by David Drake
“Colonel Gerrin Staenbridge,” the Civil Government officer said, saluting crisply.
The other man’s reply was a vague wave followed by silence. Gerrin was in no particular hurry, within reason. The two parties were meeting under a white flag in the cleared no-man’s land in front of the fort, which gave a wonderful view of the tumbled ruin of the main defensive bastion beside the gate. Eroded-looking stumps stood up above rubble that had filled in the moat and made a perfect ramp up into Fort Wager. In fact, it even looked accessible on dogback. Every minute that Courtet had to watch it from this angle was a blow struck at his morale, which looked none too steady to begin with. According to the intelligence, he’d been pushed forward by the local military council because he was the only officer of sufficient birth and rank who wasn’t as defeatist as Colonel Boyce.
As completely defeatist as Boyce. Senior officers with military ability or ambition didn’t come to Stern Isle.
Besides, Courtet’s aide was worth a little attention: he looked the way a noble Military Government warrior was supposed to in the legends and so rarely did in practice. Twenty, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, regular bronzed features and tourmaline eyes, long blond hair flowing to his shoulders and close-trimmed barley-colored beard. Uniform of beautiful materials, elegantly understated, but the breastplate commendably hacked, battered and lead-splashed.
Gerrin fought down a friendly smile; besides, Bartin was acting as his aide. The senior officer, a junior, and a bannerman, as was traditional.
“There’s no point in wasting time,” Staenbridge went on, when it was plain Courtet would not speak. Possibly could not. “You’re getting the third and last chance to surrender.”
“Ah . . .” Courtet coughed rackingly. “Same terms?” He wet his lips, visibly thirsty. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerrin could see the fine-drawn lip of the Brigadero aide curl.
“Of course not,” Staenbridge snapped. “You know the laws of war concerning fortified places, Colonel. We summoned you first when we invested the fort, and again before we commenced firing. Terms become more strict with each refusal.”
He pointed with a gauntleted hand. “Now we’ve put a workable breach in your defenses. If you refuse and we storm the position, your lives are forfeit. And believe me, if you force us to take unnecessary casualties, we’ll throw any survivors over the cliffs and their families will be turned over to the men. Who will not be in a gentle mood.”
Courtet looked from one Civil Government officer to the other, from the dark suave face of a killer to the cheerful, handsome young man with the razor-edged steel hook for a left hand. The flower tucked behind his ear made the sight worse, not better.
“What terms, gentlemen?” he said hoarsely.
“Personal liberty for your families. All able-bodied males and their households to be sent to East Residence, men to be enrolled in our forces under the usual provisions—no service against the Brigade. The remainder to be released after giving their parole never to bear arms against the Civil Government. Personal property except arms to be retained by the owners, and officers’ sidearms and dogs for those discharged. Forfeiture of real property beyond one house and forty hectares. And if that seems harsh, messers, consider the alternatives.”
“Can I, ah, consult with my officers?”
“With this gentleman and no others.” Although I wouldn’t mind consulting with him myself, under other circumstances. “Are you in command, Colonel Courtet or not?”
Probably not but he could lead his men in the obvious direction. There was nothing more demoralizing than being shelled without a chance to reply, except possibly knowing your family was there with you. The blond aide drew Courtet aside and whispered urgently in his ear.
When he turned back, the Brigade commander’s face was like gelid fat. His aide dismounted and helped him to the ground; they both drew their swords and offered them hilt-first across their forearms.
A huge roaring cheer rose from the Civil Government troops downslope, in their hasty fieldworks. Even with the mortars in support, taking the fortress would enact a big enough butcher’s bill to daunt anyone. The fort’s ramparts were black with watchers as well, and the sound that came up from them was a long hollow groan, the sort of noise you hear on a battlefield after dark when the wounded lie out. Calling for water, or their mothers, or in wordless pain.
The Civil Government officers each took his counterpart’s blade, flourished it overhead, and returned it. Then Staenbridge pulled out his watch.
