by David Drake
"Colonel. . Messer Dyaz has taken indefinite leave of absence for reasons of health, Messer Acting Colonel," Raj said, in the same gun metal flat tone.
Menyez sat silent except for his wheezing. "Well." Another pause. "It must be. . satisfying, to have such power."
"No it isn't!" Raj roared suddenly. "It isn't satisfying at all to have to act like a mountain bandit to get people to do their fucking jobs. It isn't satisfying that the agents of the Civil Government won't perform without a fucking pistol up their nose! But it's better than having this city undefended." He nodded to the documents in Menyez's hands. "Now you've got the tools, at least."
Menyez straightened, saluting crisply, respect in his voice along with the unwilling gratitude of a man who has been given a long-denied due. "Well, I'd better get out there and do my job, then." He strode briskly from the room.
"I just realized something," Gerrin Staenbridge said suddenly. "Why he's in the infantry." The others glanced over at him. "The poor luckless bastard's allergic to dogs."
* * *
Suzette chewed the end of her pen; the others had left quickly, overdue for the work of preparing their own departure. She stretched, alone with the sound of falling water and the lingering odors of gun oil and leather, dogs and male sweat that went with soldiers. She thought, dipped the steel nib of the pen in the inkwell of her portable writing desk-cum-briefcase, and continued the letter:
. . and I'm sure your husband will be as interested as mine in how Tzetzas' appointee prepared the defenses of Komar, where the Cleretts have so many investments.
Was that a little heavy-handed? No. Unfair, yes; nobody had expected Komar to become a theater of war anytime soon. If he had, the Legate would not have allowed the defenses of his own home to become quite so run down, though it was amazing what men would do with the prospect of short-term gains before their faces.
Tzetzas had gambled and lost, that was all. Luck was good, or bad: bad, for example, when the child-prostitute one brutalized at age twelve became the mistress and then the wife of an up-and-coming Gubernatorial relative named Barholm Clerett. . Coming up from the underclass meant spending long years when assaulting bureaucrats was an unattainable dream. Anne would thoroughly enjoy the description of Raj's tactics, more than the men who had carried them out and far more than the man who had ordered them.
You are too sweet for this Fallen world, my angel, Suzette thought with a sigh. Best not to over-elaborate, let Anne think up her own political tactics. Her pen scritched:
Your loving friend-
And only friend, I'm afraid, she thought,
— Suzette, Lady Whitehall.
She picked up the bell and rang once. The door opened and a small nondescript man in border County herdsman's robes padded in, bowing low.
"Here, Abdullah," Suzette said, handing over the sealed message. "To Lady Clerett, and none other. Into her own hands, not those of a servant."
"Your command, my Lady," the man said; he bowed again, touching the letter to forehead, lips, and heart. "It shall be one week, or ten days if Allah is unkind."
"And watch that!" Suzette added sharply. "Here, that could get you stoned."
The full lips quirked. "Do not worry, my Lady Whitehall," he said quietly. "Those Sunni dogs over the line would be even quicker with the rocks; I have passed for a borderer before." Druze were scarce, these days, and their weird subset of Islam had always allowed a politic lie in the face of persecution. More gravely, "For you, who saved my family from slavery, my life is always ready to stand forfeit." A grin. "And you pay well, besides!"
"Peace be with you, Abdullah. Go."
"I go, Lady. And upon you, peace."
Chapter Nine
The first orange rays of the sun were streaking the plain behind Raj's back, throwing shadow over the oasis of El Djem and the fortified hamlet at its center. Left and right the line of the escarpment stretched into black shadow, streaked with touches of blue and ochre as the rock began to catch the light; the high steppe was behind them, the low desert of erg in front. Sand leaked over the caprock of the basin; the water came from the edge below, where the limestone of the hills rested on granite and the water table was shallow enough for wells and wind-pumps or artesian springs. The air was still, a little chilly from the desert night, with a slight green smell from the fields.
