Hannibal Rising Page 0,9

stitched the ground. Rounds screamed off the tank, the gunner hit, still firing with his remaining arm.

The Stuka's windscreen starred with fractures, the pilot's goggles filled with blood and the dive bomber, still carrying one of its eggs, hit treetops, plowed into the garden and its fuel exploded, cannon under the wings still firing after the impact.

Hannibal, on the floor of the lodge, Mischa partly under him, saw his mother lying in the yard, bloody and her dress on fire.

"Stay here!" to Mischa and he ran to his mother, ammunition in the airplane cooking off now, slow and then faster, casings flying backward striking the snow, flames licking around the remaining bomb beneath the wing. The pilot sat in the cockpit, dead, his face burned to a death's head in flaming scarf and helmet, his gunner dead behind him.

Lothar alone survived in the yard and he raised a bloody arm to the boy.

Then Mischa ran to her mother, out into the yard and Lothar tried to reach her and pull her down as she passed, but a cannon round from the flaming plane slammed through him, blood spattering the baby and Mischa raised her arms and screamed into the sky. Hannibal heaped snow onto the fire in his mother's clothes, stood up and ran to Mischa amid the random shots and carried her into the lodge, into the cellar. The shots outside slowed and stopped as bullets melted in the breeches of the cannon. The sky darkened and snow came again, hissing on the hot metal.

Darkness, and snow again. Hannibal among the corpses, how much later he did not know, snow drifting down to dust his mother's eyelashes and her hair. She was the only corpse not blackened and crisped. Hannibal tugged at her, but her body was frozen to the ground. He pressed his face against her. Her bosom was frozen hard, her heart silent. He put a napkin over her face and piled snow on her. Dark shapes moved at the edge of the woods. His torch reflected on wolves' eyes. He shouted at them and waved a shovel. Mischa was determined to come out to her mother-he had to choose. He took Mischa back inside and left the dead to the dark. Mr. Jakov's book was undamaged beside his blackened hand until a wolf ate the leather cover and amid the scattered pages of Huyghens ' Treatise on Light licked Mr. Jakov's brains off the snow.

Hannibal and Mischa heard snuffling and growling outside. Hannibal built up the fire. To cover the noise he tried to get Mischa to sing; he sang to her. She clutched his coat in her fists.

"Ein Mannlein..."

Snowflakes on the windows. In the corner of a pane, a dark circle appeared, made by the tip of a glove. In the dark circle a pale blue eye.

Chapter 7-9

7

THE DOOR BURST OPEN then and Grutas came in with Milko and Dortlich.

Hannibal grabbed a boar spear from the wall and Grutas, with his sure instinct turned his gun on the little girl.

"Drop it or I'll shoot her. Do you understand me?"

The looters swarmed Hannibal and Mischa then.

The looters in the house, Grentz outside waved for the half-track truck to come up, the truck slit-eyed, its blackout lights picking up wolves' eyes at the edge of the clearing, a wolf dragging something.

The men gathered around Hannibal and his sister at the fire, the fire warming from the looters' clothes a sweetish stink of weeks in the field and old blood caked in the treads of their boots, they gathered close.

Pot Watcher caught a small insect emerging from his clothes and popped its head off with his thumbnail.

They coughed on the children. Predator breath, ketosis from their scavenged diet of mostly meat, some scraped from the half-track's treads, made Mischa bury her face in Hannibal 's coat. He gathered her inside his coat and felt her heart beating hard. Dortlich picked up Mischa's bowl of porridge and wolfed it down himself, getting the last wipe from the bowl on his scarred and webbed fingers. Kolnas extended his bowl, but Dortlich did not give him any.

Kolnas was stocky and his eyes took on a shine when he looked at precious metal. He slipped Mischa's bracelet off her wrist and put it in his pocket. When Hannibal grabbed at his hand, Grentz pinched him on the side of the neck and his whole arm went numb.

Distant artillery boomed.

Grutas said, "If a patrol comes-either side-we're setting up a field hospital here.