by David Weber
* * *
Roger heaved on his end, and the Mardukan he'd been sharing with Kyrou thumped soddenly into the pile against the door. He skipped aside and shook his head as Pahner and Surono came out with another.
"I've heard the expression before," he said, "but I never thought I'd do it."
"You see anything else to barricade the door with, Your Highness?" Pahner asked with a frown. "This is what war is all about: doing things you don't like to people you don't like even more."
* * *
"Sergeant Major," Julian said, jumping over a small mountain of Mardukans, "remind me never, ever to make that joke again."
"What's that?" Kosutic asked. She was simultaneously trying to walk sideways over the mounded bodies of the Royal Guard, tie a bandage on Pohm's neck, and make sure nobody was being left behind.
"Join the Marines . . ." Julian said.
"Travel to fascinating planets," Georgiadas chorused as he fired at one of the flankers who'd stopped to throw a javelin at them. The Marshad contingent's instinctive retreat to the city had come to a screeching halt when the bridge disintegrated in its face. Unable to fall back, it was beginning to reform south of the original battlefield, and even after the terrible pounding it had taken, the Marshadans were almost as numerous as the Pasulians.
"Meet exotic natives," Bernstein yelled, dropping a line of grenades across the line between the humans and the Marshadans.
"And kill them," Julian finished somberly as he shouldered the rolled up bag of ashes that was all that was left of Lieutenant Jasco. "Somehow, it's just not funny anymore."
"It never was, Julian." Kosutic finished the bandage and clapped the "repaired" private on the back. She looked around the battlefield and pointed to the marked assembly area. "Assemble at the O-P!" she yelled, then looked at the NCO who was jogging alongside her.
"So I should just shut up and soldier?"
"No. But you might wait until we're done with the mission," the sergeant major said, "and that will be a long time. Or at least wait to have your moral dilemma until the battle's over. In case you hadn't noticed, it isn't. And afterwards, you can drown your sorrows in wine, like the rest of us.
"I'm not saying that you have to be one of those guys who drinks from the skulls of dead enemies," she said as the company started to gather and tally off the dead and wounded. "But we have a few to pile yet. So wait until we're done to start the bitching."
* * *
"So you're just gonna leave me here, huh?"
Gronningen triggered another shot at the distant Marshadans. There were at least a thousand warriors in the mass, but it was nearly three thousand meters away. Maximum effective range for the cannon was only four thousand meters in atmosphere, due to energy bleed, so shots at this range were relatively ineffectual, but they still served to keep the Marshadan force off the backs of the rest of the Marines as they trotted steadily back towards his hilltop position. And, of course, the cannon would become increasingly effective if any of the Marshadans were stupid enough to come into shorter range.
"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Macek said nervously. Dozens of Mardukan soldiers had appeared at Marshad's gate, and more were coming from around the backside of the hill. If the main contingent didn't arrive soon, the bridgehead Denat had established across the river from them would be lost.
"Think of the poor bastards back in the barracks," Moseyev said. The word had come down that the first assault on the "guests' quarters" had been repulsed, but the group of walking wounded, mahouts, and tribesmen had been hard pressed.
"I'll think about them when I can quit thinking about myself," Mutabi said, hooking a clip onto the overhead rope. "I hate heights."
* * *
"Let's move out, people!" Kosutic snarled as she reached the foot of the hill and the plasma cannon atop it began firing across the river at Marshad. She glanced back at the stretcher teams toiling to keep up with her and shook her head. "Hooker!"
"Yes, Sergeant Major?" the corporal, who'd been promoted to team leader to replace Bilali after Voitan, responded.
"Your team stays with the stretcher bearers." There were three stretcher cases and four walking wounded, one of them in Hooker's team. "And St. John (J.), Kraft, and Willis," she added, naming off the other three walking wounded. "The rest, follow me," she finished, and went from the dog trot that they'd been maintaining to a loping run.
* * *
Macek ducked behind the tree as another flight of javelins rained down. There were only a few dozen Marshadans in the sewage ditch, but their last charge had nearly made it to the riverbank where the team crouched.
