"No, enjoy your dessert," Raj said, watching dispassionately as the man sank back into his chair and reached for his wineglass.
"And do save us some of the compote," Gerrin said with a toothy grin, scooping up a finger load and eating it. "It's so hard to get fresh ingredients out here, don't you know?"
Stanson covered a yawn with the back of his hand. "Certainly," he said, and reached for a dried fig from the bowl, across Merta's bosom. He ignored her, glancing over at Suzette. "There'll still be one lovely lady here; we shall sing songs and gossip until dawn, awaiting your return."
Raj's last sight of the tent was Merta looking pure hatred at them both.
* * *
The air outside had turned cooler and drier; they were a hundred meters up from the flood plain of the Hemmar, and the increased altitude was more than compensating for the lower latitude as they headed south. The moons shone on the Oxheads to the south, making their peaks gleam like silver or salt, up in the high knot where they united with the Coast Range. The passes would be chilly, high tumbled rock, and then they would be down into the baking plains of the border Counties, foothills smoothing down into sparse pasture and then out into the erg of the deep desert, where nothing grew except around the salt lakes or the rivers of the east. Down where the riders of the Colony were waiting for them.
Someone led a dog in out of the darkness; it was da Cruz, the lamplight slick on the keloid lumpiness of his facial scars.
"Thought yer mought be needin' me, ser," he said.
"A positive plague of volunteering, eh, loyal companions?" Kaltin Gruder said softly, with a chuckle under it.
Raj slapped his gauntlets into his hand. "Five minutes, gentlemen," he said. "Evrard," he continued, and the younger Gruder straightened, "turn out your platoon… twenty-seven rifles, isn't it?"
"Twenty-five, sir: two men down with the flux."
"By all means. The rest of you, sabers and sidearms, please." He paused. "Oh, Foley." The young man drew himself up, bristling-ready to defend his right to come along. "Get yourself something with a little more stopping power, eh?" He nodded toward the 8mm pistol at the boy's belt.
"I've got just the thing," Foley replied.
They all paused for a moment, and then turned as Raj drew on his gloves. "Gentlemen?" A check. "Thank you."
* * *
The dogs' feet padded through the night at a loping trot beneath the stars and the moons, thudding and crunching softly on the crushed rock surface; the chink and rattle of equipment was louder, but still not enough to break the peace of the night. Dew was beginning to settle, bringing out the spicy scents of the crops and trees, the spoiled-honey scent of native vegetation. The peasant woman perched on his saddlebow stank, too, a hard dry scent like an ox that has been working in the sun, no more unpleasant than any soldier who had been in the field for a week or two; it was the things that crawled across from her clothing and bit that were a nuisance. Her shoulders were still shaking with an occasional hiccupping sob, and he patted her back absently.
"Hier," she said, pointing.
The main military highway turned eastwards, and a local track continued south of east, bordered by eucalyptus that filled the night with their sharp medicinal smell. The track was graded dirt, just wagon-wide, but well-kept, arrowing off into the rustling darkness. Raj flung up a hand.
"Yo!" da Cruz's voice was pitched low, and the column came to a halt.
"How far?"
He listened to the woman's breathy gabble for a moment, cursing inwardly. She had apparently never heard of kilometers, and judged all distances by the time they took to walk; the campground the soldiers had been using was as far as she had ever travelled, and everything beyond was "foreign parts," the land of legends and monsters.
"Ah, ser," a voice said.
Raj handed the peasant woman down and turned in the saddle. It was Trooper An tin M'lewis, holding himself straight in the saddle and looking blankly ahead.
"What the fuck are you doing here, soldier?" Raj asked.
"Gettin' my rum ration unstopped, ser," the man answered; his face was pure regulation, but… "Thought the Messer Captain might needs me, seein' as I knows this ground."
You have to give him credit for effrontery, Raj thought. "Tell me," he added, and gave a gesture of reassurance to the woman, who had recognized M'lewis and shrunk back.
"Draws a dirt map, ser?"
Raj gestured to da Cruz, and a whispered order to dismount brought men and dogs crouching; it was not a dark night, and they did not want to be noticed before they struck. M'lewis flattened a stretch of soil and sketched with his ringer.
