Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Tanks Were Rattling Like Thunder
[the Sword] It fosters your masters,
It plasters disasters,
It makes the servants quickly greater
Than their masters.
– The Dominion of the Sword.
Narcissa Black Malfoy had now spent ten days in a polite confinement in the Presidential Palace in Astana. She was given everything she wanted, and her communications were delivered to her—doubtless having been read first—and her outgoing mails to the rest of her government in exile were also delivered promptly, doubtlessly also after being read. Without a House Elf around to help, she relied on the staff of the palace, which meant she didn't really have any privacy, but that was fine, because she expected none and knew that she was under surveillance the entire time.
Really, what was more grating than the confinement was not knowing what had happened to her sister. She had effectively been in a worse sort of house arrested before. She knew that she was being surveilled, from the moment that she had arrived in the CIS. The problem was whether or not her sister was still alive, whether or not she had succeeded in the absurd task that she placed before herself. For all she had sometimes hated Bella, she had never stopped loving her, either. You idiot, you glorious idiot, big sister. What's happening to you? The longer the wait was, the more that she worried.
Then at about ten on the clock, there was a sharp knock on the door. Narcissa pointed her wand at the door and commanded it open. "Come in."
"Madame Malfoy," the young Kazakh MinKol Witch at the door, in her dress uniform, stepped in, and politely bowed. "His Excellency the President will see you in an hour."
"Thank you, Officer," she said, her eyes whipping around to focus on the woman. "I'll be ready."
The woman bowed again, and turned back out. Narcissa closed the door after her, and forced herself through the routine of getting dressed and her makeup set out perfectly with the help of a few spells, in the finest professional women's business suit of the muggle world that she had been able to obtain.
Her fingers trembled so hard that it was difficult to do it right. She could remember herself, Andy, Bella, as children. She could remember her father's hand in a way that chilled her to the bone even now. She could remember running away, into the loving arms of a graceful, dignified, and to her, caring man of her own blood, who could protect her from her father and give her the life she had dreamed off since she was young. He had been at her side, through everything, through giving birth to Draco, through the good times, and the hard times, right until he met his fate worse than death, saving her and her son.
In the end, that meant she would love Lucius forever. The hard times and the disagreements and the way their relationship had nearly collapsed in the Second Wizarding War had vanished forever. But that was all for memories which would not come again.
When she thought of Bella, protecting her from her father, when she thought of running away, and leaving her elder sister to scandal, to Voldemort, to the Lestranges, she shivered and her heart chilled. Now, it was like navigating an enchanted maze, where one wrong turn might doom not just her but also Draco, and Bella.
She steeled herself, and forced her hands through the motions of the spells to finish assembling her clothes and set her makeup in place perfectly. She reviewed herself in the mirror with all of the composed dignity that she could muster. Then, with no other time left to prepare, and with her heart trembling but her body composed, Narcissa presented herself at the door, and five minutes before eleven on the clock, the Witch returned with two guards as escorts.
"Lead on," Narcissa commanded before anything else could be said.
The woman dipped her head. "Of course. This way, Madame Malfoy."
Like a Lioness in Winter, she strode through the palace with her escort, carrying herself erect and with all the hauteur that she could muster. One way or another, she was Lady Malfoy, and the fact that they had given her time to get ready implied it wasn't a trip to meet a firing squad.
Indeed, they were heading down into the bunkers below the palace, she quickly realised. Her expression tightened, seriously. She had never expected to be welcomed into these areas, where classified information was being exchanged and collated.
It meant that something significant had happened, and that it was positive. Down through the grey corridors she walked, her heart quickening in anticipation, until she was led through the vault doors which were the entrance to the emergency operations room.
"Madame Malfoy," Nursultan Nazarbayev looked up from a table, with screens projecting information in front of him and a map drawn out across it. He rose to shake her hand.
"Your Excellency, thank you," she acknowledged after shaking his hand. Five years ago, she would have never touched a filthy muggle, but now she had accepted that this man held altogether great power, was cunning, and needed to be respected for this. It was the only way to have any hope for the future at all, when it came to Wizarding Britain.
"By all means, call me Mister President," he corrected. "Please have a seat."
