Warlord (77 page)

"Face about!" he called crisply, bringing the blade of his pistol's foresight down on the window.

The rear of the room was a row of windows, giving out on the courtyard of the house. A Squadron warrior blocked one for a moment, and then the revolver kicked in his fist, the recoil a surprise as it always was when the aim was right. The body slumped and lay across the sill. Men turned from the street windows and fired from the hip, the ricochets as dangerous as enemy fire; one plucked at the sleeve of his coat as it wasp-whined by. Then the enemy were pouring through. He picked his targets and shot four times, dropped the empty weapon and drew his saber. Steel clashed about him, sword on bayonet; a charging barbarian came at him with long blade upraised above his head and practically ran up the outstretched point of Staenbridge's weapon.

"Feh," he said, kicking the man free of the saber and blocking another cut, locking wrists. The Squadron warrior fell away as a trooper drove his bayonet into his back, blade carefully horizontal to the ground to avoid catching on the ribs. The room fell silent.

"Lieutenant," Gerrin said, in a clear flat voice. "Take your platoon and check the courtyard and roofs, if you please."

"Messer Raj!" the company commander said in surprise.

"Damned if I'm going to sit on a couch
all
the way through a battle, Captain," Raj said, sliding out of the saddle.

The reserve company of the 5th was standing to arms in front of the pillared forecourt of a Star church, short a platoon already called away. The men were quiet, straining attention toward the firing nearer the docks; they gave a cheer as Raj's banner rode up, though. A panting runner skidded around a corner and jogged up to the steps.

"Ser," he said, facing Raj. "Major Staenbridge reports infiltrators tryin' to use the courtyards an' alleyways to git around his block-force. Thinks it's some Squadron chief got hisself a bright idear. Asks fer reinforcement to block it, got enough on 'is plate where we are."

"Sir, that must be—" the Captain began.

"I know, Captain Saynchez," Raj said. Center was painting a map on his eye, the most efficient route strobing across it in a red line. "Fall in and follow me."

There was a murmur of awe as they did, and a quick three-minute run to the mouth of an alleyway that gave into a gated internal patio shared by four houses. Downhill toward the harbor it was divided from a service lane by a low wall.

"Take up positions under that wall," he said. "Strict silence."

They crouched, the only sound their panting; these back alleys were heavy with the scent of stale garbage, and less pleasant things. Raj could hear nothing, see little, but Center shone a red light in front of his eyes. Then voices muttered on the other side of the wall; more and more of them, trying to be quiet. The narrow-heeled boots of Squadron warriors grated on the flagstones out there, and a sword clanged as it was brushed against a wall. The light before Raj's eyes turned green. He shot out a fist, conscious of the eyes on him, and extended one finger. Two. Three.

"Aim!" the Captain screamed, as the men leaped erect and leveled their rifles over the wall.

The Squadrones were massed not ten meters away, at least two hundred of them in the irregular opening beyond the wall and more down the five-meter alleyway between the houses. All their attention had been on the rooftops and to the west, where they hoped to filter through the buildings and move to take the 5th Descott's roadblock in the rear. Most of them had just enough time to look around when the rifles came level.

BAM.
Smoke hid the enemy for a second; then it showed what happened when seventy-five rifles were fired into a confined space. Most of the bullets had found two or three targets, and the misses were bouncing down between the stone walls that lined the narrow lane.

BAM.
The Squadrones were screaming in sheer horror as the rifles spoke again. A few managed to fire back; the young Captain beside Raj dropped, pawing feebly at the wound on his back. The legs did not move, except for a few pithed-frog twitchings as the severed spinal nerves sent their last impulses.

BAM.
An attempt at a charge broke up in bloody chaos; Raj aimed his revolver carefully and gave mercy to a man crawling toward the Descotter guns with a mask of blood across his face.

"
Marcy, migo!
" A few voices called it out first: Mercy, friend. Then more, many more: "
Marcy, varsh!
" Mercy, brother. Some down at the end of the alley tried to run out, and more gunfire greeted them. All the Squadrones were throwing down their weapons now, those who could, and falling to their knees, crying out for quarter.

