Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  “Christian,” Rick mused. “Allied to Rome, then?”

  “No,” Warner said. “They’ve got their own Patriarch, and from what I heard their chaplain wasn’t all that thrilled about the new Unification. They’re nominal allies of Drantos, but they trade with Rome and the Five Kingdoms and everybody else, and they seem willing to let their trade partners think part of the trade is tribute if that makes people feel better.”

  “Who the heck are these people?” Rick asked, and Warner looked to the sky for answers.

  “I never thought about it a lot, Skipper, but if I had to guess I’d say Crusade-era Venice. Probably pretty late Crusade era, from the little we know about their government’s setup. Maybe early thirteenth century?”

  Rick frowned.

  “Does that fit? There wasn’t a Demon Star passage in crusader times, was there?”

  “Well, that’s not the only anomaly,” Warner said. “Been meaning to talk to you about that—”

  “Not to interrupt a good conversation, Colonel,” Bisso said. “But it’s getting late, and we got problems a lot closer to home.”

  Rick nodded.

  “Okay. But get messages off to our people in Nikeis and find out what’s going on and what they’ve been up to. I want a report as soon as possible, and they’re authorized to use the semaphore and message riders to speed it along.” When Bisso nodded, Rick said, “And what other cheerful news do you have for me?”

  “Drumold,” Bisso said. “Your father-in-law is fit to be tied. Claims he’s getting the short end of the stick on rations. Not enough to get home, he said.”

  “And you know what that means,” Warner said. “Them clansmen sure as hell won’t starve.”

  Not going home through the wealthiest section of Drantos, they wouldn’t. Borderer clansmen were quite adept at foraging for themselves. Surely Ganton knew that?

  “Do you think this is deliberate?” Rick asked. “Put them in a situation where they have to steal to live, and then accuse them?”

  “Skipper, it sure don’t make sense to goad the clans into a fight,” Warner said as he shook his head. “He’s going to need those archers and pikemen every bit as much as he needs us.”

  “Some of the barons think they’ll get them as conscripts,” Bisso said. “Conquer the clan territories, and conscript the troops. Cheaper that way.”

  “Jesus, are they that stupid?” Rick asked. “Conscript archers?”

  “Yeah, some of them ironheads are dumber’n a box of rocks,” Bisso said.

  “Ganton isn’t.”

  “No, Sir, maybe not, but then we don’t know what his game is,” Bisso said. “He sure wasn’t acting too bright this morning.”

  “Or maybe he was,” Warner said. “And we just don’t know what he was after.”

  “It’s a damned dangerous game,” Rick mused, and Warner laughed.

  “Skipper, tell me what we do that won’t fit that description?”

  “Yeah. Okay, let’s get our troops on the road. The longer we stay here the better the chance our young Wanax will decide he wants something else we can’t give him,” Rick said. “We’ll deal with Drumold’s rations later. Get ’em saddled up.”

  Warner grinned.

  “Yes, Sir. Head ’em up, move ’em out.”

  “Rawhide,” Rick said. “And which one of us grows up to be Dirty Harry?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE RUINED CHAPEL

  There was a chapel at the crossroad. Most crossroads in Drantos had some kind of shelter. There was usually a cistern, and always at least a stoneheap to revere the conductor of the dead. This was a stone building with tiled roof, as large as a village church, as befitted the crossing point of two major roads, one leading south to Armagh and on to Edron, the other west to Chelm. Rick wondered idly why the roads led through a place unsuitable for a village. The church was on a small hillock but the land around it was low and swampy. There was just enough dry land to allow a small garden and churchyard. The village this church served was nearly a mile away on higher ground.

  Probably just happened, Rick thought. Cows wandered through and made a track. People used it, and crossroads are so holy in this part of Tran that no one dared move either road to better ground.

  Warner squinted up at the suns.

  “Got about three more hours of real daylight,” he said. “And some of the clans got a late start. They’ll be streaming in until after dark. Think we ought to stop here?” He indicated some low hill land west of the crossroads.

