Raj was riding alone, save for his personal bannermen, buglers, and galloper-messengers. He nodded.
“Too much temptation in the city, under the circumstances. They’re out living up to their official designation. M’lewis will get it done; he’s a soldier, in his fashion.” Raj turned in the saddle to watch the first pontoon boat being manhandled into the water. It splashed into the Drangosh and bobbed, riding unevenly. “They’ll be enough?”
“Mi heneral, consider it done. I can finish the rest in time, if I get enough of the raw materials.”
Raj’s teeth showed slightly. “Oh, that ought not to be a problem. Poplanich’s Own just detrained, they’re out helping the 5th get the timber in, and we’re moving quickly.”
He paused. “One more thing; send out some of your people, use the garrison if you must, and confiscate every boat you can find; every fishing smack, barge, canoe, whatever. Not just here, in the suburbs and every section of the valley we can still reach.”
“And back, ye bitches’ brood.”
The civilians still crowding the street wailed and stampeded; which was just fine as far as Robbi M’Telgez was concerned. Handling a lariat and a dog was second nature—his family were rancheros, yeoman tenants who herded on shares back in Descott—but this was tricky. One end of the braided leather rope was snubbed to the second-story end of a roof beam; the other was wrapped three times around the pommel of his saddle. Pochita sank down on her haunches and backed one tiny step at a time, and he could feel the thousand-pound body arching like a bow between his thighs. The rest of his platoon were doing likewise, one or two dogs to every rafter. The animals were used to working in unison, and they snarled beneath their panting as they hauled.
The adobe wall smoked dust for an instant and then collapsed towards them. Released from the pull, Pochita skipped back nimbly until her hindquarters touched the house on the other side of the irregular little plaza. M’Telgez coughed through the checked bandanna over his face; his dog sneezed massively and shook her head, the cheek-levers of the bridle rattling. Got t’check ’em, he thought. They should be snug, not loose.
Foot soldiers waded forward into the dust, rummaging for the planks and beams. They’d done the same thing here in Sandoral for material to build earthwork forts, in the last campaign against the wogs a few years ago; now they were tearing down rebuilt houses to make boats.
Always something new with Messer Raj.
Antin M’lewis sank closer to the earth, hugging it for shelter and trying to think dark like the moonless night. It was homelike, in an unpleasant sort of way; as a rustler by hereditary profession, he’d spent enough time like this back home working his way in past the vakaros pulling night guard on some unsuspecting squire’s herds. Darkness, the dogs belly-down too in a gully a few hundred meters back, his face blacked with lamp soot or burnt cork. The wind moving into his face, so no scent went to the target or his dogs—infantry ahead here, but why take a chance, and there might be a mounted officer. Just like home.
Descott was rarely this hot, though. And most Descotter vakaros would be more alert than the wog ahead of him.
He eeled forward on his belly, moving every time the Colonial sentry’s pacing turned him back toward this angle of approach. Useless sentry, the bugger was smoking a pipe and M’lewis could see the ember light with every draw, even smell the strong tobacco. Backlit by a watch-fire too, which must be playing hell with his night-vision.
Mother. The wog had stopped, and his spiked helmet was turning as he looked outward. He hesitated, almost taking the carbine from over his shoulder, then resumed his steady pacing. Mother. Spirit.
Forward another five meters. The dust was trying to make him sneeze, but Goodwife M’lewis hadn’t raised any of her sons to be suicides. Now he was behind a head-high clump of alluvial clay, right where the towel-top would pass on his next circuit.
Come on, he thought. Git yer wog arse over here. Come t’pappa. His weight came up on his knees and one hand. The other went to the wooden toggle in his waist, callused fingers around satin-smooth pearwood. Ready. Ready. One knee bent under him, bare toes gripping the dirt.
The Colonial muttered something in Arabic and stopped. He bent, raising one foot and knocking the dottle out of his pipe on the heel of his curl-toed boot.
