Hope Rearmed

by David Drake

  Eight hundred meters. “Sound advance with volley fire by ranks,” Gerrin said quietly. Kaltin should be in place behind them, anvil to the hammer.

  BAM! And nearly fifteen hundred rifles fired in unison. The front rank checked for ten seconds, aim and fire and eject and reload, and the rear rank walked through, on another ten paces, stopped in their turn. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, an endless stuttering crash. The front rank again. More men falling, but the disciplined rifle fire was stabbing into the Brigaderos like giant hay knives into a pile of fodder. He was closer to the breach in the wall now, close enough to see that it was still jammed with men trying to retreat. The ones outside were trying too, running across from his right to left, but there was nowhere to go. The two sallying forces had met at the westernmost junction, facing about to put the trapped force in a box.

  “At the double!”

  The inside of the mortar-raft was hot, thick with the choking scent of overheated metal and burning coal. The little locomotive engine wheezed and puffed at the rear of the enclosure, shoving the heavy box of iron forward. The chain drive-belt from its flywheels ratcheted against the shaft across the stern, and water from the covered paddle-wheel spattered against the board partition that separated the engine from the gap in the raft’s floor.

  Commodore Lopeyz stuck his head out of the top hatch, wondering bitterly why he’d volunteered for this. Because everyone else seemed to be volunteering for something, he thought dryly.

  The cold air flowing over the top of the slope-sided box was shocking after the fetid heat inside. The wind was in his face as he went up the narrowing White River at a walking pace. It carried the long black plume of smoke from the stack behind him, to where the other two rafts followed in his wake. None of them was doing more than four knots . . . but they hadn’t far to go, and it was a minor miracle none of them had broken down. The surface of the river was steel-gray, with small whitecaps now and then as the breeze freshened. The land to the right, on the north back, was rising; he could see little over the levee beside the stream, except the three hundred meter tabletop of the bluffs where the Brigaderos siege battery was located.

  They were level with it now, turning northwest with the bend in the river. The raft shuddered and slowed under him, fighting the current that grew stronger with every meter upstream. He dropped a few steps down the ladder and signalled to the engineer; no use trying to talk, when the hiss of steam and roar of the furnace blended with the sound of the paddles beating water into froth and made the inside one bath of noise.

  The engineer pulled levers; his sweat-glistening attendants hovered over the drive-belts, the improvised part of the arrangement. The right-hand paddle wheel went faster, and the left-hand one slowed. Slowly, clumsily, the mortar raft began to turn its nose in toward the bank. He climbed back up the ladder to judge the water ahead; his hands and feet moved carefully on the greasy iron. The other craft were copying him, and the channel was deeper on the north shore. They moved in further, slowing, until the levee loomed ahead and nearly cut off their view of the bluff a kilometer inland.

  He signalled again, waving his arms down the ladder. The engines groaned and hissed to silence. The sudden absence of noise was shocking, like the cool air that funneled down through the hatchway. The black gang leaned wheezing on their shovels, next to the wicker coal-bins; they and the engineers were both stripped to their trousers and bandannas, black as Zanjians with the coal-dust and glistening with heavy sweat. So were the ships’ gunners grouped around the mortar. Crewmen swarmed out of the other hatches and the anchors splashed.

  “Ready?” he called to the gunners.

  Their officer nodded. Over the squat muzzle of the mortar was a pie-shape of iron on a hooped frame. The gunner reached up and unfastened a bolt, and one segment of the pie fell down, hinged on the outer curved frame. Gray daylight poured into the gloom of the hold, and a wash of cold air that smelled of water and silty mud.

  Lopeyz pushed his head out the hatchway again. The other two rafts were anchored alongside, only ten and thirty meters away. Wedge-shaped gaps showed in their top decks as well.

  “Two thousand two hundred,” he called, estimating the distance to the enemy gun emplacements.

  He levelled his glasses; plenty of activity up there, but only a few of the ant-sized figures were turning towards the river. Lopeyz grinned to himself. The Brigaderos had cleverly dug their guns into the loess soil, presenting impossible targets for the Civil Government artillery in Old Residence. They had also made it impossible to move the big smoothbores in a time of less than hours.