  “Good place to make camp,” Rick agreed. “This is where we part company, and we still have things to talk over.”

  “That we do,” Warner said. “The stream looks all right, but better avoid that well. Ground’s low, and I know there’s a village up on that ridge.”

  He pointed. The village would be a mile away, but it was as likely that the sewers drained down this way as to the other side. The Unified Church now knew the germ theory of disease, but that hadn’t spread to all the country parishes, and many places were still devoted to the old religions of Yatar and Vothan.

  Cistern, not well, Rick thought, but it wasn’t worth correcting Warner on the difference. It was unlikely to be biologically isolated from the swampy ground water.

  There were no villagers in sight. That was to be expected. People in border villages tended towards thin loyalty to either side, and mostly hoped to be ignored by foraging parties. These would be lucky. Rick’s supply wagons were full.

  The church building itself seemed intact, but the doors stood ajar and the site was deserted. He looked inside.

  “Pretty well looted out,” he said. “Nothing much left.”

  “Furniture went for campfires,” Warner said.

  Tylara rode up in time to hear Warner’s speculation.

  “Who would dare despoil a temple?” she demanded.

  “Both sides been through this crossroads more than once, My Lady,” Warner replied. “Not much dry wood in the swamp and that’s all stripped out. Could have been almost any outfit short on firewood. At least they didn’t burn the place down.”

  Tylara went inside to look. She returned looking less upset.

  “It was a Temple to Yatar,” she said. “Not yet converted to the new Christian faith. There is no hint of a crucifix or Stations of the Cross.” She turned to Rick. “With your consent I will see to arranging a Mass, and perhaps we can find someone to attend this place until the regular clergy return.”

  “With my consent?”

  She smiled thinly.

  “We are not in Chelm, My Lord. And I am no longer Justiciar. I have no authority here that you do not give me.”

  Never stopped you before, Rick thought.

  “Whose county is this?” he asked.

  “Lord Ajacias was Eqeta here. Of course the title and all his lands are forfeit for treason,” Tylara said. “But this was Church property, and should be returned to the Church in any event. I know no one who has the benefit of bestowing this parish. Ajacias or one of his minions, but that would likely be forfeit with the titles.”

  “Ah.” So whatever clergy were installed during this lawless time would probably keep it. Some lord would end up with jurisdiction here, but he’d be unlikely to turn out an established pastor. And Tylara would have favorites among the converts to the Unified Church. “Then, my love, take possession for the Church, and do whatever pleases you with this place, with my blessings,” Rick said. He looked around for his orderly. “Jamiy.”

  “Sir.”

  “My compliments to our unit commanders, and they can circle the wagons. We’ll camp here for the day. And get my caravan set up. Oh and tell our corpsmen they can house the wounded of Ta-Meltemos here after the Mass.”

  So another village is converted to the Unified True Church, Rick thought. No one was consulting the villagers. Tylara certainly wouldn’t. The old pagan cults of Yatar and Vothan had initiates and a priesthood, but they weren’t an orthodoxy and didn’t think about here
sy. The new Church didn’t either. Yet. Rick had heard rumors of resistance to the new Unified Church, mostly from the Five Kingdoms. Combine patriotism and religion and you could get nasty persecutions. Heretics became traitors and vice versa.

  God save me, Rick thought. I don’t want to bring the Inquisition to Tran. But what can I do? The traveling medicine shows taught the germ theory of disease, and the Unified Church had adopted that as revelation. That helped because simple sanitation worked what looked like miracles compared to what they’d been doing.

  Science and religion. Have to see they don’t conflict. One more damned job I don’t know how to do. And I don’t have time to think about it.

  * * *

  Rick laid out the map on his field conference table. Unlike most maps on Tran, this one was accurate over reasonably long distances: Rick had drawn it on a tracing from a photograph taken from orbit. Mapmaking had never been a high art on Tran, and even Roman maps became distorted when they covered more than a few days’ marches. Roman cartographers were vaguely aware of the problems associated with different map projections, but they had never worked out what to do about them. Roman maps were good locally, but could be misleading over large distances. Maps drawn by anyone but Roman engineers were hopelessly distorted.

