The Sword

by S. M. Stirling

  Men and dogs had collapsed in the road. Others were leading their animals from the wayside to the ditch, walking slowly with their legs straddled. A few had trotted over despite their saddle sores and lay with their heads and shoulders buried in the life-giving coolness. Ludwig frowned and jerked his head toward them.

  Teodore cursed and drew his sword, spurring to the ditch. "Up and out of there, you slugs!" he shouted. The flat of the weapon whacked down on shoulders. "Purify it first, damn your arse! You can't fight with the runs!"

  The soldiers stood, dripping. Officers rode up, as dust-caked as their men, and the troopers formed lines. Some led the dogs downstream; others scooped their canteens full and added the blessed purifying chlorine powder; it was a rite shared by the Spirit of Man of This Earth cult they followed and the Star Church of the Civil Government, but not all commanders were equally pious. Messer Raj insisted on the full canonical treatment—water for human drinking to be purified by powder or by ten minutes at a hard rolling boil, with no exceptions.

  The Spirit favored him for it, too. It wasn't uncommon for armies in the field to lose five men to dysentery for every one killed in combat. That didn't happen to troops under Raj's command.

  Welf trotted back. "Sorry, Ludwig," he said. "The Western Territories aren't this hot."

  Ludwig nodded. The Western Territories were damned cold and rainy, to his way of thinking—his own ancestors had plowed through them on their way to the southern side of the Midworld Sea, and he was glad of it. Of course, even the Western Territories were warm and dry compared to the Base Area, which explained why the Brigade had stopped there; they'd been the first of the Military Governments to pull up stakes and move south.

  "And your fine gentlemen aren't used to sweating this hard," he replied, smiling to take the sting out of it.

  "True enough," Welf said. He flexed the arm that had been broken by a Civil Government bullet outside Old Residence, nearly two years ago. "I'd never have dared drive them this hard, back . . . well, back then."

  Ludwig nodded. Even the troopers had been nobles of a sort back home, with a few hundred hectares and peons to do the work. Of course, that had its compensations: plenty of leisure to practice and hunt. So they were fine riders, and mostly good shots. The Brigade had armed its men with muzzle loaders, but rifled percussion muskets, not the flintlock smoothbores that had been the best his people could make or maintain.

  "How's my fair cousin?" Teodore went on.

  "Marie? Still pregnant, according to the last letter," Ludwig said. "Thank the Spirit. Otherwise she'd be trying to outdo Messa Whitehall and riding with us."

  Teodore shuddered elaborately. He turned to watch a dog-cart creak up, loaded with sunstruck Cruisers, their dogs on leading-ropes behind. "Throw some water on those!" he ordered.

  Ludwig put his helmet back on. The leather-backed chainmail of the pentail thumped on his neck, and sweat from the sponge-and-cork lining ran into his hair and down his cheeks, greasy and stale.

  "I'm beginning to wish we'd taken the train," he said.

  "Getting there's half the fun," Teodore replied, blinking red-rimmed blue eyes.

  * * *

  A trainload of artillery began to pull out of the East Residence station, guns and men riding on flatcars, the draft dogs in boxcars farther back from the engine. As soon as it cleared the switchpoint, the remainder of the 5th Descott jogged forward, breaking into platoons as they swarmed into the last two trains.

  "Alo sinstra, waymanos!" By the left, forward march. Ten minutes, and the final platoon was loaded into its boxcar.

  Gerrin Staenbridge looked around. "The last?" he said.

  Muzzaf Kerpatik looked just as exhausted as he did. "The very last, mi colonel," he said.

  Staenbridge ran a hand over his chin, the sword-calluses rasping against the blueblack stubble. "Hard to believe." Sleep. Razors. Food. He didn't believe in those anymore, either.

  Some sort of Palace flunky-in-uniform was wading toward him over the tracks and the litter of the three-day emergency. They'd been operating in battle mode: throw anything that breaks or isn't needed out of the way and think about cleaning up later. That included a fair bit of broken-down rolling stock, as well as dead dogs, dead draft oxen, about fifty tons of coal that had spilled in odd spots and wasn't worth the time and effort of collecting, and spare gear. Central Rail stevedore-slaves, dockworkers, and press-ganged clerks lay about in various stages of collapse.

