Isn’t it one hell of a note when the best thing I can think of is that the people I loved most in all the world probably died without knowing a thing about it? he thought.
“They have not endeared themselves to me, either,” Basarab said after a moment. “Indeed, is that not rather the point? It has been . . . difficult to remember that we dare not take the fight to them. By the same token, however, if starvation and desperation drive others into actions which draw the aliens’ attention to our area, then having swallowed our pride and hidden will have been for naught in the end.”
Buchevsky nodded in understanding. Basarab had made it clear from the beginning that avoiding contact with the enemy, lying low, was the best way to protect the civilians for whom they were responsible, and he was right. They might have demonstrated their ability to punish individual patrols, to inflict loss and pain on the Shongairi, but that very experience had made it abundantly clear they dared not openly confront and challenge the invaders. In the final analysis, no matter how much damage they managed to inflict first, anyone who could destroy entire cities with kinetic strikes could certainly destroy three isolated villages in the mountains of Wallachia.
He and Basarab both knew that, but that didn’t change the fact that Basarab’s natural orientation—like Buchevsky’s own—was towards taking the offensive. Towards seeking out and destroying the enemy, not hiding from him.
Buchevsky had always recognized that tendency in himself, and the years he’d spent imbibing the United States Marine Corps’ philosophy and doctrine had only intensified it. Yet he suspected that the drive to find and crush anyone or anything which threatened those under his protection might be even stronger in Basarab than it was in him. There were times when he could almost physically taste the other man’s burning desire to take the war to the Shongairi, when those green eyes were cold and hungry, filled with hate for his country’s rapists. When the fact that Basarab so clearly understood why he dared not feed that hunger, that need to strike back, only made the Romanian’s self-control even more impressive.
And he was right. Giving in to that hunger would have come under the heading of a Really Bad Idea.
Basarab’s runners had made contact with several other small enclaves across central and southern Romania—even a couple in northern Bulgaria, a hundred and fifty miles to the south—and by now those enclaves were becoming as concerned with defending themselves against other humans as fending off the Shongairi. After the initial bombardments and confused combat of the first several weeks, the invaders had apparently decided to pull back from the unfriendly terrain of the mountains and settle for occupying more open areas. It was hard to be certain of that—or if it represented anything other than a purely local situation—with the collapse of the planetary communications net, but it seemed reasonable. As Buchevsky’s brain trust of Truman and Sherman had pointed out, troop lift would almost certainly be a limiting factor for any interstellar expedition, so it would make sense to avoid stretching it any further than necessary by doing things like going up into the hills after dirt-poor, hardscrabble mountain villages.
According to Vasile Costantinescu, the leader of another enclave six or seven miles away, at the northeastern end of the lake, the Shongairi had established an outpost—hell, it sounded like a damned forward operating base to Buchevsky!—near the town of Viziru in Brila jude. To Buchevsky, that was only a dot a hundred and fifty-odd miles to the east on an increasingly worn-out Romanian road map, but Basarab had explained that it lay in the flat, fertile farmland west of the Black Sea. It certainly sounded like terrain which would be far easier to control than rugged, forested mountainsides, but from the sound of things, the Shongairi were being surprisingly passive.
Costantinescu had family in the area, and according to the reports he’d received from them, the aliens had chosen to restrict their presence to an area no more than sixty or seventy miles across, centered on their well-defended, strongly fortified base. Within that area, they reacted quickly (and, it sounded to Buchevsky, far more effectively than they had against him and Basarab during their trek to Lake Vidraru) to any armed resistance. Beyond that, they seemed content to let the surviving Romanians stew in their own juices.
Letting them sit there in lordly disdain for the mere humans about them set Buchevsky’s teeth on edge, but that was a purely emotional—and, in his own opinion, remarkably stupid—reaction. Whatever his emotions might think, his intellect knew damned well that the farther away from his people they stayed, and the more passive they were, the better.