"This sucks!" he yelled.
"Oh, I don't know," Mutabi opined. "It could be worse."
"How?" Macek shouted back. "We're pinned down, the Company's not gonna get here in time, and there are more of them coming. How could it be worse?"
"Well," the grenadier said, pulling out his last belt of grenades. "We could be completely out of ammo."
* * *
"I can't get the angle into the ditch, Sergeant Major!" Gronningen reported furiously.
The senior NCO sucked in deep, cleansing breaths as she stepped to the edge of the hilltop to look the situation over.
"Grenadiers," she snapped, "flush those bastards. Gunny Lai!"
"Yes, Sergeant Major!"
"Your team first—go! Everybody else, lay down covering fire!"
Lai pulled the loop of rope out of her cargo pocket and hooked to the clip on the overhead line. She slung her bead rifle across her back and smiled.
"I always wondered why we did this in training." She laughed, and jumped off the cliff.
The company began to pour fire down on the scummy positions surrounding the sewage ditch bridgehead as the gunnery sergeant slid down the rope. The Marine gained speed rapidly as she felt another body hit the rope behind her, but there was an uplift at the bottom that slowed her. She let go near the top of the swing, and landed lightly a few meters from the riverbank.
"Ta-Da!" she said with a grin, and pulled the rifle off her back.
"Gunny," Macek told her, "you're a sight for sore eyes." He had a red-stained pressure bandage clamped on the side of Mutabi's neck, and there was a bloody javelin head next to the unconscious grenadier.
"Where's Moseyev and the scummy?" she asked as Pentzikis came off the rope, followed by St. John (M.). The latter had a rope trailing out of his rucksack and trotted off to the north, flipping it up and out of the river's current as he went.
"They're somewhere over there," Macek said, pointing south. "They're not responding anymore."
"Okay." The NCO looked around as more and more of the remnants of her platoon came down the rope. "Dokkum, Kileti, Gravdal—go find Moseyev and Denat." She waved to the south. "The rest of you, follow me!"
* * *
Roger's sword lopped the head off the spear as it thrust at him and opened up the scummy's chest on the backstroke. He spun in place to take the one grappling with Despreaux in the back, and then took the arm off of one fleeing towards the smashed-in door.
The wounded Mardukan slipped on the pool of blood which covered most of the floor and slid into the pile of bodies barricading the door. He started to scramble up again, but before he could, Captain Pahner took off his head with a single powerful blow of the broad, cleaverlike short sword he carried.
Roger straightened up, panting, and looked out over the city. The sounds of fighting carried clearly up to the balcony.
"We should have figured out how to smuggle in ropes. We could have gotten them in with the camping gear."
"No way." Despreaux disagreed, jerking hard to retrieve her own sword from the Mardukan in whose ribs it had wedged. "They were looking for stuff like that." She looked over at the remnants of the squad in one corner of the balcony. "How you doin'?"
"Oh, just fine, Sergeant," Kyrou said. He gestured at the securely trussed up king. "His Majesty's a bit put out, but we're fine."
"Right," Pahner said
. "We may be low on ammunition, but that was too close. Next time we use the rifles and pistols as our primary weapons." He waved the remaining team to the door. "Your turn to cover."
Roger wiped at his face with a sleeve, trying to get some of the blood off, but his sleeve was even more sodden than his face.
"Anybody got a hankie?" he asked. "Yuck."
"Captain," Damdin shouted. "We've got movement!"
"Check-fire," the sergeant major called from the landing. She peeked around the corner until she had the corporal in sight, then stumped wearily up to the top of the stairs. "Check-fire, Damdin. The cavalry has arrived."
"Great," Roger said, looking at the sergeant major. She was just as blood-covered as he was. "So what took you so long?"
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Roger glanced at the fresh bloodstains on the floor as he approached the throne. Some things never seemed to change in Marshad, he reflected. Or not, at least, without a little nudge from the outside.
