by David Drake
“Hang on, Sylvie!”
The Brigade warriors rocked into a gallop behind him.
“Well done, Major Bellamy,” Raj Whitehall said, clapping him on the back. He raised his voice slightly. “Very well done, you and your men.”
The headquarters company of the 2nd Cruisers raised a roaring shout at that, Bellamy’s name and Raj’s own, crying them hail.
“And you too, Gerrin,” Raj went on, as the three senior officers and their bannermen turned to ride down the length of the refugee column.
One or two of the wagons were burning—that always seemed to happen, somehow—but most were in place, looking slightly forlorn with their former owners sitting beside them with their hands clasped behind their necks under guard. Or off digging hasty mass graves for the tumbled bodies, stacking captured weapons, the usual after-battle chores. The smoke smelled of things that should not burn, singed hair and cloth.
“It was young Bellamy’s plan,” Gerrin said. “And a damned sound one, too.” He nodded to where a priest-doctor and his assistants were setting up, with a row of stretchers beside them. As they watched, the first trooper was lifted to the folding operating table. “Not many for the butcher’s block, this time.”
Ludwig flushed with pleasure and grinned. “The 5th carried off the difficult part, drawing away their rearguard,” he said. “My boys just had to stand in the gully and shoot over the edge when they tried to rush the bridge.”
A dispatch rider pulled up in a spray of gravel, his dog’s tongue hanging loose. He wore the checkered neckcloth of the 5th Descott over his mouth as a shield against the dust. When he pulled it down the lower part of his face was light-brown to the caked yellow-brown of his forehead.
“Ser!” he saluted.
Staenbridge took the papers, opened them at Raj’s nod. “Ah, good” he said. “From Bartin. Perino and Sala are secured. A few minor skirmishes; terms of surrender, hostages, supplies on the way—the usual.”
He flipped to the other papers. “And the same from Ehwardo, Peydro and Hadolfo,” he said, listing the other flying-column commanders. “The cities of Ronauk and Fontein opened their gates and tried to throw a party for the troops. Jorg back at base reports civilian and Brigaderos landowners coming in by the dozens to offer submission.”
They were coming up to the head of the refugee column; the smell of powdersmoke still hung here, and of death. Flies swarmed in black mats, drawn by the rotting blood and meat already giving the hot day a sickly odor; hissing packs of waist-high bipedal scavenger sauroids waited at the edge of sight for living men to depart, their motions darting and impatient. Leathery wings soared overhead, spiralling up the thermals, and the ravens were perched on wagons. An occasional crack came as riflemen finished off wounded dogs, or Brigade warriors too badly hurt to be worth the slave-traders’ while. Nearly to the front of the column was a huge tangle of dead men and mounts, with lances and broken weapons jutting up from the pile. Near the center was a man in three-quarter armor, lying with his sword in hand and his drying eyes peering up at the noonday sun. Lead had splashed across his breastplate, and blood from the three ragged holes that finally punched through the steel.
That armor really did seem to offer some protection, at extreme range and against glancing shots. Raj reflected it was just as well he’d ordered brass-tipped hardpoint rounds for this campaign as well as the usual hollowpoint expanding bullets. Generally those were sauroid-hunting ammunition, but they’d serve very well.
“They died fairly hard, here,” he said. “What’s your appraisal, messers?”
Bellamy shrugged. “Up at the bridge they charged us and we shot them,” he said. “When they ran away, we chased them and shot them.” He waved a hand at the scattered clumps of Brigaderos dead out over the fields. The ones away from the convoy were already seething with winged and scaled feasters.
Gerrin ran a thoughtful finger over his lips. “Rather better at my end,” he said. “Those rifle-muskets of theirs do carry. And their unit articulation was much better than the Squadrones—particularly considering this was a thrown-together job lot of landowners’ household troops. Some of the individual units worked quite well; they all stood fire, and some of them even managed a retreat when it seemed called for. Which is why I didn’t get the whole of their rearguard.”
He paused. “That was this fellow, I think,” he said, nodding at the armored corpse and the banner that lay across his legs. “From the way they acted, I’d say their usual tactic was to push their dragoons forward to pin you with fire and hit you in the flank with the cuirassiers. I wouldn’t like to take a charge of those lancers while I was in the saddle, my oath, no. The damned things are three meters long. And that heavy cavalry would be a nasty piece of work in a melee. They didn’t have enough drilled troops to do it here, but I doubt we’ll have as easy a time in the west.”
