The Sword

by S. M. Stirling

  A platoon of infantry passed him, rifles at their right shoulders and blanket rolls over the left. He read their shoulder-flashes, and gave the officer a salute.

  "Glad to have you with me again, 24th Valencia," he said. "That was good work you did at the siege of East Residence, and the pursuit."

  The lieutenant at their head snapped out his sword and returned the salute with a flourish. The men raised a deep shout of Raj! Raj! Some others picked it up, until he waved them to silence. In the relative quiet that followed, he heard a noncom cursing at a fatigue-party:

  "Didn't hear t' General tell ye t'stop workin', did ye? Move yer butts! Put yer backs inta it."

  What with one thing and another, it's probably for the best there's no time to address the men, he thought mordantly.

  A speech from the commander was customary before taking the field, but the last thing he needed right now was the inevitable spies—in East Residence they were even thicker than fleas and almost as common as bureaucrats—giving a lurid description of his troops crying him hail. Far too many Governors had started out as popular generals; bought popularity more often than not, but winning battles would do as well. It made any occupant of the Chair suspicious, and usually more comfortable with mediocrities holding the high military ranks.

  He looked around at the bustling yard: chaotic, but things were getting done.

  "Good work, Muzzaf," he said to the man riding at his side.

  The little Komarite looked up from his clipboard; there were dark circles under his eyes. "A matter of times and distances, solamnti," he said. "No different from calculating tonnages or profit margins." He grinned. "A pleasure working for a man who understands numbers, at that, my lord. Too few military nobles do."

  Few nobles have Center advising them, Raj thought. Aloud: "I say again, good work."

  It was that: a formidable bit of organization. Railways had been around for a long time now, but there had never been enough of them, or enough uninterrupted kilometers of line, to move large forces. He'd had enough to do managing the men; Muzzaf had been invaluable once Raj explained the basic idea. This was going to change warfare forever. Not that the railways were that much faster than dogback yet, but they were untiring—and more importantly, they could carry heavy supplies long distances at the same speed as light cavalry, without draft beasts eating up their loads or dying.

  And it never hurt to acknowledge when a man did something right, either. Another thing too many nobles did was simply snap their fingers and expect things to fall into place. It was the engineers and administrators that made the Civil Government more than another feudal pigsty.

  Muzzaf grinned. "Half of it was your lady's labors," he said. "Without her keeping the patricians off my back . . ." He shrugged meaningfully.

  Raj nodded. Suzette Whitehall had been born in East Residence, to fifteen generations of city nobility. Nobody knew how to work the system better. It was one of her manifold talents. The wonder is she picked a hill-squireen like me, he thought with a smile. He'd been nothing in particular then, just another land-poor Descotter nobleman making his way in the professionals like his fathers before him.

  And where-

  "My lady," he said.

  She stood with the command group, but she turned quickly at the sound of his voice. Her smile was slight, but it warmed the slanted gray eyes; Horace crouched, and Raj stepped free of the stirrups and bent over her hand. She was in Court walking-out dress, lace skirt split at the front and pinned back to show embroidered leggings, mantilla, the works. It surprised him; he'd expected her traveling gear. Fatima was beside her, carrying a tray with a bottle of Kelden Sparkler and several long-stemmed glasses, each with half a strawberry on its ice-cooled rim.

  He reached out a hand—not for the wine, it was too early for him—but for the fruit. She touched his fingers with her folded fan.

  "That's ammunition, my knight," she said.

  A party of officials was picking their way through the shouting chaos of soldiers and guns and dogs, heading his way. He recognized the Municipal Prefect of East Residence—the Governors didn't allow the city an alcalle of its own, knowing the fickleness of an East Residence mob—and he looked deeply unhappy. Raj braced himself.

  "More time lost," he growled deep in his throat.

  Suzette touched him on the arm. "A minute, darling," she said. "I expected this. That's Rahol Himentez, and he had a mob stone his townhouse when the coal ran out one winter. He's had a bee in his breeches about it ever since."

  She swept off towards the dignitaries.

  "—winter reserves," Raj could hear the Prefect bleating. "And the enemy's on the Lower Drangosh, not the Upper—"

  But he stopped, and his flunkies with him, milling around as Suzette's soothing voice cut through the plaintive whine.

