by David Drake
"Hadolfo. . Messer Reggiri has been kind enough to invite me and Messer Berg to dinner at his country place," Suzette said. Her slim fingers rested on Raj's forearm. "Do say yes, my dear. We'll need an escort of course, but it's quite safe and only a few kilometers away."
"By all means," Raj grated. "I'm afraid I can't come, far too busy, but by all means. ." Berg glowed, preening before his old friend. "Kaltin!" the General called.
"Messer Raj?" the younger officer said.
I wish they wouldn't keep calling me that, Raj thought, gritting his teeth against the need to lash out "Do me a favor, would you, and take. . oh, a company, and M'lewis, and escort Messa Whitehall and Administrator Berg to this gentleman's manor? They'll be staying for dinner-and I'm sure you'll be welcome as well?"
Reggiri nodded without even taking his eyes off Suzette.
"I'd be glad to," Gruder lied coldly.
"And now if you'll excuse me:-my dear, make my apologies to our guests-I have a great deal to do." At least I inflicted M'lewis on him, Raj thought vindictively. He tossed back the slyowtz. M'lewis had the morals of a dactosauroid and the effrontery of a dockside rat. .
* * *
The camp had settled into late-night routine by the time Raj was finished with the last of the personnel reports. Damn, this is like being a mayor of a city, he thought. Worse; most County capitals in the Civil Government had fewer people than the twenty-thousand-odd concentrated here. He was working in his tent; if the men slept under canvas so would he. And I used to be able to know the names of every man I commanded, he continued, pouring himself another glass of slyowtz and lighting a cigarette. Now I'm damned lucky if I can remember the officers and a few hundred more.
He took the glass and leaned on the tentpole, looking down the main avenue of the camp. There was little traffic, it was quiet enough to hear the laplaplap of waves down by the beach. Most of the troops were sleeping as men did after a hard day's work, glad enough of a hot meal and solid dry ground with room to stretch out. The camp had already taken on the universal smell of an army on the move: sweat and dogshit and greased iron and woodsmoke. Both moons were out and full, low on the horizon, silvering the sea and giving enough light to read by even without the coal-oil lantern hanging from the roof behind him. He took a long drag on the tobacco, holding it until it bit the lungs in a peculiar pleasure-pain, then blew it out at the moons.
The Canonical Handbook said that the True Earth had only one moon, smaller than either Miniluna or Maxiluna. . there were whole schools of theology which debated whether that was literal, revealed Truth or mere allegory, like the Personal Computer that was supposed to watch over every soul, or the wars in heaven between the angels of the Apple of Knowledge and the Ibemmeraphim. Or whether this had once been the True Earth and so had only one moon, later split into two at the Fall, although that was dangerously close to the Spirit of This Earth heresy.
"I know," he murmured, taking another mouthful of the plum brandy. It burned, like white fire along his gullet, and he exhaled with a hard sshhha. "I've seen the True Earth and the Single Moon. I have a personal angel, access to all the wisdom of the Spirit's Mind."
"Sir?" The guard officer was a figure in shadow.
"Nothing, son. As you were."
exercise more care, Center said coldly in the back of his mind.
Quiet, he replied. "We all have our Operating Code, try and edit it as we will." You too, I suppose.
Faintly he heard the sound of a challenge and response from the main gate, and the squeal as the spike-studded logs were pulled aside. The muffled thumping of paws sounded down the deserted alleyways; another challenge came from a roving internal patrol, close enough to be separated into words.
"Who goes?"
"Escort party a' th' 7th Descott, returnin'," he heard.
"Advance and be recognized. . Pass, friend."
But there were too few, far less than the company that had gone out. Eight men, a squad, and a ninth on a big shambling Chow. Administrator Mihwel Berg, sliding off with a sulky look on his face as he stalked into the puddle of yellow lamplight outside Raj's tent. His own was nearby, here in officer country.
"Messer Berg," Raj said. "Where are the others?"
Berg's thin face looked as if he had bitten into a lemon, and bloodshot eyes blinked behind his glasses. "Back there. With my friend Messer Reggiri. Your wife decided it was too late for anyone to come back, but I made it well enough." The bureaucrat glared at him like a rabbit turning on a hunting sauroid. "What do you propose to do about it?"