Human refugees were an entirely different threat, and one Buchevsky was happy they hadn’t had to deal with . . . yet. Starvation, exposure, and disease had probably killed at least half the civilians who’d fled their homes after the initial attacks, and those who remained were becoming increasingly desperate as winter approached. Some of the other enclaves had already been forced to fight, often ruthlessly, against their own kind to preserve the resources their own people were going to need to survive.
In many ways, it was the fact that the aliens’ actions had forced humans to kill each other in the name of simple survival that fueled Stephen Buchevsky’s deepest rage. Which was probably the reason he didn’t really want to think too much about Basarab’s proposal.
But he’s right, the American admitted with a mental sigh. And even if he weren’t, he’s the boss.
“All right, Mircea,” he said. “You’re right. We do have to come to an understanding with the other enclaves, at least the local ones, and that probably does mean sharing what we have if some of the others are flat up against starvation. So, yeah, I can see why it makes sense for us to share inventories with each other. And it makes sense for us to agree to help each other out if looters or raiders come after them. I understand that. I’ll admit I hate the thought of planning to help other people kill human beings when there are Shongairi around to kill, instead, but I’m not an idiot, and it’s not as if I haven’t had to shoot at the occasional other human being over the past couple of decades. In fact, I guess the real problem is that there’s a part of me that hates letting anyone know what we’ve got tucked away in the larder, because people are still people. If their kids start starving, then any parent worth a single solitary damn is going to do anything it takes to feed them. I understand that, and I’ll give any kid the last slice of bread I’ve got. But if any of those other enclaves out there decide to sell us out, or throw us to the wolves to save their own asses by pointing somebody who comes after what they’ve got in our direction—or if they’re stupid enough to try and use your agreement just to get close enough to us to hit us themselves—then I’m going to be really, really unhappy, you understand. And they won’t like me when I’m unhappy. Hell, I don’t like me when I’m unhappy!”
He shrugged, and Basarab nodded. Then the Romanian chuckled softly.
“What?” Buchevsky raised an eyebrow at him.
“It is just that we are so much alike, you and I.” Basarab shook his head. “Deny it as you will, my Stephen, but there is a Slav inside you!”
“Inside me?” Buchevsky laughed, looking down at the back of one very black hand. “Hey, I already told you! If any of my ancestors were ever in Europe, they got there from Africa, not the steppes!”
“Ah!” Basarab waved a finger under his nose, green eyes gleaming with unusual warmth in the candlelight. “So you have said, but I know better! What, ‘Buchevsky’? This is an African name?”
“Nope. Probably just somebody who owned one of my great-great-granddaddies or grandmamas.”
“Nonsense! Slavs in nineteenth-century America were too poor to own anyone! No, no. Trust me—it is in the blood. Somewhere in your ancestry there is—how do you Americans say it?—a Slav in the straw pile!”
Buchevsky laughed again. He was actually learning to do that once more—sometimes, at least—and they’d had this conversation before. Besides, Basarab was the only man in any of the villages under his protection who’d ever been to America. It w
as obvious he’d enjoyed the visit, but it was equally obvious he hadn’t got all of the slang quite correct. His most recent sally had been considerably less mangled than most, as a matter of fact.
Buchevsky hadn’t realized Basarab had ever visited the United States. Not for a while, anyway. But he’d discovered that despite the dark places behind Mircea Basarab’s eyes, the man had a naturally warm, sly sense of humor. He could still remember the first night when they’d heard the wolves howling in the mountains’ untouched forest and Basarab had looked at him, laid one forefinger against the side of his nose, and—perfectly deadpan—dropped his voice at least one full octave and solemnly declaimed: “Ah! The children of the night! Hear how they sing!”
Buchevsky had been drinking some of the villagers’ home-brewed beer at the moment, and he’d sprayed a quarter of a mug or so of it across Calvin Meyers. Then the two of them had glared as one at Basarab, who’d shrugged with a devilish smile.