Raj nodded. “That’s about what I thought,” he said. “Remember the old saying: a charging Brigadero would knock down the walls of Al Kebir.” A little of the animation died out of Bellamy’s face.
“Still, a good day’s work,” Raj said judiciously. “Ludwig, I’m leaving you this sector; push some patrols down the road, and find out how much of a perimeter whoever-it-is in Port Wager is trying to hold. I doubt he’ll even try to hold the city. We’ve taken the island in less than four days; these here were the only ones we’d have had to worry about, and they make a good negative example to contrast with those who surrendered in time.”
Some of the Scout Troop were living up to their informal name; the loot in the bulk of the column was being tallied for later distribution, but several of the Forty Thieves were slitting pouches and pulling rings off fingers—or cutting off the fingers, and ears with rings in them—as they moved among the enemy dead. Men riding to what they think is sanctuary will take all their ready cash with them. One big Scout was ignoring the dead. Every time he came to a man still breathing he took him by the chin and the back of the head and twisted sharply. The sound was a tooth-grating crunch.
Several other troopers surrounded a carriage at the very front of the column; beyond it was only the drift of enemy dead where they’d charged for the stone-built bridge, and gunners policing up their shell casings. Those around the coach were a mixed group from the 5th Descott and the 2nd Cruisers. Dead wolfhounds lay in the traces, and a cavalryman was sitting at some distance having a gunshot wound in one shoulder bandaged. Another jumped up to the running board and ripped open the door, then tumbled backward with a yell as the pointed ferrule of a parasol nearly gouged out his eye.
“Scramento,” the man yelled, clapping a hand to the bleeding trough in his face.
His comrades laughed and hooted. “Hole for the pihkador, Halfonz!” one of them cried, slapping his thigh. “Lucky fer ye t’hoor didn’t hev anither derringer.”
A huge 2nd Cruiser trooper batted the parasol aside with one hand and reached in with the other to pitch the wielder out; she was a tall buxom woman in her thirties, richly dressed in layers of filmy silk. A teenager followed her, shrieking like a rabbit as the big soldier’s strength tore loose her frantic grip on the carriage and set it rocking.
He looked inside, holding the girl three-quarters off the ground despite her thrashing. “Ni mor cunne,” he grunted in Namerique. “Kinner iz.”
“Ci, just kids,” a Descotter said, and slammed the door shut again.
The older woman was hammering at the Cruiser with two-handed strokes of her umbrella. The man she had nearly blinded came up behind her and ripped her gown down to the waist, pinning her arms and exposing her breasts, then kicked her feet from under her.
“Hold ‘er legs, ye dickheads,” he said irritably. Two did, spreading them wide and back as he tossed up her skirts and ripped off the linen underdrawers. Blood from his face wound spattered her breasts as he knelt, but she did not begin to scream until her daughter was thrown down beside her.
Raj heeled Horace to one side with a slight grimace of distast
e. War was war, and soldiers soldiers. He’d had men hung for murder and rape in friendly territory, or towards enemies who’d surrendered on terms—crucified men for plundering a farm on Civil Government territory, once. Very bad for discipline to let anything like that go by. The sullen resentment he’d meet if he tried to deprive men of their customary privileges towards those who hadn’t surrendered on terms would be even worse for order and morale. Besides which, of course, all the prisoners in this convoy were going to the slave markets—to domestic service or a textile mill if they were very lucky, more probably to die in the mines or building Governor Barholm’s grandiose new temples, dams, railroads and irrigation canals.
“Shall I send everything back to base, then?” Staenbridge said, waving a hand toward the convoy.
“No,” Raj said. “We’ll be moving to someplace with a harbor soon. Just take them back a village or two, somewhere with good water; we’ll pass you by and pick you up with the baggage train. And it’ll be a good object lesson for the district.”
“Ci,” Ludwig Bellamy said. “When Messer Raj offers you terms, you take them. Or get your lungs ripped out your nose. Sure as fate; sure as death.” Gerrin nodded somberly.