"Do?" Raj said. "Finish this bottle. Come on in, half drunk is only half done."
* * *
The remaining hundred and fifteen men of the escort company came into camp an hour after the dawn service. Most of the troops were at drill or fatigues, but there were enough left in the 7th's billet area to groan and whistle their envy at the escorts. The men were riding their usual dogs, mostly Descotter farmbreds, but each was leading two or three others on checkreins. The led dogs were Ridgebacks, a short-muzzled, long-legged breed easily distinguished by the odd upright curl of hair along the spine that gave the breed its name. These were pedigree animals, clean-limbed, bitches and geldings of two or three years and broken to the saddle; the breed was famous for its endurance in hot weather, and each animal was worth a year's pay for a cavalry trooper, possibly more. Their pack-saddles held coils of sausage, flagons of wine and boxes of cigarettes, sacks of Zanjian kave beans and cured hams from the Stalwart territories.
Gruder, M'lewis, and the company commander, Tejan M'brust, had extra dogs as well. They were also each accompanied by a woman on a palfrey-dog. The girls-none of them looked over seventeen-wore the collars that Brigade law required of slaves, but theirs were of thin chased silver. They carried light parasols to shade their complexions, necessary since two were blondes and one a redhead, and any of them would have fetched five hundred gold FedCreds in East Residence; not to mention their clothes and jewelry, and the twin suitcases each had on a packdog.
The officers reined in in front of the command tent and saluted; all of them were stone-faced, and Gruder did not meet Raj's eyes.
"Sir!" he barked. "Returning as ordered. Permission to report to my command, sir?"
"Nothing to report, Major?" Raj asked.
"No, sir."
"Dismissed."
He heeled his dog around with unnecessary violence; the slave-girl squeaked and clutched at the pommel of her saddle as her mount followed his. Suzette dismounted and handed Harbie's reins to a groom.
"What, no presents for me?" Raj said softly, with a stark grin.
There were spots of red on her cheeks, but her eyes met his steadily as she offered a sheaf of paper. Raj took it and looked down at the first page. Then he grunted as if belly-punched.
* * *
"Fellow soldiers," Raj began.
A long slow roar built up through the crowd, a huge semicircle of blue jackets and brown faces, spotted with the green-and-gold of Poplanich's Own, the gorgets of the 17th Hemmar Valley Cuirassiers, and the multicolored blaze of the barbarian mercenaries. A corner of the berm and the gentle slope leading up to it gave seating sufficient that most of the army could see him and the Companions seated on the improvised dais. The officers of the force were down in front where they could hear him; many of the men could too, and there was a rippling murmur as his words were relayed back to the rear ranks. Only the officers could see the map on the easel behind him, but that was not much of a drawback.
The cheer had started with the men who'd served under him in the east, then spread to the others. Da Cruz had told him-with an innocent expression-that the story of the hardtack had gotten out.
Spirit damn it, shut up, he thought. I may be leading you all to death, for Spirit's sake.
"Fellow soldiers," he continued, when the noise had died down. "You all know that we're embarked on a dangerous mission. Well, I'm glad to say I have some good news for you; it's still dangerous, but
it's not suicide. The Squadrones-I have this on the best of authorities-the Squadron still has its head tucked up its behind-they don't know we're coming!"
This time the cheer was a roar.
"The Squadron's Admiral thinks everything he's heard about us is just smoke and mirrors, rumors like the ones that come up every couple of years since the last expedition failed." Raj leaned forward, grinning like a sauroid and tapping one fist into a palm. "Isn't he going to be surprised?"
The soldiers howled laughter. "In fact, the pick of the Squadron levy, ten thousand men, sailed three weeks ago for Sadler Island, to put down a revolt." His swagger-stick traced the course, from Port Murchison away around the western coast of the north-pointing peninsula. "Under Commodore Curds Auburn, the Admiral's brother and his best general. With all their fleet, every war-galley they have in commission. The biggest threat to this force was being intercepted at sea-and now it's gone. The Spirit has put its protecting hands over us."