Thank you, Spirit, M’lewis thought, and moved very quickly. Straighten the knee, rising, right hand whipping forward and to the left in a hard sideways flick. Following the toggle and the wire it dragged, as if they were pulling him out of the dirt. Perfect soft weight on the hand, as the wire struck the left side of the wog’s neck and whipped around, slapping the other toggle into his reaching left hand—practiced ten thousand times since he was a lad, and it worked when you had to. Wrists crossed, jam the knee into the wog’s back, heave.
The sudden coppery smell of blood filled the night. M’lewis went down with the Colonial, abandoning the garrote that had sawn halfway through to his backbone and grabbing his equipment to muffle the clatter. Figures had started upright at the campfire; one of them seemed to be dancing a jig for an instant. The sounds were slight but definite. A meaty thock, the sound of a steel-shod rifle butt in the side of a head. The wetter, duller sound of steel in flesh. And once the unmistakable crackle of a breaking neck, like a thick green branch being popped. Then silence.
M’lewis jerked the garrote free and wiped it clean on the dead Arab’s pugaree. The campfire was quiet when he came up, his men finishing rifling the pockets of the dead—he could have forbidden that, and he could tell a pig not to shit in the woods, too—and sitting calmly in the same positions with wog helmets on their heads. The Scout commander nodded to them as he passed, walking out into the dark and to the edge of the little cliff. There was a gully beyond it, then low eroded clay hills, and then flat farmland. Dim enough normally at two hours past midnight, except for the hundreds of neatly spaced campfires. More lights crossed the river, over to the western bank where the smoking ruins of Gurnyca lay.
He settled in with his sketchpad and pulled out his binoculars. Railroad to the riverbank; he checked, and saw fatigue parties still working on it. Laid on t’dirt, he noted on his pad as he sketched. No embankment or crushed-rock bedding for the ties. Emergency line, low capacity, but still enough to carry supplies. Mounds of supplies throughout the basecamp, within the normal earthworks and ditch. Ammunition boxes, shells, sacks with dogmash and dried fish and jerked meat, skins of vegetable oil, all the hundred-and-one items that an army on the march needed. Convoys were moving across the pontoon bridge even at night: wagons drawn by skinny long-legged oxen, and long guns with the distinctive soda-bottle shapes of built-up siege weapons, battering pieces. 130mm and 160mm, he decided. Rifled guns, good artillery, but bitches to move.
Rail to the river, but oxcarts over it. No grazing, except from the farms; if Ali was moving north, he’d be foraging to support his men, but once he stopped, the convoys would have to come in every day. About ten kay of troops holding the bridgehead and pontoons, sappers and line-of-communication infantry. It all looked very professional, as good as anything the Civil Government’s army could do. Not at all like fighting the barbs out west. The MilGov barbs were full of fight, but dim as a yard up a hog’s ass, most of the time. These wogs used their heads for something besides holding their turbans up.
M’lewis finished his estimate and duplicated the numbers and sketch-map. “Cut-nose, Talker,” he whispered, as he eeled backward.
Cut-nose was a ratty little man, his cousin on his mother’s side. They might have been brothers for looks—it was quite possible they were brothers, Old Man M’lewis had got around a fair bit before they hanged him—except for the missing organ. Then again, maybe they weren’t close relations; no M’lewis would try to sell a dyed dog back to the man he’d stolen it from. Talker was a hulking brute from the mountains on the eastern fringe of Descott. They both had rawhide guards shrunk onto the forestocks of their rifles, and Talker had a couple of fresh severed ears
on a loop of thong around his neck.
“Tak this t’Messer Raj,” he said. “Swing east. Month’s pay bonus iffn ye gits there afore me.”
“Ser!” Cut-nose said, smiling yellow-brown with delight. Talker grunted.
M’lewis came to a crouch and headed back toward the gully and the dogs, the rest of the Scouts falling in behind him. He took the time to stamp his feet back into his boots before he straddled the crouching dog. He usually didn’t bother with socks; a dollop of tallow in the boot served as well, if you didn’t mind the smell.
“Ride,” he said.
Messer Raj would have his news. It was bad news, as far as Antin M’lewis could see, but—thank the Spirit!—it wasn’t his job to figure out what to do about it.
