It’s a long night on Horse Eater Hill. Around 0200, Red finally admits he’s done all he can for Magda. Her survival is now up to her constitution – and the microscopic geometric shapes in her bloodstream. He arranges a rotation for monitoring her condition and collapses on a clear patch of ground.
No one really rests. Miko has managed to get a campfire going, but it’s just enough to turn the fog from grey-opaque to silvery-opaque. It muffles sound, but that just means the noises that are audible are that much more jarring. Leks keeps shifting behind his gun, using the pain of his knee to stay awake through the night.
Red drags himself upright as something that might eventually be dawn begins to intrude on his eyelids. He wipes his face, groans, and checks on his patients. Alexei, who has the Magda-watch, looks up at his approach and nods solemnly. She’s still alive.
Red looks around, finds Leks, staggers over to him. The Estonian grunts in acknowledgement but doesn’t take his eyes off the fog.
“I want this place gone,” Red grates out.
Leks nods. “If air strikes were still a thing, this would be a good time for napalm.”
“Funny thing, that,” Red says. “Arkadi reminded me last night. We have a mortar.”
“And white phosphorus.” Leks’ eyes gleam hungrily, then he frowns. “Only five rounds for the 82, though. Most of it is 60mm and we don’t have a tube for that.”
“But we do have an ordnance technician,” Red reminds him. “Bailey is still healing up from the hit she took at Radom,” he glances at Leks’ own knee, “but Arkadi thinks she should be able to give us some way of using all those shells.”
Majewski comes up in time to hear the last of the conversation. “You’ve done this before.” It’s not quite a question, not quite an accusation.
Leks shifts to look at the militia captain and shrugs. “Not this, exactly. This is… worse than other things we’ve seen.”
“More ‘in your face.'” Zenobia packs an immense amount of offended contempt into those four words.
“We’re going to burn everything,” Red states flatly. “Prep the bodies. Don’t go in any buildings if you can help it. Don’t take anything from here.” He glances at Zenobia. “Make sure Miko understands that. We’re going to evacuate the wounded – that includes you, Leks – we’re going to set a base camp outside the fog, and we’re going to take our time to do this right.”
“We have a bulldozer,” Zenobia growls.
“We’re going to burn everything,” Red repeats.
“And after that, I want to flatten what’s left.”
Minka grabs the crude crutch Alexei fashioned for her and painfully hoists herself to her feet. She exchanges a look with Magda, who’s sitting awake by the fire, making motions with her good arm that suggest she’s trying to work out how to knead bread one-handed. Then she starts hobbling toward the nearest house. Alexei makes a noise of protest and follows her, shotgun in hand, but he doesn’t try to stop her.
She doesn’t enter any of the structures – the warnings of nerve agent contamination are very much in the forefront of her mind. But at each threshold, she rests her forehead against the jamb and murmurs to the unseen domovoi, hoping they understand why their homes are about to be burned – and why it may be for the best, in this poisoned place. When she’s completed her circuit, she flops down next to one of the already-rubbled buildings and stacks foundation stones until she’s created a waist-high cairn. She tucks the last of her cigarettes and a jar of Magda’s plum preserves into a nook in the rocks.
Observances complete, she returns to the campsite and leans against Wiegel, stroking him as she stares into the flames. Occasionally, her gaze strays to the nearby carcasses.
The ambulance carrying the wounded back to Ponikla also carries instructions. Wiegel follows it, easily matching the UAZ-452’s pace over unpaved and unmaintained roads. Whether because of the grim-faced armed escort or the thing wearing a horse’s face, the journey is unmolested.
The former 5th Infantry Division POWs have mostly recovered from the Battle of Radom. Their last month has been occupied with infrastructure construction and training Ponikla’s tiny militia. Red’s orders kick them into motion. Leks puts his head together with Staff Sergeant Scott – technically the ranking NCO, though Leks’ higher profile usually tends to override that – and the two start handing out work assignments. Minka’s workshop begins spewing showers of sparks and the howl of lathe work.
Three days later, the team’s ambulatory members – and those still injured but unwilling to miss this – reassemble at the base camp astride the road east of Horse Eater Hill. Artillery Spec/4 Wesley Ross, farm laborer and ex-convict Jan Kowalski, and the other two members of Ross’ mortar section take their time setting up their apparatus.
