Authors: S.M. Stirling,David Drake
It was easy duty, a way to rest the troops; a nice little date grove for shade, a good well for water. Some resourceful soul had a fire going and a couple of chickens roasting over it; the peons would never miss them. The smell was a pleasant overlay to the usual odors of dog and sweat-soaked wool uniforms and gun oil.
Foley wiped his face with his red-and-black checked neckcloth.
Ironic,
he thought. The 5th Descott had looted a warehouse full of them back in El Djem, the Colonial border town southwest of here. They’d just barely made it back alive from that one, after Tewfik mousetrapped them, but the scarves had become a unit trademark; it was as much as a soldier’s life was worth to wear one, if he wasn’t in the 5th.
The column of dust was heading in from the northwest, just now down into the flat irrigated land around Sandoral. Suspiciously regular dust, columns of it, with a thinner, wider film in front. Very much what a couple of battalions of Civil Government cavalry would make, riding hard in column with their scout-screens out ahead, all regulation and by the book. He waited until the first of the vedettes came into view, checked the silhouette and the breed of dog.
“Message to the
Heneralissimo
,” he said. “The Cruisers and Welf’s Brigaderos are here.”
Very good time, too.
No more than five days from the time they left East Residence just ahead of the first trains. Even with the railroad to supply them, it was a creditable performance, particularly if the dogs were still fit for action.
He was a little surprised. Those fair MilGov complexions were extremely pretty, but he’d doubted they could take the Eastern sun.
“Good timing,” Raj said.
Ludwig Bellamy and Teodore Welf looked more like twins than ever, down to the thick coating of gray-white dust on their faces and the dark streaks of sweat through it.
“Rail convoys on schedule?” Bellamy asked.
They moved forward under the awning and collected bowls of soup and a bannock each; the line parted to let them through, but it was the same food as the troopers were waiting for. The medical staff—priest-doctors and nuns—was manning the pots, since there weren’t any wounded to care for so far. Suzette dashed by, stopping long enough to thrust a cup of watered wine into Raj’s hand. The others were dipping water out of a bucket; Ludwig waited politely until the others had drunk, then dumped the remainder over his head.
“I
needed
that,” he said; the grin made you realize he wasn’t yet thirty.
Neither am I,
Raj remembered with slight surprise. He felt older, though.
Aloud, he went on: “I’ll give Barholm Clerett that, he does get the trains running on time. We’re expecting the last in at any moment. How are your men?”
“They’ll be ready to fight after a night’s sleep; and the dogs are mostly sound-footed. We took your advice and commandeered a big pack of remounts from the East Residence reserve before we left.” Bellamy looked around. “You haven’t been wasting time here.”
There were few civilians left on the streets of Sandoral. Instead they swarmed with soldiers and dogs, wagons and carts, and an ordered chaos of movement under the harsh southern sun. The garrison infantry were doing most of the hauling and pushing, but they looked better fed, and far better dressed. A thud and plume of smoke and dust marked another house being demolished for building materials; off in the distance sounded the
heep . . . heep
of troops being drilled and a crackle of musketry practice. The artillery park filled most of the square, guns nose-to-trail with their limbers waiting behind, and Dinnalsyn’s gunners giving them a last going-over.
“Speak of the devil,” Bartin Foley said, smiling fondly.
A bugle sounded, and the color party of the 5th Descott came trotting into the square, the battalion banner floating beside the blue and silver Starburst of Holy Federation. Gerrin Staenbridge heeled his mount over to the clump of officers and saluted with an ironic flourish.
“
Mi heneral
, the remainder of your force, reporting as ordered.” He looked around in his turn. “I see you’ve started the party without me.”
“Just laying in the drinks and rehearsing the band, Gerrin,” Raj said. “No problem getting under way?”
“No, but there might have been if I’d lingered. Our good Chancellor Tzetzas isn’t happy about having the field army so far from home, at all, at all. If I hadn’t taken the last of the trains, I suspect the bureaucrats would have followed me all the way here to argue with you about it.”
Raj laughed harshly. “Not with Ali so close,” he said. “Although our good Commandant Osterville is almost as much of a pest, in his way. And he
is
here.”
“Speak of the devil,” Foley said again, his voice flat as gunmetal this time.
He took Staenbridge’s arm and began whispering rapidly, gesturing with the hook on his left arm. Raj caught his own name and
Suzette
once or twice.
