One wall of the pike formation swung back, smoothly, like a great barn door. Around him the riders shifted, and lancepoints came down with pale Byers’ light breaking off the honed edges. He took his own spear in hand, gripped the handle of the small round buckler in his left.
“HABANDAR!” the riders shouted.
Their horses pounded forward, building to a gallop. Those nomads still alive took one horrified look at the wedge-shaped mass of leveled points and steel-helmed riders and scattered like mercury on dry ice. A few could not get out of the way in time and turned to fight; riders and horses alike went down under the onrushing mass, nothing more than ripples in its flow as Bandari horses pig-jumped or sidled to avoid the bodies. Behind them, the pike-phalanx formed up and advanced at the quickstep, crushing enemy wounded and dead alike beneath their hobnails. Ahead there was frantic activity, as the nomads’ women and children fled on whatever they could bridle. Surviving warriors darted in to snatch up families, tools, whatever valued bits could be taken in a moment.
Burn or poison everything we can’t carry off, Andries reminded himself. There was nothing ahead of him but the buildings, now; he raised the lance to the vertical and slowed to a canter, letting the butt rest on the toe of his right boot. The whole formation fell into a jingling trot; some of the haBandari were yipping in derision at their fleeing enemies.
“Stow that!” he snarled, half-turning in the saddle. Behind him the banner whipped in the air, six-pointed star over a leaping antelope, flanked by burning swords. Abashed, the others fell silent; the Edenites behind had taken up their hymn of war, to the rhythm of their boots.
Nothing abashed Miriam. “Think this’ll do it?” There was red on the blade of her lance; beads fell rattling and frozen as she resheathed the lower meter in the tube at the rear of her saddle to free her hand.
“Ja,” he replied. “Enough to scare the others into migrating in winter to get away from us. There’s a hundred thousand square kilometers out here, the Saurons can’t keep a garrison in every hotnot camp.” Yet the nomad herds were their last possible source of additional food before the next harvest.
“They can catch those farmers,” Miriam said, jerking the short horsehair crest on her helmet at the Edenites behind them.
“So we move fast. I doubt any of the hotnots will bother heading for Tallinn with the news.”
On Haven winter gave up its grip on the steppes reluctantly, with the long slow rotation of Cat’s Eye about Byers’ Sun, two-thirds again longer than Earth’s year. The last hundred cycles of the cold season were a quiet bitterness the coma of almost-death. Then the first fingers of returning light touched the far north, where nothing lived and drifts of frozen carbon dioxide lay for most of the death-season. Ice turned to gas and stormed southward, bitter in its cold, picking up a little moisture from the oceans. Over the continents it met warmer air rising from lowlands and the equatorial seas--warmer by comparison; only sheltered areas on the equator escaped midsummer night frosts, on this world. Where the fronts met, giants dueled in the sky.
The Soldier embassy riding south to the Bandari Pale had come through sleetstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, even rain. It happened to be a clear cold morning when they rode through the Bashan Pass and down into the Eden Valley, air still and free even of dust, motionless and translucent as fine crystal. Byers’ Sun was a small yellow-white disk overhead, halfway through the forty-three hour trueday. Floating high in the west Cat’s Eye covered an arm’s-stretch sector of the sky, an impossible banded jewel of yellow and green and crimson, glowing with its internal heat. The elongated red slot of the Pupil stared down, as baleful as the Lidless Eye banner that preceded the Soldiers of the Citadel beside the white flag of truce. Lower and fainter were three of the sister-moons of Haven, pale shadows impaled on the high jagged peaks of the Afritsberg. Those glinted white and cruel, sterile as salt.
Cyborg Rank Marin ignored the scenery; every augmented sense was fine-tuned to wring useful militechnic data out of this visit. The necessity to come here at all was disagreeable enough. He would make it as useful as he could. Little enough data had been available on the steppe, mostly sign from herds driven out of visible range of the emissaries. Those had been disconcertingly numerous, though. He was pleased to note that Base First Rank Shagrut was equally alert, frowning in puzzlement at the badly-sited blockhouse beside the trail, a small structure of cemented boulders.
