CHAPTER SIX
The City Offices of Sandoral were nearly as crowded as the barracks, although they smelled of musty paper and lamp-soot and ink rather than sewage and dogshit. Clerks in knee breeches and dirty ruffled shirts were running in all directions, waving papers in the air; abacuses clicked; wheeled carts full of folders of documents rumbled over the tiled floors of the corridors. There were petitioners in plenty about, too. The clamor died as Raj shouldered through; the forty troopers of the 5th tramping behind him with their rifles at port, bayonets fixed, were a stark reminder of why Sandoral was in an emergency in the first place.
Raj strongly suspected that most of the bureaucrats would continue to think of it as a tiresome interruption of routine right up until the Settler’s troops came over the wall.
Civilization, he thought sourly, watching one man blink at him through thick lenses, fingers pausing on the counting stones. The sacred trust I defend. The reason I obey purblind idiots.
They clattered up a broad stairway; the upper corridor was considerably less crowded, a condition enforced by several slope-browed men with cudgels. All of whom sensibly faded into doorways at the sight of the naked steel and harsh uniform clatter of hobnails.
“You can’t go in there! That’s Chief Commissioner Kirmedez’s—”
“Siddown,” M’lewis snarled at the functionary. The man sat.
Kirmedez looked up from his desk as Raj entered. He was a thin dark man with receding hair, dressed plainly with a simple cravat. His eyes widened slightly as he took in Raj and the soldiers behind him; he rose and bowed.
“Heneralissimo,” he said politely. “How may I serve you?”
Raj took the measure of the man. Honest, he thought, for a wonder.
oversimplification, Center said, but a valid approximation. A grid snapped onto the administrator’s face, with mottled patterns showing heat and the dilation of his pupils. proceed.
It was impossible to lie to Raj Whitehall . . . with an angel looking out through his eyes. He didn’t like it, but it was useful, and he’d use any tool to get the job done.
Anything at all.
“Messer Kirmedez,” Raj said, “Sandoral will be under siege by the Colonials within two weeks maximum. Possibly less.”
Kirmedez sat and tapped the piles of documents on his desk. “Heneralissimo, this city cannot stand siege. We’re grossly over-crowded, and the grain reserves are low.”
Raj nodded. By law, a fortified border town like this was supposed to keep a year’s reserve of basic foodstuffs, in return for remission of some taxes. He didn’t need to ask what had happened to it.
“Exactly, Messer. I’m therefore evacuating all civilians to East Residence.”
Kirmedez’s hard thin face went fluid with shock for an instant. “That’s impossible.”
Raj allowed himself a flat smile. “On the contrary. Anyone who leaves on their own feet—or on dogback or in a carriage or by ox wagon—can take whatever they wish to carry. But whenever a troop train gets in, and I expect them at four-hour intervals, the garrison is going to sweep up enough people to fill it for the return trip. There will be absolutely no exceptions. Messer Commissioner, you’d also better inform the citizens immediately, because the first twelve hundred will be leaving in about two hours on the train that brought me. Is that understood?”
Kirmedez closed his mouth. He stared at Raj for a full thirty seconds, then looked at the feral faces of the Descotter gunmen behind him.
“You mean it,” he said softly.
“I’m not in the habit of making empty threats, Messer,” Raj said, equally quiet.
Kirmedez nodded.
The door was open, and the word had spread swiftly. A roar sounded through the offices, shading up into a hysterical wail. Kirmedez rose and reached for a brass bell on his desk, but Raj put out one hand.
“Captain,” he said to M’lewis.
The Scout commander turned and barked an order. The column in the corridor outside turned and brought their rifles up in a single smooth jerk.
“Fwego!”
BAM. The volley slammed into the lath and plaster of the ceiling. Chunks and dust rained down on the faces of those who’d come out of their offices, and down the open stairwell onto the crowd below.
“Reload!”
Silence fell amid the ping of spent brass landing on the tiles and the metallic clatter of rounds being thumbed home and levers worked. Gray-white gunsmoke drifted down the hall and carried the stink of burnt sulfur.
Silence fell. Kirmedez’s bell sounded through it. “Back to work, if you please,” he called. “Messer Hantonio, step in here. We have a great deal to do.”