  Beside him, Gerrin Staenbridge chuckled with admiration. "Cut off by the flying squadron, by the Spirit," he said. "Commandeered my mistress to do it, too."

  One of the other officers laughed. "Small loss to you," he said. Staenbridge had an eye for handsome youths.

  "Well, she is the mother of my heir," he pointed out, and cocked an eye toward the civil servants Suzette had intercepted. They were beginning to move back towards the headquarters building, in a sort of Brownian motion gently shepherded by the women.

  Raj nodded curtly. "Right, gentlemen," he said to the circle of battalion commanders; most of them his Companions, all of them veterans. "Now, you've all got your maps?"

  They did, although some of the ex-barbarians, Squadrones and Brigaderos, were looking at them a little dubiously. The Civil Government's cartographic service was one of a number of advantages it had had over the Military Governments. Unfortunately, the Colony's mapmakers were just as skillful.

  "This campaign," he went on, meeting their eyes, "is what we've been training for these past five years."

  "Conquering half the world was a training exercise?" Ludwig Bellamy blurted.

  Raj nodded, with an expression a stranger might have mistaken for a smile. "No offense, Messers, but we're not fighting barbarians this time. If we hold out a sausage grinder, they're not going to scratch their heads, mutter and then obligingly ram their dicks into it while we turn the crank.

  "These are disciplined troops with first-rate equipment, operating closer to their base of supplies than we will be. And they have a first-rate commander; Tewfik ibn'Jamal is nobody's fool. I've fought him twice; lost one, won one—and the time I won, Tewfik had his father Jamal looking over his shoulder and jogging his elbow. Jamal was no commander."

  Gerrin nodded. "This time he's got Ali along," he pointed out. His square, handsome face was dark olive, more typical of Descott than Raj's, who had a grandmother from Kelden County in the northwest. "Ali's not only no commander, by all accounts he's a raving bloody lunatic."

  "That's our only advantage, and we'll need it. Messers, no mistakes this time. We move fast, and we hit like a hammer. Gerrin, detail two hundred of the 5th to me, and I'll take them ahead on the first train. You'll be rearguard here and come in on the last with the remainder of the battalion."

  He held up a hand when the other man began to protest. "I need someone here I can trust to see the plan carried out, Colonel."

  "We also serve who only stay and chivvy bureaucrats," Staenbridge said.

  "Ludwig," Raj went on. "We're short of rolling stock. I'm giving you the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers" —the former Squadron troops— "and the 3/591, 4/591 and 5/591" —all Brigaderos from the Western Territories— "and you'll follow on dogback. Entrain your baggage, commandeer what remounts you need from the Residence Area pens, and keep to the line of rail. You can pick up supplies at the railstops; nothing on the men but their weapons and personal gear. Understood?"

  Ludwig Bellamy slapped one gauntleted fist into the other. "Ci, mi heneral," he said, his Sponglish as pure as a native Civil Government officer; it even had a hint of a Descott Country rasp.

  Nobody would mistake him
for an Easterner, though. He stood a finger over Raj's 190 centimeters, and the hair cut in an Army bowl crop was yellow-blond. He'd been the son of a Squadron noble, one who surrendered to Raj to keep his lands. Ludwig had been part of the deal, a hostage for his father's good behavior. He was far more than that now. The man beside him was like enough to be his brother, and was his cousin-in-law; Teodore Welf, former second-in-command of the Brigade.

  He tapped his fingers on his sword-hilt; unlike his kinsman by marriage, he kept the shoulder-length hair of a Military Government officer, and wore the basket-hilted longsword of the Brigade rather than an Easterner's saber.

  "Good thinking, mi heneral," he said. "Some of the men . . ." He shrugged at the shrieking locomotives around them. "Well, they're not used to these modern refinements."

  "True, Major Welf," Raj said. Meaning, he thought, that steam engines scare them spitless. They probably thought they were captive demons. "It'll toughen them up, too. See that they get in some drill with their Armory rifles, Ludwig."