Puzzling because the rest of the fortifications in the pass were laid out well, as if from an old Imperial Marine text with some imaginative alterations. Bunkers, of course; many of them, on either side of the switchbacks they had climbed up from the steppe; more now as they headed down. From the looks, he suspected many gave into natural cave systems. Up to the right . . . Yes. Those basalt boulders are set to avalanche across the roadway. The road itself was also of interest. Imperial work, possibly even Co Do originally, blasting and mechanical excavation over the worst stretches. The surface had been repaired recently, though, with crushed rock and gravel to fill potholes, and the top was competently graded. Ruts were from iron-shod wooden wheels; dung had been swept up with straw brooms and collected.
Down into the valley; his senses confirmed the briefing. Very rich air, about equivalent to the 3,500 meter level on Terra, almost as rich as some parts of the great Shangri-La lowland over the mountains to the east. Much smaller, of course--thousands of square kilometers as opposed to millions--but comparable otherwise. Steep-sided on the west, with rolling foothill country to the east, a speckle of almost-trees. Dun-red-green pastureland between, with the thin thread of a perennial river, precious and rare. Old fields on the higher bench-lands of the valley bottom had been abandoned here as elsewhere on Haven, with tractors and power-driven irrigation pumps a thing of the past.
There were differences from any other farming settlement he had seen. An earth barrage was three-quarters completed, ponding back the waters of the Langstroom in a scum of grey slit-stained ice and stretches of meltwater. Three skeletal shapes of welded girder stood beside it, long cloth-covered arms revolving in the constant breeze. The sound of their groaning came clearly to his ears, although they were several kilometers distant; wind-driven pumps. Canals snaked downstream, glinting slightly where water travelled to the thirsty loess earth of the bottomlands Ploughmen were at work their tools drawn by oxen or muskeylope; other workers dug distribution ditches, leveled fields, broke up clods. Marin focused closest attention on them as the party came down into the flatlands and headed for the cattle town. Men and women were well-clothed in heavy wool and linen, a contrast to the wool-and-sheepskin herder garb of the escorts. They appeared well-fed, none of the telltale signs of malnutrition. Older children were numerous, working beside their parents; that meant that younger ones were elsewhere, probably in schools. Rammed-earth houses half-sunken in the ground dotted the fields beyond a few hours’ walk from the settlement. Closer than that were only sheds and pens. He nodded slightly; the workers would spend their nights behind the defenses.
Strong itself was also interesting. Smaller than it had been before the Dol Guldur came, obviously. Less shrinkage than in most other towns, since elsewhere townsmen had died first in the famines. The abandoned buildings had been thoroughly torn down, a process still under way, with brick and tile and precious timber and metal sorted into neat heaps. Yurt-like circular tents occupied much of the vacant space where homes had once stood, arranged in neat rectangular lines with open squares here and there. The tents were being struck and packed onto wagons, and the wagons and large herds were heading west, toward the passes over the Shield-of-God, up onto the high steppe for summer grazing.
They passed still closer; the escort-guard of Bandari lancers drew closer about the Soldiers, as clots and groups of people began to line the road. A few shaken fists and curses from the Edenite farmers, glowering hostility from the Band members, well reined in. Unusual. Soldiers were used to hostility from cattle, but it was more common to see it restrained by fear
than by self-control.
“Discipline,” Marin observed in Soldier battle-language. Shagrut nodded, and took a deep breath through his nose.
Marin copied him. Massed humanity. Coal-smoke-- significant, it would economize on precious wood and dung. Haven had very little coal, a few small beds where fossil peat had been compressed by volcanic action. Not much smell of excrement, but a tang of methane; some sort of sewage-digestion system, producing sludge for fertilizer and burnable gas. Also sulphur, which meant both geothermal hot water and the scarcest ingredient for gunpowder.
“I think, Cyborg First Rank,” Shagrut said, “we may have conquered the wrong valley.”
“No,” the Cyborg replied. “These Band cattle chose the right one.” A valuable prize, tended with a good husbandman’s care, and simply too far away from the heartland of Soldier power to be conquerable. As was being demonstrated in this careful guided tour, of course.
