Stupid, really. As if shrapnel would obey the rules of poetry, and pierce eyes as neatly as a goddess at a loom. The upper half of his face was a complete ruin. The lower half was relatively unmarked, except for one scar along his right jaw and another puckerlike mark on his left cheek.
His mouth and lips, on the other hand, were still as she vaguely remembered them. A nice mouth, she decided, noticing for the first time.
"It's fine," she repeated. "Not a problem."
A moment later, two soldiers came into the bunker hauling her luggage. What was left of it. Until they were gone, Anna and Calopodius were silent. Then he said, very softly:
"I don't understand why you came."
Anna tried to remember the answer. It was difficult. And probably impossible to explain, in any event. I wanted a divorce, maybe ... seemed ... strange. Even stranger, though closer to the truth, would be: or at least to drag you back so you could share the ruins of my own life.
"It doesn't matter now. I'm here. I'm staying."
For the first time since she'd rejoined her husband, he smiled. Anna realized she'd never really seen him smile before. Not, at least, with an expression that was anything more than politeness.
He reached out his hand, tentatively, and she moved toward him. The hand, fumbling, stroked her ribs.
"God in Heaven, Anna!" he choked. "How can you stand something like that -- in this climate? You'll drown in sweat."
Anna tried to keep from laughing; and then, realizing finally where she was, stopped trying. Even in the haughtiest aristocratic circles of Constantinople, a woman was allowed to laugh in the presence of her husband.
When she was done -- the laughter was perhaps a bit hysterical -- Calopodius shook his head. "We've got to get you a sari, first thing. I can't have my wife dying on me from heat prostration."
Calopodius matched deed to word immediately. A few words to his aide-to-camp Luke, and, much sooner than Anna would have expected, a veritable horde of Punjabis from the adjacent town were packed into the bunker.
Some of them were actually there on business, bringing piles of clothing for her to try on. Most of them, she finally understood, just wanted to get a look at her.
Of course, they were all expelled from the bunker while she changed her clothing -- except for two native women whose expert assistance she required until she mastered the secrets of the foreign garments. But once the women announced that she was suitably attired, the mob of admirers was allowed back in.
In fact, after a while Anna found it necessary to leave the bunker altogether and model her new clothing on the ground outside, where everyone could get a good look at her new appearance. Her husband insisted, to her surprise.
"You're beautiful," he said to her, "and I want everyone to know it."
She almost asked how a blind man could tell, but he forestalled the question with a little smile. "Did you think I'd forget?"
But later, that night, he admitted the truth. They were lying side by side, stiffly, still fully clothed, on the pallet in a corner of the bunker where Calopodius slept. "To be honest, I can't remember very well what you look like."
Anna thought about it, for a moment. Then:
"I can't really remember myself."
"I wish I could see you," he murmured.
"It doesn't matter." She took his hand and laid it on her bare belly. The flesh reveled in its new coolness. She herself, on the other hand, reveled in the touch. And did not find it strange that she should do so.
"Feel."
His hand was gentle, at first. And never really stopped being so, for all the passion that followed. When it was all over, Anna was covered in sweat again. But she didn't mind at all. Without heavy and proper fabric to cover her -- with nothing covering her now except Calopodius' hand -- the sweat dried soon enough. That, too, was a great pleasure.
"I warn you," she murmured into his ear. "We're not in Constantinople any more. Won't be for a long time, if ever. So if I catch you with a courtesan, I'll boil you alive."
"The thought never crossed my mind!" he insisted. And even believed it was true.
CHOOSING SIDES. A Hammer's Slammers Story
David Drake
The driver of the lead combat car revved his fans to lift the bow when he reached the bottom of the starship's steep boarding ramp. The gale whirling from under the car's skirts rocked Lieutenant Arne Huber forward into the second vehicle -- his own Fencing Master, still locked to the deck because a turnbuckle had kinked when the ship unexpectedly tilted on the soft ground.
Huber was twenty-five standard years old, shorter than average and fit without being impressively muscular. He wore a commo helmet now, but the short-cropped hair beneath it was as black as the pupils of his eyes.
Sighing, he pushed himself up from Fencing Master's bow slope. His head hurt the way it always did just after star-travel -- which meant worse than it did any other time in his life. Even without the howling fans of Foghorn, the lead car, his ears would be roaring in time with his pulse.
None of the troopers in Huber's platoon were in much better shape, and he didn't guess the starship's crew were more than nominal themselves. The disorientation from star travel, like a hangover, didn't stop hurting just because it'd become familiar.
"Look!" said Sergeant Deseau, shouting so that the three starship crewmen could hear him over the fans' screaming. "If you don't have us free in a minute flat, starting now, I'm going to shoot the cursed thing off and you can worry about the damage to your cursed deck without me to watch you. Do you understand?"
Two more spacers were squeezing through the maze of vehicles and equipment in the hold, carrying a power tool between them. This sort of problem can't have been unique to Fencing Master.
Huber put his hand on Deseau's shoulder. "Let's get out of the way and let them fix this, Sarge," he said, speaking through the helmet intercom so that he didn't have to raise his voice. Shouting put people's backs up, even if you didn't mean anything by it except that it was hard to hear. "Let's take a look at Plattner's World."
They turned together and walked to the open hatch. Deseau was glad enough to step away from the problem.
The freighter which had brought Platoon F-3, Arne Huber's command, to Plattner's World had a number rather than a name: KPZ 9719. It was much smaller than the vessels which usually carried the men and vehicles of Hammer's Regiment, but even so it virtually overwhelmed the facilities here at Rhodesville. The ship had set down normally, but one of the outriggers then sank an additional meter into the soil. The lurch had flung everybody who'd already unstrapped against the bulkheads and jammed Fencing Master in place, blocking two additional combat cars behind it in the hold.
Huber chuckled. That made his head throb, but it throbbed already. Deseau gave him a sour look.
"It's a good thing we hadn't freed the cars before the outrigger gave," Huber explained. "Bad enough people bouncing off the walls; at least we didn't have thirty-tonne combat cars doing it too."
"I don't see why we're landing in a cow pasture anyway," Deseau muttered. "Isn't there a real spaceport somewhere on this bloody tree-farm of a planet?"
"Yeah, there is," Huber said dryly. "The trouble is, it's in Solace. The people the United Cities are hiring us to fight."
The briefing cubes were available to everybody in the Slammers, but Sergeant Deseau was like most of the enlisted personnel -- and no few of the officers -- in spending the time between deployments finding other ways to entertain himself. It was a reasonable enough attitude. Mercenaries tended to be pragmatists. Knowledge of the local culture wasn't a factor when a planet hired mercenary soldiers, nor did it increase the gunmen's chances of survival.