The Sword

by S. M. Stirling

  "That'll give you crossfire from both infantry and splatguns, like this." The tip of Raj's saber traced X marks across the sand.

  "Now," he went on, moving the sword to left and right on either side of the notch, "this terrain is pretty well impassable to formed bodies of troops. Certainly to artillery. Put observers here and here. Tewfik may try to work dismounted troopers around your flanks in those areas. If he does, block them with your reserve company—it ought to be easy, in that ground.

  "Over here, about twenty klicks, is the only other path suitable for artillery and large formations of troops. That's where he'll go when he decides he can't just rush you out. Put a relay of men between here and there; when his flanking force gets there, pull out."

  He raised his head and met the other man's eyes, his own flat and hard. "I give you no discretion concerning that. When his men reach there, you bug out. Understood?"

  "Si, mi heneral," Gruder said. He grinned. "I have learned something over the past five years."

  "I certainly hope so, because I can't spare you or your battalion," Raj said.

  "Hmmm. Artillery here?" Kaltin's saber pointed to the apex of the V.

  "Yes, and start the guns out first. Also, walk all that ground tonight, and have your company commanders do it too. Ranging marks, all the bells and whistles."

  "Si." Kaltin studied the improvised sand-table. "I'll have them come and look at this, too. You have a good memory for terrain, mi heneral."

  Which was true, and even more so with Center's assistance. "Waya con Ispirito del Homme," Raj said. They gripped forearms. "Get me an extra half-day."

  "The Spirit with you also, General. Consider it done."

  * * *

  Tewfik ibn'Jamal, Amir of the Host of Peace, lowered his binoculars and cursed. Arabic was the finest of all languages for that, as for all else—as would be expected for the language God chose to dictate His word in—but the rolling, guttural obscenities did not relieve his feelings.

  "And may the fleas of a thousand mangy feral dogs infest the scrotum of the kaphar general Whitehall," he concluded.

  Ahead was a broad slope five thousand meters across at its mouth, narrowing down to barely a hundred where the roadway snaked into the badlands. The hills behind and to either side were not high, but they were steep as the sides of houses, crumbly adobe scored and riven by the rare cloudbursts of the Drangosh Valley winter. The roadway was graded dirt—a secondary road. The main highway—Allah torment in the flames of Eblis the souls of the engineers who laid it out—ran parallel to the Ghor Canal, through the populated districts farther east and towards Ain el-Hilwa. That town of fools and dotards.

  Taking that would mean two days' delay, more than enough time for the invaders to scuttle back to the walls of Sandoral—and take any hope of concluding this accursed war quickly with them.

  Another tabor of dismounted troopers trotted up into the V, angling for the enemy's foremost position on that side—if they could dislodge the outer rim, they could unravel it up the foot of the hills. A steady braaaap . . . braaaap sounded, and men fell. Figures in crimson djellabas dropped into the hot white dust of the valley floor, to lie still or twitching and moaning. He could see puffs of dust where the bullets struck, smoke pouring from the positions of the new rapid-fire weapons, a steady crackle and bang from the rifle-pits where the infidel troopers kept up a continuous hail of well-aimed fire. A pom-pom galloped up to support the soldiers.

  The rapid-fire weapons from both sides of the V shifted to it. The dogs of its team went down in a tangle, and the gun's long slender barrel slewed around in futility. He watched a survivor drag a wounded comrade into its shelter. Bullets fell on it like a rain of hail to ricochet off in sparks and whining fragments.

  In the gun-line directly before him crews heaved at the trails of 70mm field guns and pom-poms. More smoke billowed out as they fired, a ripple of red tongues of fire from left to right. Dirt fountained skyward along the enemy lines, and a spare team was galloped out to retrieve the pom-pom and the wounded.

  "Can you not suppress those Shaitan-inspired weapons?" he asked.

  His artillery chief shrugged unwillingly. "Insh'allah," he said. "Amir, whatever they are, they do not recoil as artillery pieces do—so they can be deeply dug in. All we see is the muzzle and the top of an iron shield. To make good practice we must draw close—and you saw the result of that. Also they have a battery of field guns above, with a two-hundred-meter advantage in height. If I push our gun line forward, they will come under artillery fire from the heights as they try to deploy, as well as from small arms."