She moved to sit, hiding her surprise. "I don't understand."
"I will treat you as any other Head of Government, now. Please, review this." He pushed over to her the neat paperwork of an official declaration.
On the Alliance between the Confederation of Independence States and the British Government in Exile.
"It's said," Nazarbayev spoke with bemusement in his intelligent eyes, "That Stalin once asked how many divisions the Pope has. Well, I can tell you, Madame Malfoy, how many divisions you have: Eighteen, counting the ensorcelled troops. Some will doubtless volunteer when they are freed, to get revenge."
Narcissa read to the end of the document. It placed her troops under the overall command of Stavka, but allowed her to make appointments of officers, even to high rank, on her own. It also subordinated her foreign policy to that of the Confederation, and directed that she would make decisions in the interests of the overall foreign policy decisions of the Alliance. In short, he wants me very much under his thumb. But he was being polite about it, praising her for what her sister had done.
"Your sister has brought across her forces exactly as promised, and is presently approaching the outskirts of Zaporizhia," he observed, while a servant presented Narcissa with tea.
She took it and cupped it in her hands. "Mister President, I had great confidence that Bellatrix would prove committed to our cause when she began her overture. Thank you." The reality was, she would have no choice in the matter. The terms might be changed in the future, but for the moment, her family depended on her compliance. For all it committed her to a certain course, after all, it gave her authority over her own people. And that meant Bellatrix. And possibly getting Draco off the front, too. After taking a drink, she wasted no time in signing the document, because while she may now be granted consideration for having eighteen divisions, she was still very much expected to take the agreement as it was written. That was not the kind of matter you bargained on, she thought trenchantly. Not when she was still only the head of a government in exile. It gave her what she needed—the safety of her family. She would find a way to make do with the rest. The ink still wet, she pushed it back over to Nursultan Nazarbayev, who nodded crisply in acknowledgement.
Narcissa had to maintain a professional reserve, and her life had fortunately prepared her for this. But it was such a strange feeling, that for the first time in decades, she felt a kinship with Bellatrix. Now they were on the same side, now their fates were linked. She had a niece. Bellatrix had a daughter she had to have obligations to, just like it was Draco who had driven her to take this course. Narcissa's heart soared in a way that it hadn't in years.
But now the real challenge began, too. She was in power, and she would have to keep herself that way. Once you took up those reins, you could not let them down, that was obvious to her in this world she saw around her today.
Still, she couldn't help but ask. "As for my sister?"
"You are free to appoint her to any position within the British Army-in-Exile that you see fit," he answered. "Pursuant to the agreement provided to Madame Black, I have issued an Executive Order providing for the State Prosecution Services to cease investigating any actions taken by her during the course of the war, on Confederal soil, or internationally under statutes of international jurisdiction, or on account of command responsibility. Henceforth, she's an officer of an allied nation, nothing more."
He turned toward the maps, and Narcissa looked also, while thinking about what he had said. Now, projected, Narcissa could see the positions of divisions, corps, Armies. She could see the troops had occupied all of Kherson Oblast on the left bank of the Dnepr. She could see also that they had almost completely occupied Zaporizhia oblast on two lines of advance on the left bank of the Dnepr as well.
In the south, the front had been smashed wide open. Some of Bellatrix's troops— her troops, now!-were manoeuvring to cut off Krasnodar and place the Morsmordre troops there in a cauldron against the sea on a broad, strategic scale. Two other columns were pushing north toward Rostov-na-Donu with alacrity. The flanking column on the right had already seized Stavropol and was making time from north of the city toward the northwest, following the main roads.
In the north, a massive offensive had pushed Russian troops into position to fight for Oryol. There was already heavy fighting in the city, while to the south a hook curved toward the southwest and the Ukrainian frontier. A series of other major thrusts were developing out of Voronezh, one toward Belgorod and one toward the south.
"This battle has been launched on the same scale as the Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation—Bagration," he observed. "Now we must guarantee that the operation is exploited as effectively as possible."
"I concur completely, Mister President. When will I be able to go to the front to meet with my troops?"
"When the operation is concluded," he answered. "We need you here to coordinate, for now, Madame." He certainly wouldn't take no for an answer.
