The Forge

by S. M. Stirling

  "Our esteemed leader?" Gerrin said, raising his brows and sipping. "Spirit, women may not be essential but they do add to the comforts of life… yes, for once, fellow Companion, I think we agree. He's a driven man: they may write books about him, someday, but I'll be glad to be one of the footnotes."

  Kaltin stared at him in confusion. "I meant that bitch of a woman he's married to," he said, keeping his voice low.

  Gerrin sipped again. "I wouldn't call her that, not in any pejorative sense," he said thoughtfully. The lamp had died down, and the coals flickered ruddily over the heavy bones of the Descotters' faces; they had a distant-cousin likeness. "A complex person, very. And not easy to know."

  "It's easy enough to know what she's doing to him," Kaltin said bitterly. "A man in a thousand, one warriors are ready to die for, and she… first she went sniffing around Half-Arse Stanson, now it's these bloody merchants, of all things."

  "More a matter of them sniffing around her," Gerrin said equably. "Tongues lolling, when they aren't snarling and snapping at each other."

  "Parties, barge cruises, hunts, operas—" Kaltin rolled his eyes. "She's always on the arm of one or the other, out till all hours. Who the darkgulf doesn't know it? Men who should respect him are laughing at him behind his back."

  "Not soldiers," Gerrin replied. "Unless you count Wenner Reed."

  "That militia of his is a joke. And don't try to change the subject."

  "I'm not. You may have noticed it's considerably less of a joke since he stopped interfering with us working on them. And a little dactosauroid hissed in my ear that that was Suzette's doing."

  Gruder stared at him in horror: "You're not saying that Raj pimps to… to… "

  "Oh, shut up, Kaltin," Gerrin said wearily. "Of course not. How old are you, anyway?"

  "Twenty-three, and one year younger than you, O graybeard."

  "There's years, and there's experience: at sixteen, Barton's got some advantage on you, I think. Fatima is years ahead, and she's not turned seventeen yet … Anyway, Suzette hasn't repudiated him, fostered spurious issue, or created an open scandal. He can petition a Church court for divorce, or call out any man he feels is encroaching."

  "But he loves her, Spirit dammit! The man's suffering, you can see it—he drives himself beyond his strength."

  "Raj was born to be a hero, which is to suffer," Gerrin said ruthlessly. "If not one way, then another: his conscience will do that to him, if nothing else, as long as he's a soldier. Working for Barholm, at that … As for love and Suzette, like most women she's more practical than you, m'boy, whatever she's doing or isn't. Don't confuse who she opens her knees to and who she opens her heart to."

  Fatima stuck her head down through the stairwell, upside-down; the long hair hung a meter and a half below the urchin smile. "Take me to see fireworks," she wheedled, "and I open anything you want."

  Gerrin snorted. "You're not taking that child down to the zoo on the docks, my girl."

  She sighed, looking younger for a moment. "True," she said mournfully.

  "We'll watch them from the rooftop," he relented. "You can bring the cradle up there."

  "If you'll make another pot of that mulled wine, I'll bring Damaris and Aynett and Zuafir over, we can all watch them together," Kaltin volunteered.

  "I go get blankets."

  * * *

  "Ahhhhhhh," the crowd around Raj sighed, as the silver sphere exploded over the domes. The sound rippled across the river, from pleasure boats and barges and rafts; the water threw the light of the fireworks and their torches and lanterns back in spatters of liquid diamond.

  From here, Sandoral was an enchantment, like a vision of a city before the Fall. Raj knew the reality, a city mostly of filthy alleyways and mud brick hovels, like any other… but from the barges lashed together offstream you saw the Legate's Palace floodlit by its arc lights, white marble domes and colonnades shining. They had been built a century ago, when Sandoral was rebuilt after a Colonial sack … Elsewhere in the city lamps and torches were shining points of light at windows and flat roofs, as the people clustered to watch their betters at play, kind shadow picking out the russet-colored stucco.

  Raj scooped another glass off a tray, then almost choked on it; Muzzaf's face looked back with perfect aplomb from under a servant's kerchief. They turned their backs to each other, and Raj muttered, "Anything?"