  One reason they think I’m a military genius, Rick thought. Amazing what a good map will do. Couple it with a compass and a magnetic field which nearly matches the planet’s rotational poles and I don’t spend a lot of time getting lost. Rick remembered one of Warner’s lectures on how there had to be a magnetic field for life to survive here.

  The others filed into the caravan. Rick’s traveling command post was built up from two wagons placed side by side. It was large enough to hold the conference table and had whiteboard walls for diagrams. The only problem with it was that even broken into four wagons, two for the post itself and another two for maps and furniture and supplies, the command post moved slowly on Tran’s primitive roads. The headquarters was often several days behind the commander. This time it hadn’t arrived at the battlefield before Rick was headed home, meeting it on the way and turning it around.

  Rick took his place at the center of the table. When he first did that it shocked Tylara, who expected a commander to sit at the head of the table, but it hadn’t taken her long to see the advantage of being in the middle of things. Now she sat next to Rick and watched closely.

  Tylara’s father Drumold sat across from Rick and Tylara. He looks tired, Rick thought. Can’t be too surprised at that, he’s got to be past sixty. That’s old on Tran. Life in the saddle ages you fast.

  “My son sends his regards, and begs to be excused,” Drumold said. “He’s out hurrying along stragglers.”

  Rick nodded understanding. The clansmen were more disciplined than Drantos nobles, but that wasn’t saying much. The Romans seemed to have the only really disciplined native forces on Tran. Except for the Nikeisian infantry, Rick amended. The Nikeisian axe and halberd men had fought in orderly ranks, and consequently took few losses, which may have been why the Drantos lords thought they hadn’t contributed enough.

  “So where do we stand?” Rick said.

  “With the Wanax?” Tylara said. “Not high.”

  “Colonel’s still Warlord of Drantos,” Warner said.

  “Aye,” Drumold said. “And will be so long as Ganton finds it useful to have him so. But not a moment longer, to my way of thinking.”

  “And how long will that be?” Rick asked.

  “He needs you to chase that Five Kingdoms army back home,” Drumold said. “After that, you can hold the west as Eqeta, and there won’t be an enemy standing on Drantos soil. Where’s the need for a Warlord? Unless you’ll lead his armies north. Will ye? Will you be bringing your star lords to fight when the Wanax invades the Five Kingdoms?”

  “I sure hadn’t planned on it,” Rick said. “We don’t want the Five Kingdoms! Not now, anyway.” Rick pointed to the map. “Look, this climate change is getting whole nations on the move. Southerners streaming north, and from what I hear the whole high plains is going to be a dust bowl. Whatever’s up there will come down.”

  “Westmen already have,” Bisso said. “Tough little buggers.”

  “What scares me is there may be people up there tougher’n the Westmen,” Larry Warner said.

  “What makes you think there is anyone tougher than the Westmen?” Bisso asked. “Please tell me you made that up! The Westmen damn near killed us all at the Hooey River!”

  “Just a hunch,” Warner said. “They’ve got legends about their paradise being west of where they live, but they never go there. Maybe somebody’s keeping them from going?”

  “Interesting,” Rick said. There was a time when I’d be the one to know that sort of thing. Now all I do is pee on fires. He shook his head. “But the important point is, there’ll be lots of people trying to settle in Drantos. Too many to support. We can’t keep them out, so what do we do with them?”

  “Hell of a lot to kill,” Bisso said. “Not enough bullets.”

  “Leaving aside the ethical problems,” Rick said. “So if we can’t keep them out and we can’t kill them, the only thing left is to move them on to somewhere else. The easiest place is the Five Kingdoms, but we can’t push the refugees in there if we own the joint!”

  “Actually, we could, Colonel,” Bisso said. “Easier, really, if nobody’s trying to keep them out.”