“I saw that film in Chicago years ago,” he’d said. “It was a . . . what do you people call it over there? Ah, yes! It was a film festival at the public library there. As a native of Wallachia, I was, of course, deeply impressed by the film’s total fidelity to the land in which I was born.” His smile had gone even broader, and he’d shrugged. “I do not believe they actually got a single thing right, of course, but I have always loved that particular bit of dialogue. It is so delightfully overdone, do you not think?”
“I believe the term you’re looking for at this particular moment is ‘haystack,’ not ‘straw pile,’ Mircea,” Buchevsky said now. “And while I realize Jasmine Sherman, Lyman Curry, and I are probably the only blacks within two or three hundred miles, it’s still just a little bit politically incorrect.”
“Oh, and you are so devoted to this ‘political correctness’ of yours, are you?”
“Honestly? No, not so much,” Buchevsky admitted, and Basarab chuckled. But then the Romanian’s expression sobered, and he reached across the table to lay one hand on Buchevsky’s arm.
“Whatever you may have been born, my Stephen,” he said quietly, “you are a Slav now. A Wallachian. You have earned that.”
Buchevsky waved dismissively, but he couldn’t deny the warmth he felt inside. He knew Basarab meant every word of it, too, just as he knew he truly had earned his place as the Romanian’s second-in-command through the training and discipline he’d brought the villagers. Basarab had somehow managed to stockpile impressive quantities of small arms and infantry support weapons, but however fearsome Take Bratianu and the rest of Basarab’s original group might have been as individuals, and however devoted they might have been to their chieftain, it was obvious none of them had really understood how to train civilians. Stephen Buchevsky, on the other hand, had spent years turning pampered American civilians into US Marines. Compared to that, training tough, mountain-hardened Romanian villagers was a piece of cake.
I just hope none of them are ever going to need that training, he reflected, his mood turning grim once again.
“Go ahead and sit down with the others, Mircea,” he said. “However much you decide you have to tell them, I’ll back you. I’d rather you didn’t go into too much detail about our own defensive plans and positions, though. They might not do much good against the puppies, but I’d just as soon have them come as a surprise if any of our neighbors decide to get all . . . acquisitive this winter.”
“‘Acquisitive’?” Basarab tilted his head to the side, one eyebrow cocked. “This is a word most Marines use a great deal? Or have you been saving it for a special occasion?”
“I know all kinds of big words,” Buchevsky assured him. “I just don’t know very many of them in Romanian yet. I’m sure it’ll come, though . . . assuming those floppy-eared bastards leave us alone, at least.”
His voice had hardened again with the final sentence, and Basarab reached across the table to touch his forearm again.
“Agreed,” he said, and shrugged. “I know it goes as much against the grain for you as it does for me, my Stephen. Yet sooner or later, unless they simply intend to kill all of us, there must be some form of accommodation.”
Basarab’s sour expression showed his opinion of his own analysis, but he continued unflinchingly.
“The people of this land have fought back against conquerors before, my Stephen. Sometimes with success, and other times . . . not so successfully. Indeed, Vlad Tepes himself once had his main fortress, Cetatea Poenari, atop a mountain at Cortea-de-Arges, barely thirty kilometers from here. I realize Vlad has not been much beloved in history outside Romania, although some see him differently in this land because of how much he did to resist the Turks, how successfully he held them at bay—for a time, at least—and it was to Cetatea Poenari he retreated when enemies forced him to yield ground.
“Yet that only underscores the point, does it not? Not even he, despite all the horrific measures to which he was willing to resort—and although my people venerate him in many ways, those measures were horrific, my Stephen; far worse, I fear, than anything you have seen in Afghanistan or other lands in your own lifetime—could defeat the Turks in the end. How then shall we defeat an invader from beyond the stars themselves?”
Basarab shook his head.