He nodded thanks to Raj. “And they’ll take it seriously, too. Good day to you, Heneralissimo.”
Raj raised an eyebrow; it wasn’t often you met an administrator with that firm a grip on reality.
“Bwenya Dai,” he replied politely.
And the bureaucrat was right. There was a great deal to do, fortunately. You could forget a lot, when you had work on hand.
Chief Commissioner Kirmedez snapped his fingers impatiently. “Stop babbling, man!” His assistant fell silent.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s impossible; it has to be done anyway. Now, send out the criers. But first, send runners to all the following households.”
He handed over a list. The assistant whistled. “My apologies, patron,” he said. “I should have thought of that.”
Kirmedez nodded. “Hantonio, when this war is over, I will still be Chief Commissioner of Sandoral and District, whoever is Commandant. Those men will still be wealthy and powerful. And they will remember who gave them advanced warning to gather their personal possessions and their households for evacuation.”
The assistant smiled with genuine admiration.
Kirmedez smiled back. “Favors are the grease that let the civil service wheels turn, Hantonio. Never forget it.”
And Heneralissimo Supremo Whitehall has done me a favor, he thought, pausing briefly. I wonder if he realizes it?
“Jorg!” Raj called, pleasure in his voice.
Jorg Menyez pulled up his riding steer. It lowed, then swung a long brass-tipped horn down in Horace’s face. The hound whuffled and reconsidered the grab it had been thinking of making at the long-legged riding animal’s shank.
“Just in,” the infantry commander said.
Behind him a column of footsoldiers poured down the street, shouldering the milling civilians aside; this time they were trying their best to get out of the way, not blocking the road with their welcome. The furled colors of the 17th Kelden Foot went by, to the steady thrip . . . thrip of the drum.
“The heliograph says Gerrin just boarded the last train out of East Residence, and Bellamy and his trained barbs are making good time, should be here in three days maximum.”
“Spirit,” Raj said, mildly surprised. “It’s actually working.”
Both men spat to their left and made the sign of the horns with their sword-hands; Raj touched his amulet, a circuit board blessed by Saint Wu herself a century before.
“You’ve seen where the infantry are kenneled?” Jorg said, anger flushing his fair-skinned face.
Raj nodded. “Think they’ll be fit for anything?”
“Nothing complex, but we may be able to put some backbone into them,” Jorg said. “They ought to enjoy the first part of the plan, anyway. Any trouble with Osterville?”
“No,” Raj said.
Menyez hesitated, then let the bitten-off syllable stand.
The barracks-yard was far more crowded this time; all the cavalry, the ragged ill-kept lines of the infantry units, the two hundred of the 5th Descott beside Raj, and the neat formations of the 17th Kelden and 24th Valencia to either side. The sun was sinking behind the western edge of the barracks; Raj narrowed his eyes against it, seeing only the black silhouettes of the troops.
“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 soldier, 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 of 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!”
He sighed and tucked the volume back into the saddlebag. Someday he’d have the time to really write. Someday I’ll be dead, he added sourly to himself—although hopefully not soon; twenty-one was a bit early even in this trade. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a poet or a playwright. History, now, that might be more interesting. He’d certainly got a close-up on some of it.
“More refugees?” a lieutenant asked.
“I don’t think so,” the young captain said thoughtfully, raising his glasses.
The picket of the 5th was two kilometers out from Sandoral: the roads were thick with refugees, heading into the city and then being routed out. It was better to intercept them a ways from the gates, to avoid crowding the roadways nearer the city. Two troops and a splatgun were enough to discourage even the most hysterical from bolting to the shelter of the walls. By now, most of them had gotten the message. There was a continuous traffic out of town too, hopeful magnates with their valuables in wagons, realistic ones with the hard cash on pack-dogs and the family in a fast well-sprung carriage.
It was easy duty, a way to rest the troops; a nice little date grove for shade, a good well for water. Some resourceful soul had a fire going and a couple of chickens roasting over it; the peons would never miss them. The smell was a pleasant overlay to the usual odors of dog and sweat-soaked wool uniforms and gun oil.
Foley wiped his face with his red-and-black checked neckcloth. Ironic, he thought. The 5th Descott had looted a warehouse full of them back in El Djem, the Colonial border town southwest of here. They’d just barely made it back alive from that one, after Tewfik mousetrapped them, but the scarves had become a unit trademark; it was as much as a soldier’s life was worth to wear one, if he wasn’t in the 5th.