  "Messer Falhasker has a number of people of Colonial stock on his staff," the Komarite said. "I've had no trouble in passing myself off as a Star convert of that stock." Posing as a Muslim was a little too risky. "Yes, he deals extensively in the Colony, and has continued to do so." Technically illegal, but Sandoral was a town that lived by long-distance trade; with the locks at Giaour Falls, down past the border, you could navigate the Drangosh all the way to the Colonial Gulf. Short of actual fighting or putting people up against the wall, there was no way to stop it.

  It was actually more to the benefit of the Civil Government's forces, at the moment. Fifteen thousand mouths—not to mention their hangers on—was a massive burden for a city only six times that in peacetime. Much of the Army of the Upper Drangosh was being fed from Colonial fields, and even clothed in uniforms made of cloth woven and dyed in Hammamet and Dasra and Al-Kebir itself. So there was no excuse to put people up against the wall; he was here to fight, not enforce border regulations made by people in East Residence. No excuse.

  Not yet.

  "Beyond this, nothing. I managed to glimpse his books, and his rate-of-return on ventures into the Colony is suspiciously high, but that might simply be good management, not favors for espionage."

  You could not shoot a man just because his worst rival, and the town gossip mongers, "knew" he was passing information to the enemy. Or because he wanted your wife. So much intelligence data passed through Sandoral that it was virtually useless, half the spies were not sure themselves who they really worked for; he had had confirmed reports from half a dozen sources that Tewfik was on the march… sent against the nomads of Sogdia… down with malaria… plotting to seize the Settler's throne… only a week from the border… Quite probably one of the reports was right, but how could he tell which? That was the whole point of spraying out disinformation, it clouded the waters until the truth was invisible even if it leaked.

  "But of Messer Reed's household, I have learned something. There is a new servant there, who calls himself Abdullah ibn 'Azziz"—the Colony equivalent of "Saynchez," it was so common—"who is suspiciously functionless. He seems to have moved here from the west recently. I will try to find out more."

  * * *

  The fireworks display ended with a spectacular blaze of red, blue, green, and silver starbursts, almost an exact duplicate of the Holy Federation Flag. Above him on the quarter deck, Raj could hear Suzette's voice:

  "Oh, Wenner, they're glorious!"

  "Come, come, my dear, after the Governor's Court in East Residence, I'm sure you find it boring and provincial, like all our little amusements… pretending we're big frogs in our little pond. How all the ladies resent the way you make them seem dowdy and out-of-date!"

  "No," she said seriously. "That's not true; it's Sandoral —and the people I've met here—who make the capital and the court seem… artificial, and unreal… the frontier has such… vitality."

  Raj let the Gederosian crystal goblet drop, and marched forward to where Barton Foley was backed into a corner by three local society beauties. He seemed to be deriving considerable amusement as he egged them into competition with comments very much in Gerrin's style.

  "I'm leaving, Barton," he said abruptly.

  The social smile dropped off Foley's face, as if wiped away with a cloth. "Where to, sir?" he asked.

  "There, first," Raj said, nodding downstream. The Skinner's barge erupted in shrieks and roars and a volley from the massive 15mm rifles fired skyward that made fireworks of its own; in the dark the muzzle flashes were longer than the weapons themselves. "To get very thoroughly drunk. And tomorrow, yo
u and I and the 5th/1st/1st"—Foley's platoon, first in the first Company of the 5th Descott Guards—"are going looking for Tewfik. Enough of this sitting on our butts sniffing the wind."

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Yer shouldn't be doin' this, ser. 'Tis not yer place." Da Cruz's scar-stiffened face was rigid with disapproval. "Er at leastways, yer should be takin' me wit' yer."

  "Well, I am doing it, Master Sergeant," Raj said, slapping his gloves into his palm. "And Captain Staenbridge will need you, if anything unfortunate should happen."

  Like the Colonials cutting us all into dogmeat, he thought. The chill seemed to settle in his belly. They're right: I'm supposed to be commanding thirty battalions, not leading forty men on a forlorn hope scouting mission. He put the inner voice aside; arguably it was worse for the men to see the commander vacillate than to make a possibly-stupid decision, Spirit knew everyone fucked up now and then… and things were going well in Sandoral… and the Spirit knew it was the one place on Earth… Bellevue he didn't want to be, right now.

