who held her close, then lay in a ditch by a burning house and did not move. Then the bayonets of the Janissaries herding her and a mob of terrified children into trucks. Thirst, darkness, hunger; then the training creche.

Learning reading and writing, the soft blurred Draka dialect of English; household duties, dancing, the arts of pleasing. Friends, who vanished one by one into the world beyond the walls. And him.

Her eyes had been what he had noticed first— huge, a deep pale blue, like a wild thing seen in the forest. Dark-red hair falling to her waist, past a smooth, pale, high-cheeked face. She had worn a silver-link collar that emphasized the slender neck and the serf-number tattooed on it, and a wrapped white sheath-dress to show off her long legs and high, small breasts.

Hands linked before her, she had stood between his smiling father and the impassive dealer, who slapped her riding-crop against one boot, anxious to be gone.

"
Well boy, does she please
?" Pa had asked. Eric remembered a wordless stutter until his voice broke humiliatingly in a squeak; his elder brother John had roared laughter and slapped him on the back, urging him forward as he led her from the room by the hand. Hers had been small and cool; his own hands and feet felt enormous, clumsy; he was hideously aware of a pimple beside his nose.

She had been afraid—not showing it much, but he could tell.

He had not touched her; not then, or in the month that followed.

Not even at the first shyly beautiful smile…

Gods, but I was callow
, Eric thought in sadly affectionate embarrassment. They had talked; rather, he had, while she replied in tense, polite monosyllables, until she began to shed the fear. He had showed her things—his battle prints, his butterfly collection— that had disgusted her—and the secret place in the pine grove, where he came to dream the vast vague glories of youth… A month, before she crept in beside him one night. A friend, one of the overseer's sons, had asked casually to borrow her; he had beaten the older boy bloody. Not wildly, in the manner of puppy fights, but with the
pankration
disciplines, in a cold ferocity that ended only when he was pulled off.

There had been little constraint between them, in private. She even came to use his first name without the "master," eventually.

He had allowed her his books, and she had devoured them with a hunger that astonished him; so did her questions, sometimes disconcertingly sharp. Making love with a lover was… different.

Better; she had been more knowledgeable than he, if less experienced, and they had learned together. Once in a haystack, he remembered; prickly, it had made him sneeze. Afterward they had lain holding hands, and he had shown her the southern sky's constellations.

She died in childbirth three years later, bearing his daughter.

The child had lived, but that was small consolation. That had been the last time he wept in public; the first time since his mother had died when he was ten. And it had also been the last time his father had beaten him; for weakness. Casual fornication aside, it was well enough for a boy to have a serf-girl of his own.

Even for him to care for her, since it helped keep him from the temptations that all-male boarding schools were prone to. But the public tears allowable for blood-kin were unseemly for a concubine.

Eric had caught the thong of the riding crop in one hand and jerked it free. "
Hit
me again, and I'll kill you
," he had said, in a tone flat as gunmetal. Had seen his father's face change as the scales of parental blindness fell away, and the elder von Shrakenberg realized that he was facing a very dangerous man, not a boy. And that it is not well to taunt an unbearable grief.

He shook his head and looked out again at the familiar fields; it was a sadness in itself, that time healed. Grief faded into nostalgia, and it was a sickness to try and hold it. That mood stayed with him as they swung into the steep drive and through the gardens below Oakenwald's Great House. The manor had been built into the slope of a hill—for defense, in the early days—and it still gave a memorable view. The rocky slope had been terraced for lawns, flowerbanks, ornamental trees, and fountains; forest grew over the steepening slope behind, and then a great table of rock reared two hundred meters into the darkening sky.

The manor itself was ashlar blocks of honey-colored local sandstone, a central three-story block fronted with white marble columns and topped with a low-pitched roof of rose tile; there were lower wings to each side—arched colonnades supporting second-story balconies. There was a crowd waiting beneath the pillars, and a parked grey-painted staff car with a
strategos
red-and-black checkerboard pennant fixed to one bumper; the tall figure of his father stood amidst the household, leaning on his cane. Eric took a deep breath and opened the door of the van, pitching his baggage to the ground and jumping down to the surface of the drive.

Air washed over him cool and clean, smelling of roses and falling water, dusty crushed rock and hot metal from the van; bread was baking somewhere, and there was woodsmoke from the chimneys. The globe lights came on over the main doors, and he saw who awaited: his father, of course; his younger sister Johanna in undress uniform; the overseers, and some of the house servants behind…

He waved, then turned back to the van for a moment, pulling a half-empty bottle out of his kit and leaning in for a parting salute to the Janissaries.

They looked up, and their faces lit with surprised gratitude as he tossed the long-necked glass bulb; it was Oakenwald Kijafla, cherry brandy in the same sense that Dom Perignon was sparkling wine, and beyond the pockets of most freemen.

"Tanks be to yaz, Centurion, sar," the black said, his teeth shining white. "Sergeants Miller and Assad at yar s'rvice, sar."

"For Palermo," he said, and turned his head to the driver. She raised a face streaked with the tracks of dried tears from where it had rested on the wheel, glancing back apprehensively at the soldiers. "Back, and take the turning to the left, half a kilometer to the Quarters. Ask for the headman; he'll put you all up."

A young houseboy had run forward to take Eric's baggage; he craned his head to see into the long cabin of the van after making his bow, his face an O of surprise at the bright Janissary uniforms. And he kept glancing back as he bore the valise and bag away. Eric paused to take a few parcels out of it, reflecting that they probably had another volunteer there. Then he was striding up the broad black-stone steps, the hard soles of his high boots clattering. The servants bowed like a rippling field, and there were genuine smiles of welcome. Eric had always been popular with the staff, as such things went.