The hilltop is still shrouded in fog which refuses to burn off despite the clear sky. Red lowers his binoculars, frowning, and glances at his watch, then turns to inspect the growing pile of wooden-handled crates emerging from the back of the OT-64. “Think you brought enough?”
“No,” Leks rejoins, “but I brought all we had left.”
“Guess it’ll have to do.” Red stands in silence for a few minutes until Ross signals his readiness, then nods toward the box that’s sharing space in Leks’ handcart. “Call him up.”
Leks picks up the handset of the field telephone – temporarily relocated from Rawa Mazowiecka’s defenses for this operation – and clears his throat. “Craftsman, this is Postman, over.”
A thousand meters closer to the village, Arkadi – dug in with Miko and a squad of Majewski’s riflemen – grasps a matching handset. “Postman, this is Craftsman. Target under observation. Standing by for your go.”
Leks raises a rhetorical eyebrow at Red, who nods. “Craftsman, Postman. We are go here.”
“Postman, Craftsman. Adjust fire, polar, over.”
“Adjust fire, polar!” Leks yells to Ross, who raises a thumbs-up. “Craftsman, Postman. Adjust fire, polar, out.”
Arkadi checks his notepad one last time. “Direction 5200, distance 1500, over.”
“Direction 5200, distance 1500, out.” Leks repeats the relative location. Ross’ crew spins their traversing and elevation cranks.
“Structures, mixed HE and WP in effect, over.”
“Structures, mixed HE and WP in effect, out.” The call-for-fire ritual may be a bit excessive for this situation, but everyone agrees this is a time for precision and care. It’s the first actual fire mission for Ross’ crew, too – may as well get good practice in.
“Fire in the hole!” Ross yells. Everyone in the area hunches away or covers their ears. The gunner hangs a round – 60mm high explosive wrapped in a freshly-machined 82mm sabot – and lets it drop.
“Shot, over!” Leks yells.
Arkadi winces and pulls the handset a few centimeters away from his ear. “Shot, out.” The sky shrieks, and he turns his head to watch the single HE shell burst on the hillside below the village. “Add 400, right 200, over.”
“Add 400, right 200, out.” Ross’ crew is already working.
Three more rounds satisfy Arkadi. “Add 50, fire for effect, over.”
Leks smiles hungrily. “Add 50, fire for effect. Out.”
Ross and his team know the fire plan. The first ten rounds are HE, walking back and forth through the village to break up structures. Then they switch ammunition types. The malignant fireflies of white phosphorus begin twinkling through the fog.
Eight hours later, the fires have mostly burned down. The last wisps of fog are dissipating in the late-afternoon sun.
Four motorcyclists take point up the hill, trailed by the team’s OT-64 and the militia’s gun truck. The vehicles ease to a halt at the edge of the village’s smoldering ruins. If Red didn’t know what he’d left there three days earlier, he wouldn’t be able to identify the smoking heap in front of the APC as a pile of formerly-equine, -canine, and -human bodies.
“Well. It’s a good start,” Zenobia observes from the OT-64’s rear deck. She swings down to inspect the ruins and frowns. “This isn’t right. Someone hand me a shovel.” She takes the tool that Jablonski offers and starts scraping at the ground. “These aren’t the same as the foundation. They’re older. Looks like… cobblestones.”
Alexei, mostly healed and wielding another shovel on the other side of the former building, stops and stares at her over the rubble. “They built over a crossroads. What the hell were they thinking?”
Zenobia stares back at him for a moment, then goes pale. “Oh. Oh.” She turns to Red. “I still need the bulldozer.”
Red gestures around. “I think it’s pretty much done for.”
Zenobia emits an exasperated grinding sound. “Not to destroy it.” She swipes the shovel’s blade through the pile of greasy ashes, sending charred bones clattering away. “To restore this.” She taps the toe of her boot on the ancient roadway.
This is a bit more of a dramatization than I usually write. The post-fight scenes and planning were played out informally on our Discord server. I hadn’t actually planned on them going to great lengths to burn down the whole village, but that was, in fact, what was necessary to remove the underlying problem. Said problem was my take on this world’s manifestation of a Nordic Wild Hunt myth… in which bad things happen where someone builds over an old road.