Chapter Thirty: The Dnepr Rapids.
They had seen hard fighting in the past few days, and Hermione was as exhausted as she could be. Bellatrix was as brilliant in combat against her former friends as she once had been against Hermione and her friends, and the young witch was thankful for that. She was glad to see the skills and talents of this past generation of the 'finest witch of her age' put to the use of humiliating the forces of the Morsmordre.
Their troops had slogged north through declining weather conditions while Bellatrix had at times coordinated and at times argued with CIS army staff over comms. She was under more pressure as her offensive slowed down, and it was reflected in the way that both of them were tired and haggard. The past weeks had been like an unstoppable roller coaster.
The thick mud at the bottom of the Dniprovs'ke reservoir was covered with ice and snow. Once it had been a lake, but the war had put an end to that. This was the position of just the latest attempt of the enemy to put together a stop-line, to the west of Ternovka, where a flanking valley of the Dnepr had once been inundated. Once, this place had been called the Dnepr Rapids, the long stretch of the Dnepr between the modern cities of Zaporizhia and Dnepropetrovsk where the river had descended through portage after portage, rapids after rapids. Once, it had teemed with life, both human and magical, but the magical inhabitants of the Dnepr were gone now—pollution, human intrusion, even the radiation of Chernobyl was buried in that mud, and all of that had been let out by the destruction of the dams. The river had not frozen solid, though. It was too mighty for that. In the distance to her left, Hermione could still see water roaring over rocks in the restored rapids, throwing up spray that froze into strange shapes, into growing frazil ice in the river. It was beautiful, but as cold and silent as the tomb. Perhaps one day, though, it will mean the life comes back.
It had not been easy going to get this far. With the need to finish off resistance in Zaporizhia, and then push north, they had only made thirty-two klicks from the airport for their newest front line. The village of Slavgorod to the east on the railway line marked the outer edge of their line, but there was no attempt to flank them or counterattack, the enemy simply didn't have the troops for it.
It was snowing, hard. It made it more difficult, still, to see the bottom of the formerly flooded valley. The temperatures were ferociously cold. It was dipping down toward - 2 0C, w ith the night promising to be even colder. With the wind screaming across the steppe, it felt much colder. Next to her, Bellatrix looked haunted, with her eyes drawn and her pale skin battered by the wind, looking tiny in the massive coat buttoned and belted around her.
Then a smile came to her face again. "They think they're so strong, but they're not. They're the wind-blown remnants of an Army."
Hermione couldn't help but laugh, somewhere between real amusement and sleep exhaustion. " We're all wind-blown at the moment, Bellatrix." They were running too far behind, and for all of Bellatrix's contempt at the positions they had just surveyed, the terrain made an attack very difficult to organise. Driving tanks across the partially frozen sludge at the bottom of the reservoir was a dangerous endeavour for an attack, if the ice crust on the surface failed.
The sun was fast fading from the sky. Bellatrix turned away, giving up on trying to see more of the dim and obscured enemy positions in the failing light. Hermione paced her, walking back to the command track.
Hermione grabbed the next day's met forecast from the cluster of command tents, which they were trying to keep warm with trailer-mounted diesel heaters. It was not that much of a change. Then she fell back in with Bellatrix, reading through the report.
"Clear skies up to ten thousand metres, maximum wind speed of fifteen km/h, initial temperature of -35C rising to -15C by fifteen hundred hours," she summarised, just to have Bellatrix yank the file out of her hands and read it herself.
"...Bella?" She hazarded, now that they were alone. The command track they rode in was secured, and Bellatrix unlocked it; when they arrived at position, all communications were handled from tents and other vehicles, because Bellatrix's personal command track had the telecaster in it, and leaving a telecaster unsupervised was essentially unacceptable, even though the previous user had to voluntarily release it to the next.
"That's exactly what I wanted to hear. A day that's a blessing to us," Bella laughed. "My luck holds! Come on, Granger," she bounded inside before it got cold, short enough that the vehicle wasn't too uncomfortable for her.
Inside, the telecaster sat with a magic light glowing above it. Sometimes it spun idly, nobody could say why, but perhaps it was the magical energy of all the ensorcelled people that it was controlling. The cloudy not-quite-water of the memories it had collected was dim and eerie, in the basin of the pensieve in which it sat. Hermione hoped that soon the telecaster would be separated from the pensieve, that the people would be free, that she could possibly have a chance to study a telecaster that wasn't being used for such an ill purpose.