"Then let's begin," Narcissa spoke matter-of-factly. A simple read of her situation made it plain that the only way through for House Malfoy, was to stay the course... And for her sister and House Black, well. It was time for the youngest to come into her own.
On the flat and open plains to the northwest of Stavropol and north of Krasnodar, there were few good places to stop an Army, but it was here that the enemy had to stop them, or else the retreat of the rest of Voldemort's Army from the Volga would be impossible.
It was always good, Larissa knew, when you forced your enemy to fight on terrain they had not chosen. They were a few klicks west of the village of Yegorlykskaya, where the enemy had drawn their lines where the ground subtly constricted them, just a bit, enough that the railway had dog-legged through this small village instead of taking a shorter route to the east. They could do no better for finding a position to defend.
The terrain was best to attack to the west, so it was there that the enemy drew up their tanks. They had no time to prepare fixed defences, so they were positioned to fight hull-down in a creekbed which trended to the west northwest, taking advantage of the trees which grew on the shores of the creek for some added cover, though in winter, with the snow carpeting the open plains and the trees bare, they provided a very thin cover indeed.
Larissa stood on a low copse, with the wind whipping the snow from the grass which was bowing under its weight around her camouflaged boots. She had used her wand to conjure a quick vision, through the sunglasses that protected her eyes from the glare, of the enemy lines, finer than any pair of binoculars. The enemy were disordered and exhausted and had already been hit hard, but they would see the danger soon enough, and take advantage of it.
Ginny was crouched low in the grass in her fatigues, occasionally glancing up at Larissa, thinking those exact thoughts, too. "Seen enough yet, Princess? We should probably get back into cover!"
Almost as if to punctuate the words, there was a puff of smoke from the enemy position. Ginny's eyes glinted, and the redheaded witch leapt to her feet with her wand flying. The Protego she sang out sent the tank shell ricocheting back toward their attackers, embedding in the soil and exploding three hundred metres short.
"Junior Councillor, can we TAKE COVER!?" Ginny shouted this time.
"Yes, they have our mark," Larissa acknowledged, and turned, jogging back below the copse, still standing, while behind them another salvo of shells plummeted down. A flick of her wand as she retreated sent them the same way as the first, but it told the enemy there were wizards there, too, not a doubt of it now, dirt and flame in the air as they ran for cover.
Around her, in position and ready to go, was the military strength of one of Bellatrix's brigades in the defected Janissary units now called the 'Black Guard'. They had the same vehicles as their enemies. To be told apart from the air, skulls, jackdaws, chevrons and mailled fists with swords had started to appear on the tops of the vehicles in the Black Guards. Black flags were painted on their flanks and rears. They stood out against the snow, but it couldn't be helped, for the sake of preventing 'friendly fire'.
But they were reinforced, now. The 27 th Division had caught up, since it had not been involved in the fighting for Stavropol or the other cities, just driving flat-out up the Georgian Military Road and then northwest to come in as their reinforcements. Russian and Turkmen tanks were moving up now to support on the left. Larissa could see them as she brushed her jacket off and, screened by the copse, looked to the west. "Thank you, Ginny."
"No problem." Ginny laughed. "You just need to be reminded sometimes that you're mortal, that's all. Hermione would be furious if I let you get blasted by a tank shell."
"Yeah, I guess she would. At least we've got to assume she's alright, or else all of this," Larissa waved around them, "wouldn't be happening." She started back to the command BTR that held Major Lukachenko, sheltering at the base of the slope, choosing her footing carefully as she descended the slope through the snow, a little spray of it kicked up by their quick movements.
The Major stepped out to meet them. "Councillor! What did you see about their position?" A desultory fire had opened up from the enemy ranks, but the allied forces refused to divulge the positions of their tanks and artillery by returning fire.
"Alexandra Rostislavna, they're hull-down along the creek," Larissa answered, following her back in, to crouch under the armoured cover of the roof of the BTR, a topographic map of the region spread down in front of them as they both bend over it at the hatch. She marked the positions with her wand, leaving little glowing dots on the map indicating different sizes and types of units, which expanded outwards into miniatures—glowing little magical holograms of little men standing on the map, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery pieces.
