The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (21 page)

The house was small, not to say pathetic. The whole village was pretty much in shambles, so this one standing house was at least enough to shield him from the rain. It wasn’t that the village had been damaged from war; it was just a natural dump made up of lousy, rat-ridden shacks. He had no idea what the village was called, but the closest town was called Grodno or something like that. The old wooden floorboards looked like they were centuries old, and it was astonishing that the house had survived after II Battalion of the 310th Infantry Regiment had pushed the Russians out of this area all the way back in December. Maybe this whole village was just too damn rotten for the Russians to bother making a stand here.

Günther could hardly believe how savage these people were. The house reminded him of a
n old shed, and only after he and a couple of other officers and NCOs settled there had it begun to resemble a real home, but they had to burn kerosene to not freeze to death—these primitive savages apparently kept warm burning firewood. Reaching into his pocket, he could feel that the paper packet of tobacco was running low. It had been some time since he restocked, and he impatiently waited to hear whenever they would get other supplies than the mere basics. To him, tobacco was a basic necessity, but obviously munitions, food, and fuel were prioritized by the logistics folks, and he ended up rolling very loose cigarettes to save tobacco.

The brigade had been spread out in a defensive position since the capture of Grodno, but there was little
sense of triumph so far. Through the harsh winter, Günther had hoped that they would get a bit more comfy than they had been in the forests of East Prussia, but they had been holed up in this little dump for over two months now. As the infantry brigade of the division, his brigade had followed closely when the armored brigade had punched holes in the enemy line, but they hadn’t moved more than forty miles at the most. They were still just barely across the frontier, and if you would put a pin on a map of the world where he was standing, you would probably need a microscope to tell which side of the border it was on.

However, the state of the houses made it clear that they were in decrepit enemy territory rather than in East Prussia. East Prussia wasn’t Silesia, but the villages
there looked like they were inhabited by humans rather than barnyard animals like the log houses out here. From the look of their houses, the Russkies couldn’t be much pickier about their living quarters than pigs. Dirty, inbred bloody pigs. It was a mystery how they could manage to breed like animals if they lived like this. How could they survive?

“I don’t see how you manage to keep them from breaking,” Rossbach mused, amazed by Second Lieutenant Kolb’s small portable gramophone as well as his tiny, carefully shielded collection of records.

“You just have to keep them in here,” Kolb proudly said, slamming the small steel case he had prepared during one of his leaves.

He was quite proud of his ingenious handiwork to keep the records safe when they were on the move, and he took every occasion to listen to the recordings.

“It’s a bit superfluous,” Stöckert said from where he was seated on the floor with a blanket around him while he was reading his big tome.

Stöckert was a student, and he had brought along some of his textbooks
which he read when he had nothing else to do in the evenings. Since the brigade had been pretty much parked in this same spot for the past two months, there was a lot of time to kill, and Kolb kept winding up his gramophone and played the same records over and over.

Günther had no idea how long they would be here. One of the division’s armored regiments was up a few miles to the north of them, and the other re
giment was out between the 310th Infantry Regiment’s III Battalion and a regiment from the 119th Infantry Division. The whole army group was spread out from the Baltic Sea and in a sort of hook shape that went down through western White Russia and all the way to the next army group that covered the rest of the frontier to where the Austros were supposed to hold the line. As spring was breaking after the long, and bitter winter offensives, there was the hope that the war might end. Someday. The Austrians had been hit hard in Galicia, and there was that worrying feeling that all their success up here would be for naught if the damned Austros let the enemy punch a giant hole and roll up the entire front.

