Hope Renewed

by S. M. Stirling

  “Damn,” Raj said aloud. “Runner, to battalion commanders. Get the fires going and pull back.”

  A shell burst twenty yards ahead. Raj stood in his stirrups and brought out his field glasses, sweeping along the walls. Chaos, but active chaos—groups in the crimson djellabas of Colonial regular troops, infantry from the looks of them, and the white-and-colored patchwork of city militia. More and more of the fortress guns were getting into operation, too.

  He turned Horace to the rear. “Come on, let’s get out before the fires spread.”

  He was conscious of a few odd looks. Technically, this was a defeat—they hadn’t been able to rush the gates, despite the shambolic panic of the Colonial garrison’s response. Raj grinned a little wider.

  A reputation for having something up your sleeve could be quite helpful. Even when you did have something up your sleeve.

  Suzette was flexing her arm, wincing only a little, as they turned and trotted back through the smoke and noise. Shells whirred by overhead; ash and bits of debris fell into the dirt streets about them.

  I’m almost glad that happened, Raj thought. Something sounded an interrogative at the back of his mind. I was beginning to wonder whether I’d lost my capacity for strong emotion.

  i am not contagious.

  The hell you’re not, Raj thought. For example, I wouldn’t have dared to talk this way to an angel a few years ago. He looked down at the city. For another, I wouldn’t do what I’m going to do to Osterville a few years ago. Even to Osterville.

  ah. that is the effect known as “life,” raj whitehall. and it is contagious; not only that, but fatal. for all of us.

  “Should be ready in about three hours, mi heneral,” Dinnalsyn said.

  The gunner and Raj stood together outside the earthworks, five kilometers from Ain el-Hilwa. Two thousand troopers and as many press-ganged Colonial refugees dug steadily, hauling the dirt from the growing ditch upslope in baskets, buckets, helmets, and cloth slings improvised from coats. The sun was high, and the men sweated as they worked; an hour on and an hour off, with the off spent standing guard or watering and feeding the dogs. The earthwork fort was two hundred meters on a side, a standard marching camp with a ditch as deep as a standing man, an earthwork rampart as high inside with a palisade on top, and bastions at the corners and gates with V-notches for the guns. The air was full of the smell of sweat and freshly turned earth.

  He walked over to the edge. “Found that buried cask of beer yet, dog-brothers?” Raj called in Namerique.

  The big fair men in the nearest section groaned laughter. “Don’t worry, lord,” one yelled back. “By the Spirit of Man of This Earth, we’ll have a grave big enough for all the enemy we kill if it takes us all day.”

  Raj waved as he turned away. Not bad, he thought. Back home, these men scorned digging in the earth as fit for peons and women; real men fought, hunted, and drank. They’d learned something of soldiering, then—granted he’d had to kill about a third of the adult males in their nations to get their attention, but they were learning.

  Within the enclosure medics were setting up, and tents being pitched in neat rows along the streets; everything necessary for a mobile military city of five thousand men. It could be made more elaborate the longer they stayed, but by midafternoon the camp would be ready to defend. It was said, not without truth, that watching a Civil Government army encamp was more discouraging for barbarians than fighting a battle with them. The Colonials wouldn’t be intimidated, but they’d know exactly how hard it was to storm this sort of earthworks.

  “Good, Grammeck,” he said. “Keep pushing it. Gerrin, once we’ve got the wall up, let all these Colonials go—it won’t hurt the troops to finish up by themselves. Kaltin, you’ve got overwatch—”

  “Ser,” his color-sergeant said.

  Raj looked around. A party of Civil Government officers was riding up; not his own, Osterville’s banner. Raj waited in silence.

  “General,” Osterville said.

  “Colonel,” Raj replied. Formally: “Colonel Osterville, I’m ordering you to bring your command within the walls of this encampment.”

  Osterville sneered, a rather theatrical expression. “I’ll have to deprive you and Messa Whitehall of that pleasure. As Commandant of the Military District of Sandoral, our authority is concurrent. These commands remain separate, and I’m not afraid of that lot of wogs over there.”