  But no soldiers. Every man, dog, gun, and round of ammunition was on its way east. Spirit of man, I could sleep for a week.

  If that flunky meant what he thought it did—another message from some hysterical fool in the Palace who wanted his hand held—he'd be talking for a week. The people up on the First Hill hadn't grown any less terrified of Ali over the last couple of days, and they were still given to brainstorms, most of which started and ended with keeping more troops around to protect their own precious personal fundaments. If he'd wanted to listen to bleating, he would have stayed at home on the family estate and herded sheep.

  "See you in Sandoral," he said to the little Komarite, and ran for the second train.

  It was moving as he clamped his saber hand on an iron bracket and swung up onto the rear platform. This car had been tacked on at the last minute; it was the type used to carry railroad company guards through bandit country, with bunks and a cookstove inside. He'd found it parked on a siding, and be damned if he wasn't going to keep it all to himself; that way he'd stand some chance of getting a little sleep in the fifty hours or so it would take to get to Sandoral. There was some hardtack and dried sausage in his duffel-

  The smell of curry startled him as he opened the rear door of the guardcar; his stomach growled a reminder of how long it had been since he ate. Fatima cor Staenbridge—the cor meant freedwoman—glanced around from the little stove.

  "Ready in a minute, Gerrin," she said.

  He opened his mouth to roar, thought better of it, and sat down, sighing and unbuckling his sword belt. My own damned fault. He'd rescued the girl during the sack of El Djem more or less on impulse; rather, she'd picked Bartin Foley to rescue her from a gang of Descotter troopers bent on gang rape, and he'd helped out. He'd kept her on impulse, too; Bartin had needed some experience with women—a nobleman had to marry and carry on his line eventually, whatever his personal tastes. She'd managed to keep up in the nightmare retreat through the desert, after Tewfik mousetrapped them, which demanded some respect; she'd also gotten pregnant—whether by him or Bartin was a moot point and no matter—which was more than the wife he visited once a year for duty's sake had managed to do.

  "Imp," he said.

  She stuck out her tongue at him and handed him the plate. Spirit, she's still only twenty. He'd freed her, of course, and acknowledged the child—two, now—his wife hadn't objected at all, since by Civil Government law he could divorce her for not giving him an heir. The children had to stay with her back on the estate most of the time after they were weaned, of course, as was fitting.

  He began shoveling down the fiery curry, washing it down with water and a surprisingly drinkable red. Drinkable compared to ration issue, that was. And to think I was accounted a gourmet once, he thought. Polo, hunting, balls, theater, fine uniforms and parades and good restaurants, handsome youths, witty conversation . . . surprising how little he'd missed them, in the five years since Raj Whitehall had been given command of the 5th Descott and sent out to teach the wogs not to raid the Civil Government borders.

  I resented him then, he mused. Gerrin had been senior . . . but he'd needed a commander to bring out his best. A furious perfection of willpower possessed Raj; Gerrin could recognize it without in the least desiring to have it himself. And it's never been boring. Back then, he'd been so bored he'd fiddled the battalion accounts out of sheer ennui.

  He finished the plate. Fatima was sitting on the edge of the bunk, eyes demurely cast down; a good imitation of humility. What an actress. The stage lost somet
hing when she was born Colonial. Natural talent, he supposed, plus being hand-in-glove with Suzette Whitehall in her impressionable years.

  Gerrin sighed again. As far as he was concerned, sex with women was like eating plain boiled rice without butter or salt—possible, but . . . On the other hand. A soldier learned to make do with what was at hand; when all you had was boiled rice, that was what you ate.

  * * *

  The mournful sound of the locomotive whistle echoed through the night. It was evening, and twilight was falling over the rolling hills of the Upper Hemmar River. To their right the last sunlight glittered on the surface of the river below, like a ribbon of hammered silver tracing its way through the darkening fields. The same light caught the three-meter wings of a pterosauroid as it soared over the water, gilding the naked skin and the short plush white fur of its body. Higher, the hills were dusty-green with olive trees, or carpeted with vines in their summer lushness. Terraced fields of barley were brown-gold on the lower slopes; cypresses and eucalyptus lined the dusty white streaks of roadway and surrounded the whitewashed adobe of villas.