Alexandra's eyes flickered across the points on the map, sparing as little time as she could. " By following the natural line of the terrain—they've refused their right flank."
"Yes."
"Thirteen klicks southwest from Yegorlykskaya the creek curves back to the northeast…" Alexandra looked up. "Their line is in the form of a bent bow, more curved to the left, less to the right. So, we go in from the left, at the point of inflection, hit the centre. A direct push forward, the western points of their line won't actually be able to support the centre or fire on the advance."
"Advance with the tanks to three hundred metres, and then we apparate into the middle of their lines with our squads? Take them at point-blank?" Larissa's eyes questioned her compatriot.
"That's… A hell of a lot of risk, but what can I say? The tanks will be exposed going forward without wizards on the front, Larissa Sergeivna. They'll take heavy losses from the enemy wizards." Alexandra was grimacing.
Larissa blinked for a moment, thinking hard, and fast. "Call for the divisional artillery of the 27 th , we'll use rockets to keep their heads down until the tanks get close. It's worth it, General Pronichev will approve it, we can open their entire line here."
"Alright. I'll get on the line." Alexandra ducked fully inside, and Larissa turned back to Ginny.
"The orders will come in a few minutes?" Ginny asked.
"Certainly," Larissa nodded, walking along the lines. A heavy shelling from the enemy position was starting up, trying to disrupt the attack before it happened, the screams of the shells descending around them and detonating near to their lines sending most of the soldiers and wizards to cover. Larissa, with Ginny at her side, continued to walk down the line.
Several shells exploded nearby, driving craters into the snowy ground, kicking up flame and smoke, and as Ginny ducked, her wand up, Larissa just checked her chronometer, walking matter-of-factly. Then she paused at the end of the line and turned back. "Battalion! Comrades! In five minutes we are again going over onto the attack! As we have experienced in the last week, the enemy is demoralised and stunned by this turn of events! We have the confidence of victory on our side: The enemy's air of invincibility has been destroyed and will not return to him again."
Another brace of shells slammed down, close enough to splatter dirt, churned to mud with the snow, onto Larissa's sleeve. She contemptuously flicked it off and turned back to her speech. "There are hundreds of thousands of our civilians ahead of us, who have been enslaved by this enemy, but know that our Army is in the field, fighting for their liberty. This is your hour to make true the promise you gave them when you enlisted, and show to them that Russia will not abandon an inch of her soil, nor a single one of her people, to the clutches of these monsters—Napoleon, Hitler, Voldemort, it's just one more. Urrah!"
"URRAH!"
Larissa walked back along the line, shaking her fist in the air as she returned to the command track to their shouts. "Make yourselves ready, comrades!"
Alexandra stepped out with one of her signalmen, who repeated the radio signal by holding up flags. As he did, the tanks around them began to move into their jumping off points.
"Three minutes, Councillor," she said flatly, her voice denying any tension.
"Thank you." Larissa reached for a cigarette, the easy gesture hiding that her mind was racing. She was human, even as a witch, she had fears. But there was nothing to be done for them, not until this war was over. So she had a smoke, and looked confident for the witches and wizards who looked up to her and trusted her to lead them.
It was all she could do.
Suddenly, the rain of rockets tore overhead, barely visible. They made no noise by that point except for the solitary crack of their passage at faster than the speed of sound, and that came after they had already hit the ground, beginning to explode in front of them. The cluster munitions were used especially, to make it as hard as possible for the enemy wizards to deflect all of the incoming rounds.
As the rockets slammed down, the tanks charged across the open ground. For the next ten minutes the ground exploded in front of them, and the tanks drove as fast and hard as they could toward the enemy, with the rockets simply carpeting the ground, obscuring their advance in smoke and flame, laying down a bridge of fire to obscure their advance.
The wizards on the other side were hardly dead, or even slowed down, by the attacks against them. They were easily deflecting dozens and then hundreds of rockets as the main barrage came down on them. But it kept them distracted. That was all that was necessary.
Larissa stepped forward to the position of her command squad, eyes fixed on her chrono. She raised her wand. As the last of the rockets vanished, the tanks now came under concentrated fire, both from their opposite number, and from wizards that pitted their strength against the enchantments—now preferred to the electronics of modern tanks, which could not be produced with the disruptions of the war, anyway—good old machinery and a little magic in the heart. The work of people like Hermione's friend, Andromeda Tonks, and countless other nameless but important wizards like them at the rear.