  "Move guns to the left, concentrate on the outer arm of the enemy defenses."

  "As the Amir commands," the gunner said.

  Tewfik turned back to the map table. Sweat dripped from the points of his beard onto the thick paper, reminding him of how thirsty he was. The goatskin chaggal at his side was half-empty; his men's would be worse, and there was no source of good water sufficient for fifteen thousand men within a half-day's ride.

  "Muhammed," he said, and one of his officers bowed. "Sound the recall."

  "Another push and we will be through, Amir," the man said stubbornly.

  "Another push and we will lose another hundred men dead," Tewfik said. Just then a pair of stretcher bearers trotted by. Their burden moaned and tried to brush at the flies crawling on the ruin of his face. "Or like that. I do not continue with a plan that has failed."

  "I obey."

  "And start men moving here." He traced a line to the eastward on the map. "The going's passable for men on foot. Put some of those Bedouin hunters to use; the sand-thieves do nothing but sit on their arses and eat better men's food. They should know the footpaths. Work around toward the rear of the enemy position.

  "Anwar," he went on. "You will take the reserve brigade and go" —he moved the finger in a looping circle far to the west— "twenty kilometers. A tertiary road—passable for wheels, according to the reports. Push all the way through to open country on the other side of these badlands, secure the route, and I will follow. Mutasim, you will put a blocking force across the mouth of this deathtrap; I'll leave you thirty guns. When the kaphar pull out, pursue, slow them if you can; we'll see if whoever Whitehall left in charge has sense enough to flee quickly as we flank him."

  Mutasim scowled. "So far we have accomplished little," he said, tugging at his beard.

  "There is no God but God; all things are accomplished according to the will of God," Tewfik said. He fought the urge to grind his teeth. "We were sent to stop the enemy's ravaging of our land; this we have done. We will pursue him. If we catch him, we will destroy him; if not, we will besiege him in Sandoral, which has not the supplies to support his men for long. In a week, they must begin to eat their dogs—which destroys all hope of mobility. After that, it is merely a matter of time. This was a damaging raid, no more. Insh'allah."

  "As God wills," the others echoed.

  "Go. Move swiftly."

  The officers departed, and trumpets began to sound. Only the aides, messengers, and the Amir's personal mamluks were left, silently awaiting his will. Tewfik stood and stared up the valley again, unconsciously fingering his eyepatch. It had never stopped him seeing into the heart and mind of an enemy commander before. Whitehall, Whitehall, what is your plan? What dream of victory do you cherish in your secret heart?

  That was what bothered him. He remembered the El Djem campaign; he'd caught Whitehall there, beaten him—although the fighting retreat had been stubbornly effective, preventing him from finishing the young kaphar commander off without paying a price that seemed excessive. He'd bitterly regretted that decision a year later, when the Colony's forces met Whitehall's army.

  May the Merciful, the Lovingkind, have pity on your soul, my father, he thought. Jamal had been a hard man and a good Settler, but no great general. You ordered that we attack directly into the kaphar guns, and we paid for it, Tewfik thought bitterly. Jamal had paid with his head, the House of
Islam with thousands of its best troops and a legacy of civil war. All Whitehall's doing; it had been a good day's work for Shaitan when Whitehall had been born among the infidels of the House of War instead of a believer.

  Since then Whitehall had made war in the West, while Tewfik repaired the Host of Peace and prepared for the next round of battle. This time there should be no doubt about the outcome. He had overwhelming numbers, and even Ali wasn't going to force him into the sort of error their father had made.

  Yet the Faithful had good intelligence sources in the western realms. Tewfik had followed Whitehall's campaigns closely, and spoken with eyewitnesses. Why this raid? By bringing his force out from beyond Sandoral's walls, Whitehall had exposed them to the risk of defeat—without any countervailing chance of decisive victory. True, he had ravaged rich lands; true, he had inflicted stinging tactical reverses on the Muslims. Our losses were greater than his. But we can absorb them without strategic consequence, and he knows this. Nor were burnt-out villages in this one little corner of the Settler's domains any sort of strategic loss; yes, a tragedy for those who suffered, and enough to wake screams of rage from the nobles whose estates were ravaged, but nothing mortal. At least once in the past kaphar hosts had ravaged their way to the walls of Al Kebir itself, and the House of Islam still stood—there were vast and rich lands south and east of the capital to draw on. This was nothing by comparison.

