Free The War That Came Early: West and East by Harry Turtledove

out of Alfonso XIII’s digs. If he ever came back, he could live in the ruins or in a tent like everybody else.
    When Chaim said as much, Mike Carroll made a sour face. “If the reactionary son of a bitch comes back, that means we’ve lost.”
    “Yeah, well, if we do we probably won’t have to worry about it any more,” Chaim said. He didn’t mean they would get over the border to France, either. The Nationalists didn’t take many prisoners. Come to that, neither did the Republicans. Chaim didn’t know which side had started shooting men who tried to give up. That didn’t matter any more. The Spaniards might not make the world’s greatest professional soldiers, but when they hated they didn’t hate halfway.
    He listened anxiously to find out whether any of the newly launched shells would gouge fresh holes in the rubble right around here. In thatcase, they might gouge holes in him, which was not something he eagerly anticipated. But the bursts were at least half a mile off. Nothing to get hot and bothered about—not for him, anyhow. If some poor damned Madrileños had just had their lives turned inside out and upside down … well, that was a damn shame, but they wouldn’t be the first people in Spain whose luck had run out, nor the last.
    Republican guns answered the Nationalist fire. Those were French 75s. The sound they made going off was as familiar to Chaim as a telephone ring. The Republicans had a lot of them: ancient models Spain had bought from France after the last war, and brand new ones the French had sent over the Pyrenees when the big European scrap started. All at once, the neutrality patrol turned to a supply spigot when the French and English realized Hitler was dangerous after all.
    And then, after the
Wehrmacht
hit the Low Counties and France itself, the spigot to Spain dried up. The Republic would have been screwed, except Sanjurjo also had himself a supply drought: the Germans and Italians were using everything they made themselves.
    One of the explosions from the 75s sounded uncommonly large and sharp. Weinberg and Carroll shared a wince. Chaim knew what that kind of blast meant. The French guns mostly fired locally made ammunition these days. And locally made ammo, not to put too fine a point on it, sucked. Chaim carried Mexican cartridges for his French rifle. He didn’t trust Spanish rounds. German ammunition was better yet, but impossible to get these days except by plundering dead Nationalists.
    A barmaid stepped out of a
cantina
and waved to the two Internationals.
“¿Vino?”
she called invitingly.
    Chaim surprised himself by nodding. “C’mon,” he told Mike. “We can hoist one for the poor sorry bastards at that gun.”
    “Suits,” Carroll said. You rarely needed to ask him twice about a drink. Very often, you didn’t need to ask him once.
    The
cantina
was dark and gloomy inside. It would have been gloomier yet except for a big hole in the far wall. It smelled of smoke and booze and sweat and urine and hot cooking oil and, faintly, of vomit—like a
cantina
, in other words. Mike did order wine. Chaim told the barmaid,
“Cerveza.”
He tried to lisp like a Castilian.
    She understood him, anyhow. Off she went, hips working. She brought back their drinks, then waited expectantly. Chaim crossed her palm with silver. That made her go away. He raised his mug. “Here’s to ’em.”
    “Here’s to what’s left of ’em, anyway,” Carroll said. They both drank. Mike screwed up his face. “Vinegar. How’s yours?”
    “Piss,” Chaim answered. Sure as hell, the beer was thin and sour. But, save for a few bottles imported from Germany, he’d never had beer in Spain that wasn’t. You could drink it. He did.
    And Mike got outside his vinegary red. He raised his glass for a refill. The barmaid took care of him and Chaim. He paid this time. Outside, the not-distant-enough enemy guns started booming again. Again, nothing came down close enough to get excited about. That was