Hope Renewed

by S. M. Stirling

  “Git t’kiddies out an’ a-down by t’church, t’mosque, whatever.” Orders were to spare noncombatants and the unresisting. “Yer!” He shouted through the ground-floor door. “Whin yer finished, set t’cookin’ oil around.”

  That would start the fire nicely. He took a deep breath and exhaled, letting the tight belly-clamping tension of action fade a little. A pissant little skirmish, but he’d been in the Army seven years now, since he turned eighteen, and he knew you could die just as dead that way as in a major battle.

  “And Smeet, plug that.”

  Trooper Smeet had a tear in the side of his jacket, and it was sodden and dripping. “ ‘Tis nuttin’,” he said. “We’ll a’ git kilt anyways—”

  “Did I asks yer?” M’Telgez said, scowling. “Did I?”

  “Co’pral half a year and already drunk wit’ power,” Smeet said, grinning with an expression that was half wince. He was coming down off the combat-high too; often you didn’t really feel a minor wound until you had time to think about it. He leaned his rifle against a wall and shrugged out of his webbing gear and jacket. “I bin co’pral six, seven times—t’ feelin’ don’t last nohows, dog-brother.”

  There was an ugly flesh wound along his ribs, only beginning to crust. One of his comrades washed it from his canteen, then applied the blessed powder and sealed, the priest-made bandage they all carried in a pouch on their belts. Smeet yelped and swore; the stuff stung badly, and many of the less pious men wouldn’t use it on a cut unless you stood over them. M’Telgez wasn’t much of a Church-going man, but Messer Raj insisted on following Church canons in such things, which was good enough for him.

  The attending trooper used his bayonet to cut off one of the tails of Smeet’s jacket, ripping it in half and using it to bind the padding over his ribs.

  “An’ git t’priest at it, soon as, or ye’ll feel me boot up yer arse,” M’Telgez warned. Smeet was a good enough fighting man, but he tended to be slack about kit and such.

  M’Telgez looked down at the woman and smiled.

  Pillars of black smoke stood out against the northern horizon. The smell drifted down with the wind, full of the unpleasant smells of things that should not burn. White-hot, the noon sun burned most color out of the land, turning the reaped grainfields to a pale yellow dust. Blocks of alfalfa and berseem-clover were almost eye-hurtingly vivid, and the odd patch of fruit trees or olives cast shade dense and black and sharp-edged. Where the 7th Descott Rangers waited beside their dogs, there was welcome shade from rows of eucalyptus on either side of the road, but the air was still and very hot. Insects shrilled in the dust, and a few tiny pterosauroids swooped after them, their long triangle-tipped tails flickering as they scooped cicadas into their needle-toothed little jaws.

  The men squatted patiently beside their mounts, the gun teams lying down in their traces, satisfied after their drink in the roadside canal. The beasts looked glossy-coated and strong despite the heat and hard work; the all-meat diet of plundered Colonial stock agreed with them, after the usual mash of grain and beans eked out with bones and offal. Kaltin Gruder stood, eating grapes from the bunches in the helmet he held reversed in his left hand, waiting with the same stolidity as his troopers.

  He ate more grapes and smiled. He’d soldiered against the Military Governments in the west without passion, and as much occasional mercy as advisable. He was a noble of the Civil Government, a Descotter, and a professional; war was his trade, the only trade unless he wanted the Church or to go home to the County and chase rustlers. The Colonials, though . . . his younger brother had died from a Colonial shellburst, in the El Djem campaign. He rubbed one thumb down the deep parallel scars that seamed the left side of his face.

  This was personal.

  The sound of paws came from the north, and the whistle of the pickets in their ambush positions passing them through. The scouts trotted up to him, sitting easily with their rifles across their thighs. The lieutenant who led them saluted.

  “Seyhor,” he said. “Sir. About two thousand of them; many carriages and dogs, and a substantial number of armed men.”

  “Regulars?”

  “Ferramenti, danad, seyhor,” the young officer replied. “I’d swear, nothing, sir. Household guards, no twenty in the same livery.”

  That was the advantage of counter-attacking. Most of the military nobles, the amirs, and their ghazis would be over on the west bank, with Ali—all the ones who had any desire to fight and die for Islam, at least. Ali had gotten overconfident.