Raj looked up. Perfect sincerity, he thought. Center confirmed it wordlessly with a scan of face-temperature, bloodflow, voice-tension and pupil dilation.
It bewildered him sometimes, that such men would move so willingly into his orbit and live for his purposes. He could understand why someone like M’lewis followed him, more or less. But Ludwig Bellamy could have gone home to the Territories and lived like a minor king on his estates, and Staenbridge had more than enough in the way of charm and connections to get a posting in East Residence, not too far from the bullfights, the opera and the better restaurants. Raj knew why he did what he did; he would always do what he thought of as his duty to the Civil Government of Holy Federation and the civilization it protected. He also knew that that degree of obsession was rare.
i know the reason, raj whitehall, Center said. but although you know what you do, you will never understand all the effect it has on others, and while i can analyze it, i cannot duplicate it. for this, as much as any other factor, i chose you and trained you to be what you are.
Raj neck-reined Horace about. The escort platoon fell in behind him. The day was getting on for half-done, with a mountain of work yet to do, he should look in on the wounded, they liked that, poor bastards—and Suzette was waiting for him back at base-camp.
“Ah, general,” Bellamy said. Raj leaned back in the saddle and Horace halted with a resentful wuffle. He tried to sit, too, until Raj gave him a warning heel. The blond officer’s voice dropped, even though nobody else was within normal hearing.
“You remember you told me to strike up an acquaintance with young Cabot?”
Who is fully three years your junior, Raj thought. “Yes?” he said.
“I did. A very . . . energetic young man. Intelligent, I’d say. Brave, certainly.”
“And?”
“And . . . we were drinking one night on the voyage. He commiserated with me, saying he knew how it was, to be forced to serve an enemy of one’s family.”
“Ah,” Raj said. “Thank you again, Ludwig.”
“I’ll probably hoist a few with him again, sometime, Messer.” A shrug. “He knows some remarkably good filthy drinking songs, too.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Thank you, thank you,” Suzette said. Her servants bore out the glittering heap of gifts. “You have nothing to fear, messas, nothing at all. The proclaimed terms are open for everybody.”
The crowd of women looked at her desperately, willing themselves to believe. Most of them were civilian landowners’ wives, with a fair sprinkling of Brigaderos magnates’ spouses; they came in a clump, for mutual protection. She smiled at them, willing gracious reassurance. They seemed to take some comfort that the fearsome Raj Whitehall had brought an actual wedded wife along with him; it made him seem less of the ogre who had slashed the neighboring Squadron into oblivion in one summer’s campaign.
“But,” she went on, “your husbands really will have to come in themselves. Or I can’t answer for what will happen to you and your families. And that is the final word.”
Suzette sighed and sank back on her chair as the whispering clump left the room; it was an upper chamber of the little manor house. She fanned herself against the mingled odor of perfume and fear, until the sea-breeze dispelled it and left only a hint of camp-stink in its place. This was the second time the Whitehalls had stayed here. The jumping-off camp for the Southern Territories campaign had been on this spot, although the Brigade had been neutral in that war. Those memories were far from uniformly happy.
At her feet, Fatima cor Staenbridge strummed her sitar. The cor meant that she had been legally freed from chattel-slave status; it was followed by her patron’s name, because that relationship carried a number of obligations.
“Strange,” she said, in Sponglish that now carried only a trace of throaty Arabic accent. “They come to plead for their men, yes?”
“Yes,” Suzette said. “It’s a tradition, rather out of date, but the customs here on Stern Isle are like the clothes, a generation behind East Residence. I take it they wouldn’t have done so back in the Colony?”
Fatima laughed. She was dressed in the long pleated skirt, embroidered jacket and lace mantilla of an East Residence matron of the middle classes, but she had the oval face and plump prettiness of Border Arab stock from the desert oases south of Komar. After two children, only her consistent practice of her people’s dancing—what outlanders called belly-dancing—kept her opulence within bounds.
“Muslim general throw them to his men as abandoned women,” she said. “Muslim man cut off his wife’s nose rather than take life from her hands after she see enemy with face uncovered.”
“Interesting,” Suzette said.
And rather appalling. Our own men are bad enough, most of them, sometimes.