The column of dust was heading in from the northwest, just now down into the flat irrigated land around Sandoral. Suspiciously regular dust, columns of it, with a thinner, wider film in front. Very much what a couple of battalions of Civil Government cavalry would make, riding hard in column with their scout-screens out ahead, all regulation and by the book. He waited until the first of the vedettes came into view, checked the silhouette and the breed of dog.
“Message to the Heneralissimo,” he said. “The Cruisers and Welf’s Brigaderos are here.”
Very good time, too. No more than five days from the time they left East Residence just ahead of the first trains. Even with the railroad to supply them, it was a creditable performance, particularly if the dogs were still fit for action.
He was a little surprised. Those fair MilGov complexions were extremely pretty, but he’d doubted they could take the Eastern sun.
“Good timing,” Raj said.
Ludwig Bellamy and Teodore Welf looked more like twins than ever, down to the thick coating of gray-white dust on their faces and the dark streaks of sweat through it.
“Rail convoys on schedule?” Bellamy asked.
They moved forward under the awning and collected bowls of soup and a bannock each; the line parted to let them through, but it was the same food as the troopers were waiting for. The medical staff—priest-doctors and nuns—was manning the pots, since there weren’t any wounded to care for so far. Suzette dashed by, stopping long enough to thrust a cup of watered wine into Raj’s hand. The others were dipping water out of a bucket; Ludwig waited politely until the others had drunk, then dumped the remainder over his head.
“I needed that,” he said; the grin made you realize he wasn’t yet thirty.
Neither am I, Raj remembered with slight surprise. He felt older, though.
Aloud, he went on: “I’ll give Barholm Clerett that, he does get the trains running on time. We’re expecting the last in at any moment. How are your men?”
“They’ll be ready to fight after a night’s sleep; and the dogs are mostly sound-footed. We took your advice and commandeered a big pack of remounts from the East Residence reserve before we left.” Bellamy looked around. “You haven’t been wasting time here.”
There were few civilians left on the streets of Sandoral. Instead they swarmed with soldiers and dogs, wagons and carts, and an ordered chaos of movement under the harsh southern sun. The garrison infantry were doing most of the hauling and pushing, but they looked better fed, and far better dressed. A thud and plume of smoke and dust marked another house being demolished for building materials; off in the distance sounded the heep . . . heep of troops being drilled and a crackle of musketry practice. The artillery park filled most of the square, guns nose-to-trail with their limbers waiting behind, and Dinnalsyn’s gunners giving them a last going-over.
“Speak of the devil,” Bartin Foley said, smiling fondly.
A bugle sounded, and the color party of the 5th Descott came trotting into the square, the battalion banner floating beside the blue and silver Starburst of Holy Federation. Gerrin Staenbridge heeled his mount over to the clump of officers and saluted with an ironic flourish.
“Mi heneral, the remainder of your force, reporting as ordered.” He looked around in his turn. “I see you’ve started the party without me.”
“Just laying in the drinks and rehearsing the band, Gerrin,” Raj said. “No problem getting under way?”
“No, but there might have been if I’d lingered. Our good Chancellor Tzetzas isn’t happy about having the field army so far from home, at all, at all. If I hadn’t taken the last of the trains, I suspect the bureaucrats would have followed me all the way here to argue with you about it.”
Raj laughed harshly. “Not with Ali so close,” he said. “Although our good Commandant Osterville is almost as much of a pest, in his way. And he is here.”
“Speak of the devil,” Foley said again, his voice flat as gunmetal this time.
He took Staenbridge’s arm and began whispering rapidly, gesturing with the hook on his left arm. Raj caught his own name and Suzette once or twice.
The Commandant of Sandoral and District was pushing his way through the thronging mass in the square; not looking very happy, and unhappier by the minute at the lack of deference, from Raj’s veterans and from what were supposedly his own troops.
“Whitehall,” he said. “General Whitehall,” he amended; Raj’s face was politely blank, but several of the Companions had dropped their hands to pistol-butts or the hilts of their sabers.
“Where the Starless Dark have you been?”