  Still, it wouldn’t do to emulate his mistake. Fighting for their homes and families could make even rabble desperate.

  “Company commanders,” he said.

  Back along the road men shifted as the word passed down, fastening their webbing, here a man checking his rifle or tightening the girth on a dog. The mounts took their cues from their masters, keeping a well-drilled silence, but they bristled. The unit commanders gathered around Gruder’s banner.

  “The objective,” he said, crouching and drawing in the dirt with a twig, “is a column of refugees about half a klick north. They’re coming at fair speed for civilians, but we’ve gotten ahead of them. We’ll debouch, deploy—so—and put in an attack. Captain Morinez, bring your guns along at the trot, if you please.

  “The general order is to kill anyone who resists; let the rest run, as long as they do it on foot. We’ll take provisions, spare dogs—I want to put the ammunition reserve in pack-saddles—and any high-value loot.” He dumped the grapes out of his helmet and buckled it on. “Burn or smash whatever we don’t take. Oh, and we’re not taking any hundred-pound bundles of loot, either, so wooers be swift—or refrain.”

  There was a harsh chuckle, and nods. This was a military picnic so far; it wouldn’t stay that way, but there was no reason not to make the most of it while they could.

  “Hell or plunder, dog-brothers.” He straddled his dog Fihdel and his feet found the stirrups as it rose. “Boots and saddles, gentlemen.”

  “Approximately one hundred seventy-seven thousand four hundred FedCreds. Gold,” Muzzaf Kerpatik added. “That’s allowing for the usual discounts on sales.”

  Raj grunted noncommittally, leaning one hand against the tentpole. It was a captured tent, from the baggage train Kaltin had overrun; they’d leave it behind in the morning. He looked out across the camp—not much of one, just the picket lines of staked-out dogs, the men cooking around their campfires. Odd to be in a camp where you heard more Namerique than Sponglish, but the central group was mostly MilGov troopers. Fruits of conquest. That was the true spoil of war; peace in the lands he’d retaken, and their fighting men here defending the Civil Government.

  The MilGov soldiers, the ex-warriors of the Squadron and Brigade, were happy enough. An easy campaign so far, under leaders they trusted; they were warriors by birth and professional soldiers by the trade he’d given them, and indifferent to who they fought.

  The sun was setting in the west, over toward the Drangosh thirty kilometers distant. It was hazed with burning, crops and buildings and towns; the raiding force had smashed a path of devastation a hundred kilometers southward. He could smell the smoke, faint under the cooking and dog odors of a war-camp.

  “How much of that plunder is from Osterville’s group?” Raj asked.

  “Ah, unfortunately Colonel Osterville’s battalions have had poor luck. Less than two thousand from them.”

  A chuckle ran around the table behind him. “I don’t think,” Raj said, “the men are going to find it amusing that Osterville’s boys are holding out on them. Particularly given the recent service records, respectively.”

  “Raj, darling,” Suzette said. “Do come and sit down. Or pace like a caged dog, but make up your mind.”

  He shrugged a little sheepishly and returned, sitting and taking up a drumstick. It was sauroid, but tasted pretty much like the chicken that was the alternative. As usual, Suzette had managed to find something better than you had any right to expect in the field;
of course, the pickings were good. He stoked himself methodically.

  “You don’t like this, do you, darling?” Suzette said.

  “No,” Raj said. “I’m a thrifty man. The looting’s good here because this area hasn’t been fought over in a long time. It’ll be generations recovering.”

  “Which will weaken the Colony,” Gerrin Staenbridge pointed out.

  He’d managed to shave and find a clean uniform, which was a minor miracle when they were all living out of saddlebags. Every man pays the price he will for what he values, Raj thought. Gerrin dressed for dinner the way he dressed line for a charge, with finicky care, as a mark of civilization.

  “That’s assuming the stalemate continues out here,” Raj said. “The Civil Government of Holy Federation is the legitimate ruler of all humankind. The Colonials included.”

  Staenbridge raised an eyebrow: “Well, it hasn’t had much luck enforcing that for millennia or so,” he pointed out.

  During which time the Colonials had besieged East Residence twice and the Civil Government had reached as far as Al Kebir once.

  “I don’t like it either,” Bartin Foley said.