  “Fwego.” He opened his mouth and jammed his palms against his ears.

  SHUMP.

  The raft bobbed under him, and ripples floated away from it in a near-perfect circle. Hot air snatched at his three-cornered hat. Smoke billowed through the hold, sending men coughing and gasping. More swept across the upper deck in the wake of the man-high oblong of orange fire that belched out of the mortar’s twenty-cenemeter tube. He blinked against the smoke and watched the blurred dot of the forty-kilo mortar shell rise, hesitate and fall. It plunged into the riverward slope of the bluffs. A second later earth gouted up in a huge plume that drifted and fell in a rain of finely divided dirt. These shells had a hardened tip made by casting them in a water-cooled mould, and the fuses were set for a delay after impact.

  “Up three, increase charge one bag,” he shouted down past his feet into the hold.

  The crew spun the elevating screw and the stubby barrel of the mortar rose. The loader wrapped another donut of powder onto the perforated brass tube at the base of the shell, and three men lifted it into the muzzle.

  SHUMP.

  This time it arched over the lip of the bluff, into the flat area behind the enemy guns. Lopeyz raised his binoculars and grinned like a downdragger. Men were spilling over the edge of the bluffs, some picking their way down the steep brush-grown slopes, others plunging in their haste. Still more were running eastward, down the gentler slope of the bluff to the rear, where the Brigaderos had shaped the earth into a rough roadway. He could hear shouting; it must be very loud, to carry this far—and his ears were ringing from engine noise and the firing of the mortar.

  “Correct left one,” he said. The crew turned the iron traversing screw one full revolution, and the mortar barrel moved slightly to the left. “Fwego.”

  SHUMP.

  Right into the gun positions along the lip of the bluff facing Old Residence.

  “Fire for effect!” he barked. The other rafts cut loose as well.

  SHUMP. SHUMP. SHUMP. A pause. SHUMP. SHUMP. SHUMP. Ragged clouds of smoke drifted upriver with the breeze. The edge of the bluff began to come apart under the hammer of the shells.

  The Brigaderos rifles went into the cart with a clatter. Rifleman Minatelli straightened with a groan and rubbed his back; it had been a long day. The sun was setting behind the ruined, gutted Brigaderos position on the bluff to the west, tinging it with blood—which was appropriate. The air was getting chilly, but it still smelled the way he was learning went with violent death; like a latrine, mixed with a butcher’s shop where the offal hasn’t been cleaned away properly. A sour residue of gunpowder mixed with it all. It wasn’t quite so bad here in the open fields beyond the breach in the wall, where the wind blew. Some distance off, a company of cavalry sat their saddles, rifles across the pommel and eyes alert.

  A wail came up from the field nearby. The Brigade had offered a truce in return for permission to remove their wounded and dead. That had turned out to mean friends and often family coming to look through the bodies when the Civil Government troops had finished stripping them of arms and usable equipment. Or bits of bodies, sometimes. Minatelli swallowed and hitched the bandanna up over his nose. A little further off big four-wheeled farm wagons piled with dead were creaking back to the enemy lines. The priests said dead bodies bred disease; Messer Raj was pious that way, and the word was he was happy to see the Brigaderos taking them off for burial.
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  One of the women keening over a body looked his way. “Why?” she shouted at him. “What did we ever do to you? Why did you come here?” She spoke accented Spanjol, but probably didn’t expect him to understand.

  The young private pulled down his bandanna. “I was born here, you stupid bitch,” he growled, and turned away.

  The other members of his squad laughed. There were six all told of the eight who’d started the day; Gharsia dead, and one man with the Sisters, his collarbone broken by a bullet. They moved on, leading the two-ox team, and stopped by another clump of bodies. These had been ripped by canister, and the smell was stronger. Minatelli let his eyes slide out of focus; it wasn’t that he couldn’t watch, just that it was better not to. He bent to begin picking up the rifles.

