by David Drake
The low-sunk defenses were a lip in the earth from here; they’d been modernized a century or so ago. Carson Barracks didn’t really need walls. It stood at the center of several thousand square kilometers of marsh and bog, hardly a hectare of it capable of bearing a man’s weight and much of it quicksand. Melancholy wastes of swamp were visible from where they stood, with only the arrow-straight causeway and canal that led north to the railhead on solid ground near the Padan river to vary the landscape. Waving reddish-green native reeds, the green-green Terran variety, an occasional glint of water through the thick ground-haze. The air stank of vegetable decay and the sewage that drained into the swamp and moved, very slowly, downslope toward the river.
Not many Brigade members lived in Carson Barracks by choice, although duty brought many there for a time. Most of the permanent population were slaves, or administrators drawn from the old native upper classes.
“It’s probably a good thing fuckin’ Forker waffled again,” Ingreid went on. “The only thing he could make up his mind on would be to sell us out to the civvies.”
“Yeah. What we ought to be doing is mobilizing. You remember my cousin Henrik?”
Ingreid rubbed his bearded chin. Hairs caught in the thick layer of horny callus that ringed the thumb and forefinger of his right hand where it controlled his sword.
“Bit younger than you? Had a captaincy in the regulars, then killed . . . shit, what’s-his-name—”
“Danni Wimbler’s son Erik.”
“—over a woman, had to make tracks. Good man, as I remember.” Ingreid snapped his fingers. “I do remember. He’s the one cut the head off that Stalwart chief at, oh, up near Monnerei.”
“Yeah; good man, but no luck. The grisuh killed him on Stern Isle.”
“Spirit of Man of This Earth download his core,” the other man said.
Howyrd touched a lump of blessed agate he wore around his neck. “Yeah. Thing is, one of his men lived, knocked out by a shell. Got shipped out on a slaver after the grisuh caught him, then pirates jumped the ship and sold crew and cargo in Tortug. This guy, Eddi, he killed a guard and stole a sailboat, turned up half-dead . . . anyway, he told me about the fighting. More like what a sicklefoot pack does to a herd of sheep. The Squadron wasn’t any accident. Ingreid, we ought to be mobilizing. Right now.”
The other noble shook his head. “Damned if I thought we’d ever be running scared of the civvies,” he mused.
“More like running scared of this Whitehall.”
“Think he’s really got the Outer Dark workin’ for him?”
They spat and made a gesture with their left hands. “Ni, he’s just one grenade-on-toast of a fighting man,” Howyrd said. “They say when he had some Skinners fighting with him, he hung one for killing a civvie trooper, then rode into their camp alone—and they made him a blood-brother or something.”
Ingreid winced. “I fought the Skinners once. In maybe a hundred years, I’ll want to do that again.” He shook his head. “Tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to hire and outfit another regiment of guards, and start buying powder and lead, and check that all my tenants-in-chief and freeholder-vassals have their rifles ready and their swords sharp. And I’ll tell everyone I know to do the same, down to the petty-squires and fifty-hectare men. And if Forker doesn’t like it, Forker can go suck a dead dog’s farts. He’s not going to have me drowned in my bath like he did Charlotte Welf.”
Carstens sighed and knocked the dottle out of his pipe against his heel; the spur jingled sweetly as he did. “Watch out you don’t get a native uprising,” he cautioned. His friend was wealthy even by the upper nobility’s standard, but he would have to squeeze his serfs fairly hard to support an extra twelve hundred men and their dogs and gear.
“Then we get practice whipping peon butt,” Ingreid snorted. “Heretic bastards deserve it, anyway. They’re all civvie-lovers, from the ploughboys to the so-called gentry—whatever they say to your face. He’s no better,” he went on, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the Palace. “Books, librarians, it’s enough to make a real man puke. Outer Dark, he’s got to look at some book before he knows what hole to put it in. If he’s got anything to put.”
“Yeah, and I’ve got to waste my time and my regiment’s back on the border,” Howyrd said.
“They’re not coming by land?”
“Ni. Nothing but rocks up there, or swamps worsn’ this.”
