Hope Rearmed

by David Drake

  The man bowed, touching brow and lips and chest; it looked odd, when his appearance was so thoroughly Southern Territories.

  “Saayid,” he said.

  “Your family is still living in that house in the Ox-Crossing, isn’t it?” Raj asked.

  That was a suburb of East Residence, outside the walls and across the bay. Abdullah nodded.

  “It’s yours, and the grounds,” Raj said, and waved away a pro-forma protest. “Don’t deprive me of the pleasure of rewarding good service,” he said.

  “Thank you, saayid,” Abdullah said. “And now . . . I think the merchant Peydaro Blanhko—” he touched his chest “—should vanish from the earth. Too many people will be asking for him.”

  Raj looked at Suzette as the Druze left the tent. “Someday I’m going to get the whole story of that one out of you,” he said.

  “Not with wild oxen, my love.”

  Raj stepped up to the map and began sketching in the extra data. “No, but I suspect that if I tickle you around that tiny mole, you’ll tell all. . . . Right, that’s the shipyard. Now—”

  The flap of the command tent had been pinned up, leaving a large three-sided room open to the west. In full dark the camp outside the walls of Lion City was a gridwork of cooking fires and shadowed movement; Raj could hear the tramp of feet in the distance, howling from the dog-lines, and a harsh challenge from a sentry on the rampart.

  They can probably see our fires from the walls, Raj thought, standing with his hands behind his back; the center of the camp was slightly higher than the edges, and he could make out the pale color of the city walls. Lantern-lights starred it. Much brighter was the tall lighthouse, even though it was on the other side of the city. The light was a carbide lamp backed by mirrors, but the lighthouse itself was Pre-Fall work, a hundred meters tall.

  There were probably plenty of nervous citizens on the ramparts, besides the civic militia. Looking out at the grid of cooking fires in the besieger’s camp, and thinking of what might happen in a sack.

  Then they’d bloody well better give up, hadn’t they? He turned back to the trestle table. “First, gentlemen,” he said to the assembled officers, “I’d like to say, well done. We’ve subdued a province of nearly a million people in less than two weeks, suffered only minor casualties”—every one of them unpleasantly major to the men killed and maimed, but that was part of the cost of doing business—“and your units have performed with efficiency and dispatch.

  “Colonel Menyez,” he went on, “you may tell your infantry commanders that I’m also pleased with the way they’ve shaken down. Their men have marched, dug—and shot, on a couple of occasions—in soldierly fashion.”

  A flush of real pleasure reddened Menyez’s fair complexion. “I’ve had them under arms for a full year and a half or more now,” he said. “Sandoral, the Southern Territories and this campaign. I’d back the best of them against any cavalry, in a straight stand-up firefight.”

  Civil Government infantry usually lived on State farms assigned to them near their garrisons, and were paid cash only when on field service away from their homes, unlike the cavalry. The farms were worked by government peons, but it wasn’t uncommon in out-of-the-way units for the enlisted men to be more familiar with agricultural implements than their rifles. Menyez’s own 17th Kelden County Foot had been in continuous field service since the Komar operation four years ago, and many of the other infantry battalions since the Sandoral campaign on the eastern frontier. The fisc and Master of Soldiers’ office had complained mightily; finding regular hard cash for the mounted units was difficult enough.

  Raj went on: “I’d also like to particularly commend Major Clerett for his management of the preemptive attack over the Waladavir; a difficult operation, conducted with initiative and skill.”

  Cabot Clerett nodded. Suzette leaned to whisper in his ear, and he nodded again, this time letting free the boyish grin that had been twitching at his control.

  “And now, Messers, we get the usual reward for doing our work.”

  “More work, General?” somebody asked.

  “Exactly. Lion City, which we certainly can’t leave in our rear while we advance. Colonel Dinnalsyn?”

  The artillery commander rose and walked to the map board. “As you can see, the city’s a rectangle, more or less, facing west to the sea. Here’s the harbor.” A carrot-shaped indentation in the middle with semicircular breakwaters reaching out into the ocean and leaving a narrow gap for ships.