  Whitehall must have something in mind, something decisive. But what?

  Tewfik plucked at his beard again. "He threw as many troops as he could into Sandoral before we reached the walls," he muttered to himself. "Yet it would have been better to send one-third as many, and use the other trains for supplies." Sending all the civilians out of the fortress city had been a shrewd move, but not enough. And why so many cavalry, when the issue would be settled by fighting from behind strong works?

  "He has too many troops to hold the walls, and not enough food to feed the numbers he brought—yet not enough men to meet us in the field."

  Three pounds of food per man per day, fifteen per dog; Whitehall knew the importance of logistics as well as any man. What was his plan?

  There was something else here, something beyond a young kaphar chieftain with a genius for war. The infidels whispered that their false god rode at Whitehall's elbow.

  He shrugged off the notion. There was no God but God. "Insh'allah," he said again, snapping his binoculars back into the case at his waist. "We waste no more time."

  * * *

  "Hadelande!"

  Robbi M'Telgez pulled the rifle free from the scabbard and kicked his feet free of the stirrups. Dirt clouted the soles of his boots as Pochita crouched; he turned and ran up the crumbly slope, coughing in the dust Company A kicked up in their scramble. He chopped the butt of his rifle into the dirt to help the traction, feeling the dirt sticking to the sweat on his face, blinking his eyes against the sting and thanking the Spirit for the chain-mail avental riveted to the back of his helmet. It might or might not turn a swordstroke, but the leather backing of the mail protected your neck from the sun pretty good.

  Captain Foley reached the top and his bannerman planted the company pennant. The officer stood with arm—hook arm—and sword outstretched, to give the alignment. M'Telgez flopped down on his belly and crawled the last three paces to the ridgeline, because bullets were already cracking overhead. Got guts, that one, he thought.

  Foley stayed erect until the unit was in place, then went to one knee only a little back from the crest. Some men in other units gave them a hard time for having the colonel's boyfriend as company commander. He didn't care weather Foley banged men, women, bitch-dogs or sheep—as long as he knew his business, which he did.

  There were plenty of wogs making for the same crestline from the other side, hundreds of them. The slope was steeper there, though; he could see clumps of them falling back in miniature avalanches of rocks and clay, down to where their dogs milled about in the dry streambed below. Others were prone on the slope, firing at the Civil Government banners that had appeared on the ridge above. M'Telgez flipped up the ladder sight mounted just ahead of the block of his Armory rifle and clicked the aperture up to 800 meters.

  "Pick your targets!" the ensign in command of his platoon shouted.

  He did, a wog with fancywork on his robe walking around at the base of the hill and followed by signalers. A long shot, and tricky from up here, but he had the ground for a firm rest. He worked the rifle into the dirt, fingers light on the forestock, and took up the first tension on the trigger.

  "Fwego!"

  BAM. Eighty rifles fired. The butt punched his shoulder; a measurable fraction of a second later the wog in the fancy robe folded sideways under the hammering impact of the heavy 11mm bullet. He fell, kicking. Not goin' t'git up, neither, M'Telgez thought. Not with a hollowpoint round blowing a tunnel the size of a fist through his stomach and intestines. The Descotter whistled tunelessly through his teeth as he worked the lever and reloaded, the spent brass tinkling away down the slope to his rear. Most of the others had picked closer targets; bodies were sliding back down the steep slope. Live ones, too, as the more sensible wogs decided that toiling slowly up a forty-degree slope of crumbling dirt under fire wasn't the way to a long life.

  BAM. He picked another hard target, a Colonial prone behind a slight ridge and firing back. The djellaba blended well with the clay, but he aimed up a little. The wog jerked up seconds later, clawing at his back. Lever, reload.

  "Five rounds, independent fire, rapid, fwego."

  M'Telgez's hand went back to his pouch; he pulled four bullets out of the loops and stuck their tips between his lips like cigarettes. Another went into the chamber, and he snapped the ladder-sight back down to the ramp.

  Damn. There were too many wogs who'd decided to chance it. Bam. One down. Out one of the rounds between his lips. Bam. A miss, but the target yelled and danced sideways. Bam. Head shot, and the spiked helmet went end-over-end downslope in a splash of blood and brains. Bam. Couldn't tell, smoke too thick. Bam.