  Bellamy tossed his chin upward slightly in affirmation; with a slight start, Raj recognized the gesture as one of his own. How times change.

  "The Brigaderos can use some hard marching," Ludwig Bellamy said judiciously. Welf shrugged unwilling agreement. "They're good shots and good riders, but a bit soft in the arse."

  For that matter, there were plenty of officers in the Civil Government's armies who wouldn't dream of campaigning without half a dozen servants and a wagonload of luxuries.

  Not the ones who went to war with Raj Whitehall, though.

  "So." Raj turned to the other commanders. "Jorg, you and Ferdihando will bring the 17th Kelden Foot and the 24th Valencia on the next series of trains, right after me and my detachment of the 5th."

  Jorg Menyez was a slender balding man, with receding brownish hair and mild blue eyes, red-rimmed as usual. He was violently allergic to dogs, the reason he'd gone into the low-prestige infantry service.

  "Infantry first?" he said in mild surprise. He'd shown what foot soldiers could do if properly trained and led, but it was still odd.

  "I need reliable men in Sandoral right away," Raj said. "Osterville's in charge there. Dogs aren't the most urgent priority, where dealing with Osterville's the problem."

  There were a few snickers. Osterville had been sent to take over in the Southern Territories after the reconquest, when Raj was recalled in not-quite-disgrace. The command of the Fortress and District of Sandoral was quite a comedown. None of the officers who'd been with Raj had supported Osterville, for all that he was one of Barholm's Guards; that was one reason he'd lost the political struggle with Mihwel Berg of the Administrative Service. None of it was likely to make him kindly-disposed toward the Heneralissimo Supremo.

  Menyez sneezed thoughtfully into a handkerchief. "He's supposed to have twenty thousand men there," he said. "I doubt there's half that fit for duty." Osterville would be drawing the pay of the vacant ranks; it was a common enough scam, if not on quite that scale.

  "Five thousand if we're lucky, but that's more than enough to make trouble if Osterville's a mind to," Raj said. Insane to make trouble with the Colonials over the border, he thought absently—but he'd seen what jealousy could do to a man's mind. "Which is why I want your riflemen in place."

  "Si, mi heneral." Menyez frowned. "How did Berg manage to get Osterville canned from that post? Berg's not a bad sort, for a pen-pusher, but Osterville was one of Barholm's Guards, after all."

  Raj shrugged. "He's pretty sure I did it," he said. "Spirit knows why. In any case, we'll cross Messer Osterville when we come to him. Movement: after Colonel Menyez, the remainder of the cavalry," he went on, listing the battalions. "Any questions?"

  Kaltin Gruder, the commander of the 7th Descott Rangers, shrugged his heavy shoulders. Pale scars stood out against the olive tan of his face.

  "No problemo, mi heneral," he said. "Thrashing the wogboys has its attractions; the looting's good and I like the smell of harem girls."

  Raj clenched his teeth for a moment. There were times when the task of restoring civilization on Bellevue was like pushing a boulder up a greased slope. Gruder was a professional; he wasn't supposed to be thinking like a MilGov barbarian noble or an enlisted man . . . then he caught the grin and answered it.

  I talk to Center too much, he thought. Angels have no sense of humor, it seems.

  The cool irony that touched the back of his mind was wordless, but it communicated none the less.

  "Colonel Dinnalsyn, you'll space the guns out between the battalions. One last thing: we've a new issue of splatguns." There were exclamations of delight; the rapid-fire multibarreled guns were the first new weapon the Civil Government had adopted in a hundred twenty years. Raj had had them run up in the Kolobassian armories on his own authority—to Center's designs.

  "Four per battalion. Remember they're infantry weapons, not guns; push them forward, and we'll give the Colonials some of the grief their repeaters and pom-poms do to us. If that's all, then, we'll get under way."

  The Companions slapped fists in a pyramid of arms. "Hell or plunder, dog-brothers."

  Gerrin Staenbridge watched the tall figure of the General ride away. "As I remember it, wasn't Lady Anne Clerett the one who dropped a word about Osterville in our Sovereign Mighty Lord's ear? I wonder who talked to her?"

  They all looked in Suzette's direction. Staenbridge grinned. "Behind every great man . . ." he quoted.