  “The breakwaters, the lighthouse, and the foundations of the sea walls are adamantine.” Pre-Fall work; the material looked like concrete but was stronger than good steel, and did not weather. “The walls are about four hundred years old, but well-maintained—blocks up to two tons weight, height five to ten meters, towers every hundred-and-fifty meters or so. The main gate was modernized about a century ago, with two defensive towers and a dog-leg. There are heavy pieces on the sea walls, and four- and eight-kilogram fortress guns on the walls, some of them rifled muzzle-loaders firing shell. They outrange our field-guns.”

  “Appraisal, messer?”

  “The sea approaches are invulnerable. Landward, my field-pieces could peck at those walls for a year, even with solid shot. I could run the wheels up on frames or earth ramps to get elevation and put shells over the walls . . . except that the fortress guns would outrange my boys. That goes double for the mortars. The only cheering word is that there’s no moat. If you want to bring the walls down, we’ll have to ship in heavy battering pieces—the ones from Fort Wager would do—and put in a full siege.”

  Everyone winced—that meant cross- and approach-trenches, earthworked bastions to push the guns closer and closer to the walls, artillery duels, then however long it took to knock a suitable breach. Desperate fighting to force their way through into the town.

  observe, said Center.

  —and powder-smoke nearly hid the tumbled rabble of the shattered wall. Men clawed their way upward, jerking and falling as the storm of bullets swept through their ranks. Another wave drove upward, meeting the Brigaderos troops at the apex of the breach. There was a brief point-blank firefight, and then the Civil Government soldiers were through.

  They charged, bayonets levelled and a tattered flag at their head. But beyond the breach was a C of earthworks and barricades taller than a man, thrown up while the heavy guns wrecked the stone wall. Cannon bucked and spewed canister into the advancing ranks—

  —and Raj could see Lion City ringed by circumvallation, lines of trenches facing in and another line facing out. Beyond the outer line sprawled the camps of the Brigade’s relieving armies, improvised earthworks less neat than the Civil Government’s but effective enough, and stunning in their number.

  A sentry leaned against the parapet of the outer trench. His face had a bony leanness, and it was tinged with yellow. His rifle slid down and lay at his feet, but the soldier ignored it; instead he hugged himself and shivered, teeth chattering in his head.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Raj said, blinking away the vision. Dinnalsyn resumed his seat with the gloomy satisfaction of a man who had told everyone what they were hoping not to hear.

  “The garrison,” Raj went on, “consists of a civic militia organized by the guilds and cofraternities, and the household guards of merchants and town-dwelling landowners, about five thousand men of very mixed quality, and a force of Brigaderos regulars of four thousand—they were heavily reinforced shortly before we landed. Nine thousand, including gunners, behind strong fortifications. They’ve ample water in cisterns if we cut the aqueduct, and this city exports foodstuffs—there’s probably enough in the warehouses for a year, even feeding the Brigaderos’ dogs.

  “I don’t want to lose either time or men; but at this point, forced to chose, I’ll save time and spend men. Colonel Menyez, start putting together scaling ladders of appropriate size and numbers for an assault force of six thousand men. As soon as some are ready, start the following battalions training on them—
”

  He listed them; about half and half cavalry and infantry. Everyone winced slightly. “Yes, I know. We’ll try talking them into surrender first.”

  Filipe de Roors was alcalle of Lion City because of a talent for dealing with his peers among the merchant community. Also because he was very rich, with ships, marble quarries outside the city and the largest shipyard within, lands and workshops and sawmills; and because his paternal grandfather had been a member of the Brigade, which the other merchants thought would help when dealing with the local brazaz military gentry and the authorities in Carson Barracks. The post of mayor usually combined pleasure, prestige and profit with only a modicum of effort and risk.

  Right now, de Roors was silently cursing the day he decided to stand for the office.