“My felicitations on an honorable but difficult decision,” which you should have made yesterday, you butchering moron. “Colonel Courtet. Your men will march out within twenty minutes and stack arms,” he said, “or you’ll be in violation of the truce. Colonel, you’ll remain with me until that’s done. Sooner begun, the sooner we can get the wounded attended to and your women and children settled.”
Courtet nodded heavily, resting one hand on the saddle of the dog beside him.
“Where’s Whitehall?” he burst out.
The two Descotters looked at him expressionlessly. He blinked, and amended: “Where’s Messer General Whitehall? They say,” the Brigadero went on, “the demons fight for him. I could believe that.”
“General Whitehall is where he thinks best,” Staenbridge said. And I violently disagree; he should be here, and I on that boat. “And the holy Avatars fight for him, Colonel. He is the Sword of the Spirit of Man—hadn’t you heard?”
Courtet was silent but his aide bowed courteously. “I had heard that, sir,” he said, in fair if slow Sponglish. “We yield our swords to the might of the Spirit, then, to take them up again against Its enemies, heathen and Muslim.” He turned and spurred for the gates.
They opened, and remained that way. A squad came forward to put Courtet under guard; Bartin Foley murmured to the lieutenant in charge, and a table, chair and tumbler of brandy appeared. The fat old man in too-tight armor looked at them and then put his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving.
Staenbridge heeled his dog off to one side. Bartin leaned toward him.
“You said that as if you meant it,” the younger man said. “About Messer Raj being the Sword of the Spirit; and here I thought you were a skeptic.”
“I find myself growing less sceptical, comrade of my heart. Less skeptical than I would wish.”
“Envious?” Bartin grinned.
Gerrin Staenbridge shuddered elaborately and began stripping off his gloves. “Merciful Avatars—if there are any—no! Plenty of fame in being one of the selfless, faithful Companions, as I don’t doubt the lying histories will call us all, forgetting we’re each the central characters of our own stories.” He thought for a moment, watching the screeching gulls and cawing dactosauroids over the harbor.
“Bad enough to be a hero, and carry the burdens of human expectations. To shoulder those of Something Else . . . even a soul like Raj’s will crack under the burden in the end. No matter that all of us do what we can to help.”
He looked at the younger officer and smiled. “The flower’s charming, by the way. And since it’s on the left today . . . ?”
CHAPTER NINE
Raj Whitehall looked past his booted feet where they rested on the table, down the long conference chamber and out the french doors and balcony at the other end. From here you could just see the blue-and-silver Starburst banner of the Civil Government floating over Fort Wager against the violet morning sky and the pale translucent globe of Maxiluna. Soon to be renamed Fort Tinneran, for all the good it would do. There was something satisfying in the sight. Also in getting some honest work done. This meeting was informal, the Companions and one or two others, but there were things that needed doing.
Grammeck Dinnalsyn ruffled a stack of papers. “Just mason’s work for now, General,” he said. “The fort’s sound.”
“Not until it gets overhead protection for the guns, and something that can drop plunging fire on the beach,” Raj said crisply. “Curse
d if I’ll see it taken back by the same tricks I used, Grammeck.”
Although that would be a lot more difficult without Center. It had been close enough even with the Spirit lending a direct hand.
i am not god.
No, but you’re the closest approximation available within current parameters, Raj thought.
“I do have an idea about that,” the gunner said. “It’ll be a while before we can get real howitzers or mortars there; they’ll have to be ordered from East Residence Armory or the Kolobassian forges. Which requires formal funding from the Master of Ordnance . . .”
Half a dozen people groaned. “Exactly. You can steal money for yourself, but Star Spirit help you if you spend money irregularly for the State. What we can do, is take some of the surplus smoothbores, cut them down, and mount them in pits. Some sort of turntable, but that’s blacksmith-level work. Then timber-and-earth covers, with removable sections. Solid shot, and time-fused shell, of sorts. I wouldn’t care to have forty kilograms of either dropped on my head.”
