Warlord (48 page)

Gerrin tapped a ringed thumb meditatively against the pommel of his saber. "Slow on the loading, though," he said. "Looked as if they were more used to hunting and target-practice."

Kaltin snorted. "Not much real fighting recently, I suppose."

"Not our problem, eh, ser?" da Cruz said dryly. "Anyways, the Squadron won't be as tough as thet-there Brigade, nohow."

The others nodded; the Squadron had come roaring out of the northern wilderness a century and a half ago, to take the Southern Territories from the Civil Government. They had been outright savages then, and the Territories had gone downhill under their management.

"Can't say the men are over-eager to take them on, even so," Gerrin said carefully, glancing aside at Raj. "Not after a year's hard fighting out east. The Squadron's no match for the wogs, true, but you have to sail to get at them. A wet way to fight, and not a Descotter's choice."

Raj grunted again, ducking his head slightly.

observe
Center said.

—Raj was standing on the quarterdeck of a three-master, his disembodied viewpoint beside the wheel, looking over his own shoulder. The storm had died down, leaving whitecaps on a ruffled wine-colored sea. The Civil Government sailing-transports were scattered from horizon to horizon, many dismasted or wallowing with their sails blown to flapping rags on bare poles. In among them the Squadron war-galleys plunged, huge plumes of spray flung back from the bronze rams at their bows. Oars worked like centipede legs; they were painted vermilion and white, the long snaky hulls were black. Off in the middle distance more came up, their sails not yet struck for battle; the towering lateen shapes bright crimson with the barbarians' golden Sun-and-Comet. One shocked to a stop, the mast-tops lashing as its ram knifed into the planks of a transport.

The helpless merchantman heeled far over under the impact. Tiny figures flew into the water from the rails, thrashing about briefly until the eager tentacles of scavenging downdraggers hauled them toward gnashing beaks. Others went under the oar-blades as they rose and fell like a mincing machine. Off in the middle distance cannon echoed and smoke rose as a lone Civil Government paddle-steamer loosed a broadside; the solid shot skipped along the waves, and one crashed into the oarbank of a galley, but the other vessels turned nimbly aside to avoid the bigger ship's blundering rush. There was only one in sight. Perhaps, from the smoke, another lay over the horizon; dozens of the galleys, and hundreds of their helpless victims.

The Raj-figure wheeled sharply as a seaman tugged at his sleeve, and the viewpoint turned with him. A Squadron two-banker was boring in on their ship; Raj could see the sea falling off the arrowhead shape of the ram, and the mouths of four brass carronades running forward through the square deckhouse above it. Gunners waited with smoking linstocks; the forward mast bristled with the raven-beak spikes of boarding ramps ready to fall and nail the craft together, and behind them crowded the Squadron marines shrieking and waving their massive flintlocks and axes in the air.

"Yeah, well," he said softly, without looking around, conscious that his step had faltered.

The others had gotten used to these fits of introspection; none of the Companions had known him well before he . . . 
became an Avatar of the Spirit of Man of the Stars?
Raj shuddered and worked his shoulders. For the others, it was times like this that he pulled something impossible out of the hat.

As if he was inspired.

"Well," he went on, "I can see how the people who were out east would like a little more rest." That had been the biggest campaign in sixty years, and the first time in forty-odd the Civil Government had defeated the Colony in a major battle. Memory flashed across his mind: Colonist cavalry sweeping toward Raj's shrinking circle in the Valley of Death. Section leaders yipped and waved yataghans, sharpened on the inner curve, but the mass of bright-colored riders were silent because they held their reins in their teeth to work their carbines with both hands. The recollection was so vivid that Raj missed a step.

I could use a break myself, he thought ruefully.

the man you have become in these past two years would not know how to take a break, raj whitehall,
Center said. If the mental voice had a tone, it was of regret.
no more than i would. 
 

Raj shook his head and continued aloud: "The problem is, if I
am
going to be sent to take back the Southern Territories, I'd prefer to have some people with me who've gotten into the habit of pulling their heads out of their arses for a look around now and then."