  Raj looked up from the maps. Center could provide better, holographic projections with all the information you needed, but he'd been raised with paper and it still had something the visions lacked. His father had taught him to read maps, going around Hillchapel—the Whitehall family estate, back in Smythe Parish, Descott County—with compass and the Ordinance Survey, until he learned to see the ground and the markings as one.

  "Sentahvo for your thoughts, my heart," Suzette said.

  She had her gittar in her lap, gently plucking at the strings.

  "Thinking about Descott, and Hillchapel," Raj said. "Damn, but it's been a long time since we've seen it."

  Suzette nodded. She'd fitted in surprisingly well; if she considered it a bleak stone barn in the middle of a wilderness, she'd never said so. Well, compared to East Residence, that was what it was; a kerosene lamp was a luxury, in Descott. Most of the County was upland volcanic wilderness, thin forest and thinner stony pasture where you needed ten hectares to feed a sheep. Bandit country too, and bad for killer sauroids.

  He missed it.

  "This is as domestic as we get, I'm afraid," Suzette said lightly.

  Raj glanced around the railroad car. It had been fitted with table and chairs; there was a commode behind a blanket screen, a couple of skins of wine-and-water hanging from the wall, a lantern overhead, and a box of field rations—Suzette's version, and a vast improvement on Army issue. One of his aides was snoring on the floor.

  In a car behind, the troopers were singing—they probably thought of it as singing, at least—in a roaring chorus:

  * * *

  "We're marchin' on relief over burnin' desert sands

  Six hundred fightin' Descotters, t' Colonel, an' t'band

  Ho! Git awa', ye bullock-man—ye've heard t'bugle blowed

  The Fightin' Fifth is comin', down the Drangosh Road—"

  "We're luckier than they are," Suzette said, lifting her head and looking off into the gathering night. "We're together, at least. . . . Their women have to sit and wonder. And every time someone rides up to the farmhouse door it might be a messenger with a bundled rifle and saber that's all they'll see of a lost husband, or a son."

  "It's not much of a married life I've given you," Raj said.

  Suzette smiled at him. "I wouldn't exchange it for any other," she replied. "I don't think you're one of those who're allowed to have a normal life, anyway."

  "Not yet, at least," Raj said. Never, went unspoken between them.

  It wasn't as if Barholm would give Raj an honored retirement, even, as a reward for victory.

  I have found it unwise to use the term never, Center said.

  Suzette's fingers strummed the gittar again. Raj pulled the greatcoat around his shoulders and let his head fall back. Just a moment, he thought. A moment's rest.

  * * *

  "Git yer arses out offen t'floor," the sergeant barked. "We'll be there anytimes."

  Corporal Robbi M'Telgez blinked awake.

  "Jist when I waz gittin' t'hang a sleepin' on these things," he said mournfully, picking straw out of his hair and yawning in the hot close darkness of the boxcar, thick with the smell of sweat.

  The train was slowing, swaying more from side to side. All around was the flat irrigated plain of the Upper Drangosh. M'Telgez put his eye to the slats in the boxcar; it was good-looking country, dry but fit to sprout shoelaces where there was water. The wheat and barley were in, the fields being plowed for a summer crop of corn or millet; cotton and sugarcane and indigo were all well up, and there were orchards in plenty as well, mostly dates and citrus.

  Good land fer the gentry, hell on farmers, he thought idly. Rich land meant poor men to work it; they'd all be peons around here. Hotter n' blazes, too.

  They passed through a belt of country places, retreats for rich cityfolk built in an open, airy style that looked indecent somehow compared with the foursquare solidity of the houses he was accustomed to—but then, Descott was a long way north of this, and highland country too. He didn't suppose it got cold here even in winter. Then there were shanties on both sides of the rail line, crude booths of straw and reeds. He swore softly when he saw who was in them, besides refugee peasants from the countryside. Among them were men in Civil Government uniforms, only infantry, but still . . . they looked hungry.

  "Ain't they supposed to pay 'em when they calls 'em in from t'farms?" he said.

  The troop sergeant laughed sourly. "Wuz ye born yesstiday, M'Telgez?"