Still, some of those tanks exploded, or were transfigurated in ways that instantly killed the soldiers inside. This was a messy business, and in a wizarding war, death could be undignified. Still it must go on; the tanks carried home the attack, the thunder of guns and engines and treads muffled into the snow.
Then it was time. "BATTALION FORWARD! Apparate to contact!"
They had spread the image of the enemy position, and so each of them had the job of apparating over a squad, and immediately fighting. In a single moment, with the last of the straggler rockets coming down in their midst, so that they had to defend against their own missiles, the same for the guns of the tanks that were firing into their positions, they were in the midst of the enemy.
Shock and desperation met them, wild cries of men who realised that they were now facing melee combat close range. A Bombarda quickly destroyed a tank nearby, while Ginny signalled their position, and the fire of their own tanks slacked off. A few sharp applications of binding spells left regular soldiers helpless and allowed Larissa and her command force to take over the rude positions of fallen logs their enemies had previously occupied.
Around them, magical and materiel combat blinded together into a cacophony of light, sound, violence, and death. And then the tanks tore over the crest of the slope, firing down into their remaining rivals at point-blank, while the Koldovstoretsy took them from the rear. The step was alive with fire, and in the defile of the creek-bed, the bodies stacked or burned from the ferocious combat, the guns of the better part of a brigade of tanks now able to fire in enfilade along the northwest trending line of the creek.
The combat swirled away from them as they worked their spells, shielding and loosing destructive magic with reckless abandon, until their enemies had been overmatched, and they could turn to exploitation of the situation. Quickly, Larissa was bogged down in the business of commanding the advance. But advance they would, and she had proudly taken Bellatrix Black's promise to heart: They were going for the Dnepr, and nothing less.
The offensive had certainly lived up to Bellatrix's reputation for 'spectacular insanity'. When there was an attempt to halt the advancing columns at a canal south of Zaporizhia, Bellatrix had mustered the wizards loyal to her to simply advance earthen berms, raising chunks of soil and mud out of the water, to create paths down which her tanks could advance under fire.
Now they stood at the city itself, the ruins, worked over by nuclear warfare and the Morsmordre's Invasion of the Ukraine. The destruction of the DniproHES dam and hydroelectric station complex to slow the invaders had completed the utter ruination of this once grand industrial area, nuked and then flooded.
Hermione understood now why Bellatrix's troops were willing to follow her through so much. It had become obvious in the fighting around Melitopol, and more clear, still, when they had stood on the bank of that canal, and directly under fire, raised the causeways. Bellatrix was always at the front. She superficially lacked a normal human emotion of fear, like Larissa in that sense, but with a manic, frenetic desperation, not the calm, diffident air of the Russian wizarding aristocrat.
Her fearlessness and willingness to lead from the front—or perhaps lack of ability to imagine anything else!-was what made muggle men follow her, despite the other facets of her reputation. Of course, it also made keeping her alive an incredible chore, as well as simply surviving in her presence as her guard.
Their current position was at the Zaporizhia East airport, where they were trying to put together a drive to finish bottling up the enemy in the Old City, pinned against the river. They did not need to take the ruins which could grind up an Army, they only needed to shove them into place and hold them there, so that their armoured spearhead could keep driving north toward Dnepropetrovsk.
Artillery was continuously firing around them. They had brought up the corps-level masses of 155mm self-propelled howitzers. It was natural to place them around the airport. The enemy was firing back, but as they targeted the artillery fire, and sent wizard hunter-killer teams into the heart of the city in quick raids, they knocked out more and more of their batteries. The sound of the guns thundering had become just a dim backdrop to the days that had passed in a blur, the ruined city overlooking the famed island home of the Zaporizhian Sich, burning in a desultory manner to the west.
Hermione was pulling together casualty reports for the wizards involved in the fighting and sending them out. Bellatrix never cared about any of the paperwork, and Hermione had soon found herself supporting General Dodson in that respect. Drinking tea out of a tin cup, a cigarette curling smoke in an old ashtray they had found, their headquarters was in the control tower of the airport, where despite the fact it was an obvious target, Bellatrix had insisted on it for the view that it gave her.