"Cease fire!" Raj shouted. A few more aimed rounds pecked out, and a man in front of him flopped backward, still kneeling, his long brown hair dropping into a pool of blood from the massive exit-wound in his back. "Cease fire, I said!"

The rifles fell silent, and men vaulted the wall to round up the stunned survivors. Raj suddenly felt a stab of pain and put a hand to the seat of his trousers; it came away red.

"Yer wounded, ser!" one of the troopers said, leaning his rifle against the wall and fumbling out the package of blessed powder and boiled gauze on his belt

"Only a graze," Raj said. There was a flat sadness in his tone as he watched the Squadron prisoners stumble by, disbelief on their blood-flecked faces.
And only in the arse. The poor bastards couldn't find their own.
 

"Cease fire," Dinnalsyn said, raising his head from the telescope. "Signal the mortars to cease fire too."

All around him in the little park men slumped to the earth; air quivered over the scalding-hot barrels of the field guns, and the brass shell casings that littered the earth behind them.

Ships were burning and sinking all over the outer harbor; over the inner, too, from the smoke. One was on fire right in the mouth of the breakwaters, aground on the moles. Tiny figures dropped over the rails, wading on the half-submerged rocks; eager tentacled forms cruised just below the waves, moving forward to the scent of blood. Beyond them in the ocean the last half-dozen galleys were well out of range, helpless spectators to slaughter. A long black shape churned out of the inner harbor and turned for the outer, its low-slung ram casting back twin waves and its stacks fuming. Five more followed it in line, paddles beating the harbor water to froth, moving with a butting purpose utterly unlike the organic grace of sailing craft.

"Sweet merciful Avatars and Holy Saints," he murmured. The water was actually tinged with blood—pink more than red, but . . .

He turned the binoculars on the nearest street. Three field-guns fired as he watched, and the Squadron rush dissolved as the canister shot filled the roadway and bounced between the walls. Freakishly, the man who had led it remained standing for a second; he had dropped his banner because both arms were off at the shoulder, and he stood screaming amid the fragments of his men. The dismounted cavalry below the guns gave him a volley in mercy. Further down the street the last Squadron holdouts were trying to return fire from prone position behind bodies, but each time one raised himself on his elbow to reload his muzzle-loader, a Descotter marksman fired. From the roofs of some of the larger buildings heavier weapons were firing, huge rifles in the hands of squat figures in leggings and breechclouts who danced derision between shots.

"Not much longer," Dinnalsyn whispered.

"You made the right decision, calling for surrender," Raj said.

"I, ah, I—" Curtis Auburn stuttered.

The dogs whined as they picked their way among the hot shell-casings. The gunners were dropping them back into the round holding slots in the caissons, using tongs. Beyond the gun positions the sloping surface of the road was black with powder residues; beyond that, littered almost to covering with spent rifle cartridges. Auburn's eyes were farther down the street, though, on the windrows of bodies: the dogs whined more loudly as their riders pressed their knees tighter and forced them onto the slick-slippery surface. Prisoners were busy, working under guard to throw bodies and body-parts onto handcarts. Load after load was lumbering away, down toward the harbor.

There was a cleared lane down the center, more or less, but that was reddish-brown with a scum that pooled and clung. More flies than Raj had ever seen in one spot swarmed about, making the mounts toss their heads: The late afternoon sun was hot, and a miasma was already rising from the street.

"I've heard the expression," Raj murmured to himself as they proceeded at a slow walk. There seemed no end to the carpet of bodies, no impression the carts could make on their number. "But this is the first time I've actually seen a street run with blood."

Administrator Berg had been riding behind them, with a handkerchief pressed to his face. Now he stumbled out of the saddle and to the side of the road, bending over and heaving with his eyes squeezed tightly shut to avoid seeing what he was spattering with vomit Raj turned his toes inward to touch Horace's ribs; the dog stopped and began to sit, then straightened at his jerk on the reins. He looked around, feeling as if there was a thin pane of glass between him and the world.
Only two hours,
he thought.
Only two hours.
The blood had splashed and stuck far up the sides of the whitewashed buildings; blood and bits of flesh.