"Ser, 'tis no more than half a klick up thisshere laneways," he said, with quick efficiency. "Farmstead scattered out, loik they does hereabouts." In Descott, an isolated dwelling was built around a courtyard and walled. "Barn by the road; house back mebbe ten meters, sheds n' whatnot, chickenhouse, a well, kitchen-garden. Road turns just before, go quiet 'n yer doesn't get seen 'till yer right up their arse."
"Good, very good," Raj said. "Hmmm, we need someone to scout it."
"I's yer man, ser," M'lewis said cheerfully. They stood, and their eyes met for a long moment. The trooper's grin died away for an instant.
"Good man," Raj said. "See to it, then. We'll be—" he nodded to his right "—about five hundred meters that way."
M'lewis nodded. To Raj's surprise, he did not go for the rifle in its scabbard by his saddle; instead, he stripped off jacket and boots, hung them on his saddlebow with his saber-belt. He was wearing a black cotton shirt, not the off-grey most men bought; the kerchief he took out and tied around his head was the same color. For weapons he tucked a long curved skinning knife in its sheath through the narrow waist belt of his trousers, over the small of his back, and took something out of the pocket of his jacket. Raj stepped closer and looked; it was a wire cord with wooden toggles on both ends, and M'lewis tucked it through his belt with care, the handles secured but easy to reach. Then he bent, rubbed dirt over his face.
"Loik old times t' home, 'tis, ser," he said, and was gone into the night.
"Evrard," Raj said.
"Sir?"
"Leave four dogholders; we'll go up the lane, quietly please, and wait. Clip the stickers, a round chambered. Quietly is the word, gentlemen," he repeated to the others around him, drawing his pistol and snapping the cylinder out for a final check. Just habit, but habits saved your life or killed you, in this line of work.
"Forward, Companions," Gerrin whispered, and the others chuckled softly; they seemed quite taken with the archaic title.
The noncoms relayed the orders, and the men stepped out of the saddles of their crouching dogs, with firm murmurs of stay to keep them in place. A series of rapid click-chick sounds as the forearm-long blades of the bayonets snapped home under the muzzles, spring-clips holding them to barrel and cleaning rod, and the oiled-metal sound of loading. Raj heard the platoon sergeant go down the squads, giving the men a quick check and delivering softly fervent promises:
"En I will cut a new asshole in any yer bastids pops it, unnerstan?"
The trees left a narrow slit of moonslight down the crown of the dirt road; the men of the 5th advanced up the sides by sections, alternating right and left. There was surprisingly little noise, but then these were hunters, after all; part of a boy's training back home was to be sent out with a rifle and one round, with a beating and no supper if he came back without game. Raj could smell the sweet-yeasty scent of barley in the milk ear stage behind the low adobe wall of the field on his left; water gurgled in an irrigation ditch, and pale silver light flickered through the leaves. Then they were coming up to the curve; a vineyard on their right, and broad-leafed tobacco on the left. Good cover, he thought, motioning backward with his hand. The column halted and sank down, men resting on one knee.
"I think I can see light, about four hundred meters ahead on the left," Foley whispered. Gerrin laid a finger over his lips. Raj strained his eyes. Nothing,
but then Foley had the eyes of youth. Damn, stop being a teenager, start dying, he thought, then a figure rolled over the fence wall at their left and landed on noiseless bare feet.
"Ser," it said, as a dozen bayonets poised. It was M'lewis; Raj motioned his Companions close. "Warn't no problem, ser. It ain't no bandits, neither. It's them pretty boys from the 2nd."
"Numbers and positions, M'lewis," Raj said.
"Four of them carriages out in the yard, dogs tethered an' eatin' on the stock they's killed. Men and boys— I figger five, six, family and mebbe a slave—tied up in one the sheds. Six mebbe seven from the 2nd, officers an' gentleman-rankers, with they whores and slaves, they party pretty loud. No sentries." M'lewis seemed faintly sorry at that, and touched the garrote at his belt.
"How do we handle it, Raj?" Gerrin asked. As if to punctuate his remark the faint echo of a scream drifted down the road from the farmstead.