The Council of State for War was meeting in an old chapel, a semicircle of seats sloping down to the altar; behind it was a smooth wall of the same gray-streaked white marble as the rest of the big room, with a balcony choir-loft above, screened in carved nairstone that glittered silver and rose in the yellow brightness of the gaslights. Lady Anne Clerett was rumored to observe the meetings from behind that screen . . . and the faint elusive scent of jasmine under the wax-and-incense of the room strongly hinted that rumor was correct. The altar was coated in shining electrum, and held a featureless ball about the size of a man's head. The material was part of its mystery; nothing present-day technology produced could even scratch it, should someone be impious enough to try. It was a computer of the Ancients, from before the Fall, timeless and holy.

a 7ec42,
Center said in its emotionless monotone,
in charge of automated traffic control for a suburb of the Old Residence before the collapse.
A pause,
and it had an unacceptable error rate even then. 
 

The crowd below was all-male, except for one of the Supreme Reverend Syssup-Hierarch's assistants. About fifty present, mostly military, and dressed in a dozen colorful variations on standard uniform. They turned to look at Raj as he and the Companions entered through the big doors at the rear of the arc of seats, relief on their faces. Governor Barholm sat in the Chair before the altar, a shining confection of electrum and brass, pearls and jewels, with a huge golden Star-burst for a back.

"Ah, Brigadier Whitehall," he said.

His voice carried easily in the chapel's superb acoustics, a well-trained instrument. Despite the cloth-of-gold robes, Barholm Clerett looked very much the simple squire from the Descott County hills, a brick-built man with a barrel chest and a nose like a beak in his square dark-brown face. Only a very stupid man would believe that appearance; Clerett had ruled the Civil Government for fifteen years, as Vice-Governor to his ailing uncle and then in his own right, through intrigue and riot and war.

Beside him on a crimson cushion rested a mace, a short weapon forged from a single billet of steel, inlaid with silver and platinum. The emblem of rank only a commander of an independent army corps sent beyond the Civil Government border could carry.

"
Thank
you for joining us," he went on dryly, as Raj and his followers slid into the seats reserved for them in the front row.

A few of the high-born officers in the front ranks smirked; Chancellor Tzetzas leaned back, slimly elegant in his robe of midnight-blue torofib silk from Azania. One eyebrow rose, an expression calculated to the millimeter.

"We were discussing," Barholm went on, "the sacred task of reclaiming the Southern Territories from the barbarian heretics currently occupying them. A task," he added waspishly, "which arouses very little—surprisingly little—enthusiasm!"

"Your Supremacy," an elderly man in uniform protested, "we would serve you ill if we did not counsel you honestly. My father"—he shuddered slightly—"my father's elder brothers and my grandfather sailed with the last fleet sent to reclaim the Territories."

observe
Center said.

—and Raj was on the docks, down where the deep-sea merchantmen came to harbor. It was East Residence, but an earlier one; the East Railway station was not there, and the Messer-class men in view were wearing drooping broad sleeves that covered their hands to the knuckles. A fashion from his great-grandfather's time, like the lace fans of the ladies among the crowd. Miniluna and Maxiluna were both aloft and full, across the horizon from the setting sun, pale translucent crater-marked spheres floating above the darkening sea.

Troops ringed the berths where a dozen transports were docked; gulls chased hissing dactosauroids through the tarry maze of rigging, the sound lost in a surf-roar of voices. The mob was anxious enough to crowd the leveled bayonets. Raj could see the men jab them forward now and then, the long blades coming back red-tipped and the edge of the crowd stumbling away in an eddy; mounted officers with drawn sabers sat their dogs behind the line of guardsmen. Other figures were coming down the gangplanks of the transports, figures in the tattered remains of Civil Government uniforms. They shuffled down the creaking planks in groups, groups of eleven; ten men with their hands each in the belt of the one before them, and pus-wet bandages across the ruins of their eyes. The leading man in each group had one good eye, but no hands. . . . 

" . . . and never will I forget my father's words, when he told me how his only living brother came back, a blinded eunuch. Your Supremacy," the old man went on, holding out his hands almost pleadingly; they were calloused from the grip of reins and saber. "Mighty Sovereign Lord, only because my father had not yet entered Holy Church did our line survive at all. I have served the Chair in war all my life, and my sons and my sons' sons. Spare them, Your Supremacy!"