  After the tunnel gloom of the main gate, even the orange-red light of a sun not yet fully over the horizon was bright, and he blinked at the dark shapes waiting. He added another curse for the easterner general, for insisting on meeting at dawn. The air was a little chill, although the days were still hot.

  “Messer de Roors?”

  De Roors jerked in the saddle, setting the high-bred Chow he rode to curvetting in a sidle that almost jostled one of the soldiers’ dogs. The Civil Government cavalry mounts didn’t even bother to growl, but the civilian’s dog shrank back and whined submissively.

  “Captain Foley, 5th Descott Guards,” the young officer said.

  Raj Whitehall’s name had come west over the last few years, and something of the men who accompanied him. The 5th’s, especially, since they had been with him since the beginning; he recognized the blazon fluttering from the bannerman’s staff, crossed sabers on a numeral 5, and Hell o Zpalata beneath—Hell or Plunder, in Sponglish. De Roors looked at the smiling, almost pretty face with the expressionless black eyes and then at the bright-edged hook. The dozen men behind him sat their dogs with bored assurance; they weren’t tasked with talking to him, and their glances slid across him and his followers with an utter indifference more intimidating than any hostility.

  “This way, if you please, Messer,” the officer said.

  Watching the invaders build their camp had been a combination of horror and fascination from the walls; like watching ants, but swarming with terrible mechanical precision. Closer up it was worse. The camp was huge, there must be twenty thousand people inside, maybe twenty-five, more than half the number in Lion City itself. A road had been laid from the main highway southeast, graded dirt with drainage ditches, better than most highways on the Crown Peninsula. Around the camp was a moat, one and a half meters deep and two across at the top; the bottom was filled with sharpened stakes. Inside the ditch was a steep-sloped earthwork of the reddish-brown soil thrown up by the digging, and it was the height of a tall man. On top of it was a palisade of logs and timbers, probably taken from the woodlots and cottages that had vanished without trace.

  At each corner of the camp and at the gates was a pentagonal bastion jutting out from the main wall; the bastions were higher, and their sides were notched. Through the notches jutted the black muzzles of field guns, ready to add their firepower to the wall or take any angle in murderous crossfire. The gate bastion had a solid three-story timber observation tower as well, with the blue and silver Starburst banner flying from the peak.

  All of it had been thrown up in a single afternoon.

  “Ah . . . are you expecting attack, then?” he asked.

  The captain looked at him, smiling slightly. “Attack? Oh, you mean the entrenchments. No, messer, we do that every time we camp. A good habit to get into, you understand.”

  Spirit.

  The escort had shed traffic along the road to the encampment like a plough through thin soil, not even needing to shout for the way. Things were a little more crowded at the gate, although the barricades of spiked timbers were drawn aside; nobody got in or out without challenge and inspection, and the flow was dense and slow-moving. De Roors was riding at the head of the little column, with the officer and banner. A trumpet rang out behind him, loud and brassy. He started slightly in the saddle, humiliatingly conscious of the officer’s polite scorn. Puppy, he thought. No more than twenty.

  Another trumpet answered from the gate parapet; an interplay of calls brought men out at the double to line the road on either side and prompt the other travellers with ungentle haste.

  A coffle was halfway through, and the officer threw up his hand to stop the escort while the long file of prisoners got out of the way. There were forty or so men, yoked neck to neck with collars and chains and their hands bound together; many of them were bandaged, and most were in the remnants of Brigade uniform. The more numerous women wore light handcuffs, and the children trudging by their stained and grimy skirts were unbound. None of them looked up as they stumbled by, pushed to haste by armed and mounted men not in uniform but dressed with rough practicality.

  “Apologies, Messer Captain,” said one, as the captives stumbled into the ditch to let the troopers through. He didn’t seem surprised when Foley ignored him as if he were transparent.

  “Slave traders,” the captain said, when they had ridden through into the camp. “They follow the armies like vultures.”

  Maybe that was staged for my benefit, de Roors thought. The ancient lesson: this is defeat. Avoid it. But the Brigaderos were real.

