The Bloody Deluge by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author:Adrian Tchaikovsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

THE SIEGE CONTINUED unabated, and unchanging, for seven days. In that time, the Order soldiers kept a watch over Jasna Góra, preventing any large-scale exodus or resupply. Although Katy would not have trusted herself to get out unseen, there were a few sufficiently stealthy that they would risk leaving at night, under the guns of the soldiers. Magdayeva was gone the morning after she arrived, creeping away with the last hours of the night to ride back to her people. Tomasz himself came and went as he pleased, testing the piecemeal Order perimeter, and once bringing back a black-crossed banner to hang from the monastery walls.

Shots were exchanged infrequently, between opportunistic snipers atop and outside the walls. There were no injuries on either side, or not from the guns. With foodstocks still carefully rationed, the greatest test of the defenders’ mettle was a widespread outbreak of constipation.

All that changed on the evening of the seventh day. As the skies above were shading into evening, the Order’s reinforcements arrived. The hundred-odd who had been camped out before the gates of Jasna Góra were abruptly swelled by a motorcade of vehicles: Transit vans, two large lorries, a cattle truck, a ramshackle fleet of sedans and estates and hatchbacks, and a tank.

It ground in at the back, a lumbering, tracked monster, drab green and brown paint flaking away from grey metal, a camouflage made perfectly pointless by its colossal grumbling roar. Behind it, the crumbling tarmac of the Częstochowa roads was left dented and mauled. It was a muscular, brutal implement of warfare, dented and scored, every line of it focused towards the stubby barrel of its great gun.

Leszek came out to see, as the newcomers were setting up their new swathe of canvas.

“Tomasz?” he asked.

“Leopard 2A4M CAN,” came the immediate reply. “From the way it’s handling, they’ve had good use of it before bringing it here.” Tomasz stared down at the thing, nestled within the expanding Order encampment. “I worked with them, years ago,” he confirmed. “Not easy to keep running. They must have some military on hand.” He was trying to think about fuel and ammunition—how much had the Order scavenged, to bring this monster to their door?

“Ah.” Leszek leant on the wall, staring out. Tomasz tried to follow his line of sight, and saw a large tent being raised, with another black and white banner flying proud over it: this one showed, with some artistry, a black eagle grasping a crossed white shield.

“I rather suspect that this signals the arrival of this Grand Master Danziger that Miss Lewkowitz spoke of,” Leszek noted. “We have achieved something, Tomasz. We have the full attention of the New Teutonic Order.”

“They will attack soon.”

“It seems likely,” the Abbot agreed.

“If they have shots for the tank gun, then the gate will not hold. The walls may not. They weren’t built with this in mind.”

Leszek took a deep breath. “These walls have held off a great deal that they were not made for,” he remarked mildly.

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