She was desperately guilty about all of the enslaved people they were forcing to fight in the heat of the moment. She was guilty about the fact that her own government very much did not intend to force Bellatrix to let them go until the end of the offensive. They were needed on the front line. They were needed to win. So still they fought.
Hermione hoped they knew they fought for a far better cause than before. But she couldn't dupe herself into believing it was really equivalent to simply being conscripted, because it wasn't. She dogged the hatch behind them. Bellatrix had enchanted a fireless flame in the middle of the vehicle which kept it warm even when it wasn't running, and the flood of heat back into her body made her feel guilty for the soldiers who, on that night, in the heat of combat, would have no warmth as the temperatures dipped down to -35C through the night as the storm eased off.
Bellatrix stood before the telecaster now, and with her wand out toward it, it spun. She did not give orders to the Army, however. The magic of the telecaster was subtle, and it could force the trained men of the ensorcelled Army to follow general orders; it was not necessary to micromanage operations through it. Instead, she was using it for its second function. As she completed the non-verbal spell, the spinning telecaster projected a ghostly three-dimensional image of Lady Minister Tamar Dadiani, who had access to the Telecaster with the Black Guard—Bellatrix's other Army. A similar image of Bellatrix would be mirrored for Lady Tamar.
"Minister."
"Madame Black," Tamar acknowledged.
"The met forecast for the Dnepr Rapids region tomorrow is excellent. I want you to reach out to Astana and confirm the operation will be executed. It's our chance to turn the line, before they throw more troops into Dnepropetrovsk," Bellatrix said with a tired pride, a gleam in her eyes that showed her feeling of triumph. " The drop zone that was identified between Pavlovka and Vasilovka will work nicely—AB, I believe it was."
"AB," Tamar acknowledged. "Well, we're only going to get one throw of this bolt, Madame Black. Are you sure it will be enough?"
"I will make it enough," Bellatrix's lips curled into a confident sneer. "I will make it enough. The weather has been so bad, we could not execute it before, but now is our chance, and with those troops in place, we will be able to finish the job and catch up to our timetable. Get it done, Lady Tamar, if we're going to win the greatest victory in this war. Get it done."
"They'll jump at dawn tomorrow."
"Thank you, Lady Minister. I'll see you on the other side!" Bellatrix grinned brightly, swayed her hips with a little wave of her hand before deactivating the telecaster, and then slapping her hands together.
The ruthless but childlike glee was a reminder of the fact that Hermione was sleeping with, charitably, a madwoman. For all that, the sway of her hips was a reminder of just how sexy, how beautiful Bellatrix was. Hermione, now warm, paused in the act of having removed her coat and boots. She was also impressed because Bella really was asking for help. Really had coordinated something. "VDV insertion," she asked the older witch, bent over and looking up.
"Of course. We'll turn their flank with the airborne," Bella answered lightly, her eyes gleaming. "I told you I was capable of asking for help, Granger. I just needed to make sure it was still a situation I could control, still a situation that would meet the terms of my promise to the Confederation. That's done. If they land there in good weather tomorrow – we'll be at Dnepropetrovsk the same day. And then I've got a plan for that, too."
"Are you going to tell me?" Hermione asked, feeling flippant with the older woman. "Or am I supposed to just be awed by your improvisational cleverness?"
"I don't know, muddy, maybe you're just supposed to assume I'm intelligent," Bellatrix snarked back as she stepped closer to the little fold down bed, tossing her massive coat over one of the seats along the way.
Hermione was about to open her mouth to resist the slur when Bella kissed her fully on the lips. Bella pushed her back down onto the bed, and dropped to her knees in front of the younger witch, pushing her back firmly into the shock padding along the wall. Her gloved fingers snapped at the buttons of Hermione's trousers.
"I need to shut you up more often," she muttered, as Hermione stared down at her in blank shock.
I should have realised the anticipation of victory was making her horny. Oh God. Hermione sucked in her breath. For a moment, there was a war in her mind between need and lust, and the feeling of anger at Bella using slurs on her again. But Bella was there, those black curls fell down across her thighs as the older woman insistently tugged at her trousers and panties in one go.