Raj raised his binoculars. El Djem was built on a mound of earth two meters high, surrounded by a wall of date palm trunks twice as tall again, bound with ancient iron-hard rawhide and plastered with mud. The minarets of a mosque stood stark and white against the paling stars, one cutting across the yellow circle of Maxiluna. More to the point, so did a heliograph tower built into the stockade. . and the success of this raid depended on how much damage the two battalions could do before substantial Colonist forces came up.
Three figures ghosted in; M'lewis, Muzzaf, and one of the fifty or so border irregulars who had joined the 5th. And none stuck with the 2nd, Raj thought with satisfaction. Thank the Spirit of Man of the Stars that Stanson and his crowd were a hundred kilometers east at Ksar Bougib; the two forces were to work towards each other. It was bad enough being responsible for his own fuckups.
"Went loik a charm, ser," M'lewis said. "Blastin' powder in place."
He nodded thanks to Muzzaf, who had procured that and a number of other useful items for the 5th. And whose trader's knowledge of this side of the border had been invaluable. Komar was unhealthy for him, right now, but it was his own inner demons that had brought him on the raid, rather than travelling west to his kin in Kendrun along with his family and movable wealth. The trooper and the Komarite left as quietly as they had arrived.
The borderman irregular remained for a moment and laughed softly, looking down on the oasis with much the same expression as a housewife standing in her chickenyard and picking out a roasting pullet. "These fellahin are sheep, lord," he said. "Not like the Bedouin. We cannot raid so far as this on our own, it is a great pity." His smile grew broader. "We heard their muzzein squealing, 'Prayer is better than sleep.' Soon they will squeal a different song."
"There hasn't been a Civil Government raid here in over twenty years," Muzzaf said, returning with two dogs. "And that was a failure." He would be riding with the irregulars. They got on surprisingly well with the man from Komar city, and they had been very useful as well. Although their high motivation had its drawbacks, this was a grudge fight for them.
"Positions, then," Raj said. He touched his amulet, eyes closed for a moment and lips moving silently in prayer. Oh Spirit of Man of the Stars, you know how busy I must be this day. Do not forget me, even if I forget you. Then he moved crouching to the long black shape of Horace, kneeled into the prone dog's saddle. The barrel-sized muzzle swung back toward him, and a tongue like a wet towel stropped across his leg. "Ready, boy," he whispered. Birds sang in the fruit trees of the oasis, and dactosauroids hissed.
The gates of El Djem swung open; there were sheds and barns aplenty among the palm-groves and fields, but no houses. However slack the hamlet had grown, it had been founded as a defensive outpost and some traditions remained. The laborers crowded through in clumps and straggling trickles, bearded men in long nightshirt-like garments, hoes and spades and pruning hooks over their shoulders. Raj tensed his knees, and Horace rose smoothly from his crouch. All around him there was a rustle and click as three hundred others did likewise; the other two companies were downslope a hundred meters, to provide a base-of-fire. There was a sound like a hundred iron gearwheels turning in a watermill, the sound of massed wardogs growling.
"And-" Raj muttered to himself. Timing was everything, the difference between a cheap victory and a bloody rat fight through the packed maze, against men who lived in it and were defending their own homes and families.
Whunk. The explosion of the twenty-kilo charge of blasting powder was massive but the noise was muffled, because the men who had set it had buried it a meter deep in the base of the wall. From here, Raj could see
the huge spurt of dust and stones; the top of the heliograph tower quivered, swayed, lurched, then toppled outward with an initial slowness that was almost stately. A thrashing stick figure arched out from the signalling platform, to strike the ground and bounce just before the last chunks of mud and wood settled in a haze of powdered adobe. There was a solid knot of men in the gate, now, and a fan spreading out into the field beyond. About a thousand, probably most of the adult males in El Djem; they had stopped, chattering among themselves and craning to see what had happened around the circular stockade from the gate. They were theoretically soldiers, a land grant militia, possibly even fairly effective in a fixed defensive position if given time to mobilize and arm.
Which time he had no slightest intention of granting.