  He pointed; his own four battalions were setting up camp on a hill no more than a kilometer from the walls. Beyond that was a dense pall of smoke, as the ruins of the suburbs beyond the wall smoldered. Not coincidentally, there was an orchard and pleasant little country villa on the hill.

  “I warn you,” Raj went on, stroking his chin, “that the Colonials may try to sally. Your position is more vulnerable than mine.”

  Osterville spat—toward the city, which made the gesture ambiguous. “They’re scum, with incompetent officers. Obviously, or they’d be over the river with Ali, wouldn’t they?” His voice took on a faint hectoring, lecturing note. “Look at the way they reacted when we attacked this morning. As I said, I’m not afraid of them, and neither are my men. We’re staying where we are.”

  “By all means, Colonel Osterville,” Raj said mildly. “Perhaps it’s advisable, all things considered.”

  From the ranks of officers around Raj a loud whisper continued the thought: “Considering what our men would do to those garrison pussies who’ve been shorting the take.”

  Osterville’s head whipped around, finding a wall of bland politeness. He saluted and pulled his dog around, with a violence that brought a protesting whimper as the cheek-levers of the bridle gouged.

  “Ser.” A messenger this time, from the heliograph detachment who’d been setting up a relay back to the bridgehead. “Message from Colonel Menyez.”

  The silence grew tense. Raj read. “Ali’s arrived,” he said. “And tried the usual. So far—”

  observe, Center said.

  “Noisy beggars,” Major Ferdihando Felasquez said.

  The Colonial army was parading past the walls of Sandoral, fifty thousand strong. Tabor after tabor of mounted men in crimson djellabas and pantaloons, in a perfect order that rippled with the rise and fall of the trotting dogs. Between the blocks of men came guns, light pompoms and 70mm field pieces, with heavier siege weapons behind. Beyond that, on a hillock just out of medium artillery range, an enormous tent-pavilion in brilliant stripes was already going up. From the tallest pole flew the green crescent banner and the peacock of the Settlers.

  And over it all came an inhuman pulse of drums, like the beating heart of some great beast. Beneath that the clang of cymbals and the brazen scream of long curled trumpets.

  Felasquez tapped his gauntlets against his thigh. “Should we send them a few love-notes?” he asked. “Some of the heavier pieces on the wall could reach that far.”

  “No,” Jorg Menyez said, scanning down the line of units with the big tripod-mounted field glasses. “We’re playing for time, so there’s no sense in poking the sauroid through the bars. Ah, yes. Notice something?”

  He stepped aside and Felasquez bent to the eyepieces. A forest of banners was going up before the Settler’s pavilion. “Ali, Hussein the Wazir, the Grand Mufti of Sinnar, the Gederosian Dervishes . . . wait a minute.”

  Menyez nodded. “No Seal of Solomon. Tewfik’s not here.”

  “Unless they want us to think that.”

  “No, that’s not the way Colonials think.”

  Felasquez nodded. “I’d still feel easier if you weren’t splitting up so much of the 24th Valencia,” he went on.

  “The garrison infantry need stiffening; we haven’t had enough time to work them into first-class shape.”

  “You can’t stiffen a bucket of spit with a handful of lead shot,” Felasquez said.

  Menyez clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not as bad as all that. They’re trained men, sound at bottom; they’ve just been neglected recently. Standing b
ehind a parapet and shooting is about the easiest type of combat for ’em. They just need some examples. How’re the militia-gunner volunteers showing?”

  “Pretty well; still have to see how they stand fire, of course. But the ones who stayed were the ones who wanted to fight. A lot of them were with us when we fought Jamal, five years ago.”

  Along the walls of Sandoral men stood to the parapet and looked out the merlons, but their numbers were sparse. Most of the garrison stood to in the cleared space within the walls, or waited in their billets. Apart from them the city was a ghostly place, where little moved but rats and cats almost as feral.

  “It’s all waiting now,” Menyez went on, “and I want my supper. Runner; message to the Heneralissimo—”

  This time the viewpoint shifted to a point on the rail line west. Raj recognized it: a long viaduct over a gully that was a torrent in the winter and spring. The burning remnants of the wooden trestle bridge lay scattered below.