  “Fuckin’ Spirit!” one of his comrades said. It was the squad corporal, Ferhanzo. “Lookit!”

  Thumbnail-sized silver coins spilled from a leather wallet the dead Brigadero had had on his waist belt. Whistles and groans sounded.

  “Best yet,” the corporal said, pouring the money back into the wallet and snapping it shut. “Here.”

  He tossed it to Minatelli, who stuffed it into a pocket. The young Old Residencer was the best of them at arithmetic, so he was holding the cash for all of them. They’re treating me different, he thought.

  It hit him again. I got through it! He’d been scared—terrified—but he hadn’t fucked up. He was a veteran now.

  That made him grin; it also made him more conscious of what was at his feet. That was a mass of cold intestines, coiled like lumpy rope and already turning gray. Insects were walking over it in a disciplined column, carrying bits off to their nest, snapper-ants with eight legs and as long as the first joint of his thumb. He retched and swallowed convulsively.

  “Hey, yu shouldda been ad Sandoral,” one of the other men said slyly. “Hot nuff tu fry ’n egg. Dem wogs, dey get all black ’n swole up real fast, ‘n den dey pops lika grape when yu—”

  Minatelli retched again. The corporal scowled. “Yu shut yor arsemout’,” he said. “Kid’s all right. Nobody tole yu t’ stop workin’.”

  The platoon sergeant came by. “Yor relieved,” he said. “Dem pussy militia gonna take over. We all get day’s leave.”

  “ ’Bout time,” the squad corporal said.

  The noncom had volunteered his squad for very practical reasons; he finished cutting the thumb-ring off the hand of the corpse at his feet before he straightened.

  “C’mon, boys, we’ll git a drink ’n a hoor,” the corporal said.

  “I, uh, just want some sleep,” Minatelli said.

  The front of his uniform was spattered with blood and other fluids from the bodies he’d been handling. He should be hungry, they’d had only bread and sausage at noon, but right now the thought of food set up queasy tremors in his gut. A drink, though . . . And the thought of a woman had a sudden raw attractiveness. It was powerful enough to mute the memory of the day gone by.

  The corporal put an arm around his shoulders. “Nu, best thing for yu,” he said. “Wash up first—the workin’ girls got their standards.”

  The Priest of the Residential Parish entered the door at the foot of the long room as if he were walking to the great altar in the cathedron, not answering a summons sent with armed men. His cloth-of-gold robes rustled stiffly, and the staff in his hand thumped with graceful regularity as he walked toward the table at the other end of the chamber. The inner wall was to his left, a huge fireplace with a grate of burning coals; to his right were windows, closed against the chill of night. He halted before the table that spanned the upper end of the room and raised his gloved hand in blessing.

  Got to admire his nerve, Raj thought. He has balls, this one.

  “Why have you brought me here, my daughter?” Paratier said. “A great service of thanksgiving for the victory of the Civil Government and the army of Holy Federation Church is in preparation.”

  He stood before the middle of the long table. Behind it sat Suzette, flanked by scribes and a herald; Raj was at one comer, his arms crossed. The walls of the room were lined with troopers of the 5th Descott, standing at motionless parade rest with fixed bayonets. Evening had fallen, and the lamps were lit; the fireplace on the interior wall gave their bright kerosene light a smokey coal-ember undertone on the polished black-and-white marble of the floor and the carved plaster of the ceiling. The Priest looked sternly at Suzette, then around for the seat that protocol said should have been waiting for him. Raj admired his calm assumption of innocence.

  “The Spirit of Man of the Stars was with us this day,” Suzette said softly. “Its will was done—but not yours, Your Holiness.”

  “Heneralissimo Whitehall—” the Priest began, in a voice as smooth as old oiled wood.

  “Lady Whitehall is acting in her capacity as civil legate here,” Raj said tonelessly. “I am merely a witness. Please address yourself to her.”

  Spirit, he thought. He had known good priests, holy men—the Hillchapel chaplain when he was a boy, and a goodly number of military clerics since. Priest-doctors and Renunciates; even some monks of the scholarly orders, in East Residence.