Raj opened his mouth. Now, how do I say "kill them all" suitably? he thought. Then—
Observe.
* * *
—troopers of the 2nd falling screaming before their guns and Raj and the companions broke into a farmhouse kitchen. Reaching for their weapons, jerking, dying, slammed back by the lead. Servants and mistresses screaming and bleating pleas for mercy, holding their hands over their faces as troopers of the 5th drove the bayonets home again and again. Blood flowing sticky into the dirt floor, splashing on walls and ceiling in trails of red—
—and Stanson's face behind the pistol on the duelling ground. It was a different place this time, the other/Raj was standing on bare ground beside a road. Spectators, Trahn Minh looking on with satisfaction on his thin arrogant face; Suzette white-lipped with anxiety. Stanson sneering, bringing the pistol up in a smooth arc as the handkerchief touched ground—
—Stanson falling as Raj's saber gashed his throat—
—Tewfik riding his dog into the surf, and the ululating cheers of the Colonist army behind him, the great green banner snapping in the wind.
* * *
"—we do this by the regulations," Raj said. "No firing on," the next words seemed to choke him slightly, "fellow soldiers of the Civil Government except in self-defense or on my order." With deadly precision: "Is that understood?"
"What about the camp followers?" Kaltin asked.
"Fair meat, but don't start anything unless they try to fight or run… best we keep the platoon outside for a blocking force, unless it drops in the pot. Evrard, send your platoon sergeant around back with M'lewis and half your men. The rest will come with us and secure the farmyard and the vehicles. We'll deal with the scum inside ourselves. Follow my lead. Understood?" A chorus of nods. "Let's go, people."
* * *
Raj poised his foot above the doorlatch. The rhythmic screams from the farmhouse had stopped a minute ago; now they started up again, weaker and more shrill, muffled as if they came from a room behind this one. The peasant house was a single-story square, whitewash peeling from adobe walls and tiles missing from the roof; probably this single large kitchen-cum-everything in the front, a bedroom behind, and a half-loft above. The old farmer lay outside, his hands clutching a wooden pitchfork and his eyes staring upward. The face had been recognizable, even after a careless saber slash left half of it dangling down in a slab of meat and gristle, baring the pink bone and an eternal smile. Eight-legged native quasi-insects walked across his tongue to reach the eyeballs.
The air smelled of poverty and dog shit and blood and cooking; raucous noises of celebration and snatches of song came through the plank door, almost louder than the screams. Smoke ghosted white from a squat mudbrick chimney in the center of the roof.
"One," Raj said. There was a small metallic sound behind him; Foley had brought a sidearm with stopping power, all right. A double-barreled shotgun, cut-down to riot gun size, about 18-gauge.
"Two." Gerrin was at his side, pistol in one hand and saber in the other, quivering eager. Behind him Kaltin dusted one sleeve absently, and Evrard's lips moved silently in prayer; Master Sergeant da Cruz's mutilated face looked closer to peace than Raj had ever seen it.
"Three." Raj felt the world pause and go crystal clear, attention narrowing down to a diamond-bright focus. There was a taste of metal in his mouth, somewhere in his head the knowledge that he might be dead in a few seconds. Namelessly dead in this squalid little yard where nothing had ever happened but the endless repetitions of misery … And there was a job to do.
The sole of his boot crashed against the cheap pine-wood of the door next to the latch, and it came away in a shower of splinters. The door banged open. Raj fired a round into the ceiling as he stepped forward, moving aside to let the others file in.
It took a moment for the activity in the room to cease. It was L-shaped, lapping around the bedroom on two sides, with a single wickerwork door between them. There was another door at the end of L's short arm, out to the rear yard and the well. The long arm was filled with a table, crowded with the remains of a feast, roast piglets, a goose… more chickens were turning on spits in the fire, and a small ceramic crock of a clear yellowish liquid was surrounded by a scatter of cups. Raj glanced at it and was no longer surprised at the slow stunned looks of many of the feasters; that was the local homebrew, distilled from grape skins left over after the wine was pressed, and it had a kick like a sicklefoot.