  A long file of Colonial dragoons rose from prayer and rolled up their issue rugs. Naiks and rissaldars screamed at them, and they returned to their work—hacking through the ties of the railway line. As each section of track came loose, they carried it at a run to one of the bonfires that blazed at intervals down the line and threw it on. The dry wood flared up like tinder, and in the heart of the furnace-heat he could see the thin strap iron turning cherry-red and then yellow, slumping and twisting into a mass of metallic spaghetti that would have to be carted to the forges and rolling-mills as scrap.

  Raj nodded to himself, tight-lipped. No surprise; a railroad was the best military target there was. But it had taken generations to get the line from Sandoral to East Residence completed; until Barholm Clerett came to the throne and Raj reconquered the territories to the west, there always seemed to be a more urgent short-term priority.

  The Colonials were doing a good professional job of the wrecking, and there were a lot of them.

  Dust smoked up from the road. Sweat dripped off the twenty-hitch train of oxen as they strained at the trek-chain. The big tented wagon rolled forward, its axles groaning, man-high wheels turning at the steady, inexorable pace that would take it ten kilometers a day and neither more nor less. It was one of a line of two dozen, between them taking up several kilometers of road; all of them had the Crescent pyrographed on the wood of their sides, and the Peacock stenciled on their tilts.

  The load was sacked grain, and bales of a repulsive-looking dried fish; even in the holographic vision he could imagine the mealy, oily smell of it. Advocati, the staple dog-fodder of the Drangosh valley, a sucker-mouthed parasitic bottom-feeder with no backbone. Dogs would eat it, just; even slaves would refuse it if they could. As he watched, the oxen halted as the drivers snapped their whips. Men with baskets of grain and dried alfalfa pellets went down the train, dumping loads by the draft cattle.

  The escort sank down and unlimbered the goatskin water-bottles at their waists, stacking their light lever-action rifles. Infantry, with short curved falchions at their belts rather than the scimitars of the cavalry. Tewfik wouldn’t be wasting his best men on duty like this, but here was about a platoon of them. The drovers were civilians, slight men in ragged clothes.

  A voice called, and drovers and soldiers alike knelt in the dust, performing the ritual washing and unrolling their mats. A call, and they knelt to distant Sinnar, the holy city where the first humans on Bellevue had landed, bringing a fragment of the ka’ba from ruined Mecca.

  A Colonial officer with gold-rimmed spectacles and a green-dyed beard stood beside a hole. It was outside the walls of Sandoral—he could see the city in the middle distance—but outside ordinary artillery range. There were several hundred Colonials working in the hole, mostly stripped to their loincloths, but they had the look of soldiers. Probably engineers; the Colony had whole units of them, rather than expecting line units to be able to double up at need, the way the Civil Government did. He’d never seen men work harder, or with more skill.

  Picks were flying; plank ramps went down into the hole, and wheelbarrows came up at a trot, full of earth. The dirt was piled neatly in heaps not far away; other men were filling sandbags from the heaps. Still more shaped timber, raw beams from orchards around the city, or seasoned timber salvaged from houses. A knocked-down floor of planks waited to be assembled.

  A bunker, Raj decided. Cursed large one, too. Probably for Ali.

  Raj blinked, conscious of the eyes on him. They were all used to his . . . spells of inattention . . . by now.

  He cleared his throat. “Ali’s reached Sandoral and he’s digging in around the city. So far he hasn’t mounted an assault—bringing up his siege train, at a guess. He’s got the full fifty thousand men with him; it must be straining his supply of wagons and fodder to keep them fed. Tewfik’s banner isn’t with the main army.”

  There was a stir at that. “What do we do, mi heneral?” Staenbridge asked.

  “We dig, and we wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For the wogs” —he nodded toward Ain el-Hilwa— “to take the bait. In which case, we—”

  The officers waited in silence, a few taking notes. “Is all that clear?” Raj finished.

  “No reserve?” Staenbridge asked.