As if to counterpoint his words, a distant honking roar came out of the reedbeds. A hadrosauroid herd by the sound; the big grazers had been preserved around Carson Barracks for hunting and as emergency food supplies. Hadrosauroids ranged up to four or five tons each, and they flourished on the reeds. Howyrd flipped a finger at an entirely different sort of sauroid tooth hanging on his amulet chain, a curved cutting dagger serrated on both sides and long as a woman’s hand.
“Only there’s still a lot of big meat-eaters around there, so you have to build palisaded camps. Not enough cleared land or farmers for major campaigning; most of what the civvies’ve got there is tribal stuff, mercs. Naw, when they come, they’ll come by sea.”
Grooms brought up their dogs, big glossy mastiffs standing chest-high to a tall man at the shoulder. A squad of Carsten’s dragoon Regulars rode up as escorts for their colonel, armed with rifle, broadsword and revolver; they had the worn look of a weapon that fits a man’s hand easily when he reaches. Ingreid’s guards were in the buff and gray of his household regiment; half the hundred-man detachment were dragoons, half heavy were cavalry on Newfoundlands, with steel back-and-breasts, helmets, arm-guards and thigh-tassets. They carried twelve-foot lances as well as the usual swords and firearms, and the long slender ashwood poles stood like a steel-tipped thicket above the square.
“Off to see Marie?” Howyrd said.
Ingreid gathered his reins. “No such luck. Marie Welf tells me that I’m old enough to be her father—my sons are older than her—and I should go looking for a nice widow of forty with tits like pillows if I want to marry again.”
They exchanged a look. Whoever married Marie Welf would be technically an Amalson, and eligible for the Brigades elective monarchy. Those elections were settled by weight of shot as often as numbers of votes, but that was one rule always observed. Forker was childless and getting old. Any sons Marie bore . . .
Ingried shook his head. “She’s got guts, have to say that for the bitch.”
“Not the only thing she’s got, by the Spirit,” Carstens said with a man-to-man grin. More harshly: “And she’d better get a protector soon. Does she think she can breathe bathwater, just because her momma got the chance to try?”
“Women,” Ingreid said. “Hail and farewell, friend. See you on the battlefield.”
“And some people think he’s a simple soldier,” Cabot Clerett said bitterly, beside her on the church steps.
Fatima wiped at her eye with a lace handkerchief, managing a final sniffle. Civil Government convention was for ladies to weep when a guest at other peoples weddings; it seemed bizarre to her, but custom was custom. The ceremony had been beautiful, she had a lovely new dress of light-blue silk, torofib woven in Azania, and Gerrin and Bartin—she smiled to herself—had promised her another present as well, fitting to the occasion. It was hard to cry under those circumstances.
The newly-married couples were parading two by two out of the high brass-and-steel doors of the Wager Bay Cathedron, newly converted back to the Spirit of Man of the Stars; only fair, since there had been barely enough Earth Spirit cultists in town for a congregation. The newlyweds passed beneath an arch of sabers held by their comrades, on to awnings and trestle tables. Whole oxen and pigs were roasting over portable grills; there was to be a feast for the battalions of the men concerned, courtesy of the commanding officers of the units and Messer Raj.
“They are simple soldiers, Messer Cabot,” Fatima pointed out ingenuously.
It was just going on for sundown, but the post-siesta crowds of townsfolk were kept out
of the square by pickets tonight. Both moons were up, and paper lanterns had been strung from the official buildings which ringed the plaza. A breeze from the sea tempered the days late-summer heat to a languorous softness.
The troops were on their best behavior, with detachments in guardia armbands to see that they stayed that way later after the wine had flowed. The wedding songs they were bawling out ranged from the bawdy to the obscene, but that was customary in most places. That the couples had barely met before the ceremony was also common enough; and if the grooms had been among those who slaughtered the brides’ fathers or former husbands in the fighting around Fort Wager, that too was not unknown among a warrior people like the Brigade. Nobody knew for sure who had killed who . . . and life would not be easy for Brigade women without protectors among a hostile native populace, in a province newly conquered by aliens of a different faith.
“No, not them,” Cabot said. “The men are all right; good soldiers, they deserve a holiday, they’ve been working hard.”