There was a moment of ringing silence. Chancellor Tzetzas coughed discreetly into a handkerchief.

"Most moving, most moving." He was a tall slender man in his mid sixties, with the fine olive skin and delicate features of old City nobility. "Your Supremacy's will is mine, of course; still, this is a rashly adventurous course of action we contemplate. The campaign in the east concluded so successfully last year"—Tzetzas bowed easily in Raj's direction—"did no more than pay its own costs."

Raj felt his lips tighten, then forced an easy smile and a nod of polite acknowledgment.
Because I didn't let you get your hands on all the loot, Tzetzas,
he thought coldly. Some of it had gone on victory-bonuses, a good deal to pensions for troops crippled from their wounds, soldiers the Chancellor had thrown off their land grants as soon as they were registered as unfit for duty.

"Our mighty sovereign lord, Governor Barholm, has embarked on numerous projects to glorify the Spirit of Man of the Stars"—the new Temple, paid for out of an increase in the salt tax—"and to better the lives of the people"—railway extensions, new harbors and dams and steam mills—"and in conclusion, I am forced to confess myself at a loss as to where the funds for this expedition might be found."

"
Take it out of what you steal, Tzetzas.
" The call was a sotto voce whisper from one of the more junior officers up in the higher tiers of seats. Laughter rumbled from all the military men present, although the Chancellor's robed bureaucrats sat in appalled silence. Tzetzas's head turned, and the movement reminded Raj of a carnosauroid he had seen in the Governor's menagerie, one moment death-still, the next snapping an insect out of the air. Then the Chancellor relaxed, smiling thinly as Barholm joined in the bellow of mirth.

I
would not like to be the man who said that,
Raj thought. There was an old joke about a fangmouth biting Tzetzas; rumor had it that the poison reptile died in convulsions.

observe
Center said.

—and a young officer jerked erect in bed; Raj recognized the room, or rather its pattern. Company commander's quarters in an East Residence barracks, although the sleeping woman was decidedly non-regulation. The officer's face was fluid with sleep; he reached out to touch the holstered pistol hanging from the headboard by unconscious reflex.

"Heysos? That you?" he mumbled.

"
Nao
" a voice said, as the door swung open and a masked man in dark clothing stepped through. The naked soldier had just enough time to clear the heavy dragoon pistol from its holster before the shotgun blast caught him in the face, flinging his body back and much of his head across the wall behind him.

The woman screamed twice; the assassin stepped to within a meter of her before he fired the other barrel.

Tzetzas spread his hands. "And in any case . . . military affairs are outside my area of expertise; I would not care to speculate on the chances of success. The dangers to the eastern frontier, however, are, one would think, obvious. We lost several provinces to the Colony when the
last
expedition was destroyed."

Thump.
All eyes swung back to Barholm, as he brought the stylized keyboard down on the arm of the Chair. The diamond and padparascha sapphire symbols on its surface glittered, matching the autocrat's robes.

"Thanks to Brigadier Whitehall here," Barholm bit out, "the Colony is without a Settler. Ali and Akbar are still settling who's to be master—"

observe
Center said.

—and dark men in doghair robes waited behind an alabaster planter filled with rose bushes, the blossoms plate-sized disks of crimson and yellow. A figure in long robe and cloth-of-gold turban came striding along the pathway beyond, where fountains tinkled among delicate tilework; behind him walked guards, black giants naked to the waist with long curved blades resting unsheathed on their shoulders. The planter overturned and those behind it leapt forward, curved daggers raised, shrieking. Their screams of rage turned to fear as swords hissed and rifles from the snipers on the rooftop opposite spat puffs of white . . .

—and stocky grizzled Tewfik stood in the open flap of a field-commander's tent, dressed as ever in the plain scarlet burnoose and spired helmet of the Colonial Regulars, with the Seal of Solomon on his black leather eyepatch. His left hand was clenched on the hilt of his scimitar until the knuckles showed white, but there was unshakable calm in his voice, and in the face that watched the soldiers drilling. Behind him a man in civilian robe and ha'aik waited by the map table, looking uneasily at the officers who stood around him with their arms crossed. From his expression, he was fully conscious that they would be delighted by an order to take him out—and shoot him as soon as he cleared the rug.