  "You know, Messers," he went on, drawing on his gauntlets, "I was with Messer Raj back when he took command of the 5th in the El Djem business, south of Komar. Only five years . . . and that one man has changed the world—and changed himself."

  "Haven't we all," Kaltin Gruder said, touching the long scars on his face. The Colonist shrapnel that had carved those furrows had killed his younger brother, on Raj Whitehall's first independent campaign. "Haven't we all."

  Chapter Five

  "Damned hot," Tejan M'Brust said, using an end of his neckerchief to wipe his face.

  "No shit," Ludwig Bellamy replied.

  He reined aside to the verge of the road, his dog stepping wearily over the ditch and hanging its head, panting, under the shade of a plane tree.

  The troopers' dogs were panting too, a massed sound like hundreds of wheezing bellows as they rode by in column of fours. A knee-high fog of dust rose from the crushed rock surface of the road; he sneezed and hawked and spat to one side. The Descotter followed suit and offered him a canteen, water with vinegar. It cut the gummy saliva and dust nicely. Bellamy drank and watched the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers go by, the dogs at a fast ambling walk. Both units were under strength—they'd paid a substantial butcher's bill in the Western Territories and hadn't had time to recruit back to full roster yet—but they shaped well, to his critical eye. A few were even talking or joking as they rode, though most slumped a little, reins in one hand and eyes fixed on the rump of the dog ahead. The unit dressing was crisp, though.

  "They're shaping better than the Brigaderos," M'Brust said, echoing his thought. "I don't think there's a regular cavalry unit better, my oath I don't. Not even the 5th Descott."

  Ludwig nodded, grinning tiredly. His people, the Squadron, were accounted wilder than the Brigade; they'd come down from the Base Area later, and the Southern Territories they'd conquered had been a backwater. But these battalions had been longer under Messer Raj's discipline and were first-rate material to begin with, once they had childish notions about charging with cold steel knocked out of them.

  For a moment the skin between his shoulders crawled, as he remembered the Squadron host advancing into volley-fire and massed artillery. The chanting, the waving banners, the sun bright on a hundred thousand swords . . . and Raj Whitehall waiting, his men a thin blue line looking as fragile and ordered as a snowflake by comparison. Waiting, then raising his sword and chopping it downward. . . .

  He shook it off, removed his helmet and let the air dry his sweat-damp hair. To their left the l
and rose in rocky hills, dry and shimmering with heat in the summer sun. To the right were gentle slopes, citrus orchards, and then open grain-fields with peons bending over their sickles as they reaped. The dusty yellow of the wheat was like flashes of gold through the glossy green leaves of the fruit trees. More to the point, between road and orchards passed a rock-lined irrigation channel, and a slow current of water. It was dry and intensely hot here in the southern foothills of the Oxheads—the land was sloping down toward the sand deserts of the borderlands—and the sight and sound of the water was intoxicating. He squinted at the sun, then remembered to take out his watch and click open the cover; in the Southern Territories, even wealthy nobles hadn't carried them. There was no point; nobody needed to know the time that precisely, and they were impossible to keep repaired, anyway.

  Civilization. "Benter," he said to the younger brother who was his aide. "Twenty minutes. Water the dogs."

  He turned and heeled his dog westwards down the line of march; behind him the cool brassy notes of the trumpet sounded, and the signalers of each company passed it back. When it reached the rear of the column the last unit halted first—you had to do it that way, or the whole mass would collide with each other, like a drunken centipede. His lips quirked at the memory of his father trying to halt a mass of Squadron warriors on the move, back when he was a boy. That had taken the better part of an hour, even with the paid, full-time fighters of the household guard.

  The three Cruiser battalions of ex-Brigaderos were full strength . . . except for their stragglers. Teodore Welf rode up, red in the face from the heat and from embarrassment.

  "Major Bellamy," he said, saluting.

  "Major Welf," Ludwig replied, glancing past him.

  They spoke Sponglish, although the Squadron and Brigade dialects of Namerique were fairly close: regulations, and it was best to stay in the habit, since more than half the officers in their units were seconded Civil Government natives like M'Brust.