From the slope below Raj's position the two hundred troopers of Second and Third Companies rose and began to pour volleys into the crowd; eight hundred meters range, and Armory rifles were efficient mankillers at that distance. They were deployed in two lines, one kneeling and one standing erect, firing by half-platoons; the sound was like an almost continuous series of single gunshots, but magnified twelvefold. BAM and the long barrels of the rear rank swung down in unison, as the troopers reloaded. The front-rank weapons rose, precise as a ballet, or the shuttle of a loom. BAM. There was light enough now to tell a white thread from a black, the traditional test, but still sufficiently dim that the orange-red muzzle flashes of the rifles were long stabs of fire, hot combs teeth-on to the target. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM.
Raj drew his pistol as the first volley slapped and echoed across the basin, flipped it into his left hand and drew the saber. A long slither and rasp sounded behind him as three companies of cavalry did likewise.
"Trumpeter, sound charge!"
"UP AND AT 'EM!"
* * *
The carnage in the gateway would have been sickening, if time or inclination had allowed such luxuries. The packed dirt of the lane between the two log-and-mud blockhouses was carpeted with bodies and turning to slimy mud with blood and body fluids. The noise that bounced back and forth between the straight confines of the gateway was stunning, the howling of men and dogs, screaming of the wounded and dying as they were pulped into a paste of dirt and flesh. Past the blockhouses the lane made a half-turn and there were more of the Colonists still on their feet; dazed, mostly, their bodies spattered with the blood of the men who had been a few paces ahead of them. Raj saw their faces go slack with new fear for an instant, before the sabers of the 5th and the teeth of its dogs were upon them.
A dozen or so of the survivors had retained enough presence of mind to try and shut the gates; futile, most of the troopers had split off from First Company and were scaling the palisade from the saddle around its whole circumference. . but it was an improvement on standing and waiting to be killed, he supposed. Horace and three other mounts reared their forepaws against the iron-sheathed wood, and Raj felt a jar that ran all the way up his spine to whipcrack his neck and make his teeth meet with a clack. The effect on the twin leaves of the gates was to turn them into giant flyswatters that hammered back against the buildings on either side with a thud that shook the ground beneath his feet. They rebounded enough to let the remains of the men behind them drop.
"Keep moving!" Raj shouted, using the opportunity to pull Horace up.
The words were lost in the overwhelming roar of battle-maddened dogs in the narrow way, but the gesture with the sword might do some good. Speed and impact were the weapons here; they had to overwhelm all resistance before the locals could organize . .
The flood of First Company poured by, riding knee to knee, then slowed to a trickle. Shots were crackling further into the alley-maze of the town; it was all mud brick, with narrow windows and jutting rafter-logs, some of the tenements four stories high. Raj could see figures in 5th Descott blue swarming on the firing platform of the palisade, some kneeling to sweep snipers off the roofs, others swarming down the ladders into El Djem. A quick glance out the gate showed the reserve rounding up the few hundred laborers who had managed to scatter into the oasis, advancing on foot at the run, and-
Horace's jumping wheel might have unseated his rider, if a lifetime's reflex had not adjusted Raj's muscle before his conscious mind was aware of the dog's movement. Two men had been close enough to the hinge of the gate to avoid being crushed, and they ignored the false promise of the open gate to attack Raj. He fired four times, and the one with the pitchfork spun and fell with a bullet in his thigh. That had been a bad choice, because the other had a pruning hook, a half-meter of steel like a giant straight-razor on a head-high pole. Also he was younger, and looked determined. .
The dog whipped his head back at the man's first swing; the Colonist reversed the polearm and thrust at Raj's face. He caught it on the blade of his saber and let it run down the steel to ring against the basket hiltguard, used that to immobilize it for a second. The shaft of the pruning hook even provided an aiming point as he trained the pistol at the Colonist's center of mass. A bullet went past Raj's ear with a flat whak, and the whole side of his face crawled as if the skin was trying to suck itself in. No time for it. The young man froze, white showing all around his eyes as the Descotter's finger tightened on the trigger.