The Commandant of Sandoral and District was pushing his way through the thronging mass in the square; not looking very happy, and unhappier by the minute at the lack of deference, from Raj’s veterans and from what were supposedly his own troops.
“Whitehall,” he said. “General Whitehall,” he amended; Raj’s face was politely blank, but several of the Companions had dropped their hands to pistol-butts or the hilts of their sabers.
“Where the Starless Dark have you been?”
Raj straightened, finished the wine, and dipped his bannock into the stew. “Well, Commandant, I’ve been rather busy—getting ready for the war, you see.”
Somebody chuckled, and Osterville turned a mottled color. “I’ll thank you to accompany me to my headquarters,” he said. “We’ve got several things to discuss.”
“If you want to talk,
Colonel
, you’ll talk here and now. Because as I mentioned, there is a war impending.”
Words burst from the smaller man. “You’re
destroying
my city!” he barked. “I’ve received petitions from every man of rank in the district—”
Raj raised an eyebrow. “I don’t doubt you have,” he said. “Let them petition Ali. That’s the alternative, and I think they’d like his methods even less than mine. In any case, as you’ve made clear, you’re the supreme civil authority in this area; relations with the local nobility are your responsibility.”
The Commandant opened his mouth and closed it again. He snapped his fingers, and an aide put a sheaf of documents in his hand.
“Perhaps you’ve been too
busy
,” he said, “to read these dispatches from the Capital? They’ve been coming over the semaphore by the dozens.”
Raj mopped his bowl with the heel of the bannock and plucked the papers out of the smaller man’s hand. He glanced through them, chewed, swallowed.
“Oh, I’ve been reading them,” he said.
He ripped the thick sheaf through with casual strength, tossing the fragments into the dry hot wind. They fluttered off like gulls, and one of the newly arrived dogs of the 5th snapped inquiringly at a piece as it went by.
“I have the
Governor’s
authority, signed by the Sovereign Mighty Lord himself. I received it in person, from his own hands. What are a few waggling flags to
that
?”
He tossed the last of the papers to the cobbles. “And now, Colonel Osterville, if you don’t have any more problems . . .”
“But I do have
this
,” Osterville said. The document he produced was thick parchment, impressively sealed with lead and ribbons.
Raj raised an eyebrow. “You have a decree from the Chair, a Vermilion Order, swaying the wide earth?” he asked, using the formal terminology.
“Not exactly,” Osterville said. “But you will note it’s from Chancellor Tzetzas, in the Governor’s name, requiring you to cease and desist from interfering with private properties and instead attend to your assigned mission.”
“From the Chancellor?” Raj said, examining the parchment. He crumpled it experimentally. It was first-quality sheepskin parchment, soft and supple. “By courier, I suppose?”
Osterville nodded toward a man in his entourage. Raj looked at him, and then around.
“M’lewis. Deal with this as it deserves,” he said.
“Where are the jakes?” the Scout Captain said, putting down his bowl and unfastening his sword belt.
Like most Civil Government cities, Sandoral had public lavatories, simple brick boxes connected to storm-flushed sewers. M’lewis strode over to the nearest, and back a minute later. He was holding the now brown-streaked and stinking parchment by one corner between thumb and finger. Shocked silence gripped the Commandant’s party as he walked over to the courier, unfastened the flap of his message pouch, and dropped the soiled parchment inside.
“Just so the Chancellor understands exactly what weight I attach to his attempts to interfere with my mission and the Governor’s authority,” Raj said.
“You’re mad,” Osterville said softly. “Mad. Nobody—Tzetzas will eat your
heart
.”
Raj’s smile sent Osterville back a step. “Perhaps I am mad, Colonel. Perhaps I’m the Sword of the Spirit of Man. In either case, I’m in charge here.” He produced a document of his own. “And this is your own confirmation, directing your troops to cooperate in the transport of the civilians.”
He held it up, and one of the Companions leaned over to read it with interest.
“That! That was that witch, she—” On the edge of ruin, Osterville pulled himself back. He’d been about to say something that would be a public provocation to a challenge. He ran a hand through his hair. “Where is
she
? I haven’t seen her since . . .”