There were four people he judged to be part of the farm family: all women, from one who looked to be a blousy-but-attractive forty and was probably a decade younger at least, to a just-pubescent girl; he could tell that easily, because like the others she wore only dirt and bruises. The older three women had been cooking and serving, while the youngest was on her knees before a seated 2nd Gendarmerie officer, her head bobbing up and down as she fellated him. His left hand stroked her hair; he smiled dreamily, and rested the point of a fighting knife on the skin between her neck and collarbone. Four others in stained white uniforms were sprawled around the table; and three times as many servants, mistresses and general hangers-on, frozen at the sound of the shot in every activity from drunken sleep through vomiting and shouted song to vigorous fornication.
The oldest of the peasant women screamed sharply as the door flew open. The girl stopped at her task as she felt the knifepoint lift from her arteries; looked up and scuttled on all fours over to a wall-side bench and hid beneath it, curled into a ball with her eyes closed. Silence fell as the Companions stepped through behind Raj, weapons ready; silence except for the last shriek from the bedroom. That door banged open, too, and a man in the 2nd's uniform stepped through.
"What the Outer Dark—" he began, then focused owlishly on the gun-muzzles staring at him across the room. His trousers were unbuttoned, and there was blood on the slack genitals and clotted in the wool. Raj could see him forcing alertness, eyes narrowing and hand dropping to his pistol as a man in servant's livery stepped through the door behind him. The servant's trousers were stained as well, although it was harder to tell against the burgundy fabric. He was pushing a nude boy of about ten ahead of him, gripping his neck.
"I'll put the tightass snottie back with the others, Messer—" he began. Faster than his master, or simply less drunk, he pushed the boy away sprawling and crouched. That would be the boy Tuk, Raj thought, surprised at the clarity of his mind, watching the child haul himself across the packed dirt with a red sheet glistening in the firelight across the backs of his thighs. Center's scenarios played themselves through his mind; he did not need the angel-computer to prompt them now. Tewfik riding his dog into the sea …
"Messers," Raj began, his voice high and clear. It was very important to enunciate clearly. "Thank you for your timely aid, in, in apprehending these bandits."
More silence, broken only by the whimpering of the raped children. Then a babble of voices, hooting laughter from some of the servants and mistresses, shouts of anger from the soldiers of the 2nd.
"Spirit curse you, what bandits?" the man with the fighting knife still in his hand
said, blinking; the other hand fumbled his garments closed, a human male's first instinct in a conflict situation. Adrenaline was sobering him a little, but not much. "Thersh… there's nobody here but our servants, man!" He peered. "Why, it's the Descotter sheep-diddler, the one who spends all day wallowing in the dirt while his wife—"
Raj fired into the ceiling again; it was roughly-barked pine logs with lathes laid over, and dust filtered down from the bullet hole. He suppressed a sneeze.
"It shows great initiative of you to hold them helpless here, after the atrocities they've committed on Civil Government subjects," he went on, overriding the man's voice. Ignoring him, in fact; instinct told him that only the one in the door to the bedroom was much problem. That one hadn't bothered to button his fly, and his weight had gone forward on the balls of his feet. A glance went between the officer and his servant.
Raj smiled, an expression much like those of the sicklefeet his men had killed the previous day. "Because now we are going to take the bandits out and kill them, each and every one."
Movement: the servant by the bedroom door snatched up a cleaver from the board that served as a mantle and lunged. Movement: Foley's shotgun roared. The target was less than five meters away, far too close for the double-buckshot load to spread much. It did chew the man's stomach into a pink mass, through which red-grey loops of intestine showed; he flew backward into the fireplace, toppling the spit with the chickens. The smell of burning pork added itself to the fug of the room, and scorched wool as his clothes caught fire. The young companion turned like a gun turret, the stock of his weapon clamped against his ribs. The stubby barrels stared at the officer of the 2nd, who had managed to clear his pistol and bring it up to half-port in the fraction of a second it had taken to kill his servant.
"Drop it," Foley said; his voice cracked in the middle of the words, but the cut-off shotgun did not waver, one barrel smoking and the other black readiness. "This one's for you, Messer."
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