Unconquerable as yet.
The walls were thick and high, earthfill faced with stone and brick. Within streets were narrow, to keep wind from stealing too much heat; houses turned massively built whitewashed adobe fronts to the cobble pavements, for the same reason. Despite the embassy, folk were at work, narrow slit windows carrying the noise of pedal-driven looms, the clang of a blacksmith’s forge, an ear-pricking whine of lathes. In the central square the exhibition was less subtle; a hundred picked troops drawn up with automatic rifles, their quiet order as much a statement as their weapons. Sunlight glinted on blued iron and mottled wool camouflage smocks, a motionless waiting that was not stiff but a carnivore readiness to spring. . . . Elite troops. A slightly different odor from the anger and fear outside, more of the rich hormonal stink of aggression. The ranks were to either side of a house larger than most; there the Pale’s leaders waited, under their banners.
Marin and his party dismounted, bringing their own banners. His eyes read the waiting Bandari, looking for the subliminal clues. Van Reenan. Older than he had expected, although years younger than the Cyborg. A hint of pain in the easy straddle-legged stance, a slight smell of illness. He filed the datum. Two women flanking him; one smelled of pregnancy. Several others, some with the telltale brick build and startling muscularity of Frystaat, full or half-bred.
“We are the emissaries of the Citadel and the Unified State,” Marin said, after silence that stretched.
Van Reenan grinned, white against the dark skin. “The Sauron Unified State is radioactive ash,” he replied. His dialect was the Anglic of Sparta, pure and crisp; the Cyborg’s analysis showed a trace of a guttural, clipped accent, an overlay of the slurred archaic Americ of Haven. “And we have received emissaries from the Citadel before.”
The other three Soldiers had stirred imperceptibly at the Bandari’s taunting reference to Homeworld’s fate.
Marin directed the hormones and blood-distribution of his brain away from anger.
“Your hostages stand guarantee for your good conduct,” Marin noted. Soldiers had visited here twenty years ago, and they had not returned. That had been part of the original survey of the continent.
“They came demanding water and earth,” van Reenan replied. His voice held subtones of amusement, and something else, a hieratic, ritual element.
Shagrut nodded stiffly. Earth and water were tokens of tributary status, in the folk-mythology of most of Haven’s peoples. The Citadel made use of the symbology.
“We threw them down a well, where they could find plenty of both,” van Reenan continued casually. “I hope you’ll be more polite. In any case, we will talk.”
He stood aside and gestured. Wordless, Marin led his party through the door.
Death’s-head indeed, Piet thought, looking down the long table. There seemed to be little flesh on the bony face, or life in its muscles. The eyes, though, the eyes were full of life. The problem is, it isn’t human. The negotiations were showing that, plainly enough. Just getting a word out of the Cyborg was a victory. . . .
“The mere fact that you’re here demonstrates the success of our plan,” he said. The Sauron 2-I-C stiffened very slightly. Aha. Not quite the iron man, that one. The Cyborg might have been a breathing statue.
“How so?” he said, in his nasal accent. “We maintain combat superiority.”
“Relevant, if I were implementing a combat strategy; you will have noticed, we’re not. Ours is a persisting logistics strategy.”
“Archer Jones,” Marin said.
“. . . Art of War in the Western World,” Piet finished, slightly surprised. Not completely unknown for the soldati to be historians too, he thought.
“In essence,” Marin said, flatly, “you have found an opportunity to use your superior numbers by avoiding combat and striking at our subsistence base. We are enough to fight, but not enough to guard. You have avoided turning our cattle against you--which would negate your numerical advantage--by offering them alternative means of subsistence yourselves. Yes. Quite a clever scheme. However, with spring, we can move significant forces into your outlying territories. You must then either abandon productive occupation and retreat to this valley, or meet us in open-field combat and be destroyed.”
“If we do retreat,” Piet said, keeping the enjoyment off his face with scrupulous care, “the likelihood of a successful siege is low.”
“Debatable.”
“Probable.”
The other Bandari at the table were watching with awe, as their leader dropped into the same monotone that the demonic Sauron used.