"We'll have to flood the streets and scrub everything down," he mused.

They were coming into the wider open areas around the warehouses; the bodies were scattered here, with room between them, although the blood from higher up had pooled and clotted around the dams of flesh. Many of them had been bayoneted or sabered in the back; others had the mutilated look produced by the 15mm Skinner rounds. On the dockside itself thousands were squatting with their hands on their heads, or helping to put out the fires that smoldered on the wrecked ships. The sea breeze was a touch of cleanliness—if you ignored the glistening shapes that cruised just below the surface of the harbor, broad smooth humps as they nearly surfaced, a fluke or a beak or a writhing arm protruding when they turned to dive. Shots had taught them to keep back from the dock—you could see intelligence in the huge unwinking eyes that showed now and then—but the water writhed when a corpse-cart was backed to the edge.

"And I hope you can persuade your brother to do likewise," Raj went on, in the same emotionless voice.

Curtis Auburn shook himself; on the third try his voice functioned roughly.

"Ah, I'm sure, recognition of the Civil Government's suzerainty—" he began.

Suddenly Raj reached out and grabbed the Squadron leader by the knotted braids on the side of his head.

"
Look,
Auburn!" he shouted, his voice a shocking roar. He forced the other man's head around effortlessly, despite the bull neck's resistance. A cart piled high with bodies tipped and slid two-score more into the waiting serrated beaks. "Look at that!"

The Grand Captain of the Squadron wrenched his head away and buried his head in his hands. Raj waited, lighting a cigarette and turning his eyes away.

"Don't try to bargain with me, Auburn," he went on, when the other man was calmer; his own voice had the metallic flatness back. "I beat Conner, I beat your Admiral Charles, and now I've beaten
you.
We've lost less than a battalion, and killed half the fighting men in your entire nation. Once might have been luck, twice a mistake—three times is the Voice of Heaven, man!"

He offered a cigarette, and a light when Auburn's hands shook.
Not fear, not really,
he decided.
Shock.
Curtis Auburn's entire world had vanished in an afternoon; this morning he'd been a ruler of a century-old kingdom, leading home a powerful army. Three hours later, the army was downdragger food—and he was a rightless prisoner.

"What do you intend for my men—for your prisoners?" he said quietly.

"Well, under the laws and customs of war, they're mine to do with as I please," Raj said grimly. Quite true; he could execute, enslave, or ransom them—and their families—as he pleased or his ruler instructed. Auburn would be remembering what his ancestors did to the Civil Government prisoners from the last expedition, blinded and castrated en masse. Raj let the silence stretch for a moment

"But Governor Barholm has decreed as much mercy as possible," he went on.

"Only those who refused to surrender when summoned on the march north will be enslaved." Several thousand, and a profitable object-lesson. "And any among the prisoners who refuse to swear allegiance, of course. Those who do swear will be formed into military units under Civil Government officers, and sent back to East Residence for retraining and deployment to the eastern frontier. All their property here is forfeit, of course—only those who came in voluntarily will keep their lands—but they'll have their families, and if they give good and loyal service, they can expect to rise in the hierarchy of Earth's proper government."

He leaned forward and caught Curtis's eyes. "If your brother comes in and makes unconditional submission, you and he can take your households with you; you'll be granted estates near East Residence"—carefully watched, of course—"and Charles's followers will get terms at least as good as those yours do. Failing immediate surrender, tell him he can run but he can't hide; I will send every living Squadron man, woman, and child to hell or the auction block and
I
will send Charles Auburn's head to the Governor packed in salt.
By the living Spirit of Man, I swear it."

"Are you a man or a demon?" Curtis asked hoarsely.

"
I am the Sword of the Spirit of Man,
" he said, with the conviction of absolute belief. "Now get out—and tell your Admiral what you've seen. Tell him everything."

"Well, a great victory, yes," Administrator Berg said. His eyes were carefully unfocused as they rode back toward the Palace; he seemed to be trying to avoid seeing either the man beside him or the world around. Raj handed him a clean handkerchief, and he accepted it gratefully. "We've been . . . very fortunate, yes, the Spirit has favored us."