  They looked at him, and the younger man dropped his eyes to the cut-down shotgun on the table before him, his single hand slowly reassembling the clean, oil-gleaming parts. They went together with smooth clicks and snaps, and he slid it into the harness he usually wore over his back.

  “It’s not real soldiers’ work, harrying peasants like this,” he went on doggedly.

  Gerrin and Raj nodded in chorus, and smiled at the coincidence. “Not good for morale, really,” Raj said. “Not too much of it.”

  “Gets the men thinking like bandits,” Staenbridge agreed.

  Suzette shook her head. “Such perfect knights,” she said with gentle mockery. Then: “Ah, Abdullah.”

  The Druze entered with two suspicious troopers at his heel, their bayonets hovering not far from his kidneys, and Antin M’lewis to one side. He bowed: “Sayyid. Sayyida.”

  Raj leaned back in the captured folding chair, some amir’s hunting equipment. I’ll be damned. I didn’t expect to see him alive again, I really didn’t. Suzette had an eye for picking reliable servants, though.

  “That’s all, men,” he said to the troopers. They hesitated, and his tone grew dry. “I can handle one Arab, thank you.” They saluted, threw Abdullah a warning glance, and wheeled smartly out.

  Damn, this living legend shit can get wearing. The men wouldn’t leave him alone for a moment, watching, listening, guarding. Damn their dear loyal souls. What was he, an invalid?

  you are their talisman, Center said. without you they would feel themselves lost.

  I’m only one man, Raj thought/protested. And I’ve got competent officers.

  belief is its own reality.

  Abdullah pulled documents from his ha’aik. He also accepted a goblet of watered wine; his particular brand of exceedingly eccentric shi’a Islam had some liberal notions.

  “Lord,” he began. “Ain el-Hilwa is swollen to bursting with refugees. Perhaps a hundred and seventy, a hundred and eighty thousand in all. They crowd the city and the suburbs outside the wall.”

  Raj nodded. That was no surprise. The spy’s long brown fingers moved dishes to tack down the map and papers against the warm breeze of evening.

  “The garrison includes ten thousand men of the Settler’s regulars and the ghazis of the local amirs, but of these no more than two hundred are of single tabors.” Banners, the Colonial equivalent of the Civil Government’s battalions, although usually a little smaller. “The rest have been sent on detachment to the Settler’s army across the Drangosh.

  “Likewise, their officers quarrel. The provincial wali, Muhmed bin Tarish, is a court favorite; he hides among his women and sends messages commanding the men to stand fast within the walls. Haffez al’Husseini, the most senior of the military officers, is a veteran of the Zanj wars, but slowed by his wounds. He—”

  The report flowed on, full and concise; units, strengths, weapons, dispositions, guns, the state of the fortifications and the water supply (which was good, since the city straddled the Ghor Canal). Center drew holographic projections over the map.

  Abdullah’s voice ceased. The others waited, in a silence filled by the flutter of canvas in the wind and the muted sounds of the camp; a dog howling, the brass of a trumpet calling, a challenge and response at an outlying vedette. Ten minutes later Raj blinked.

  “Yes,” he said, softly, to himself. “That should do.” He looked up. “Excellent work, Abdullah. You won’t regret it.”

  Abdullah bowed. “My life is to serve, sayyid.”

  Raj waved a hand. “If your son still wants that cavalry ensign’s commission—and I’m still around and in command when he turns sixteen—it’s his.”

  A very rare honor for one not of the Star Church; although Abdullah’s faith allowed its adherents to freely observe the ceremonies of other religions, where advisable. The Druze bowed again, more deeply.

  “Gerrin,” Raj went on. “We’ll be concentrated by 0900 tomorrow?”

  “All except for Osterville,” Staenbridge said. “But he’s—”

  “—closer nor he said, ser,” M’lewis put in. “Nobbut six klicks east.”

  Raj nodded. “Here’s what we’ll do. Bartin, write this up. At dawn—”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Allahu Akbar! Gur! Gur!”

  The band of Colonials swept out of a side street in the maze of alleys. The morning sun burned bright on their scimitars and spiked helmets; beneath their djellabas they had wound tight linen strips, the winding-sheets of men determined to seek Paradise in battle with the unbelievers.