Hermione mustered the will to resist, and then it melted away. She wanted this, she needed it, wasn't it her reward for putting up with this madwoman anyway?
This wildly attractive madwoman. Hermione bit her lip and then finished helping with her clothes. She was naked a moment later; two pairs of hands did not take long to finish stripping her simple and practical clothes.
As before, Bella was still fully clothed. Hermione wasn't really sure what to think of that, other than the fact that she still hadn't seen the Dark Witch fully nude. "Bella, do you want help with your clothes…?"
Instead, Bella hooked her legs over her shoulders, and looked up with a grin. "Oh, no thank you. It's colder close to the floor," she said with a mild bemusement which nonetheless make sparks shoot up through Hermione's spine.
Then, Bella traced a line of kisses down each of her inner thighs in turn, closer and closer to her centre. Her hands braced firmly on Hermione's hips, the young witch felt steady enough above Bella to run her hands through her hair, that endless mass of dark curls, streaked with white, that only magic kept untangled, especially in the field.
For a moment, with Hermione's fingers massaging her scalp, Bella pushed her face down against the younger woman's thighs and moaned as if that feeling alone were good enough to be erotic, maybe it was. Then her lips planted a kiss, and her tongue licked a trail which didn't end until it buried itself in the patch of fur between Hermione's legs.
She really likes have her scalp— the thought disappeared midway through. Hermione's running cynical monologue on life couldn't handle what Bella was doing to her at the moment.
They made love, wildly and intensely, they fucked, they didn't stop until both of them were satisfied, however ridiculous it was, inside of the armoured carapace of the command track, shoved up on a metal shelf of a cot, taking turns because they couldn't both fit on it. Hermione didn't care, she wanted it, she needed it, and in the end, she found herself pleasuring Bella with her fingers, up on her lap, up on her thighs. Of course, Bella had used her tongue... But it didn't matter, nothing mattered in that moment, except for the moment.
Finally, she broke the kiss to whisper in Bella's ear, "so, doing better? Going to let me see you naked someday?"
"Mmmmnn.." Bellatrix refused to answer, but the sound seemed contented. Hasty, needy, but with absolutely no regrets.
Still, she avoided answering the question.
They woke up well before dawn, of course. It was winter, and the dawn came late. Hermione stirred, to find that Bellatrix was already using a heating spell to boil their tea. She was fully dressed and, as usual, had probably used magic to make herself up in the morning. For a pureblood that was nothing, a normal part of the routine, just waking up, and it meant she only had to splash her face with some of the water, melted from snow.
Hermione groaned softly and stirred in bed. She found herself with tea with condensed milk, and a hard biscuit to dip in it. "Thank you for the boil- up," she bobbed her head.
"You just need to get ready, Granger," Bellatrix answered, looking at her a bit askance, a bit pensive, as she cupped her own tea mug in her hands. "Today will be exciting."
Hermione pursed her lips and soaked the biscuit in the tea to take bites of it. "Well, thank you nonetheless. Bella, why won't you let me see you naked?"
Bellatrix stopped short and looked up. "First of all, Granger, don't call me that. Second of all, because I don't want to? I like to think that's a good enough reason right there. Third of all, you aren't so pathetic that you seriously think this is going to last, do you? Do you think I'm going to parade around in front of my sister with a mudslut on my arm? I did this for the sake of my family. What in Merlin's name would I tell my daughter if she saw the two of us together? You're being ridiculous."
"I want you to apologise for calling me that word right this instant." Hermione pointed at her bare left arm. "You put a slur into my skin already, and I'm ashamed of that, but I've let you see your own handiwork every time we've had sex now, and you … What, you'd let me see you if you still had the Morsmordre on your arm, but not because you've had it cut off? And Delphini? God, Bellatrix, she's a half-blood herself. We all know Riddle's origin story now, you can't hide it. You make out like the Naryshkin family was degenerate for marrying muggle aristocrats but they're just as fine as Voldemort by that standard—and your own daughter! How hypocritical are you going to be, Bellatrix? We just had sex last night!"
Bella glared at Hermione over the top of her teacup.
"You can't say that you're just trying to cheer me up before a suicide mission now. It isn't that bad anymore. You wanted last night," Hermione continued, trembling as she spoke, with the intensity of the emotion. "You wanted me last night. Sometimes, I wonder if you wanted me that night in the Malfoy Manor, even…"
Bella's lips curled into a sneer. "I'm not a rapist," she answered. "And don't ever think again about insulting my daughter. Delphini Black will be the next scion of the House. My daughter is pure."