Raj straightened, finished the wine, and dipped his bannock into the stew. “Well, Commandant, I’ve been rather busy—getting ready for the war, you see.”
Somebody chuckled, and Osterville turned a mottled color. “I’ll thank you to accompany me to my headquarters,” he said. “We’ve got several things to discuss.”
“If you want to talk, Colonel, you’ll talk here and now. Because as I mentioned, there is a war impending.”
Words burst from the smaller man. “You’re destroying my city!” he barked. “I’ve received petitions from every man of rank in the district—”
Raj raised an eyebrow. “I don’t doubt you have,” he said. “Let them petition Ali. That’s the alternative, and I think they’d like his methods even less than mine. In any case, as you’ve made clear, you’re the supreme civil authority in this area; relations with the local nobility are your responsibility.”
The Commandant opened his mouth and closed it again. He snapped his fingers, and an aide put a sheaf of documents in his hand.
“Perhaps you’ve been too busy,” he said, “to read these dispatches from the Capital? They’ve been coming over the semaphore by the dozens.”
Raj mopped his bowl with the heel of the bannock and plucked the papers out of the smaller man’s hand. He glanced through them, chewed, swallowed.
“Oh, I’ve been reading them,” he said.
He ripped the thick sheaf through with casual strength, tossing the fragments into the dry hot wind. They fluttered off like gulls, and one of the newly arrived dogs of the 5th snapped inquiringly at a piece as it went by.
“I have the Governor’s authority, signed by the Sovereign Mighty Lord himself. I received it in person, from his own hands. What are a few waggling flags to that?”
He tossed the last of the papers to the cobbles. “And now, Colonel Osterville, if you don’t have any more problems . . .”
“But I do have this,” Osterville said. The document he produced was thick parchment, impressively sealed with lead and ribbons.
Raj raised an eyebrow. “You have a decree from the Chair, a Vermilion Order, swaying the wide earth?” he asked, using the formal terminology.
“Not exactly,” Osterville said. “But you will note it’s from Chancellor Tzetzas, in the Governor’s name, requiring you to cease and desist from interfering with private properties and instead attend to your assigned mission.”
“From the Chancellor?” Raj said, examining the parchment. He crumpled it experimentally. It was first-quality sheepskin parchment, soft and supple. “By courier, I suppose?”
Osterville nodded toward a man in his entourage. Raj looked at him, and then around.
“M’lewis. Deal with this as it deserves,” he said.
“Where are the jakes?” the Scout Captain said, putting down his bowl and unfastening his sword belt.
Like most Civil Government cities, Sandoral had public lavatories, simple brick boxes connected to storm-flushed sewers. M’lewis strode over to the nearest, and back a minute later. He was holding the now brown-streaked and stinking parchment by one corner between thumb and finger. Shocked silence gripped the Commandant’s party as he walked over to the courier, unfastened the flap of his message pouch, and dropped the soiled parchment inside.
“Just so the Chancellor understands exactly what weight I attach to his attempts to interfere with my mission and the Governor’s authority,” Raj said.
“You’re mad,” Osterville said softly. “Mad. Nobody—Tzetzas will eat your heart.”
Raj’s smile sent Osterville back a step. “Perhaps I am mad, Colonel. Perhaps I’m the Sword of the Spirit of Man. In either case, I’m in charge here.” He produced a document of his own. “And this is your own confirmation, directing your troops to cooperate in the transport of the civilians.”
He held it up, and one of the Companions leaned over to read it with interest.
“That! That was that witch, she—” On the edge of ruin, Osterville pulled himself back. He’d been about to say something that would be a public provocation to a challenge. He ran a hand through his hair. “Where is she? I haven’t seen her since . . .”
Raj laughed, an iron sound. “Colonel Osterville, I’ve answered your official inquiries. You can scarcely expect me to stretch business to the point of giving you an itinerary for my wife. Now, if you’ll pardon me—”
He turned, and the officers followed him. Gerrin Staenbridge paused, holding his gauntlets in one hand and tapping them into the palm of the other. For a moment Osterville feared he would slap them across his face in challenge, but the hard dark features were relaxed in a smile. He held the order Osterville had signed—the order that Suzette Whitehall had somehow charmed out of him. He read it, pursing his lips, then looked up at Osterville with an expression of feline malice before he spoke one word.
“Sucker.”