"Tinker!" He smiled at the throne's new occupant. "You seem to have come up in the world."
Kheder Bijan did not return his expression of pleasure.
"You are to bow to a ruler, Prince Roger," he said. "I would suggest that you get used to it."
"You know," Roger said, glancing at the full platoon of Marines behind him, "I can understand how Radj Hoomas made the mistake of underestimating us, but I'm surprised at you. Surely you don't think you can bully us? Although, if you really are that stupid, I imagine that explains why we haven't received any of our agreed upon equipment yet. You were supposed to have the barleyrice, dianda, and shields to us three days ago, Bijan. Where are they?"
"You humans are so incredibly arrogant," the new ruler observed. "Do you think that we're simple provincials? That there was only one javelin in the quiver? Fools. You're all fools."
"Perhaps," Roger said with a thin smile. "But we're starting to be angry fools, Bijan. Where's our gear?"
"You're not getting any gear, human," the ruler snorted. "Nor are you going anywhere. I have far too much to do to lose my most important contingent of troops. Become accustomed to these walls."
Roger cocked his head and smiled quizzically.
"Okay, what neat trick do you have up your sleeve now, spy?" he asked brightly.
"You will address me as 'Your Majesty,' human! Or I will withhold the antidote to the miz poison you ate the first night you were here!"
"Unfortunately, we didn't have any poison," and Roger told him. "I'm fairly sure of that. For one thing, we're still alive."
"It was in your dishes at the banquet," the former spy scoffed. "It is visible as small flecks of leaf, but it's virtually tasteless. And it only takes one dose. Only a fool would have missed it, but you ate it nonetheless. Since then, we've been keeping you alive with the antidote. If you don't have it, you'll die, basik!"
"Hold it," and Roger said, thinking back. "Little green leaves? Taste like raw sewage?"
"They're tasteless," Bijan said. "But, yes, they would have been bright green."
"Uh-huh," and Roger said, trying not to smile. "And, let me guess—the antidote has been in all the food you've been giving us since, right?"
"Correct," Bijan sneered. "And if you don't have it, you'll die. It starts within a day, but it takes days of agony to end. So I suggest that you avoid it at all costs. But enough discussion of this, we must plan the next conquest and—"
"I don't think so," Roger interrupted with a chuckle. "Haven't you been keeping up with recent news, Bijan?"
"What are you talking about?" the new ruler asked. "I've been doing many things . . ." he continued suspiciously.
"But obviously not keeping up with who's been cooking my meals for the last few days," Roger purred like a smiling tiger.
Bijan gazed at him for a few seconds, then gestured to one of the guards standing by the throne. There was a brief, whispered discussion, and the guard left.
"Sir," Julian said, leaning forward behind Roger, "is this a good idea?"
"Yeah, it is." Roger never took his eyes off of Kheder Bijan. "In fact, send somebody to collect up T'Leen Sul. That seems like a capable family. Oh, and tell Captain Pahner that it looks like we're going to be staying a little longer then we'd planned."
He stopped talking as the guard returned to the throne room. The guardsman crossed to the new ruler and said a few words, and Roger had become sufficiently familiar with Mardukan body language to tell Bijan was suddenly one worried scummy.
The new king turned to the prince and placed his true-hands on the arms of the throne.
"Uh . . ."
"We're not Mardukans, Bijan," and Roger told him with a deliberately Mardukan laugh. "In fact, I'll tell you a little secret, Tinker. We're not from anywhere on this planet. We have no similarity to anything on it, we're not vulnerable to the same poisons you are, and we most especially aren't basik."
"Ah, Prince Roger, there seems—" the ruler began.
"Bijan?" Roger interrupted, as the door opened to admit Pahner.
"Yes?"
"Say goodbye, Bijan."
* * *
Including the representatives from Voitan and all the surrounding city-states, there must have been two or three hundred diplomats, alone, in Marshad. The exact number was open to some debate, since no one had ever gotten a definitive count, but there were certainly enough to make the goodbyes both long and fulsome. Roger smiled and shook hands, smiled and waved, smiled and bowed.