As a professional staff officer, Günther had been in uniform since the very first day of hostilities just over two years ago. He had followed the division from the fighting at the frontier of South Prussia, the withdrawal all the way to just within a hundred miles of Krakow, and through Operation
Clausewitz last year when the Russians had been successfully driven out of central South Prussia. The brigade had gone through hell since it first began its long service in this damn war, and both battalions of the 102nd Infantry Regiment had been reduced to paper formations before the brigade had briefly been withdrawn and placed in reserve for a short respite before the winter when it had helped to push back the Russians just before New Year, and then they had just been holding the line while both sides in this part of the world had been pretty much building up their strength through January and February. However, ahead of the winter offensives the division had been reassembled and had taken part in giving Ivan a black eye while the city of Memel was liberated from its Russian occupation up by the Baltic Sea in coordinated attacks in which their division had helped to draw Russian attention away from Memelland.

Hopefully, Ivan would have
had enough soon—everyone fantasized about Ivan calling it quits and then ending basically the whole war since the rest of the Entente were just a bunch of petticoat countries. Still, as soon as Russia was out of the war the entire German army could move over and bash the frogs to kingdom come in a thrashing that would make the glorious victory over Napoleon look like a cordial and friendly little affair. The news from the West were neither good nor bad. The Gneisenau Line was said to be impenetrable, and there was no reason for Günther to doubt that since he heard nothing bad coming from over on the other side of Germany. Except when the French had managed temporary breakthroughs and embarrassed the kind of damned idiots who said that a defensive line could be unconquerable. It never amazed him to think that some people actually bought myths like that…

In the grainy silence between two songs Günther could hear the faint sound of vermin under the floor—a pretty disgusting sound.

“Damn rats,” he sighed.

It was really disgusting to have rats this close, and to have to worry about them coming and nibbling on things or just shitting.

“Two or four feet?” Kolb smirked.

Günther chuckled dutifully. It was a really old joke, and Günther hardly ever called them rats like some guys did. As dirty and feral the Russian peasants were, they weren’t vermin. It would probably have been a lot easier if they were, but Ivan wasn’t just a mindless animal. They were a clever bunch. They just happened to live like animals.

Meryem was getting restless from Daryn’s long absence. He usually came back before the arm on her little pocket watch approached midnight, and she wondered what was keeping him. She was getting hungry too; she didn’t wish to open one of the tins since he usually came back with some bread, salted lamb, or something else for her. She hadn’t eaten all day since before he had left for his spying, and the gnawing hunger was making her impatiently mutter to herself. As embarrassing as it felt to be talking to herself like some senile hag, it made her feel good. It was a bit like verbal peeing; it relieved some kind of pressure inside her, and she wasn’t really directing her muttering at her hero-husband. It wasn’t his fault that his duty took precedence over her or that she was useless. As a patriot, she liked to think that she would feel sad if he bothered with her rather than to do his duty. After all, men should always remember their duty, and he had sworn before all the gods and his ancestors to serve His Majesty’s and do his duty until death. She hadn’t actually sworn anything since she wasn’t technically a soldier. She didn’t want him to pick country over her—but she wanted to want that. After all, her little life was just her little life while the fate of the nation was something holy.

On a whim she crawled over to the woolen blanket to get out the big holster hidden underneath. She hadn’t worn her holster in a while, and the revolver was tucked away under a blanket to keep it out of sight since she had been instructed by Daryn to keep it hidden at all times. The gun was so big, and she had been very uncomfortable firing it when Daryn had shown her how. It had made her arm hurt, and she had no idea how men in movie reels could fire them so effortlessly. She was sure that Daryn was an expert marksman who could kill a
white ghost
from a mile away. When he had been away in Russia before the war she had imagined all the adventures like in that silent film, what was it called again…? She frowned, annoyed that the title escaped her.