She looked out, inscrutable, her arms still fully concealed in glove and engageante. Every so often she would turn the maps, ask a question, look at the position of a unit, and then give an order. There was the look of a caged tiger to her, she wanted to be fighting, when there was so much noise and violence all around.
Hermione shivered a little, and tore her eyes off Bellatrix. She took another hot gulp of her tea—the heat was long dead in the control tower and it was cold enough to make her want any kind of warmth she could find (she didn't like thinking about the further implications of that, though)-and then finished off the reports and handed them to Dodson.
"Sir, the bottom line is, we've lost twenty percent of our wizarding strength for the rest of this offensive, when we started at half strength. We're going to need more reinforcements from MinKol soon, or else we're just plain going to lose the ability to conduct offensive operations," Hermione said softly, not wanting to draw Bellatrix's attention to it until her Chief of Staff had a chance to review it.
Then, Bellatrix was over her shoulder, pressing down against her. A shiver ran through Hermione's spine. For a moment, she completely blanked on the report. For the past days, she had slept together with Bellatrix in the command track, at nights and whenever else they had a chance—not making love, the pace was too intense for that, but resting together in the same bed . The other members of the staff made do with tents, but Bellatrix had a bed which folded down in the command track, and with Hermione effectively serving as her bodyguard, and Bellatrix maintaining her obsessed detachment, it had just happened, without any talking, without any planning, without any thinking.
Almost like it were natural for them to be together. "Colonel Granger," Bellatrix said, her voice distantly sounding, and then coming sharply into focus as Hermione's brain jolted her back from her reverie, "can you repeat that please?"
"...Of course, Ma'am," Hermione answered formally, and began to go for the papers...
"BLUF, Granger?"
Hermione pursed her lips, her cheeks curling into a flush that reminded her how young she was. Even if hearing Bellatrix use English military acronyms was just weird. Then she forced herself to be professional, and give Bellatrix the summary that she wanted. "We're at forty percent strength for our wizarding units, Ma'am. We'll soon lose the ability to conduct offensive operations with adequate coverage for the men. We need reinforcement, especially from MinKol, if we're going to meet the operational timetable. The next two hundred kilometres we need to cover are a slog, the enemy is moving in reinforcements, and our operational pace is grinding us up."
"Thank you, Granger." Bellatrix had a distant stare. "Dodson?"
Her Chief of Staff for the Crimean units stiffened. "She's right. We can keep on the offensive for now, but Long Range Aviation hasn't gotten all of the bridges in Dnepropetrovsk, so we're going to face heavy opposition there."
"I'm not asking for help yet. Ask for Long Range Aviation to support us in cleaning up Zaporizhia, if they haven't got the bridges in Dnepropetrovsk yet, they won't in time for it to matter. And we need to get our troops moving north, immediately."
"Minimising further losses in Zaporizhia won't be…"
"I'll MAKE IT HAPPEN!" Bellatrix shouted at Dodson, and then grinned. "I will ask for help. But on my terms. Get us ready to move, General. Speed matters. Come on, Granger. Let's finish this shit."
Despite all the danger implicit in those words, Hermione found that after two weeks of this insanity, they served only to send a shock of anticipation through her heart. Bellatrix, wild and uncontrolled in the middle of the campaign, was impossibly sexy to her sleep-deprived and caffeine and nicotine overdosed brain.
And for the moment, that also guaranteed she didn't have the slightest doubt.
Notes:
BLUF - Anglo-Saxon military acronym for "Bottom Line Up Front".
Enfilade - a military term meaning to fire, or approach, from the short length of an enemy line. So say if the enemy line was an I, to approach from the top or bottom of the I.
Defilade - to be protected from enfilade.
Zaporizhian Sich - the holdfast of the Cossacks of the Ukraine in the 17th century.
Point of Inflection - where a line changes angle. So in that case, the most exposed point.
klick - just in case this wasn't clear from before, this is a military abbreviation of "kilometre".
left bank— Looking down from Moskva, so the east side of the Dnepr.