Raj nodded. Spirit, but I like a man who can think for himself. With Center’s matchless ability to store and sort information, he really didn’t need all that much of a staff. He had set himself to train one anyway; the Civil Government needed something better than ad-hoc organizations whenever a field army was set up. There was a big gap in the table between the administrators who saw to pay and garrison work, and the battalion-level unit organizations.
a deliberate one, Center observed. Field armies made coups easier.
“We get the coups anyway,” Raj replied.
“Draw up the plans,” he said. “We may not have time for it, but at least our successors will get some help. How are the public works, town water supplies, that sort of thing?”
“In fair-to-good shape, no new work but maintenance is sound. Nothing like the pigsty we found down in Port Murchison; but the roads are pretty bad.”
“See if you can get the same organization working on transport, then,” Raj said.
“Sir,” Ludwig Bellamy cut in, “speaking of Port Murchison—”
Raj nodded, and the ex-Squadrone went on, “I’ve had a letter in from my father.”
He smoothed the sheaf of crinkled pages out; they were covered with a thick quasi-literate scrawl. Karl Bellamy had had expensive tutors shipped in from East Residence for his son, as he might have had a concubine or swordsmith. In fact, most Squadrone fathers would much rather have spent the money on girls or guns than possibly sissifying grisuh learning. The elder Bellamy had seen no need for such polish for himself, and the letter was too confidential for secretaries.
“Colonel Osterville has been removed as Vice-Governor of the Territories,” he said.
There was a general murmur of satisfaction around the table. Osterville was one of Barholm’s Guards—a semi-official group of troubleshooters-cum-enforcers of good birth, usually men with few prospects save the Governor’s favor. Raj had been a Guard, to begin with. Osterville still was, and he’d been sent to relieve Raj at the end of the reconquest under what looked suspiciously like official disfavor.
“The man’s got the soul of a pimp,” Kaltin Gruder said flatly. “I had to spend six months under his command, and the Spirit spare me any such service again. Who got him, Ludwig?”
“Administrator Berg,” Ludwig said, raising his brows. “Malfeasance in office, peculation, suspicion of usurpation of Gubernatorial honors.” The last would be the decisive one. Far more dangerous to wear the wrong color shoes than to strip a province bare. “He’s being posted as garrison commander to . . . ah, Sandoral.”
More satisfied smiles. A hot, dusty town uncomfortably close to the Colony. None of them expected Osterville to shine if it came to serious skirmishing.
observe, Center said.
A brief flash; Osterville’s face streaked with sweat and dust, bracing himself against the rocking of a railway car. The view out the window was not unlike central Stern Isle, but Raj recognized it as the plateau north of the Oxheads, east of salt-thick Lake Canpech. On Governor Barholm’s new Central Railway, heading east away from East Residence and the rich lands of the Hemmar River country.
“Hingada Osterville,” Hadolfo Zahpata said, in his sing-song southern accent; he was from northwest of Sandoral, and so were most of his 18th Komar Borderers. “I would wish a more able man in the post, though. Ali will be moving sometime. Malash; the Spirit appoints our coming up and our going down.”
“Endfile,” Raj said, and rapped his knuckles on the table. That was pleasant news, but not strictly germane. “Now, Muzzaf?”
The Komarite cleared his throat. “There is a machine shop which can do the work you requested,” he said, setting a Brigade cap-and-ball revolver down on the table. It was a five-shot weapon, loaded with paper cartridges from the front and with nipples for the percussion caps on the back of the cylinder.
“The original design was copied from the Civil Government model,” he went on, “so the calibre and pitch of the rifling are the same. Once the cylinder is bored through and tapped, and the hammer modified, it will accept the standard brass cartridge case—and ammunition is available in sufficient quantity if we indent for it now. I, ah,” he coughed, “know of certain channels to expedite matters.”