Raj laughed, an iron sound. “Colonel Osterville, I’ve answered your official inquiries. You can scarcely expect me to stretch business to the point of giving you an itinerary for my wife. Now, if you’ll pardon me—”
He turned, and the officers followed him. Gerrin Staenbridge paused, holding his gauntlets in one hand and tapping them into the palm of the other. For a moment Osterville feared he would slap them across his face in challenge, but the hard dark features were relaxed in a smile. He held the order Osterville had signed—the order that Suzette Whitehall had somehow charmed out of him. He read it, pursing his lips, then looked up at Osterville with an expression of feline malice before he spoke one word.
“Sucker.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was the hour before dawn, a little chilly even in summer in the clear dry southern air. The massed ranks of the army knelt as the Sysup-Suffragen of Sandoral paced by, with acolytes swinging censers that spread aromatic blue smoke across the men. He reached out his Star-headed staff in blessing as he passed the colors of each unit, and the men extended both hands out, palms down, in the gesture of reverence. Behind the hierarch came four priests bearing a litter on which rested a cube of something clearer than crystal and taller than a man. Light swirled in it, growing and flaring until the watchers bowed their heads and closed their eyes in awe. It shone through the closed lids, through hands flung up before faces, then died away amid a murmur of awe.
Raj touched his amulet as he rose. “The Spirit is with us,” he said.
Or at least Center is. What a cynic I’ve become.
realist,
Center corrected.
Is there a difference?
He turned to the command group. Which included, from necessity, Colonel Osterville.
“Gentlemen, my congratulations. You’ve managed a very complex operation in record time and with surprisingly little confusion; my particular thanks to Colonels Menyez and Dinnalsyn. Now it’s time to show the wogs that two can play the invasion game. Colonel Osterville, I presume you’ll wish to accompany the field force rather than remain in Sandoral?”
“I certainly will. Furthermore, I insist that the cavalry battalions of the Sandoral garrison be under my command.”
Raj nodded. “By all means, Colonel. By all means.”
Osterville shot him a suspicious glance, and found his face blandly unrevealing. He tugged at his mustachio thoughtfully.
colonel osterville is attempting to intuit the reason for your ready agreement,
Center pointed out.
probability of success 12%±3.
“Colonel Menyez, you will command the city garrison. I’m leaving you the 17th, the 24th, the garrison infantry, and three batteries of field guns. You’ll also have the guns of the fixed defenses, of course.”
Dinnalsyn looked up. “I’ve tested the militia artillery crews who volunteered to stay,” he said. “Not bad at all, and the ammunition’s plentiful.”
Jorg Menyez nodded thoughtfully. “Any cavalry? The garrison units can stand behind a parapet and shoot, and the 17th and 24th can do anything cavalry can except ride and charge with the saber, but I could use a mobile reserve.”
“I’ll leave you three companies of the 5th Descott,” Raj said. “That’ll have to do. The field force will comprise three columns.
“The remainder of the 5th, the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers, the 3/591, 4/591, and 5/591, and the main artillery reserve of thirty guns will go with me. Colonel Osterville, you’ll command your garrison cavalry and two batteries. Major Gruder, you’ll have the 7th Descott Rangers, the 1st Rogor Slashers, the Maximilliano Dragoons, and Poplanich’s Own. Major Zahpata, you’ll take your 18th Komar Borderers, the City of Delrio, and the Novy Haifa Dragoons. Plus two batteries of field guns each.
“We’ll be advancing fast, close enough for mutual support; no wheeled transport except for the guns and the ammunition reserve. Spread out, live off the land; spare lives when you can, but burn and destroy everything else, so long as you can do it quickly. Let the semaphore posts stand long enough to get off messages. Portable plunder will be transferred to the central group, and from there back here to Sandoral for eventual division; do
not
allow the men to weigh themselves down with choice bits. When Tewfik comes looking for us, we’re going to need every bit of mobility we can get.
“The purpose of this exercise is to create enough havoc that Ali will be forced to divert at least part of his army from the west bank of the Drangosh. We lay waste the nobles’ estates; the nobles scream for protection. He can give any particular noble the chop, but he can’t ignore too many of them—hopefully, he’s not so much of a bloody lunatic as to forget that, at least not yet. We can’t face the entire Colonial army in the field, but we may be able to give part of it a bloody nose. Move fast, and create the maximum amount of panic and alarm; that’s more important than actual damage.
“Any questions?”
A few of the officers looked at each other, but none spoke. Raj slapped on his gloves. “Then to your men, Messers, and the work of the day.”