  Paratier, however . . . there seemed to be something about promotion beyond Sysup that acted as a filter mechanism. Perhaps those with a genuine vocation didn’t want to rise that high and become ecclesiastical bureaucrats.

  “Bring in the first witness,” Suzette said.

  A door opened, on the table side of the wall beyond the fireplace. A man in the soiled remnant of priestly vestments came through in a wheeled chair, pushed by more soldiers. His head rolled on his shoulders, and he wept silently into the stubble of his beard.

  “What is this?” Paratier boomed indignantly. “This is a priest of Holy Federation Church! Who is responsible for this mistreatment, abominable to the Spirit?”

  “I and officers under my direction,” Suzette said. She lifted a cigarette in a long holder of sauroid ivory. “He was apprehended attempting to leave the city and make contact with the barbarian generals. The ciphered documents he carried and his confession are entered in evidence. Clerk, read the documents.”

  One of the men sitting beside Suzette cleared his throat, opened a leather-bound folder, and produced the tattered message and several pages of notes in a copperplate hand.

  “To His Mightiness, General of the Brigade, Lord of Men, Ingreid Manfrond, from the Priest of the Residential Parish, Paratier, servant of the servants of the Spirit of Man, greetings.

  “Lord of Men, we implore you to deliver us from the hand of the tyrant and servant of tyrants Whitehall, and to forgive and spare this city, the crown of your domains.

  “In earnest of our good faith and loyalty, we pledge to open to you the east gate of Old Residence and admit your troops, on a day of your choosing to be determined by you and Our representative. This man is in my confidence and bears a signet—”

  “Produce the ring,” Suzette added.

  A box was opened; inside was a ring of plain gold, set with a circuit chip.

  “—which is the mark of my intentions. With Us in Our determination to end the suffering and bloodshed of Our people are the following noble lords—”

  Paratier thumped his staff on the marble flags. “Silence!” he said, his aged voice putting out an astonishing volume. “How dare you, adulteress, accuse—”

  “The prisoner will address the court with respect or he will be flogged,” Suzette said flatly.

  Paratier stopped in mid-sentence, looking into her eyes. After a moment he leaned on his staff. Suzette turned her gaze to the man in the wheeled chair.

  “Does the witness confirm the documents?”

  “Yes, oh, yes,” the priest whispered. “Oh, please . . . don’t, oh please.”

  “Take him away,” Suzette said. “Prisoner, do you have anything to say?”

  “Canon law forbids the judicial torture of ordained clerics,” Paratier snapped. After a moment he added formally: “Most Excellent a
nd Illustrious Lady.”

  “Treason is tried under the authority of the Chair, and witnesses in such cases may be put to the question,” Suzette pointed out.

  “This is Old Residence; no law supersedes that of Holy Federation Church within these walls. Certainly not the fiat of the Governors!”

  “Let the record show,” Suzette said coldly, “that the prisoner is warned that if he speaks treason again—by denying the authority of the Sole Rightful Autocrat and Mighty Sovereign Lord Barholm Clerett, of the Spirit of Man of the Stars upon Earth—he will be flogged and his sentence increased.”

  Paratier opened his mouth and fell silent again. “Does the prisoner deny the charges?”

  “I do. The documents are forged. A man under torture will say whatever will spare him pain.”

  Suzette nodded. “However, torture was not necessary for your other accomplices, Your Holiness. Bring them in.”

  Seven men filed in through the door, their expressions hangdog. A light sheen of sweat broke out on Paratier’s face as he recognized them: Fidelio Enrike, Vihtorio Azaiglio, the commander of the Priest’s Guard . . .

  “Let the record show the confessions of these men were read,” she said. “Prisoner, you are found guilty of treasonable conspiracy with the enemies of the Civil Government of Holy Federation. The punishment is death.”

  Paratier’s lips whitened, and his parchment-skinned hand clenched on the staff. Raj stood and moved to Suzette’s side.

  “But,” she went on, “on the advice of the Heneralissimo Supremo this court will temper the law with mercy.”