  The main street was narrow and crooked as well; only one file of troopers was between Raj and the attack. Horace spun beneath him with a roaring growl, and his hand swept out saber and pistol. A grid of green lines clamped down over his vision, and the outlines of the Colonial troopers glowed. One strobed; the one with his carbine in his hands. Still a hundred paces away: a long pistol-shot but not impossible for a skilled man on dogback to make with a shoulder-weapon. And the Arab looked good. . . .

  Raj moved his wrist. A red dot settled on the Colonial’s midriff. His finger squeezed the trigger. Crack. The carbineer flipped over the cantle of his saddle. Crack. Another down. Place the dot and the bullet went where Center indicated it would. Crack—crack—crack. The revolver was empty, and the Colonials were through.

  A clang of steel on steel as a scimitar met his saber. He flexed his wrist to let the sharply curved blade hiss by, then cut backhand across the Arab’s face. A second was barreling in with his blade upraised. Horace lunged with open mouth for the Bazenji’s throat. Raj stabbed, and the point of his weapon went in below the breastbone. He ripped it free with desperate strength, wheeling. Suzette’s carbine clanged and nearly dropped from her hands as she used it to deflect a cut. Raj rose in the stirrups and chopped downward; there was a jar like the blade hitting seasoned oak, and a splitting sound. It nearly wrenched from his hand, sunk to brow-level in the Colonial’s skull, but the weight of the falling body pulled the metal free.

  There had been no time for fear. Something contracted in a hard knot under his ribs when he saw his wife clutching at her upper arm.

  “It’s nothing, light cut,” she said.

  He checked; in the background rifles barked as the troopers put down the dogs of the dead Arabs where they stood snarling over their masters’ bodies. She was right; she held a dressing over the superficial wound while he tied it off.

  “Damn, that was too close,” he said. “Anyone else wounded?”

  His bannerman had gashed fingers where he’d used the staff to block a cut. Suzette heeled Harbie closer and went to work on that. The sergeant of the color-party was looking at him wide-eyed.

  “Spirit, ser,” he blurted. “Five dead wit’ five shots!”

  Raj felt a flush of embarrassment. He wasn’t actually a first-rate pistol-sho
t; the sword was his personal weapon of choice, and with that he was very good. With Center’s eerie trick, you didn’t have to be good. He didn’t much like the experience. It was too much like being a weapon yourself, in another’s hand.

  Whatever works, he thought.

  precisely.

  “Keep moving,” he said sharply.

  The suburbs of Ain el-Hilwa were burning already, as the Civil Government troops shot and hacked their way through the crowds who ran screaming towards the gates. Shells went by overhead in long ripping-canvas arcs, to crash on the massive stone-faced walls behind the moat. It was a wet moat, full of canal water, right now dark with the heads of refugees swimming across; and getting no help from the garrison. The gates were jammed tight with a press of humanity.

  “Forward!” he said again. “Dammit, bugler, sound Advance at speed!”

  The brazen scream cut through the white noise of the crowds, the gathering roar of the flames. Sheer press of numbers was slowing the advance despite complete surprise. The people ahead wanted to get out of the way of the sharp blades and snarling meter-long jaws and rifle fire; they couldn’t.

  Should have stayed in their houses, he thought—or in the sprawling city of reed shanties and tents outside the suburbs. There was no wisdom in panic.

  A field gun bounced up behind him. The crew pulled the trail free of the limber and spun it around, running it forward with the long pole held up and the nose of the gun down. They pushed it through the front line of Civil Government troopers and let the trail fall.

  “Stand clear!” the gun commander said. He skipped aside himself and pulled the lanyard.

  Pomph. The shock of discharge slapped at him, bouncing back and forth from the narrow walls.

  So did the hundreds of lead shot in the canister charge. Men—and women and children—splashed away from the spreading scythe of it.

  “Waymanos!” Raj shouted again. “Forward!”

  The buildings dropped away on either side as they came out into the broad cleared area around the moat. Cannon and pompoms were firing from the walls, but most of the shots went overhead, into the belt of houses, helping with the work of destruction. In the gates, the garrison were firing down into their own people, dropping handbombs and pouring burning naphtha from the murder-holes over the arched entrances to clear the press. The gates swung shut, and the bridges over the moats gaped as hinged sections were pulled up.