Raj mounted Horace and turned the dog and his personal bannermen down the front of the assembled force. He halted before the ranks of the infantry.
“Fellow soldiers,” he said, raising a hand. “I’m off to teach the wogs the price of invading the Civil Government of Holy Federation.”
Silence reigned. “I can only do that if Sandoral is strongly held behind me.” He pointed south. “Ali is coming, and more wogs than you can count are coming with him. If you hold these walls, we can win this war; otherwise, we all die. I’m riding out confident in the aid of the Spirit of Man of the Stars—and in your courage and discipline. Which is why, when the plunder is divided, all the infantry here will receive a full share, just as the cavalry troopers do. Are you lads ready to do a man’s work today?”
The 17th began the cheering, and it spread down the line as Raj rode past, his personal flag dipping in salute as he passed each battalion’s banner. The cavalry were massed on the other side of the square; you had to use a different manner with them.
He grinned as he reined in, facing the long rows of helmeted riders and the panting tongues of the dogs; they knew something was up as well, and their pricked-forward ears were mirrors of the men’s excitement.
“To Hell or plunder, dog-brothers,” Raj roared.
The men gave back a single exultant bark, and the dogs howled, thousands of them in antiphonal chorus, a sound that slammed back from the buildings around the plaza and made the hair crawl along the spine.
“Walk-march . . . trot.”
“I might have known,” Raj said, reining in on the little hillock beside the east-bank end of the bridge.
Suzette pulled up Harbie, her riding palfrey, beside Horace. The smaller dog wagged its tail and sniffed Horace’s muzzle; after a moment Horace gave a snuffle in reply and turned his head away in lordly indifference.
“You do have a medical element along,” Suzette said, her eyes bright with friendly mockery. She touched the first-aid kit slung from the saddlebow. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t join them.”
The boards of the pontoon bridge rumbled as a splatgun battery crossed. Cavalry followed in columns of fours, the plate-sized paws thudding on the wooden pavement. Some of the dogs had their ears back at the unfamiliar slight swaying of the surface beneath their feet; others looked upstream or down. The men were singing, an old Descotter folktune:
“Goin’ t’Black Mountain wit me saber an’ me gun;
Cut ye if yer stand, shoot ye if yer run—”
“I can command thousands of armed men and not a single woman,” Raj grumbled.
One armed woman
, he corrected himself. Suzette had her Colonial repeating carbine in a scabbard tucked under the saddle flaps before her left knee.
“Well, you did
marry
me, not
enlist
me, darling,” Suzette said.
Raj snorted and returned his attention to the map. Below, the raiding force poured across the Drangosh, dogs and guns.
Twenty-five, thirty-five klicks a day,
he thought, tracing it with his finger. South and east—there was nothing close to the river to raid, but the Ghor Canal ran a little farther east, and there was a thick belt of cultivation along it.
Three or four days should bring us to . . .
A city, called Ain el-Hilwa, about halfway between here and the Colonial bridgehead opposite Gurnyca.
By that time the wogs should be well and truly terrorized.
“Scramento!”
Robbi M’Telgez swore.
The carbine bullet pecked dirt from the adobe wall into his eyes. He crouched and duckwalked along it, rising slightly to peer through the branches of a flowering bush a few meters farther on. There wasn’t much shooting elsewhere in the hamlet, but this was the best house; therefore the one most likely to be defended.
“Ye, Smeet, Cunarlez, M’tennin,” he said. “Cover us. Five rounds rapid. T’rest fix yer stickers. We’ll tak Rosalie t’breakfast.”
“We’ll a’ git kilt,” Smeet muttered. “Hunnert meters, dog-brothers. I gits t’winda on ‘t lef.” He blew on the round he loaded into the chamber.
M’Telgez drew the bayonet—nicknamed Rosalie from time immemorial—from the left side of his belt beneath the haversack and clipped it beneath the muzzle of his rifle. There was a multiple rattle and click as the other men of his squad followed suit.
The house ahead was bigger than most in the sprawling settlement along the irrigation ditch; probably the local headman’s. It was about a hundred meters upstream from the burning wreckage of the
noria
, the water-powered millwheel that filled the distributory network of irrigation ditches. A small square house of two stories, blank whitewashed adobe below, a few narrow windows above, and most of it was courtyard enclosed by a wall. It hadn’t been constructed as a fortress; it had been a long time since Civil Government troops came this far, and none of the local villages even had a defensive perimeter. From what he knew of raghead custom, the wogs built this way to keep neighbors from seeing their women. But it
functioned
perfectly well as a minor strongpoint.