“No. To dream of such foolishness would but bring the destruction it has brought elsewhere, yet if the Shongairi had intended simple butchery rather than conquest, then they would have begun by destroying all of our cities and towns from space. To me that suggests we are at least marginally more valuable to them alive than dead. I fear one could scarcely have said more for the Turks or the Soviets, and no one truly knows how many thousands and millions of Romanians died resisting those purely human conquerors. Now it would seem we must turn our thoughts once more to surviving conquest, and what our people have done before, no doubt they can do again. But I will not subject my people to these new conquerors from beyond our world without first holding out for the very best terms we can obtain. And if they prove me in error—if they demonstrate that they are, indeed, prepared to settle for butchery rather than conquest—then they will pay a higher price than they can possibly imagine before they rule these mountains. As you say, they will not like either of us when we are angry.”
He sat for a moment in cold, dangerous silence. Then he shook himself.
“Well, it seems we are in accord, then. But if we are to have true agreement with our neighbors—and if I am to be certain the agreement is upon my terms—I shall have to go in person to negotiate with each of the enclaves and its leaders.”
“Now, wait a minute!” Buchevsky said. “I’ll agree it’s something we need to do, whether I’m all that crazy about it or not, but I’d just as soon not have you out wandering around the woods all alone, Mircea. I’ve gotten a little fond of you, and on a purely selfish note, you’re the one holding this entire arrangement together. We can’t afford to lose you.”
“I am not so easily lost as all that, my Stephen,” Basarab assured him. Buchevsky only glared at him, and after a moment, the Romanian sighed. “Very well, you stubborn American! I will take Take and his men with me. For that matter, it probably would hurt nothing for me to arrive with a suitable . . . retinue to impress my fellow leaders with my importance and formidable military resources.” He made a face. “Will that reassure you?”
Buchevsky opened his mouth to protest again, but then he closed it once more, objection unspoken. He’d discovered he was always uncomfortable when Basarab went wandering around the mountains out from under his own eye. And a part of him resented the fact that Basarab hadn’t even considered inviting him along on this little jaunt. But somebody had to stay home and look after things, and that was logically his job if Basarab was away. Besides, the truth, however little he wanted to admit it, was that he would probably have been more of a hindrance than a help.
Take Bratianu and the rest of his formidable little band all seemed able to see like cats and move like drifting leaves. He couldn’t even come cl
ose to matching them when it came to sneaking through the woods at night, and he knew it . . . however little he liked admitting that there was anything someone could do better than he could.
Hey, cut yourself some slack, Stevie! he scolded himself. Take must be, what—forty or fifty years old? And I’ll bet you he’s spent every month of those years wandering around in the woods. That probably gives him just a teeny bit more experience than you’ve got, now doesn’t it? And under the circumstances, it makes sense for Mircea not to invite a great big clumsy Marine with him. Even if it does piss you off a little.
He chuckled and shook his head at the thought, and Basarab smiled at him.
“I think we have a few days yet before the written invitations can reach all of the others,” he mused. “Next week, I think. Wednesday, perhaps. And while I am away, you will keep an eye on things for me, my African Slav, yes?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Buchevsky agreed.
. XXX .
Rain pelted down, not so much pattering on the leaves as battering its way through them, and thunder rumbled somewhere beyond the coal-black sky which had draped itself over the mountain summits like a lumpy, billowing roof. It felt more like October than the first week of September, Dave Dvorak thought, squatting in the scrub woods west of US-64. And it felt more like seven or eight in the evening than it did like four in the afternoon, too.
He didn’t like being here. Rob Wilson didn’t like being here, either, and neither of their wives had been happy about their going. Yet they hadn’t argued, and despite the unpleasant weather and something roiling around within him which felt entirely too much like terror, he was proud of them for not arguing.
“Of course you’re going,” Sharon had said unhappily, meeting his gaze with level blue eyes which refused to weep. “They need you. But don’t you dare get yourself killed, Dave Dvorak! And do what you can to bring my idiot brother back with you, too.”