Saving the Frontier
, that was the one! It was a film about a group of soldiers riding on camels through deserts in Shinkyou, on their guard against Qingists and evil Muslim bandits. She wasn’t sure how Muslims could be bandits, since it seemed like a bandit was someone who by definition didn’t obey God, so it was a bit of an oxymoron. However, that was what some of the people who had murdered officials and defied the government were called, so she reluctantly accepted the misnomer just because it was annoying to point out stupid mistakes all the time. Shinkyou had been the frontier of Japan since the time of the Holy Liberation War, and
Saving the Frontier
had just been one motion picture’s representation of the hard work the Imperial Army had had to undertake to save the frontier from remnant Qingists and impious tribes who wouldn’t obey the government after the wonderful destruction of the evil impostor dynasty. She liked frontier films, even though the bad guys were usually Muslim bandits—in one violent film the chief bad guy had even been a bad imam. She didn’t like that at all, even though she had never actually met an imam in person, but she was confident that they couldn’t be bad.

The big gun had some markings on it, the most significant being the imperial chrysanthemum, the symbol of imperial authority. Did that mean that maybe the gun belonged to His Majesty? Obviously the Emperor couldn’t use all His guns; there had to be many millions of them, and even if the Emperor was the Great Martial Genius, there was no way even a genius could do everything at the same time. Daddy had said that His Majesty was a holy man, a great statesman and general like the Great Prophet—peace be upon Him—and that she should revere Him too as a great example for people to emulate.

In the hands of a patriot, a gun like this was bound to vanquish any number of
white ghosts
. She could almost picture herself shooting an ugly Russian right between the eyes in his stupid face. Gripping the revolver firmly in her right hand, she held out her arm, pretending that there was a nasty Russian between herself and the wall. Maybe that one who molested her when they first came to the city.
Oh, I haven’t forgotten about you, filthy white pervert!

“Pow,” she said. “Pow, pow! Take that,” she giggled. “Dirty white devil, die!”

The gun was stamped with the abbreviation for the Nankei Arsenal, and she felt a little sorry for the craftsmen who had made it that it had yet to draw enemy blood and validate their work. Lowering it again, she felt a little bad that she had cheated a patriot out of using it against the enemy since she had only ever shot a stupid tin can with it. She had never even tried to shoot a Russian. That was the whole point of making these things in the first place.

She hadn’t heard much news about the war for weeks, but she was certain that the Imperial Army would come and beat up the stupid Russians soon so Daryn could take her home. She both wanted to go home and stay away with Daryn at the same time. It was exciting to be a good patriot, and she told herself that nothing she could do in Tekika would be more patriotic than making tea and trying to help keep Daryn warm while he drew up his little list here within the enemy’s lair. He had said they would be leaving soon to get back into contact with his superior so the list could be forwarded to the Emperor and He could send the Imperial Army to chase the devils all the way back home to Europe.

She stuffed the revolver back down into the brown holster that looked the same as the holsters military officers wore. Before Daryn had given her the gun she had never actually seen a pistol outside of photographs and motion pictures. She had hardly ever seen rifles either before they went into Russia. Guns was emblematic of war, far less civilized than the swords of the police that were metal incarnations of justice and order as well as being fighting tools. As far as she remembered, she had never seen a policeman draw his sword, and instead the long scabbards just hung down from their belts as the most distinctive trait, even more distinctive to her eyes than their uniforms. Other countries were violent, she had seen that in the European motion pictures of men with broad-brimmed hats riding on horses and shooting guns as if they were soldiers. There was no doubt she was lucky to have been shielded from all that misery and violence of the Foreign World, having spent all her life in an urban district where the only violence might be a police official spanking a convicted criminal. The closest thing she had come to the police killing evildoers was seeing executions in newsreels, but she only ever saw one once or twice, and after that she just looked down when she saw footage of someone with an execution placard over his chest. She didn’t like watching people suffer, even if they were mean evildoers.

After rolling the belt around the holster she tucked it back under the blanket to hide it again. As she leaned back against the wall with a heavy sigh, she wondered how long she would have to wait for Daryn to come back. She was so hungry she almost wanted to have just a small bite from one of the tins, but if she opened it then it would spoil if it wasn’t eaten soon. No, she had to wait for her husband since he was bound to have something for her to eat.