  Trooper Smeet put his eye to a crack. "Good's a place t' croak as any," he said mournfully. "We'll a' git kilt, ye know. I hadda dream—"

  The rest of the platoon threw bits of hardtack and cold bacon-rind and anything else handy.

  "Ye keep sayin' thayt long 'nuff, it'll happen, yer bastid," M'Telgez said disgustedly.

  Smeet grinned; he was missing his two front teeth, and his face was a brown wrinkled map of twenty years' service. "Ye knows a way 't live ferever, loik?"

  Just inside the city walls the train screeched to a stop; he braced himself against the planking and shaded his eyes as the doors were thrown open.

  "Come on," the sergeant yelled again.

  The boxcars emptied rapidly, the men stretching, the dogs barking with hysterical relief. It was just as hot outside, with the dry baking heat that he remembered from the first campaign down here five years ago, but at least you could breathe in the open. M'Telgez unsnapped the lead-chain of his mount and spent a moment soothing her.

  "Sooo, quiet now, Pochita, ye bitch," he said. A tongue the size of a washcloth and rough as industrial abrasive lapped at his face. "Quiet—down, girl."

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Messer Raj and the company commander and the captain in charge of the Scouts—M'lewis and his Forty Thieves were along, best to double-strap your pouch—talking earnestly. He worked faster, sliding his rifle into the scabbard at the right front of his saddle, tightening the girth and breast-straps, checking the neck-bandolier and the fastening on the saber hanging from the other side. He slid the blade free a handspan and tested the edge, then checked the loads on the revolver he had tucked into one boot-top.

  Messer Raj would have a job of work for them to do, and no mistake. He'd been in the 5th Descott for five years now, and that was one thing you could rely on.

  * * *

  "Nice to be loved," Bartin Foley said.

  "Not when they get in the way," Raj replied.

  They rode at the head of the column, slowly. Cheering civilians packed the sidewalks, hysteria in their voices. Rose petals and rice showered down on the troops, as if they were a party of groomsmen bringing a bride home from her father's house. Individuals darted out to offer bottles of wine to the soldiers or, even more dangerous, food to the dogs. What do they think's going to happen when they stick a roast in a war-dog's face? Raj thought, turning in the saddle to see one of the crowd reeling b
ack and clutching a gashed-open forearm. The crowd-stink was as palpable as the blurring waves of heat that radiated back from the whitewashed adobe of the buildings and soaked the uniform coat beneath his armpits.

  The noise was spooking all the dogs, a solid roar between the whitewashed, blank-walled, flat-roofed houses.

  "Trumpeter!" Raj snarled. "Sound Draw."

  The sharp notes cut through the white-noise background of the crowd, as they were designed to cut through the clamor of battle. Two hundred hands slapped down on the saber hilts slung to the offside of their saddles; two hundred blades came free in a single slithering rasp, then flashed as they were brought back to rest over the shoulder. The dogs knew the calls as well as the men, and they snarled in unison, a chilling bass rumble. Long wet fangs glistened, each backed by half a ton of carnivore. War-dogs were bred for aggressiveness and trained to kill, and the bristling snake-headed posture of these indicated they were perfectly ready to do just that.

  The crowd screamed and surged away; there would be deaths in the trampling . . . but not nearly as many as there would be if Ali sacked the city, which was what was going to happen if they kept getting in his way. Overhead, doors slammed shut as the wrought-iron balconies emptied. Raj heeled Horace into a trot; the bugler signaled again, and the whole column rocked into motion behind him. The iron wheels of the splatgun battery clattered behind them.

  "Well, that'll make us less popular, mi heneral," Bartin said.

  "Popularity be damned," Raj replied, feeling some of the tension drain out of his shoulders.

  They broke into the Plaza Real, the square that formed the center of all Civil Government cities. The usual buildings fronted it: the Star Temple with its gilded dome, the arcaded Government House, the townhouses of wealthy landowners and merchants . . . and the cavalry barracks, conveniently to hand in case of trouble. Highly unusual were the tents and shanties that had gone up all over the square, crowding right up to the ornamental fountain and gardens in its center; the sour smoke of their cooking fires lingered, and the stink of an overloaded sewer system.