They swung into the saddle and followed the gully north, riding with muffled harness. Every kilometer or so he paused and headed for high ground; the eastern bank was generally a little above the level on the west, and there were few dwellers close to the main stream, if you avoided the raghead semaphore towers. Every stop showed Colonial watchfires on the other side; Ali’s convoy guards, picketed all the way down his line of march northward towards Sandoral.
The third time showed something a little different. He closed his eyes for a minute before putting them to the glasses. There was a fair-sized Civil Government town on the other side of the river, and as he watched, the first of the buildings went up in a gout of flame. That gave enough light to watch the Settler’s troops systematically stripping the warehouses and granaries before they put them to the torch; Ali’d be living off the land as much as he could, to spare the transport.
There was a migratory insect on Bellevue about the length of a man’s thumb. Every century or so swarms of them would hatch north on the Skinner steppe and fly south, eating the land bare until they reached the empty deserts to spawn and die. Where they passed, famine followed.
Ali’s men were more localized, but just about as thorough.
Barton Foley sat in the shade of the palm tree and tapped his lips thoughtfully with the end of his pencil. Now, would virile go well with while in that stanza, or not? he thought.
“Heads up!”
He sighed and tucked the volume back into the saddlebag. Someday he’d have the time to really write. Someday I’ll be dead, he added sourly to himself—although hopefully not soon; twenty-one was a bit early even in this trade. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a poet or a playwright. History, now, that might be more interesting. He’d certainly got a close-up on some of it.
“More refugees?” a lieutenant asked.
“I don’t think so,” the young captain said thoughtfully, raising his glasses.
The picket of the 5th was two kilometers out from Sandoral: the roads were thick with refugees, heading into the city and then being routed out. It was better to intercept them a ways from the gates, to avoid crowding the roadways nearer the city. Two troops and a splatgun were enough to discourage even the most hysterical from bolting to the shelter of the walls. By now, most of them had gotten the message. There was a continuous traffic out of town too, hopeful magnates with their valuables in wagons, realistic ones with the hard cash on pack-dogs and the family in a fast well-sprung carriage.
It was easy duty, a way to rest the troops; a nice little date grove for shade, a good well for water. Some resourceful soul had a fire going and a couple of chickens roasting over it; the peons would never miss them. The smell was a pleasant overlay to the usual odors of dog and sweat-soaked wool uniforms and gun oil.
Foley wiped his face with his red-and-black checked neckcloth. Ironic, he thought. The 5th Descott had looted a warehouse full of them back in El Djem, the Colonial border town southwest of here. They’d just barely made it back alive from that one, after Tewfik mousetrapped them, but the scarves had become a unit trademark; it was as much as a soldier’s life was worth to wear one, if he wasn’t in the 5th.
The column of dust was heading in from the northwest, just now down into the flat irrigated land around Sandoral. Suspiciously regular dust, columns of it, with a thinner, wider film in front. Very much what a couple of battalions of Civil Government cavalry would make, riding hard in column with their scout-screens out ahead, all regulation and by the book. He waited until the first of the vedettes came into view, checked the silhouette and the breed of dog.
“Message to the Heneralissimo,” he said. “The Cruisers and Welf’s Brigaderos are here.”
Very good time, too. No more than five days from the time they left East Residence just ahead of the first trains. Even with the railroad to supply them, it was a creditable performance, particularly if the dogs were still fit for action.
He was a little surprised. Those fair MilGov complexions were extremely pretty, but he’d doubted they could take the Eastern sun.
“Good timing,” Raj said.
Ludwig Bellamy and Teodore Welf looked more like twins than ever, down to the thick coating of gray-white dust on their faces and the dark streaks of sweat through it.
“Rail convoys on schedule?” Bellamy asked.
They moved forward under the awning and collected bowls of soup and a bannock each; the line parted to let them through, but it was the same food as the troopers were waiting for. The medical staff—priest-doctors and nuns—was manning the pots, since there weren’t any wounded to care for so far. Suzette dashed by, stopping long enough to thrust a cup of watered wine into Raj’s hand. The others were dipping water out of a bucket; Ludwig waited politely until the others had drunk, then dumped the remainder over his head.