“Go for it,” Raj said. “Initial order of six thousand, we certainly captured enough. I want every cavalryman to have one by the time we ship out of here; we don’t want melee actions, but I’m damned if I’m going to have my lads facing a man with four revolvers and them with nothing but a sword. Messer Historiomo?”
“I see no reason not to authorize the expenditure,” the Administrative Service representative said cautiously; but then, he did everything cautiously.
“Which brings us,” Raj went on, “to the fund. My lady?”
“Every battalion has agreed to contribute in proportion to their losses,” she said. “I talked to the officers’ wives . . .”
“Good, very good.” The Civil Government made little provision for the families of casualties, or for men rendered unfit-for-service. He’d established a tradition of using plunder to set up a pension fund; the men trusted him not to steal it. “Muzzaf, put it in something suitable. Land, I suppose, or town properties. Arrange for trustees, trustworthy ones.”
“My love?” Suzette went on.
He nodded. Some people found his conferences a trifle eccentric—Fatima, for example, was acting as secretary to Suzette and had her nine-month-old daughter, named Suzette for her patroness, in a cradle beneath the side table they were using—but they got the work done.
Raj’s wife produced a list of her own. “We have about fifty troopers who’ve got injuries that make them unfit-for-service but not really incapacitated—ones without somewhere to retire to back home, that is. I’ve looked up about the same number of young Brigaderos widows or orphaned maidens of good reputation and appropriate rank who were covered by the amnesty; there were a fair number of men with medium-sized farms held in fee simple, here. Widows and daughters wouldn’t inherit in the absence of male offspring under Brigade law but would under ours; the ones I’ve talked to are willing and ready to convert to orthodoxy to avoid ending up as spinsters living on their relatives. For that matter, there are a couple of hundred who’ll settle for a man on active service; that’s a Brigade tradition too. If you know some unmarried troopers you’d like to see get a farm to come back to eventually . . .”
Raj nodded. The same thing had happened spontaneously in the Southern Territories after the conquest, and worked out surprisingly well. Soldiers and their relatives had solid legal status under the Civil Government, and could hold land under low-tax military tenure; desirable qualities in a husband, in uncertain times. Having a farm to retire to after mustering-out was the dream of most troopers who didn’t stand to inherit one or a good tenancy. It was a good way to start integrating new territory into the Civil Government as well.
“See to it, then, my sweet. Ah—we could hold a mass cer
emony here. The men would like that, and it’ll make them remember they’re soldiers first and foremost, active or on the invalid list.”
Kaltin laughed. “Advise the active-service men to get the brides pregnant before they leave,” he said.
“I don’t doubt they’ll try, Kaltin,” Gerrin said. “The dispositions, Raj? We’re still scattered to hell-and-gone.”
He swung his feet down as servants brought in the breakfast trays. “That is next,” he said, accepting a plate and shoveling it in without looking. After a moment he tasted what he was eating and looked over at his wife. “How do you manage to dig up a good cook wherever we go?” he asked. Their regular was an East Residence native who refused to leave the walls for whatever reason.
“Hereditary talent, my sweet.”
“Well. Now, I’m sure all you gentlemen are having a wonderful time relaxing, but we’ve got to get Kaltin back into the field before he fades to a sylph and gets worn down to a nub.”
“You underestimate me, sir. It’s only been a week.”
“Nevertheless. Gerrin, you are hereby appointed Purple Commander.” He slid a clip of papers down to the other Descotter, who looked through them and began to hand them out to the men who would be his subordinates for the field maneuvers.
“I will be Orange Commander,” Raj said, and did likewise.
“Jorg, you’ll be in charge of the referees, and I want it as realistic as we can get without massive casualties. We’ll do a thorough briefing this afternoon, but in essence I want to get us better at marching divided—” he held out a hand, fingers splayed “—and fighting united.” The hand closed into a fist.
“Oh, and we’d better arrange some sort of substantial prize for the best units; the men are starting to think this is going to be a military picnic like the Southern Territories.”