  North along the chain of heliograph stations a light began to blink, a slotted cover like a lever-operated Venetian blind slapping open and closed over a mirror-backed carbide lamp. It showed hard and clear against the pale stars of midnight. High overhead Maxiluna was a thin sliver of orange-tinted silver, and the smaller, brighter Miniluna had set an hour ago. It was cold enough to make the uniform jacket and the thousand-pound bulk of Horace at his back welcome. The tower above flicked once to the north to acknowledge the message, then began to relay it south; it was a long one. Pure nonsense, as a matter of fact, meant only to deceive; if there was movement and light at all the temporary chain of towers, no single one would be noticeable to a chance watcher on the other shore. And they would be used to night patrols setting out …

  "He's perfectly right," Barton Foley said, walking back along the line of men and dogs. "Barge in place, Brigadier who shouldn't be here, sir. Clear path down to the water."

  "Not you, too," Raj muttered, and turned to the Lieutenant of the 7th Descott Rangers in charge of the station. "Message by rider, word of mouth only, Lieutenant: starting tomorrow night, be ready for anything we send from the other side. Otherwise, keep your movements routine. Understood?"

  "Sir," the lieutenant said earnestly.

  "Just a minute, Raj," Gerrin said. "I really think you should reconsider… If you think a senior officer is necessary, I'd be glad to go"

  "No." Forcing relaxation: "After all, you've got an infant son to consider, don't you, Captain Staenbridge?"

  He could see the other man's mouth close. "By the Spirit, you're right… damnable habit of yours, Raj."

  "Er, excuse me, Brigadier," the lieutenant said. "I've got a rather odd request. Squad of my men—a Corporal M'kintok—just volunteered to accompany you."

  Raj snorted softly. "Who's next, Tzetzas? My thanks to your squad, Lieutenant Meagertin, and tell them they're going to ruin the County's reputation. Now, if nobody else has precious time to waste… "

  Salutes, embraces, fists slapped together. A voice inside his skull, this risk is strictly unnecessary.

  Shut up. Observe.

  I said, shut up: you're the voice of god, but I'm a man, Spirit take it, and this is something I'm going to do! There was a pause that took no time in the observable world. Then:

  Stochastic effects may randomize even the most rigorous Calculation, the voice of Center said; it was the first time he had heard Center lapse into religious jargon. Consciousness returned to the world of men.

  "… let's go."

  * * *

  Raj held Horace's bridle as the men led their beasts onto the barge. It was a normal bulk-cargo vessel, brownish-grey native pigaro wood, hard and impervious and full of tiny bubbles of air. The shallow hold was roofed with arches of willow-withe, and a cover of dark canvas on top of that, also standard for cargoes vulnerable to sun or rain. Just enough room for the dogs, if they walked half-crouched and lay down in neat rows; thirty-two men and mounts of Foley's platoon, the two men and four dogs of the portable heliograph unit, M'lewis, Holdor Tennan, and himself. The vessel sank deeper against the inlet mud as fifty thousand pounds of dog and man and gear filed aboard; the steersman at the rear sweep began to look worried.

  "Come on, boy," Raj said, stepping towards the plank. Last on, first off on the other side.

  Horace balked, flopping himself down with a jingle of accoutrements.

  "This is no time for that, you sumbitch!" Raj hissed, painfully conscious of eyes watching him, the men from the heliograph tower and others from within the barge. He hauled, with no result; kicked the dog in the ribs with the flat of his boot, and produced nothing but a hollow drum-sound, hideously loud. Dogwhips were useless on Horace; there was only one thing to do.

  "Suit yourself," he said, and walked up the gangplank. Behind him the dog watched, whined when Raj jumped down into the hold of the barge, then picked up its reins in its teeth and followed, testing the footing with each step.

  * * *

  "Phew," Foley muttered, as the last of the men disembarked on the east bank. It had grown fairly rank inside the barge, while they drifted down toward the east bank and past the spot where the Civil Government border curved away from the west. They were in the Colony, now, and far from help.

  "Avocati," Raj whispered back. The common dog-fodder along the river, a noxious, flabby sucker-mouthed bottom-feeding scavenger fish with no backbone; the main drawback was that it made the dogs' breath even worse than usual.