  “Good point,” Warner said. “Hmm. You know, Colonel, maybe he’s got something there. Hard cheese on the Fivers, but hell, it’s going to be tough on them anyway. Not that you need reminding, but the important thing is to keep those damn madweed farms producing. First crop of refugees, we can put to work in the fields. Promise them safe passage north if they work hard and don’t cause trouble. If we hold the Five territory, we could do that. Send them north and give them land to settle on.”

  Rick frowned.

  “You’re proposing that we help Ganton with this conquest?”

  “Rather have the Fivers unhappy with us than have our own Wanax hate our guts! Sure, why not?”

  “We don’t have enough troops to do all we have to do now,” Rick said. “Let alone this. It was all we could do to keep the Five from conquering us, now you want to go the other way?”

  “We still have that problem,” Warner said. “It won’t get easier. Skipper, we got long-term problems, too. Bisso can tell you, the troops are getting restless.”

  Rick looked the question to Bisso.

  “It’s true enough, Sir. We don’t know where we’re going. Look, Murphy was a private soldier. Now he’s set up as a great lord all on his own, with wives and kids and land. Mason’s an officer, marrying into the nobility. Warner’s got his University. What have the rest of us got? More’n that, what do we look forward to, Colonel? We got no lands, most of us have concubines but not real families, we can be called out to fight any time. Hell, Colonel, Chelm yeomen have more rights than we do!”

  “I’ve never heard you talk like this before,” Rick said.

  “Never had the chance, what with Sergeant Major Elliot and all. Colonel, I’m not saying anyone’s muttering about mutiny. We know what happens! Warner got sold into slavery, Gengrich damn near lost his whole command. Only good things that happened to us were after you took over. I’m just saying we don’t see where we’re going. We trust you, but frankly, Sir, when I hear you talk like you don’t know what we’re doing either, it scares hell out of me!”

  Tylara was about to say something. Probably to protest the sergeant’s tone, Rick thought. And that wouldn’t do.

  “So, just what do you want out of all this, Bisso?” Rick asked before she spoke.

  “Me? Retirement to a gated post with a good pension, with grandkids coming to visit on holidays. I reckon there’s others with more ambition, but that’d suit me just fine.”

  “And the others?”

  “Like I said, Sir, there’s others with more ambition, ’specially when they see h
ow Murphy’s set up. But I reckon being retired on good pay in a safe place wouldn’t be the least of what they want.”

  Rick nodded.

  “A military colony in a safe place. Training a new regiment. Might surprise you to know that’s always been what I had in mind for the company, Bisso. The big problem is making things safe enough. Right now—”

  “But right now, there’s no place on this planet safe. Skipper, I know that, Elliot knows that, most of the men know that. But you did ask.”

  “I did indeed. Okay, Warner, you think the best way to get a peaceful old age is to install Ganton as High Rexja of the Five Kingdoms. Maybe so. So why does Ganton think he can do it now?”

  “He has this claim,” Warner said. “Lady Tylara can tell you, the Wanax thinks he’ll get allies in the Five. Legitimists. Isn’t like this never happened before.”

  Tylara nodded agreement.

  “My Lord Husband, you have yourself said that sometimes when you have enough problems, they solve each other. Could this be so now? Our Wanax has ambitions, but he also has claims that will win him support in the North. We need a place to send the refugees from the south. If we help Wanax Ganton, we will have such a place.”

  “I need to think on it,” Rick said. The problem is, they may be right. But I’m tired! I don’t want to fight anymore.

  “Perhaps God wills it,” Tylara said. “That we bring the true religion to the heathen.”

  And she means it, Rick thought. Of course true religion brought benefits like hygiene.

  Bisso looked uncomfortable, but Warner nodded.

  “There’s already Unification converts in the Fiver armies,” he said. “Maybe they’ll defect to us. Some already did. It’s always been uneasy between Yatar and Vothan up there.”

  “There have never been religious wars on Tran,” Rick said. “And I sure don’t want to be the cause of one.”

  “All due respect, Skipper, how do you know?” Warner demanded. “History on Tran means what your grandfather told you, plus maybe some legends like the Time and Skyfire, and damned little details of those. For all you know they’ve had religious wars out the wazoo.”