“Hadelande!”
he shouted, and vaulted the wall.
The three men he’d designated cut loose, firing as rapidly as they could work the levers and reload. The heavy bullets knocked dust-spouting holes in the mud brick around the windows, or went through—most of them went through, it was only fifty meters and everyone in the 5th ought to be able to hit a running man in the head at that range—beating down the enemy fire. A light bullet still pecked at the dust between his feet. He suppressed his impulse to leap and yell, concentrating on running.
The six Descotters flattened themselves by the doorway. No sense waiting there; it would just give someone upstairs time to think about dropping something unpleasant on them. He was suddenly conscious of his dry gummy mouth, the sweat trickling down from neck and armpits under his uniform jacket, the sound of a chicken clucking unconcerned out in the dusty yard. M’Telgez held out three fingers, two, one.
He and the next trooper stepped out and fired at the lock. They were lucky; nothing hit them when the crude wooden mechanism splintered. The other four fired a round each through the datewood planks while he and his partner stuck their bayonets through the gaps between and lifted the bar out of its brackets. The door burst inward, and they were through.
It was an open space of packed earth with a well in the center and rooms about it. An open staircase came down from the second story opposite him, and men were leaping down it. One pointed a long-barreled flintlock
jezail
.
It boomed, throwing a plume of smoke. Someone behind him yelled—yelled rather than screamed, so that couldn’t be too serious. Armory rifles banged, and the other man with a firearm toppled from the stairs; he had a repeating carbine, which showed that this squad had a proper sense of target priorities. Then a wog was rushing at him, swinging a long scimitar.
Clang.
M’Telgez caught the sword on his bayonet, and it skirled down the forearm-length of steel until it caught in the brass cross-guard. He let the inertia of the heavy sword push both weapons downward, and punched across with the butt of his rifle. It smacked into the Arab’s bearded face with a crackle of breaking bone, a crunching he could feel through his hands. The Colonial pitched sideways, spinning and fouling the man behind who was trying to pull a double-barreled pistol out of the sash around his ample belly. His mouth opened in an “O” of surprise as M’Telgez spun his rifle around and lunged, driving his bayonet through the Arab’s stomach and a handspan out his back.
There was a soft, heavy resistance, a feeling of things crunching and popping inside. He twisted sharply and withdrew, a few shards of white fat clinging to nicks in the blade of the bayonet. Blood spattered out; the wounded man’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed backward.
The men of the 5th waited an instant, taking cover behind the mudbrick columns that supported the second story of the house. M’Telgez reloaded his rifle and raised three fingers, then jerked them towards the stairs. Three men ran up them and through the open arched door at the top. A shadow moved at the corner of his eye. He whirled, just in time to see it was a veiled and robed woman with a big earthenware pot raised over her head in both hands. M’Telgez raised the muzzle of his rifle as his finger curled on the trigger, and the bullet smashed the vase into shards, leaving her standing with her hands spread and eyes wide.
He pivoted the rifle and jabbed the butt into her stomach. Air whooped out of her and she collapsed to the ground. The Descotter put a boot in the small of her back and pinned her to the dusty earth.
“Anythin’ up thar?” he called sharply.
“Nothin’,” a voice answered him. “Jist sommat wog kids.”
“Bring ’em down,” he called. “Rest a yer dog-brothers, search it. Look unner t’roof tiles, t’hearthstone, shove yer baynit inna any chink ye see. Nuthin’ heavy, jist coin an’ sich.”
Which was a pity; cloth and tools and livestock would all fetch a good price back in the
Gubernio Civil
if they had time to send them back, not to mention the wogs themselves. A good stout wog would bring six or seven silver FedCreds sold to the slavers who usually followed the armies, a quarter the price of a riding dog. He’d picked up some coin that way in the Southern Territories. M’Telgez banked half his pay and most of his plunder with the battalion savings account; he had an eye on a little place back in the County when he’d done his twenty-five years. There were two schools of thought on that—some held that you had about one chance in four of living that long in the Army, so it made more sense to spend it on booze and whores as it came.
Robbi M’Telgez had noticed that troopers who thought that way tended to be careless, and to make up a large share of the discouraging statistics. Besides, his family could use the money too, if it came to that.