"He's getting good at this," Pahner said quietly. "I hope he doesn't get to liking it too much."
"I don't think he's a Caesar, Captain," Eleanora said, just as quietly. "Or even a Yavolov. Besides, he has Cord beside him muttering 'You, too, are mortal.'"
"I don't really think he is either," the Marine said, then grunted in laughter. "And you know what? I'm beginning to think that it wouldn't matter, anyway."
He surveyed the troops surrounding the prince. You always knew the ones who should be in the Regiment, even before RIP. They were the ones who always looked out. Even when they joked, they were the ones who watched others, and not just whoever they were talking to. The ones who saw their whole surroundings in one gulp. The ones who were human anti-assassin missiles.
Sometimes those weren't the ones who made it. Sometimes, rarely, you got those who were straight plodders. And sometimes even the missiles lost their edge. He'd felt that in the company before leaving Earth. Too many of the troops hadn't cared; it was only the prince, for God's sake.
Not now. The survivors were like a Voitan blade. They'd been tempered over and over, folded and refolded. And, at their core, it wasn't Pahner or even the sergeant major who'd given them their true temper. It was the prince—the trace element that made them hard and flexible. That was where their loyalty lay now. Wholly. Whether it had been his admission of fault, or his swift and decisive removal of the spy who, more than anyone, the company blamed for putting them in the noose of Marshad, or the realization that he'd removed Bijan not simply out of vengeance but because he'd finally learned the responsibility that came with power, as well, the captain didn't know. But whatever it was, it had worked. This was no longer the company of Captain Armand Pahner, escorting a useless prince; it was a detachment of Bronze Battalion, The Empress' Own, Colonel Roger MacClintock, commanding, and the captain smiled.
"Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!"
* * *
Roger thanked the representative from Sadan for his kind words. The broad, well-watered Hadur River valley was heavily settled, and the trade routes ran far and wide. And throughout that entire region the word had spread over the last several weeks that you didn't want to mess with the basik. Sadan was the city-state furthest along the route, and its representative had already promised that not only was the way open through his lands, but also in the lands beyond.
Roger looked up at the flar-ta loaded with wounded. The two beasts were crowded with stretchers, b
ut most of the Marines in the stretchers were recovering from leg wounds. They'd be back on their feet in a week, and getting used to marching again, he thought, and smiled at one of the exceptions.
"Denat, you lazy bum. You just wanted to ride!"
"You just wait until I get out of this stretcher," the tribesman said. "I'll kick your butt."
"That's no way to address the Prince," Cord said severely, and Roger looked over his shoulder at his asi.
"He's permitted. By your laws, Moseyev would be asi to him, so I give him leave to be a lousy patient." The prince reached up to clap the towering shaman on the shoulder. "But it's good to have you behind me again. I missed you."
"And well you should have," Cord sniffed. "It's past time to begin your teaching again. But I had a fine time in the barracks. Great fun." The still-recovering Mardukan had emerged coated in red, as had Matsugae and Poertena.
"It's still good to have you back," Roger said, and passed up the line of flar-ta and Marines, touching an occasional arm, helping to adjust a shield or commenting on a recovery, until he reached the head of the column, where he smiled broadly at T'Leen Sul.
The Mardukan nodded to him. The human expression was accepted now throughout the Hadur region, and the new council head clapped his lower hands in resignation.
"It won't be the same here without you," he said.
"You'll do fine," Roger said. "The land distribution was more than equitable, although you and I both know there'll be complaints anyway. But the trade from Voitan will soon mean you can relieve the tax burden and still maintain the public works."
"Any other points I should remember, O Prince?" the Mardukan asked dryly. "Should I, perhaps, think about a fund to restart the forges? Reduce the crops of dianda and balance it with barleyrice? Remember to use my chamber bucket and not the floor?"
"Yeah," Roger chuckled. "Something like that." He looked back along the line, where the natives of Pasule were pressing forward to offer baskets of food to the Marines.