“Too hard, some,” Fatima said.
She generally helped out in the 5th’s field hospitals, and there had been a full complement of broken bones and heatstroke during the field exercises. Moving thousands of men at speed through rough country was dangerous even without live ammunition. Plus cracked heads and ribs from over-enthusiastic encounters with practice sabers, sheathed bayonets and rifle butts during the melees. Especially between units with a history of bad blood like the 5th Descott and the Roger Slashers.
“Well, if they didn’t like to fight they wouldn’t be much use, would they?” Cabot said.
His voice was friendly in a patronizing way. Fatima suspected he talked to her only because he was fairly sure she didn’t understand him most of the time; doubly sure, since she was both a woman and a Colonist. Also he was lonely in the Expeditionary Force, close only to Ludwig Bellamy and constrained with him. Most of the men of comparable rank were either Companions or professionals deeply respectful of the General’s abilities; they were older, too. For all that, he was a nice enough young man, she thought. No problems after her firmly polite refusal of a pro forma attempt at seduction, the sort most men felt obliged to make toward another’s mistress. Of course, Fatima was often near Lady Whitehall. . . .
“No, it’s the land,” Cabot Clerett said. “I can’t think what Historiomo is thinking of, to let him distribute land to men under his command! Cash donatives are bad enough, but if you give a man a farm you’ve got him for life. And it makes all the others hope for the same thing.” The faint hope of saving enough for a homestead out of plunder was one major reason so many younger sons of yeoman-tenants and freeholders joined the cavalry.
“Government would give them farms?” Fatima asked, making her eyes go wide. Suzette had shown her how to do that.
“Ah, no.” His face lit. “There’s Lady Suzette—”
His eyes sought her out. Raj and his wife were strolling between the tables, exchanging a word here and there and toasting the couples. It wouldn’t be appropriate or dignified for a man of his rank and birth to actually sit at table with enlisted men in a social gathering, unlike a campfire on a battlefield. The first table started to raise a cheer, then quieted at a single motion of Raj’s hand. The singing immediately grew less raucous when Suzette came by; two of her maidservants followed her with sacks, and she was handing gifts to the brides, small things like shawls or brooches. Words of reassurance probably meant more, to young women now alone with men with whom they might not even share a common language beyond a few words of the Spanjol foreign to both.
“I don’t understand it,” Cabot muttered, half to himself. “One minute he’s trying to buy their favor, and then . . . He works them like peons right after they’ve won a battle; he keeps the strictest discipline I’ve ever seen, flogs and hangs for minor offenses against peasants—”
“He make them win,” Fatima said.
“Yes,” Cabot said; again to himself. “He’s got guts and he knows his trade, I’ll grant him that. And he wins. That’s what makes him dangerous.”
“General who lose is not dangerous to his Sultan?” Fatima asked. Cabot shot her a sharp glance, then relaxed at her palpable innocence.
“Yes, Fatima,” he said. “That’s the problem, you see. Bad generals may ruin you; good ones may overthrow you. Now, a Governor who was a successful general . . .”
“Besides,” Fatima went on, frowning, “I think—thought—Lady Whitehall have the idea for the weddings.”
“Oh, Lady Suzette,” Cabot said, the throttled anger in his voice vanishing. “Suzette. She’s an angel. I’m sure she didn’t have anything in mind but helping—”
“Excuse me, Messer Clerett,” Gerrin Staenbridge said. “I’ve come to collect my mistress.”
“Of course,” Cabot said, bowing. “And I complement you on your taste, Messer Staenbridge . . . in this at least.”
Gerrin’s grin was toothily insincere as he bowed the other man on his way. “No style at all,” he murmured to himself after the Governor’s nephew had moved out of earshot. “Bottom like a peasant, to boot. Very boot-able, in fact.”
Fatima was thinking over Cabot’s last remark to her. “Gerrin,” she said, “tell me: why smart young man stupid about a woman?” My lady Suzette is a djinni, not a houri, she thought in her mother tongue.
“What was that?” Bartin Foley said, coming up on her other side.
“I ask why all young men so stupid,” Fatima said, taking his arm as well.
“Imp,” he said. She stuck out her tongue at him.