  The oncoming enemy wavered, then fell back; most of them turned over onto their backsides and tobogganed down the slope, controlling the slide with their feet. There were boulders and rocks enough at the bottom to take cover behind, if they were careful.

  "Dig in!"

  The order came down the line. M'Telgez cursed; like most cavalry troopers, he hated digging—back home in Descott, a vakaro resented any sort of work that couldn't be done from the saddle. Resignedly, he spoke to his squad:

  "Even numbers! Odd numbers on overwatch. C'mon, lads, 'tain't yer dicks yer grabbin', put yer backs inta it."

  He reached to the back of his webbing belt and undid the leather pouch that held the head of his entrenching tool. It was a mattock-and-pick if you put the head in the central hole, a shovel if you put it into the slot behind the broader section. He unhooked the wooden handle that hung from his belt by the bayonet on his left side and knocked it into the main hole. A few swift blows cut through the hard crust of the adobe; it came up in chunks, and he piled those and handy rocks ahead of him, working down the slope behind to make a cut that would let him lie comfortably and fire through a couple of notches.

  The afternoon was savagely hot, and the sweat ran down his body in rivulets that he could feel collecting where his shirt and jacket met the webbing belt. The damp cotton drill cloth clung and chafed. A carbine bullet went by overhead now and then with a malignant wasp-whine, encouraging him. A man came by with extra ammunition slung in canvas bandoliers from the pack-dogs; M'Telgez snagged an extra fifty rounds and cut a notch to support them with a few quick strokes of the mattock.

  "M'Telgez! Report to the captain!"

  Shit. Jest whin I wuz gettin' comfortable, loik, the corporal thought resignedly. "Smeet, y'got it fer now. Don't fook up too bad, will yer?"

  "We'll a' git kilt, but it'll na be my fault, corp," the older trooper said cheerfully.

  M'Telgez wiped his hands on the s
wallowtails of his jacket and picked up his rifle, then stepped-slid downhill a pace or two; running crouched, his head was below the ridgeline. The crunch of entrenching tools in the dirt marked his passage, and the steady crackle of fire from the alternate numbers keeping up harassment against the wogs. He also passed a few dead men; head and neck wounds were generally quickly fatal.

  "Ser," he said when he came to the company pennant.

  Barton Foley braced his pad across his knee with the point of his hook and wrote. "You have the way back to battalion, Corporal?"

  "Yesser," M'Telgez answered.

  He had a good eye for that sort of thing; and it was an officer's job to remember what his men could do.

  "Detail one man of your squad to accompany you, and take this to Colonel Staenbridge."

  "No problemo, seyhor." He'd take M'tennin, the lad was young, eager and a good shot. Smeet could handle the squad—he was a good junior NCO, when there was no booze around. Drunk, he didn't know a sow from his sister or an officer from an asswipe.

  "Verbally, add that we can handle it for the present but would appreciate reinforcements. Report back immediately with his reply—and watch out, there may be wogs in these ravines."

  * * *

  M'tennin screamed.

  M'Telgez took one look over his shoulder and clapped his heels to Pochita's ribs. The thing already had the younger man's shoulders in its jaws and one clawed foot hooked into his dog's side, ripping downward in a shower of blood and fur and loops of pink-gray gut. Pochita needed no urging; she brought her hindpaws up between her front and leapt off in a bounding gallop, teeth bared, ears flat, and eyes rolled back, right down the narrow floor of the canyon. Her rider whipped his head around as something screeched behind him, a sound like a steam-whistle gone berserk.

  He could smell its breath, like a freshly-opened tomb in hot weather. It was bipedal and longer than a war-dog, probably heavier, but it ran with a birdlike stride—lightly, on the toe-pads of its three-clawed feet, so lightly that the shotgun blast of dirt and stones spraying back from each impact was a surprise. The body was a dusty orange-yellow, striped irregularly with vivid black; the open mouth was mottled purple and crimson. Teeth the size of his fingers reached for him, and the clawed forefeet on either side. Behind it another much like it—hunter's reflex told him they were probably a mated pair—was tearing at the bodies of M'tennin and his mount with impartial gluttony. Its muzzle went skyward, the long narrow jaws dislocating as it swallowed a leg and hip.