He spread his hands for silence. "Wait! Cheer when we've won, not before!" More grimly. "This means we've got a better chance, not a walkover. There'll be hard fighting yet.
"Now, here are the general orders. We'll take the shortest sea route from here"-he tapped their position on Stern Island-"to here." The stick traced a line directly south, landing on the indented coast south and east of Port Murchison. "We'll land and concentrate in this bay and establish a base.
"Nobody," he went on, tapping the stick into his palm, "is to leave the landing site without orders; nobody under any circumstances whatsoever is to enter the Port Murchison harbor. We're going to land close enough to panic them, then grind up what they send out."
He paused. "Any questions?"
Gharderini shot to his feet. "You say there won't be any interception at sea," he said furiously. "How can you be so sure? Did the Admiral send word, or the Spirit of Man of the Stars inform you personally?"
Raj stood and let his hand fall on Suzette's shoulder. "The information," he said slowly, "is from a source I trust absolutely."
as you should, raj whitehall, Center said, as you must.
* * *
"Hear us, O Spirit of Man of the Stars," the priest intoned.
"Hear us," the massed troops answered. Everything was aboard except the men; the tide was making, and a breeze blowing down from the hills and out to sea.
The priest lifted his hands to the last of the stars, vanishing as night faded under the spear-rays of the sun.
"Code not our sins; let them be erased and not ROMed in Thy disks."
"Forgive us, O Star Spirit!"
As Raj led the response, another voice spoke in the back of his mind:
observe Center said.
* * *
— and a high surf beat on a rocky beach under a gray sky. Dinghy-loads of troops and the light transports drove in regardless, men leaping into head-deep water and wading ashore with their rifles over their heads or clinging to the saddles of swimming dogs. The first of them were just forming up when the Squadron troops rose from behind the dunes, their double-barreled muskets blasting at point-blank range-
— and viewpoint-Raj was clinging to a rope-line, on the deck of a ship lost in sea and spray. The sound of the storm was beyond belief, a solid roar in all the frequencies a human ear could perceive. Walls of water rose higher than the masts, but the wind tore off their tops and flung them as a horizontal sheet of spray like low cloud, until there was no telling where air began and sea stopped. The ship rose as a wave belled out beneath it, and for a moment they could see the rocks ahead. Then they struck, and the hull exploded into fragments beneath their feet-
— and the fleet was crowding into the bay, the beach black with men and the sea with dinghies and swimming dogs. Everyone's head came up at the first cannon shot. The Squadron warships came around the headland in a surge of gilded beaks and vermilion oars, the first flying the sword-and-comet banner of Commodore Curtis. Its bow-guns cut loose, the roundshot skipping over the low waves and into the side of the first Civil Government warship. Timbers smashed over the paddle wheel, and then the deck came apart in a shower of splinters and white smoke as the boiler ruptured. Behind the galleys came the transports, their rigging thick with the elite troops of the Squadron roaring out their war cries. .
* * *
"The Spirit of Man is of the Stars and all the Universe; this we believe."
"Witness our belief, O Star Spirit!"
"As we believe and act in righteousness, so shall we be boosted into the Orbit of Fulfillment."
"Raise us up, O Star Spirit!"
"Deliver us from the Crash; from the Meltdown; from the Hard Rads; spare us."
"Spare us, O Star Spirit!"
"We receive diligently the Input from Thy Holy Terminal, now and forever."
"Forever, O Star Spirit."
"As we believe, so let Thy Holy Federation be restored in our time, O Spirit of Man of the Stars; and if the burden of a faithless generation's sin be too great, may our souls be received into the Net. Endfile."
"Endfile!"
Raj looked out over the sea of bared heads. "Right, lads. Enter your sins at the Terminal, and fight with the Spirit at your side."
The priest lowered his hands. "The Spirit be with you."
"And in thy soul."