“I needed that,” he said; the grin made you realize he wasn’t yet thirty.
Neither am I, Raj remembered with slight surprise. He felt older, though.
Aloud, he went on: “I’ll give Barholm Clerett that, he does get the trains running on time. We’re expecting the last in at any moment. How are your men?”
“They’ll be ready to fight after a night’s sleep; and the dogs are mostly sound-footed. We took your advice and commandeered a big pack of remounts from the East Residence reserve before we left.” Bellamy looked around. “You haven’t been wasting time here.”
There were few civilians left on the streets of Sandoral. Instead they swarmed with soldiers and dogs, wagons and carts, and an ordered chaos of movement under the harsh southern sun. The garrison infantry were doing most of the hauling and pushing, but they looked better fed, and far better dressed. A thud and plume of smoke and dust marked another house being demolished for building materials; off in the distance sounded the heep . . . heep of troops being drilled and a crackle of musketry practice. The artillery park filled most of the square, guns nose-to-trail with their limbers waiting behind, and Dinnalsyn’s gunners giving them a last going-over.
“Speak of the devil,” Bartin Foley said, smiling fondly.
A bugle sounded, and the color party of the 5th Descott came trotting into the square, the battalion banner floating beside the blue and silver Starburst of Holy Federation. Gerrin Staenbridge heeled his mount over to the clump of officers and saluted with an ironic flourish.
“Mi heneral, the remainder of your force, reporting as ordered.” He looked around in his turn. “I see you’ve started the party without me.”
“Just laying in the drinks and rehearsing the band, Gerrin,” Raj said. “No problem getting under way?”
“No, but there might have been if I’d lingered. Our good Chancellor Tzetzas isn’t happy about having the field army so far from home, at all, at all. If I hadn’t taken the last of the trains, I suspect the bureaucrats would have followed me all the way here to argue with you about it.”
Raj laughed harshly. “Not with Ali so close,” he said. “Although our good Commandant Osterville is almost as much of a pest, in his way. And he is here.”
“Speak of the devil,” Foley said again, his voice flat as gunmetal this time.
He took Staenbridge’s arm and began whispering rapidly, gesturing with the hook on his left arm.
Raj caught his own name and Suzette once or twice.
The Commandant of Sandoral and District was pushing his way through the thronging mass in the square; not looking very happy, and unhappier by the minute at the lack of deference, from Raj’s veterans and from what were supposedly his own troops.
“Whitehall,” he said. “General Whitehall,” he amended; Raj’s face was politely blank, but several of the Companions had dropped their hands to pistol-butts or the hilts of their sabers.
“Where the Starless Dark have you been?”
Raj straightened, finished the wine, and dipped his bannock into the stew. “Well, Commandant, I’ve been rather busy—getting ready for the war, you see.”
Somebody chuckled, and Osterville turned a mottled color. “I’ll thank you to accompany me to my headquarters,” he said. “We’ve got several things to discuss.”
“If you want to talk, Colonel, you’ll talk here and now. Because as I mentioned, there is a war impending.”
Words burst from the smaller man. “You’re destroying my city!” he barked. “I’ve received petitions from every man of rank in the district—”
Raj raised an eyebrow. “I don’t doubt you have,” he said. “Let them petition Ali. That’s the alternative, and I think they’d like his methods even less than mine. In any case, as you’ve made clear, you’re the supreme civil authority in this area; relations with the local nobility are your responsibility.”
The Commandant opened his mouth and closed it again. He snapped his fingers, and an aide put a sheaf of documents in his hand.
“Perhaps you’ve been too busy,” he said, “to read these dispatches from the Capital? They’ve been coming over the semaphore by the dozens.”
Raj mopped his bowl with the heel of the bannock and plucked the papers out of the smaller man’s hand. He glanced through them, chewed, swallowed.
“Oh, I’ve been reading them,” he said.
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