  He looked up the bank; the floodplain held the same mix of carob and native thorny brush as the other shore, but the ravine-scored silt of the bluff was much higher, twenty meters, notched and slashed by winter flooding. The air smelled of river, dog, and wet mud; Raj took a deep breath and exhaled, grinning up at the dark menace of the hill. I feel young again, he realized with a start; which was very odd, because he had yet to reach his twenty-sixth year. Even in his teens he hadn't shared his peers' pleasure in taking useless risks, in riding vicious dogs or hanging around girls with dangerous male kin; they had called him a sober-sides for it, and for occasionally turning down a hunting trip or a cockfight to crack a book.

  It's because this is a comprehensible job, he thought. No huge amorphous army, where he had to leave a dozen crucial things a day in the hands of men he had never fought beside; no not-quite-omniscient computer angel to show him unassailable reasons for doing things he despised; no snakepit spy-hive of a city… just a cavalry patrol into hostile country, go in, get the information and get out. Succeed or die.

  Foley came back along the line of kneeling men and crouching dogs; there was a slight frown on his half-youthful face, the look of someone focusing on a complicated piece of work. Learn to do it right and they'll just stick you with something more difficult, lad, Raj thought mordantly.

  "M'lewis has a way up, sir," he said. "Passable without much cutting." Native scrub was like resilient metal wire that bit; they had saw-edged clearing bars, but the noise and delay were to be avoided if at all possible.

  "Let's do it then," Raj said.

  * * *

  "Avatars of the Spirit," Raj swore, as he poked his head cautiously over the rise.

  It was morning of the second day, south from their landing point; he had been about to pack it in, the patches of cultivated land along the bank of the river were growing more and more frequent, reaching inland further and further. Another fifty kilometers, and the bluffs would fall away to the wide alluvial plains, densely cultivated all the way east to the Rushing River and the highlands of Gederosia.

  "That's the biggest fukkin' raghead army I ever wants to see," M'lewis said beside him on the ridge.

  The skin around his lips was off-white… well, it was stunning. The date groves and norias of the riverside were lost in a sea of tents, orderly clumps and rows, dog-lines running for kilometers, artillery parks with everything from the common pompoms to heavy muzzle loading howitzers. Supplies were being unl
oaded from riverboats, pyramids of sacks and crates and bundles; men marched through the streets of the tent city, the spikes of their helmets glinting; parties of cavalry dashed across the plain round about. In the center of the camp was a huge white and scarlet tent like a miniature mountain range. Banners hung in the still morning air above it, or fluttered briefly; the sound of the camp was like surf, spiced and peaked with the sharp music of drums and the shrill of fifes.

  A muzzein had called the morning prayer; campfires were blossoming higher, carrying the sharp spices of Colonist cooking.

  "There must be a hunnerd thousand men there," M'lewis whispered again.

  Raj smiled; the Warrant Officer was as good a man of his hands as you could hope to find, a superb dogsman with an instinctive feel for the lay of the land and a crack shot, but the scale of this was outside his experience.

  "Barton?" Raj asked.

  The young lieutenant was quartering the camp with his own binoculars; his face was pale under natural olive and heavy tan, but his voice was steady:

  "I make it… twenty thousand, or a little more," he said, writing and sketching on a pad by his head.

  "Much better," Raj said. He took the drawing and laid it before M'lewis. "See, each of the standard tent holds a Colonist squad; six men, smaller than ours. So many men to a gun; banners are graded, like in our regular army. Sample a section, figure out how many equivalents, and you've got a reliable estimate, the same way you'd number a sheep herd quickly." A pause. "You're counting too many camp followers, I think, Barton: they're building that bridge with peasants they've rounded up, mostly."

  "Bridge, sir?" Barton asked.

  "Mmmh. See there?"

  Down by the water's edge the Colonial forces had dug and pushed a huge ramp of earth and timbers down into the current of the Drangosh. Two enormous cables of flax lay coiled and ready at the head of it, rope as thick as the chest-height of the men who handled it; behind the coils further lengths were anchored in timber and stone. Working parties upstream anchoring other cables that were small only by comparison. Across the river a similar ramp was being built; Foley turned his glasses on one, then the other.