"Fellow soldiers," Raj said.
Of a sort. It wasn't these men's fault that they'd been badly commanded, but he didn't intend to let the consequences keep him from carrying out the mission. A lot of them were going to pay with their lives for their officers' slackness, before this was over.
"We've very little time. The 33rd Drangosh, the 12th Pardizia" —he listed the infantry battalions, about half the two thousand available— "will turn to and begin construction of the necessary boats and gear for a pontoon bridge to cross the Drangosh and carry our invasion force. This task will be performed under the direction of Colonel Dinnalsyn of the Artillery Corps."
A long murmur swept through the packed garrison formations. Raj stood like an iron idol, hands clasped behind his back, while the shouts of Silence in the ranks! controlled it. None of his veterans had moved; probably because none of them were surprised at what he intended.
"The cavalry formations based in Sandoral will immediately assume control of the gates. Only military personnel will be allowed to enter the city or approach on the main roads.
"The remainder of the infantry will begin clearing Sandoral and evacuating the civilian population to the railroad station, commencing immediately. No resistance is to be tolerated. All units will be accompanied by parties of the 5th Descott, the 17th Kelden, or the 24th Valencia.
"I'm aware that you men of the district infantry battalions have been seriously neglected. Effective immediately, all arrears of equipment, rations, and pay will be made up from the stocks in the city's treasury and arsenals. For the duration, you will be quartered inside the walls—to be precise, in the housing of the evacuated civilians."
Stunned silence sank over the parade ground. The formations rippled slightly as men turned to one another, then back to the figure standing on the stone dais. A helmet went up on a rifle among the infantry, and a voice cried out:
"Spirit bless Messer Raj!"
"Raj!"
"Raj!"
"RAJ! RAJ!"
He let it continue and build for a moment, judging, waiting until they were about to break ranks and crowd around him. A raised hand brought the sound back down from its white-noise roar, like receding surf on a beach.
"Cheer after we've beaten the wogs back to their kennels," he said. "Until then, we've a man's job of work to do. See to it."
"RAJ! RAJ! RAJ! RAJ!"
* * *
Corporal Minatelli turned back down the street. "What's the problem now?" he barked.
"Theynz warn't open up," the garrison soldier said timidly in a thick yokel burr. "They wouldn' give us no food either, when we wuz hongry. Turned us'n away frum d'doors."
Minatelli sighed. Raggedy-ass excuse for a soldier, he thought disgustedly. Literally; the man's buttocks were hanging out a great rent in his trousers, and the blue of his jacket was faded to sauroid's-egg color. He had a beard, too, like a barb or a wog.
"Here's how ye do it, dickhead. Y'ain't askin' 'em to dance, see?"
He stepped to one side and put the muzzle of his rifle against the lock. Bam, and bits of lead and metal pinged and whistled across the street. The ragged soldier yelped as one scored a line of red across the side of his face. Minatelli slammed the sole of his boot into the door beside the lock, and the wood boomed open against the hallway.
"What's the meaning of this?" shouted the man inside. "It's impossible—you peon scum, where's your officer? I'll have you flogged, flogged—"
Smack. The side of Minatelli's rifle-butt punched into the man's face. Blood spattered down the lace sabot of his shirt. The soldier chopped the butt up under the man's short ribs, and he folded over without a sound. Minatelli grabbed him by the collar and threw him out into the street.
"Anyone what ain't out in ten, gits shot!" he shouted to the crowd of family and servants. "Out, out, out. T'wogs is comin'!"
A torrent of civilians poured out of the townhouse door. Minatelli grinned to himself; a couple of them trampled on the head of the household before two with more presence of mind or family affection picked him up and carried him out into the crowded darkness of the street. The gas lamps were on, but the reddish light only made the milling crowd seem less human, a gleam of eyes and teeth and wailing voices in the hot night. Both sides of the street were lined with troopers, their fixed bayonets a bright line containing the shapeless movements of the crowd. Occasionally one would jab at someone who crowded too close, and a scream of pain would rise above the hubbub of confusion, fear and anger.
Minatelli's grin grew broader. Back in Old Residence, he'd been a stonecutter like his father and grandfather before him. They'd have sent him around to the servants' entrance if he so much as called on a house like this. Now he got to buttstroke one of the breed of stuck-up riche hombes bastards. Military service definitely had its good points.
The garrison soldier gaped at him for a slow twenty seconds. Then his crooked brown teeth showed in an answering smile. The glitter in his eyes was alarming.
"Sor!" he said, saluting smartly. Then, to his squadmates: "C'mon, boyos!"
Their boots and rifle-butts thundered on the next door down. Minatelli reloaded, slung his rifle and turned to Saynchez.
"How many, d'ye think?"
"Mebbe six, seven hundert," the older private said. "No different n'countin' sheep, a-back on me da's place. Me da ran sheep fer the squire."
"Banged the sheep, more like," one of their squad said, sotto voce.
"Wouldn't mind bangin' this one," another added. A feminine squeal came from the darkness.
"No fuckin' around!" Minatelli said sharply. "That's enough—move this bunch down to t'train station. Hadelande!"
* * *
"Tight! Get those boards tight before you nail them to the stringers!" Grammeck Dinnalsyn said, for the four hundredth time.
The infantryman gaped at him, then obligingly whacked at the edge of the board with his mallet. The dry wood splintered. Dinnalsyn winced, then skipped aside to let a dozen men go by with a beam. One of his officers followed, drawing lines on the timber with a piece of chalk and consulting a crumpled piece of paper in the other. A noncom stumbled after him, holding up a hurricane lantern. Both moons were up, luckily, and there were bonfires of scrap lumber scattered along the broad stretch of riverside as well. Wagons rumbled in with more wood; wheelbarrels went by loaded with mallets, nails, rope, and saws.
"Cut here, here and here," the young lieutenant said, giving a final slash with the chalk. Crews sprang to work with two-man drag saws.
The first pontoon was already ready to launch down by the river's edge, a simple breast-high wooden box of planks on rough-cut stringers, eight meters by twelve. The stink of hot asphalt surrounded it, as sweating near-naked soldiers slathered liquid black tar from pots onto the boards.
Dinnalsyn pulled out his slide rule. Si. Now, the river's nine hundred meters; make it eight meters per barge, allow a reserve of ten percent, and—
A dog pulled up beside him with a spurt of gravel. He looked up and pulled himself erect. "Mi heneral," he said.
Raj nodded, his eyes light gray in the shadows under his helmet brim. "How's it coming, Grammeck?"
"On schedule, more or less."
"Will they float?"
"After a fashion, if we use enough tar and the wood swells tight. I'm going to float them as we finish them, that'll give the timber some time to soak."
"Good man," Raj said. "While you're at it, have your people run up steering oars and paddles. We'll put some of the garrison infantry to practicing maneuvering, that'll be important later. Here in the Drangosh valley, quite a few of them were probably riverboatmen before the press gang came through."
"Si, mi heneral. The Forty Thieves aren't with you?"
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 soldi
er, 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 o
f 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!"
The Sword Page 9