Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 759: Pompeii and Caesar

The night air over Gibraltar was heavy with the scent of salt and smoke.

From the cliffs, one could still see the wreckage floating in the bay below. Twisted landing craft, blackened oil slicks, and bodies carried away by the slow, pitiless tide.

Searchlights still combed the water, more out of habit than necessity. Nothing living remained out there.

Inside the officers’ villa that now served as the temporary command post for the German Eighth Army, laughter rolled between the stone walls. It was not the laughter of joy, but of relief… the kind that followed a narrowly averted disaster.

Generalfeldmarschall Heinrich von Koch sat at the head of the long oak table, posture loose, one arm draped over the back of his chair.

The buttons of his tunic were undone at the collar, and his once-immaculate gloves rested beside an open bottle of brandy.

Around him sat the senior commanders of the three armies that had held the Western Gate, German, Russian, and Spanish alike.

Their uniforms were a patchwork of mud, blood, and triumph.

The Spaniards had brought the wine, the Russians the cigars, and the Germans, as always, the discipline to make both last longer than they should have.

A Spanish colonel raised his glass.

“To the men who held the line,” he said in accented German. “To the Legions of Gibraltar, the soldiers who made the Rock live up to its name.”

The room echoed with the clink of glass and the chorus of voices repeating the toast in three different languages.

Heinrich drank deeply, savoring the burn.

General Aristarkh Mirov, commander of the Russian Iberian Expeditionary Corps, exhaled a plume of cigar smoke and turned toward Heinrich with a grin.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve fought under many men, but never seen a defense executed quite like this. You didn’t just hold the line… you broke their spirit. The Americans and their allies will not try this again soon.”

Heinrich smiled faintly, swirling the brandy in his glass.

“Flattery from a Russian general… I should have this moment engraved on a plaque.”

Laughter rippled through the room.

Mirov leaned forward, undeterred. “I’m serious. The way you used the coastal terrain, the false retreat lines, the feigned communication gaps, the overlapping fields of fire, it was textbook. Even your air cover was perfectly timed. You made an entire army bleed for a beach they never even reached.”

Before Heinrich could reply, General de Rivera, commander of the Spanish Royal Army’s southern divisions, raised his hand.

“I’ll confess something, gentlemen,” he said, his voice softening. “When I saw the first wave, hundreds of landing craft pushing toward the coast, maybe even thousands, I thought Spain was finished. I truly did. My men were praying in the trenches. I was praying in my command tent.”

He chuckled quietly, shaking his head. “But then the Germans opened fire… and the Russians followed suit. That was when I realized the Americans were not fighting an army. They were fighting history itself.”

The table fell silent for a moment. Even the faint murmur of aides and telephones in the next room seemed to vanish.

Heinrich leaned back, lighting a cigarette from the candle in front of him. The flame reflected in his eyes as he spoke.

“You give me too much credit, my friends,” he said. “I am but Pompeii to Bruno’s Caesar.”

The words hung in the smoke, confusing some, intriguing others. Heinrich smiled faintly at their puzzled looks.

“I have spent my entire life subordinate to that man,” he continued. “Every campaign he’s waged, I’ve been part of. Hell, I attended the academy with him when we were merely boys dreaming of glory. I learned war by watching him. You stay near true greatness long enough, and some of it rubs off… whether you want it to or not.”

Mirov exhaled through his nose. “He can’t truly be that great, can he? I mean, he’s the most brilliant strategist of our era, yes… but comparing him to Caesar? That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

Heinrich gave a small, knowing smile.

“You’re right,” he said. “It is a bit much, to compare Caesar to Bruno.”

The table fell utterly still.

“Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon… even Clausewitz before him,” Heinrich went on, tapping ash into an empty glass. “Bruno stands above them all. Put them all on equal footing, bound by their own rules of war, and he would defeat them every time. Of that I have no doubt.”

The room got quiet, real quiet, the only sound that could be heard was Heinrich’s voice as it trailed off deep into thought. No longer just about the comparison he had made moments before.

“Perhaps only Alexander stands as his equal, but the world will never know Bruno as it knows Alexander, because Bruno does not conquer. He fights only to preserve that which is not his to rule.”

The conversation slowly recovered not long after. Drifting into songs, toasts, and the clatter of emptied glasses.

Heinrich rose without a word and stepped out onto the villa’s balcony. The sea air met him with the chill of midnight, heavy with salt and the faint tang of burned oil.

Below, Gibraltar still smoldered.

The wreckage of the Allied fleet glowed faintly beneath the moonlight, shattered hulls rocking gently in the tide, the last flares dying in the surf.

Searchlights swept over the water like tired sentinels searching for ghosts that had long since sunk.

Heinrich lit another cigarette, his fifth of the night, and watched the smoke spiral into the darkness.

Behind him, laughter echoed, the sound of men pretending they hadn’t just witnessed a generation die.

He whispered to the wind, his voice barely audible over the waves.

“Bruno… this victory is yours too. You taught me how to make the impossible look inevitable.”

He looked down at the black water, at the quiet ruin of what had once been a mighty fleet.

“And yet,” he murmured, “each triumph feels more like a warning than a reward.”

He took one last drag, flicked the ember into the sea, and went back inside to rejoin the laughter.