“Therefore, a temporary accommodation is mutually beneficial,” Piet said.
It always helps to be able to talk to a man in his own metaphors, he thought with grim amusement. Saurons thought in games theory: Cyborgs even more so, it was obvious if you looked at the grammar of their so-called battle language, or even the dialect of Anglic they spoke among themselves. Keep your logic clean and you could lead them by the nose, if you were careful. It was a major reason why they’d lost the war.
Of course, they had taken the Empire of Man down with them. The life of the Pale and its people depended on Piet van Reenan doing better than that.
“We have reached an impasse,” Marin said.
“I thought we were making progress?” Shagrut said, slightly surprised.
The two Soldiers were alone in the common room of the quarters the Bandari had given them; adobe walls with plain wool hangings, brick floors with sheepskins, a brick stove and a bucket of coal. Elsewhere were a plain kitchen, and four sleeping chambers. Bare enough, although more comfortable than anything in Angband Base. The three Soldiers of their escort were elsewhere; despite the hostility of the populace, the attendants assigned them were always female volunteers in the fertile phase of their cycles. Absently, Marin admired the cunning of it. Spreading the genes of the Race was standard policy; the long-term goal of making Haven another Homeworld was directly aided by it. The Bandari doubtless, and correctly, thought of it as a raid on the most precious armory the Soldiers possessed.
“Less and less progress,” Marin continued, staring through the narrow iron slits of the stove into the low red glow of the fire, admiring colors no human could see. That was the only light inside, and more than enough for them. “Our positions have reached a plateau. Each has offered terms which represent their current minimal positions for a truce. These remain irreconcilable, although much closer than before. In fact, at worse we could accept what they offer--until we are in a position to renew hostilities, of course--and I suspect they could do likewise with my latest proposal.”
He allowed himself a slight frown and began to methodically stoke himself with bread and cheese from the table beside his chair, eating with the graceless economy of a wolf. Outside, beyond the double-doored vestibule and thick walls, the haBandari guards were being changed; the visible guards, that was. Multiple riflemen in concealed positions guarded every entrance and exit of the building; he could hear one of them cough and shift position a hundred or so meters away, and the fain
t click of a steel barrel against a windowsill. Upstairs mattress ropes creaked to the rhythm of faint panting grunts. Absently, Marin correlated the pair’s heartbeats, comparing them with his own, Shagrut’s, and those of the sleeping Soldiers’ and their bedmates.
“Yet . . . perhaps this impasse is deliberate,” Marin said.
Shagrut gave a faint twitch of surprise. “The Bandari chief seems to be exceptionally reasonable, for a cattle commander. Less given to counterproductive emotional bias.”
“Exactly. His reason has been as a mirror held up to mine. Every move solidly grounded in logic and supported by concrete data. This is a facade. He is moving according to a metalogic which eludes me, but one which is carefully planned.”
“Evidence?” Shagrut said.
“None. Intuitive leap.”
The other soldier nodded. Not even a Cyborg’s mental processes were all conscious; that was not the way of maximum efficiency. Gaining new insight often did not proceed in linear fashion; instead, the mind leapt to the conclusion and traced the lines of proof afterwards.
“We could abandon the negotiations,” Shagrut said.
Marin could read a slight eagerness there, knew he himself shared it. Move forward, smash your enemies, impose your will--those were their people’s cultural imperatives. Political imperatives as well; fear and invincible reputation were solid operational assets when dealing with human norm populations.
No. Cost-benefit. That was also a Soldier imperative, force as a rational tool in the service of Racial growth.
Uneasily, he remembered the Second Battle of Tanith. The Second Fleet had calculated well and wisely there; calculated that the Imperials would break off when losses exceeded damage inflicted, with allowance for needs elsewhere. First Citizen Diettinger had commanded a flotilla at that battle, or the first part of it. Instead the Empire of Man had stripped every outpost, abandoned every position. By the end of the battle ships were ramming each other as the Soldiers fought to disengage, and the Imperials blasted occupied cities on the surface of Tanith to glassy craters, sacrificing millions to eliminate a few regiments of their enemies.
War World IV: Invasion Page 31