"How is it an insult from a mudblood," she mockingly sneered the slur in her arm, trying to be brave, "to simply state the objective fact that Voldemort and by extension his daughter are half-bloods? What is she going to think when she finds that out? She's as smart and capable as you are, I'm sure. It will crush her to find out."
Bellatrix just glared at her, and Hermione quickly went to finish dressing, with the biscuit and the tea in her stomach. That was enough. They needed to get out, to take charge of the situation, to not argue in the middle of a command track. There was a sigh, though. Hermione desperately wanted to confront Bellatrix, she wanted the woman to recognise her, to apologise. But duty forced her to let it drop with Bella's glare, to leave the words unspoken, to carry on instead.
Bellatrix firmly buckled on the coat over her more elaborate clothes, and partially tamed her curls beneath a floppy, thick, warm cap. It was really cold; she wrapped a scarf in Slytherin colours around her neck, which she had somewhere in her bag, and pulled on wool leggings before putting on her boots. Hermione, bound to the woman, acknowledged a small bit of happiness that Bellatrix was at least taking her health in the winter weather seriously. The younger witch, for her part, had on the full ensemble of a winter combat uniform from hat to insulated boots.
Then, together, they headed to the command tents, surrounded by the small trailer mounted diesel engines which did nothing but heat air and run fans to blow it through flexible trunks into the inside of the command tents, continuously. They created a cloud of smog that quickly condensed to ice crystals on their clothes as they walked through it, their breath roiling as vapour in the pre-dawn dark. And all of that, walking a few hundred feet into the relative warmth of the tent, where more hot tea was waiting, as well as bowls prepared from the ration packs, of baked beans, mutton sausages and crackers. A hearty enough breakfast from the janissary rations, but Hermione missed the Russian field kitchens. For now, a cold silence prevailed between the two women, and Bellatrix went to take her report from General Dodson.
A few minutes later they both returned, Bellatrix putting aside her empty bowl and looking to Hermione. "Well, they're coming in from the southeast, just a few minutes now, and then it will begin. I want to watch. Stand to, Councillor."
"Of course, Ma'am," Hermione answered formally, and insisted on tipping a salute as she followed Bellatrix back out into the cold. Now they could see the scene of tents and vehicles, troops moving in uniform and taking positions. The Rooks went in first, providing final suppression, though they had battered the Morsmordre forces in the area so heavily, and with so much magic in use, that the electronics for anti-aircraft missiles were largely ineffective. To have the range for this operation, they were operating out of rough fields near Voronezh.
There were twenty-two of them, sweeping in two crossing waves across the site of the landing, only minutes before. They used information from Bellatrix's army to target the remaining anti-air assets, chaff and flares spewing from them as they crossed over their targets, firing salvoes of rockets as they moved in at low altitude. A few attacked close enough that Hermione could see the puffs of smoke from their guns firing, but the clatter of everything that could face skyward in the enemy army trying to hit them obscured the sound of their own attack; only the rockets detonating rippled to them, and the roars of the jets in the clear air after they had already passed by.
And then one of the officers near them pointed up to the east, coming out of the rising sun, to protect them for as long as possible, when they lined up on their final approaches, while smoke and flame still roiled across the battlefield to the north, then it was to the northeast on open ground that the enemy couldn't cover, that they were coming in, and aiming for open wheat fields, now covered in snow, where they would have enough time to mount their vehicles and swing out into action before the enemy could respond. "There they come!"
A squadron of attack helicopters attached to Bellatrix's Army now swept across the field to the west of the landing zone, making a final run to check for surviving missile batteries. The artillery supporting her troops opened fire with special smoke-producing white phosphorous rounds to mark a line of smoke across the field to further obscure targeting of the landing zone, though the big Ilyushins were at high enough altitude that it would not really help.
The important thing was that it was not necessary to disable all of the anti-air firepower in the enemy Army. It was only necessary to target the long-range missiles. The Landing Zone was outside of the slant range of the other weapons, and though they tried to fire a few Rapier SAMs, they didn't have the range. One of the helicopters did go down, but that was an acceptable sacrifice in war, keeping the enemy distracted. The Rooks came back for another set of passes to the west, with the same objective. The pilots of those birds knew that they might sacrifice their lives by exposing themselves to the anti-air of the enemy, and that this was worth it if it kept one of the massive Il-76s from being shot down before the desantniki could debouche.