Chapter Seven
The longboat cut through the darkening purple of the waves toward the shore of the bay. Senior Lieutenant Antin M'lewis crouched in the bows, his eyes flickering restlessly as the muffled oars beat behind him. No way of telling if the barbs were waiting for them. . probably not. He looked up for a second; low scudding clouds, and a wet breeze from the east, overland. Rustler's weather, they called it at home in Bufford Parish. Home to the only men in Descott County, or so his Pa had told him the first time he took him out to try for some of Squire Rahmirez's sheep. It had been Squire Rahmirez got him into the Army, too, after the little matter of those two riding dogs he'd sold him. Well, good Spirit bless, did the man think he'd bought them, to be selling them at that price? Good-hearted of him to sponsor M'lewis's enlistment, though. "The Army will be the making of you, me lad," he'd said.
Truer words never passed yer teeth, Squire, M'lewis thought, and spoke under his breath:
"An' if you treat a barb to a dose a' cleanin'-rod
He's like to show ye everthin' he owns
When he won't produce no more, summat water on
the floor
Where yer hear it answer hollow to yer boot
When the ground begins to sink, shove yer
baynet down the chink-"
"El-Tee?"
"Jist some ol' Army musik," M'lewis said.
The keel grated on sand, very quiet. He turned to look at the other boats, half a dozen, with the tethered dogs swimming alongside. None of them made any sound as the men leaped overboard with their rifles over their heads and led the animals up beyond the high-water mark before crouching down beside them. M'lewis slapped palms with the petty officer in charge of the detail-to whom he had been careful to lose money as yet unpaid-and vaulted over the bow, running quickly through the shallow water before too much could soak into his boots. His dog followed with the reins in its mouth, silent-trained, and they all ran crouching up to the lee of the ridge six hundred meters inland. It was good to feel solid land again; the last night had not exactly been a storm, but the wind had been up high enough.
"All right," he whispered, as the others crowded round; there were twenty-two, not forty as battalion legend had it. I has me standards, he thought ironically. "Ye bastids all know yer assignments," he said. "One last word. Yer here t' scout, not finger. Any one a yer stops to lift a shiny pretty or a skirt, better run fuckin' fast an' far."
His hand blurred, and suddenly the man across from him was gasping, hands clawing up to his neck at the coil of wire that had whipped around it. Then he froze, his eyes rolling down in a frantic effort to see the knife-point pricking just above his belt-buckle.
&nbs
p; "Fast an' far, because I'll be behind him wit' me little friend here t' take yer breath away. That means ye partic'lar, Dommor Alleyman. Comprene?"
"Grrk! ci!"
M'lewis flipped the toggle and unwound the wire, patting the man on the cheek. "Good. When th' fightin's done, ye'll all have more gold 'n yer can carry, more likker n' ye can hold, 'n big-titted barb princesses spreadin' wide and askin' fer it. Until then, do yer fuckin' jobs!"
Silent nods, and then they dispersed; two began to put up the big tripod-lantern that would flash directions to the fleet and guide them in safe to the center of the bay. M'lewis smiled to himself; he had chosen them all well. Most were old neighbors-some even from Hole Canyon, his family's subdistrict-and they all had a professional's deep respect for a really successful operator. He pulled the pocket compass out of its case at his belt and took a reading. Surprising how few men realized the value of tricks like that. Gentry-doings, they'd say. How did they think the gentry got on top in the first place?
"Thissaway," he said to the six with him, straddling his dog. "Go."
The felt-muffled surfaces of the stirrups made no sound as he slipped the toes of his boots into them. Well, I'm gentry now. Of sorts; his sons would be Messer-class. . Keep yer mind on business, ye butthead, he told himself. The dogs moved off, paws almost silent in the deep soft dust of the road, spaced out to ten-meter intervals. Messer Raj's business. A shooting Star of a man, and if you hitched your cart to his harness he'd draw you along. Or you'd go over with him in a crash.
M'lewis smiled into the warm summer night. They were coming up on a hut, and lantern-light leaked through the warped shutters.
"Dicinsyn, Felodez," he whispered. "Around the rear. No killin'." Time to find out some local news, then on to that well the map marked.
* * *
"Yer map's not bad, but sommat incomplete, ser," Antin M'lewis said. "Anyways, no concentration of barb sojers anywhere within three hours' ride. Hardly spotted a man under arms; no Squadrones t' speak of."