  “Not this time; it’s a calculated risk, but so’s this whole expedition.”

  He turned and looked at the Arab city, surrounded by the smoldering wreck of its suburbs, crammed to the very wall with refugees.

  “Either this will be easy, or it’ll be impossible,” he said.

  probability of action proceeding according to current projections, 78%±7, Center said helpfully.

  “I’d put it at about three to one on easy,” he went on. “If not, we’ll just have to react fast.”

  “When you go by the Camina Bellica

  As thousands have traveled before

  Remember the Luck of the Soldier

  Who never saw home anymore!

  Oh, dear was the lover who kissed him

  And dear was the mother that bore;

  But then they found his sword in the heather,

  And he never saw home anymore!”

  “Ser.” Antin M’lewis was Officer of the Day; he slipped into the circle around the fire. “Major Hwadeloupe t’see yer.”

  Raj finished the mouthful of fig-bread and dusted his hands, leaning back on the cushions—someone had salvaged them from a nearby Colonial mansion, and they were all resting on them and the Al Kebir carpets from the same source. A roast sheep on rice had been demolished, and they were punishing the sweetmeats and pastries the Colonials were famous for. The wine was too sweet, even diluted, but nobody was drinking all that much of it anyway; they knew him better than that. The firelight played on the faces around it, bringing out scars on Kaltin Gruder’s as he leaned forward to light a twig and puff a cheroot alight.

  “By all means, Antin, bring him along,” Raj said.

  Hwadeloupe commanded the 44th Camarina Dragoons, one of Osterville’s battalions.

  “An’ ser . . . he’s got ‘is men out there. Hunnerts of ’em, not too far.”

  “Keep an eye on them, Captain.”

  The strong male voices were roaring out the next verse, the one that had gotten the song officially banned centuries ago. It was a truth the Governors preferred that the Army not be too conscious of:

  “When you go by the Camina Bellica

  From the City to Sandoral,

  Remember the Luck of the Soldier

  Who rose to be master of all!

  He carried the rifle and saber,

  He stood his watch and rode tall,

  Till the Army hailed him as Governor

  And he rose to be master of all!”

  “Glad you could join us,” Raj said as Hwadeloupe strode up. “No, no, no salutes in the mess, Major. Have some wine.”

  The soldier-servant handed him a mug of half-and-half, watered wine. He gripped it distractedly, a middle-aged man with the marks of long ser
vice on the southern border on his leathery face.

  “Mi heneral, if we could speak privately?”

  “I have no secrets from my officers and Companions, Major.” Not quite true, but it was a polite way of telling Hwadeloupe that he couldn’t expect to hedge his bets.

  “Ah . . . sir, I would like to transfer my battalion to your command—to this encampment, that is.”

  The rest of the command group had fallen silent; Suzette kept strumming her gittar, but softly. Without the song, the minor noises of the camp came through: dogs growling, a challenge from the walls, the iron clatter of a field gun’s breechblock being opened for some reason.

  “If I might ask why?” Raj went on implacably.

  Hwadeloupe stood very straight. “Sir. Colonel Osterville thinks there’s no risk from the garrison of Ain el-Hilwa. But I know you don’t think so, and I see your men still have their boots on, and your guns are limbered up. Colonel Osterville may be right. On the whole, though, when he and you disagree, I’ll bet on you. With respect, sir.”

  Raj shoulder-rolled and came erect. “I can always use good men,” he said. “And I don’t think you’ll regret that decision. Captain M’lewis will show your men to their bivouac area within the earthworks.”

  “Ah, sir. There’s one other matter.” Hwadeloupe kept his eyes fixed over Raj’s shoulder. “We have, ah, a considerable quantity of booty with us. Just picked up, you understand. We’d like to turn it in now to the common fund, as per your standing orders.”

  Raj raised an eyebrow; one of Gerrin’s expressions, and very useful in situations like this. “That’s odd, Major. We’ve had several smaller parties in from Colonel Osterville’s camp, and they’ve all had some late-arriving booty to turn in too.” He extended his hand. “No hard feelings. M’lewis will settle your people in.”