Then the 'bouquets', the parachutes of the men, began to blossom in the sky above, first hundreds and then thousands, off to their northeast. The lines of men leaping into the bitterly cold air and activating their parachutes were silhouetted in the light of the rising sun. With them went jeeps, and armoured vehicles, too, the BMDs of the VDV, the Russian Airborne Forces.
One of the Rooks briefly distracted Hermione as it flew overhead at low altitude, trailing smoke from missile damage. She breathed a wish for the safety of the pilot and turned her attention back to the awesome sight of the deploying of a full strength Airborne Division. As the vehicles-ejected from the back ramps of the Ilyushins on pallets—neared the ground, rods extending from them came in contact with the snow and earth first, and triggered powerful rockets attached to the parachute assembly which slowed them for a safe landing.
Cases of heavier weapons went down, too. Men cleared their parachutes and raced to these as fast as they could, opening them and readying man-portable missiles, mortars and heavy machine guns. Jeeps, which landed with men, raced across the field to deliver troops to the BMDs, and soon, an entire mechanized force would be on the move.
"General Dodson! Shift to counterbattery fire and bring the men to the final jumping-off points! We will coordinate our attack with the VDV." Bellatrix turned to shout, and when he acknowledged the orders with a salute, she stepped up to Hermione's side, grinning with an almost lustful anticipation.
Her wand was in her hand, and the smile on her face was a grin as uneasily sadistic as it had always been with Bellatrix at her worst. "Now, Granger, we get to have fun."
The airborne were swinging into the attack as their Army prepared to renew its own attack. Stepping forward, Bellatrix cast the first powerful spell that would blast a carpet of crushed rock down across the approach for the mud-filled valley. Here, where the Dnepr Rapids roared through building ice, she would again use magic to create bridges for her Army, and now the enemy could not be ready for them, for they were being hit in their flank.
Hermione saw, clearly, the victory almost already in hand at the moment the battle had started. And for all the confusion, uncertainty, and insanity in her life at that hour, she was damned glad Bellatrix was on their side, whatever madness that it was.
The unedited version of this chapter is available where the story is posted as "There Will Be Love" on AO3.
Notes:
Dnepr Rapids-the rapids of the Dnepr (or Dnipro, or Dnieper) river between Zaporizhia and Dnepropetrovsk (renamed Dnipro by the modern Ukrainian government) were a famous obstacle to the trade and raiding route of the Varangians from north to south, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Drowned by dams, the sediment would be filled with radioactive material from Chernobyl and all the old chemicals from Soviet industrialisation efforts, but still the restoration of these ancient rapids, where the Cossacks had their holdfasts and armies of horses once crossed to raid Europe, would offer some hope for the future in natural terms-while being a terrible blow to the Ukraine in economic terms.
VDV - Воздушно-десантные войска России, the Airborne Forces of the Russian Federation (with the same acronym serving for most of the other successor states as well). Due to the difficulty of maintaining airborne forces in the circumstances, these are almost certainly mixed units with contingents from the other CIS powers.
BMD - Боевая Машина Десанта, translating to "Airborne Forces Combat Vehicle", specialist light tanks of the VDV with a main armament of 100mm cannons. A related vehicle designated the BTR-D in the west is used as an APC by the VDV (did I mention ALL militaries, of all countries, love acronyms? Because they do!).
Ilyushin, Il-76 - Primary high-wing, T-tail, 4-engine heavy transport plane of the Russian Armed Forces, used by many other countries. Noteworthy for the old-style glassed-in nose and very distinctive; NATO reporting name "Candid".
Desantniki - I use this word because it is not a translation of the English "paratrooper" or an equivalent, but means in Russian "one who desants", and desant is actually a French word, meaning "disembark". So it really means "Those who disembark airplanes", which sounds innocuous until you remember that they disembark them in the middle of the sky. :-)
A few comments on Bella and Hermione: Their relationship at the moment is born of stress and an attraction that they are both having trouble with, albeit for very different reasons. This is a little tough because true love and respect are not there yet.