  Inside the camp was nothing of the tumult or confusion he’d expected from experience with Brigade musters. Instead it was like a military city, a regular grid of ditched laneways, flanked by the leather eight-man tents of the soldiers. Most of them were still finishing their morning meal of gruel and lentils and thin flat wheatcakes, cooked on small wrought iron ybatch grills. Every occupied tent—he supposed some men were off on fatigues and so forth—had two wigwams of four rifles each before it, leaning together upright with the men’s helmets nodding on them like grain in a reaped field. The men were wiry olive-skinned eastern peasants for the most part, with cropped black hair and incurious clean-shaven faces. Individually they didn’t look particularly impressive. Together they had shaken the earth and beaten nations into dust.

  The captain drew closer, courteously pointing out features: De Roors was uneasily aware that the hook flashing past his face was sharpened on the inner edge.

  “Each battalion has a set place, the same in every camp. There are the officer’s tents—” somewhat larger than the men’s “—and the shrine for the unit colors. This is the wia erente, the east-west road; the wia sehcond runs north-south, and they meet in the center of camp, at the plaza commanante, with the general’s quarters and the Star church tent. Over there’s the artillery park, the dog lines—” a thunder of belling and barking announced feeding time “—the area for the camp followers and soldiers’ servants, the—”

  De Roors’s mind knew the Brigade’s armies were vastly more numerous. His emotions told him there was no end to this hive of activity. Men marching or riding filled the streets, traffic keeping neatly to the left and directed at each crossroads by soldiers wearing armbands marked guardia. Wagon trains, supply convoys, officers riding by with preoccupied expressions, somewhere the sound of hundreds of men hammering wood.

  The commander’s tent was large but not the vast pavilion he expected; the canvas church across the open space from it was much bigger, and so was the hospital tent on the other side of the square.

  His escort split and formed two lines, facing in. The guard at the door of the tent presented arms to Foley’s salute, and the young officer dismounted and stood at parade rest beside the opened door flap.

  “The Heneralissimo Supremo; Sword-Bearing Guard to the Sovereign Mighty Lord and Sole Autocrat Governor Barholm Clerett; possessor of the proconsular authority for the Western Territories; three times hailed Savior of the State, Sword of the Spirit of Man, Raj Ammenda Halgren da Luis Whitehall!” he called formally, in a crisp clear voice. Then:

  “The Alcalle of Lion City, Messer Filipe De Roors.” A murmur from within. “You may ent
er, Messer.”

  De Roors was dimly conscious of his entourage being gracefully led away. The tented room within was lit by skylights above; there was a long table and chairs, and a map-board with an overhead view of Lion City. Nothing of the splendor that a high Brigade noble would take on campaign, nothing of what was surely available to the conqueror of the Southern Territories. Nothing but a short forged-steel mace inlaid with platinum and electrum, resting on a crimson cushion. Symbol of the rarely-granted proconsular authority, the power to act as vice governor in the barbaricum.

  The man sitting at the middle of the table opposite him seemed fairly ordinary at first; certainly his uniform was nothing spectacular, despite the eighteen-rayed silver-and-gold star on either shoulder, orbited by smaller silver stars and enclosed in a gold band. A tall man, broad in the shoulders and narrow-hipped, with a swordsman’s thick shoulders and wrists. A hard dark face with startling gray eyes, curly bowl-cut black hair speckled with a few flecks of silver. Looking older than the young hero of legend—and less menacing than the merciless aggressor the Squadron refugees and Colonist merchants had described.

  Then he saw the eyes, and the stories about Port Murchison seemed very real.

  You’ve met hard men before, de Roors told himself. And bargained them into the ground. He bowed deeply. “Most Excellent General,” he said.

  This one could sell lice to Skinners, Raj thought a few minutes later. A digest of Lion City’s internal organization, constitutional position in the Western Territories, and behavior in previous conflicts rolled on, spiced with fulsome praise, references to common religious faith, and earnest good wishes to the Civil Government of Holy Federation.