One of the few men she knew who had little or no false pride of that sort was Gerrin Staenbridge—which was understandable, all things considered. It made him disconcertingly hard to fool, more so even than Raj, and Raj had grown disturbingly, delightfully insightful over the past four years. She glanced down at Fatima; the Arab girl had had an interesting life so far as well. The rather bizarre menage a trois she’d fallen into seemed to suit all parties, though. Gerrin got the children he’d wanted, and which a nobleman needed; he and Bartin both got a willing woman at the very, very occasional times they desired one—Bartin more often than Gerrin, but then he was much younger; and Fatima acquired the legal status of an acknowledged mistress and mother of acknowledged heirs to a wealthy nobleman.
Certainly better than what the other women of El Djem were undergoing now; most of them were probably dead. If Fatima ever desired something more passionate than the avuncular/brotherly relationship she had with Gerrin and Bartin, she never showed it. Of course, she was harem-raised. And the despised daughter of a minor concubine at that.
“I have a problem,” she said. “With young Cabot.”
Fatima sat erect, bright-eyed. Suzette and Raj had stood Starparents to her children, a close bond, and had sponsored her into the Church. “Anything I can do, my lady. I poison his food?”
“No, no,” Suzette laughed. Actually, my dear, when I need poisons I have Ndella or Abdullah. “I need advice about him. He grovels at my feet, but he talks to you, occasionally; you’re more nearly his age, and you aren’t born Messa.”
“He want you, and he hate Raj,” Fatima said. “His uncle would send Raj the bowstring—” she fell back into Arabic for that phrase “—if he did not need him so much.”
Suzette nodded. The Arab girl continued more slowly: “His uncle hate and fear Raj. Cabot, he hate and envy Raj. Envy his victory in war, envy that the soldiers love and fear Raj as he were All—ah, as he were the Spirit of Man.” She frowned. “He would not be bad young man, if he not an enemy.”
/>
The East Residence patrician chuckled: “My dear girl, you’ve lived among us of the Civil Government for years and not noticed that the definition of a bad man is someone who belongs to the other faction?”
“Oh,” Fatima said, with her urchin grin, “Arab think that way too.” More seriously, she continued: “The Sultan al’Residance, he would kill Raj for spite. Young Cabot, he would be Raj if he could. Want his fame, want his glory, his followers. Want his woman—not just open her legs, but have her love. He want all. That why he must think bad of Raj, but can’t be away from him either; he think to learn from him, then take all that is his. But maybe in deepest heart, he love Raj like other soldiers do, and hate himself for love.”
“You,” Suzette said, chucking Fatima under the chin, “are a remarkably perceptive young lady.”
“I learn from you, Lady Whitehall. Gerrin talk to me a lot too, and I learn,” she replied. Her head tilted to one side. “Why is it, lady, that man who want bed woman all the time, very much, what’s the word?”
“Muymach.”
“Ah. Muymach man, often not want to talk to woman? Like, oh, Kaltin?”
“Kaltin Gruder’s a loyal Companion,” Suzette said. Who hates my guts, but that’s neither here nor there. Kaltin Gruder had lost a brother and acquired scars external and mental in Raj’s service, but he remained very . . . straightforward. Intelligent, but not subtle.
“Yes, a man-of-men. I friend with his concubine; they say he like bull in bed, but they lonely—he never talk to them. Back home,” she went on, “man never talk to woman, not even father to daughter.”
“And I have the best of both worlds,” Suzette said with a fond smile for an absent man. “Do keep talking to Cabot,” she went on. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She touched a handbell. The door opened and a man looked through; for effect with the locals, he was dressed in his native costume of jellabah and ha’aik, with a long curved dagger and sheath of chased silver thrust through his belt. The Star amulet around his neck was protective camouflage; Abdullah al’Azziz had been born a Druze, and was authorized by the tenants of his own faith to feign the religion of any region in which he lived. Suzette had seen him imitate an Arab sheik of Al Kebir, a Sufi dervish, a fiercely orthodox Star Spirit-worshipping Borderer from the southeastern marchlands of the Civil Government, an East Residence shopkeeper, and a wandering scholar from Lion City in the Western Territories. No, not imitate, be those things. Though she had saved him and his family from slavery, she suspected that the man served her as much for the opportunity to use his talents as from gratitude.