He clicked heels and saluted. His father returned it, and they stood for a wordless moment eye to eye; they were of a height.

Alike in color and cast of face as well; the resemblance was stronger now that pain had graven lines in the younger man's face to match his sire's.

"Recovered from your wound, I see." The strategos paused, searching for words. "I read the report. You were a credit to the service and the family, Eric."

"Thank you, sir," he replied neutrally, fighting down an irrational surge of anger.
I didn't want the Academy
, a part of him thought savagely.
The first von Shrakenberg in seven
generations not to, and a would-be artist to boot. Does that
make me an incompetent, or a coward
?

And that was unjust. Pa had not really been surprised that he had the makings of a good officer; he had too much confidence in the von Shrakenberg blood for that.
What was it that makes
me draw back
? he thought. Alone, he could wish so strongly to be at peace with his father again. Those grey eyes, more accustomed to cold mastery, shared his own baffled hurt; he could see it. But together… they fought, or coexisted with an icy politeness that was worse.

Or
usually
worse. Two years ago he had sent Tyansha's daughter out of the country. To America, where there was a Quaker group that specialized in helping the tiny trickle of escaped serfs who managed to flee; they must have been surprised to receive a tow-haired girlchild from an aristocrat of the Domination, together with an annuity to pay for her upkeep and education. Not that he had been fond of the girl; he had handed her to the women of the servant's quarters, and as she grew her looks were an intolerable reminder. But she was Tyansha's… It had required a good deal of money, and several illegalities.

To Arch-Strategos Karl von Shrakenberg, that had been a matter touching on honor, and on the interests of the Race and the nation. His father had threatened to abandon him to the Security Directorate; that could have meant a one-way trip to a cold cellar with instruments of metal, a trip that ended with a pistol-bullet in the back of the head. Eric suspected that if his brother John had still been alive to carry on the family name, it might have come to that. As it was, he had been forbidden the house, until service in Italy had changed the general's mind.

I saved my daugh
… a
little girl
, he thought.
For that, I was a
criminal and will always be watched. But by helping to destroy
a city and killing hundreds who've never done me harm, I'm a
hero and all is forgiven
. Tyansha had once told him that she had given up expecting sense from the world long ago; more and more, he saw her point.

He forced his mind back to the older man's words. "And the Janissaries won't have any problems in the Quarters?"

"Not unless someone's foolish enough to provoke them.

They're Master Sergeants, steady types; the Headman will find them beds and a couple of willing girls."

There was another awkward pause, and the strategos turned to go. "Well. I'll see you when we dine, then."

Johanna had been waiting impatiently, but in this household the proprieties were observed. As Eric turned to face her she straightened and threw a crackling salute, then winked broadly and pointed her thumb upward at the collar of her uniform jacket.

He returned the salute and followed her digit. "Well, well!

Pilot Officer
Johanna von Shrakenberg, now!" He spread his arms and she gave him a swift fierce hug. She was four years younger than he; on her the bony family looks and the regulations that cropped her fair hair close produced an effect halfway between elegance and adolescent homeliness.

"That was quick—fighters? And what's this I hear about Tom?

You two are still an 'item'?" With a stage magician's gesture he produced a flat package.

"They're turning us out quick, these days—cutting out nonessentials like sleep. Yes, fighters: Eagles, interceptors." The wrapping crumpled under strong, tanned fingers. "And no, Tom and I aren't an item; we're
engaged
." She paused to roll her eyes.

"Wouldn't you know it, guess where his lochos's been sent?
Xian
!

Shensi, to watch the Japanese!"

The package opened. Within were twin eardrops, cabochon-cut rubies the size of a thumbnail, set in chased silver.

Johanna whistled and held them up to the light as Eric shook hands with the overseers, inquired after their children in the Forces, handed out minor gifts among the house servants and hugged old Nanny Sukie, the family child-nurse. Arms linked, Eric and Johanna strolled into the house.

"Loot?" she inquired, holding up the jewels. "Sort of Draka-looking…"

"
Made
from loot," he said affectionately. It was a rare Draka who doubted the morality of conquest. To deny that the property of the vanquished was proper booty would go beyond eccentricity to madness. "You think I'm buying rubies like that on a Centurion's pay? They're from an Italian bishop's crozier—he won't be needing it in the labor camp, after all." The man had smiled under the gun muzzles, actually, and signed a cross in the air as they prodded him away. Eric pushed the memory aside. 'I had the setting done up in Alexandria…"

…
maintained rapid growth in population and wealth.

Immigration continued through the 1790's. first with the
Icelandic refugees fleeing the great eruptions. Frenchmen
followed, first from Haiti-Santo Domingo after the slave revolt,
then royalists from France proper. A continued trickle came
through the "legions" of European mercenaries maintained by
the Colony, first mainly German, and then including many
Norse
…

… Seizure of Ceylon from the Dutch in 1796 and Egypt from
its Napoleonic occupiers in 1800 made the raising of a
merchant marine and navy imperative… Congress of Vienna
made the new acquisitions permanent as compensation for the
loss of Canada to the Americans in 1812-1814. Manpower
resources remained extremely tight The employment of free
citizen women in the increasing number of clerical and
administrative posts followed, as did peacetime conscription
and the raising of the first Janissary legions. Modeled on
the
slave-soldiers of the Ottoman Empire, they proved a crucial
innovation
…