Snak. The hammer fell on a defective round, but Horace's teeth closed on the burrwood shaft, splintering it like a straw caught in a doorjamb. The villager had time for one scream as the horrible fangs closed again, on his face. Well-trained, the dog dropped the corpse and spun again in a circle smaller than his own length, ears almost straight as his nose pointed toward the sound of a rifle action working. The man on the roof above was wearing a robe and ha' aik, and armed with a light repeating-carbine; he was only ten meters away, taking careful aim from one knee. Raj seemed to be imprisoned in honey, moving in dreamlike slowness. A hot-chill flash ran across his skin, as the body's refusal to believe in death met the mind's knowledge that there was no way to dodge a bullet in the time available. All the universe vanished, outside the enormous circle of the muzzle.
The lariat that settled around the sniper's shoulders was almost as much a surprise to Raj as it was to the sniper; his brain had screened out peripheral vision. The trooper galloping his dog down the lane to the gate already had the rope snubbed to the pommel of his saddle; ten meters before he reached the Captain the braided leather cord went bar-tight and the Colonist shot off the roof as if launched by a catapult. He landed in the street with a dull thud that cut his shout of rage off knife-sharp, and dragged fast enough that he rolled to the feet of the two dogs when the trooper reined in.
"Nice work, Companion," Raj said, conscious of breathing once again; an impressive display, even though the lariat was a standard working tool back in Descott County.
"I was a vakaro for a while, sir," Corporal Holdor Tennan said. "With an outfit rounding up wild cattle. . Senior Lieutenant Staenbridge's compliments, and they've secured the mosque."
There were shouts outside the gate, and Kaltin Gruder jogged through at the head of a column of dismounted troopers with fixed bayonets. Raj held up a hand as he began to speak, turned to the other Companion: "My congratulations, and he's to hold in position, stationing marksmen on the minarets and the roof of the Caid's mansion. Kaltin," he continued, turning to the man standing at his stirrup. The troopers were fanning out down the street, scanning windows and rooftops. "Ready?"
A brisk nod; even after a week's march through the desert the elder Gruder had kept a clean tunic for the attack. He had even shaved, which was devotion, if you liked.
"All the ones who got out are secured, Raj," he said. "Put 'em in a livestock pen, trussed up. Two-twenty, about. No casualties."
"Well. You and Thiddo fan out-" He made an encompassing gesture "-and start doing a house-to-house; First and Fifth already have blocking forces at the intersections and fire teams on the palisade. Quick and dirty; spike anyone who gives you trouble. Separate the men out, move the commoners out to that pen. Women, children, and anyo
ne who looks important into the center of town, we'll use the mosque to contain them. And keep the troops in hand."
"Won't be able to much longer, Raj," he warned.
The soldiers looked alert enough, their fingers on their triggers and eyes moving restlessly, but many of them were grinning. With the primal exultation of having come through an action alive, and with anticipation of the rarest pleasure of a soldier's life, the sack of an undamaged town. Two pounced on the groaning sniper and began frisking him for weapons, tying his hands behind his back; he shrieked as they wrenched at a dislocated shoulder, but it seemed to bring him back to consciousness. The trooper popped it back into place with rough efficiency.
"Off wit' yer, Mohammed," he said, pushing the prisoner toward the gate. "Any messages to yer wife? I'll be seein' 'er before you does!" Barking laughter. "Milio, put 'im in the pen."
Kaltin indicated the byplay with a jerk of his head. "Not much longer at all."
"Well, we'll just have to do it quickly, then, won't we?"
* * *
"— and that concludes this phase of the operation, except for finding the Caid. Where is the Caid?" Raj asked in frustration, lighting a cigarette. It had been the sort of action soldiers dreamed of in barracks, a rich town taken with negligible loss, but somehow his teeth were on edge.
The command group was meeting in the loggia of the mansion that had been owned by the Caid, the headman, of El Djem; a narrow, irregular cobbled triangle fronted it, with the mosque on one side and high-walled houses on the other. The Caid's was slightly different, with a sheltered verandah where he could address public meetings, give impromptu judgment, and right now the shade was welcome as the temperature built to its brain-frying noonday maximum. A rather informal type of governance, but this had not been a large town, no more than five thousand or so. It would have been convenient to have the chief administrator on hand for interrogation, but not essential.