“Are you sure you will not need me more here, saaidya?” Abdullah said.
Suzette looked around her sitting room; while she did, her hands straightened the pile of papers before her. The punkah overhead made a languid attempt to stir the air, and hot white light speared in through the slats of the shutters. A cat on a pile of silk cushions beneath writhed in its slumber, spreading a paw. From the courtyard garden came the sound of splashing water and a rake slowly, very slowly, gathering leaves.
“We won’t be here much longer, my faithful one,” she said.
“Now: here is the report from Ndella. Read and destroy it.”
“Ah, that one,” Abdullah said with professional appreciation.
Ndella cor Whitehall had been born in the Zanj city of Liswali and trained as a physician, before being captured by Tewfik’s men and sold north to Al Kebir. As a freedwoman of Suzette Whitehall she plied her old trade and a more discreet one among the servants of the Gubernatorial Palace.
“Men tend to ignore women and servants,” Suzette said judiciously.
“Fools do,” Abdullah conceded. “But then, most men are fools. Even the wise among us can be led into folly by the organ of generation. Or so my wife claims.”
“So I’ve found,” Suzette agreed. “Now, there are some juicy details in there on just how far along Forker went toward surrender at one point. Use them with extreme discretion, but anyone who knows him will probably believe it.
“Here,” she went on, “are ayzed and beyam.” Zanj, an abortificant and poison respectively; brewed from native Bellevue herbs known only in the far south and utterly untraceable in the western Midworld. Suzette sighed: “I only wish there were two of you, Abdullah.”
The Druze smiled. “Am I not multitudes, saaidya?”
Right now he was a Spanjol-speaking merchant of Port Murchison; down to the four-cornered hat with modest plume, green linen swallowtail jacket with brass buttons, striped cravat and natty chiseled-steel buckles on the shoes below his knee-breeches. He made a flourish with the hat, bowing and letting his hand rest on the hilt of a plain sword.
“I shall be welcome in Lion City.” Particularly bringing a sloop with a cargo of Stern Isle sulfur and Southern Territories saltpeter. Both restricted cargoes in time of war, of course, but a few hundred pounds would make no real difference.
“Less so in Carson Barracks,” she said. More briskly, “Now, unless I miss my wom
an and your reports are false, Marie Welf is well-aware that she’s the sheep at the carnosauroid’s congress. Forker and half the nobles in the Brigade want to murder her, the other half to marry her and father an heir to the Seat—and once she’s had a male child, she’s an inconvenience and danger. None of the prospects pleases, and most of the men are vile.
“You will approach her only when she’s desperate. This isn’t a girl who waits for a rescuer, but she’s inexperienced. She’ll jump at a way out. Forker keeps her isolated, but she has friends, and the Welfs have partisans. Investigate them also.”
“Ah, saaidya,” Abdullah said, tucking the small case of vials into an inside pocket of his tailcoat. “Were you a man, what a ruler you would be!”
“Were I a man,” Suzette said tartly, “I’d have better sense than to want to be a ruler.”
“As I said, my lady.”
She extended a hand, and Abdullah bent over it in the style of the Civil Government. Suzette dropped back into Arabic: “Go, thou Slave of God,” she said, which was what his name meant. “May my God and thine go with thee.”
“May the Beneficent, the Lovingkind, be with thee and thy lord.”
Alone, Suzette picked up a packet of letters—they were copies of Cabot’s reports to his uncle—and put them down again. Raj was out with most of the Expeditionary Force, on maneuvers again. Cabot and she were to meet at a little cove, where the swimming was safe. Quite respectable, since several of her women would be along; the Civil Government had a nudity taboo but not during bathing.
“Some men,” she murmured, stroking the cat, “are governable by the fulfillment of their desires, and some by their frustration.” For the present, Cabot Clerett wanted to worship from afar; his concubine was probably sitting down rather carefully these days.
How long he could be controlled that way was another matter, of course. A man who knew himself able, but also knew he owed everything to his uncle’s preferment. Wild to accomplish something of his own . . . and dangerously reckless in his hate, from the evidence in the letters. Far too dangerous to Raj to be tolerated.