Warlord (23 page)

His hand caught the carved bone at the top of its curve, with a motion like a trout rising to a fly. Tomorrow they'd be back in the hot sun . . . 

The burning manor house was still smoldering, throwing a pall of acrid-tasting haze across the 5th's encampment. There was a crash as rafters collapsed in the squat four-story tower at the west end, turning it into a giant chimney casting red-shot black billows in the darkening sky of late evening. The long rows of spicebush trees reaching down to the salt marsh were burning, too, smelling like hot cinnamon and cloves; higher up troopers and soldier-servants were ringbarking mastic and terebinth trees, uprooting frankincense bushes and piling them together for burning.

"Pity they burned it before our boys got in," Suzette said. The household were dining at a looted table under a fringed marquee; Captain Stanson sat at the other end, frigidly polite. "The last two had some beautiful things."

Suzette's chamberlain stalked over from the cookfires, haughty in a plundered silver cloth robe and a staff of office. Behind him two servants walked with the care of men carrying a burden not quite heavy enough to be uncomfortable, a huge silver dish of roasted sauroids on a bed of the inevitable boiled rice and dates. The quasireptiles were of a local species that lived in salt marsh, feeding on grubs and rushes; their flesh was white and salty but otherwise remarkably similar to chicken.

"Not surprising," Raj said, ripping off a six-inch drumstick.

Off to one side came the musical
ting
of hammers on iron; the labor force of the estate were being neck-shackled, in collars on either side of a long chain. Each bent at the small portable anvil as the slaver's smith deftly inserted a soft-iron pin through the clasp of the collar and peened it over with three expert blows. Most of them had been slaves before in any case, this was a commercial enterprise and not a farm. The few surviving free guards and craftsmen were on a separate chain, and the dozen or so Civil Government-born captives were off celebrating their newfound liberty by doing camp chores.

"Ser," M'lewis said, coming up and saluting. "Them ragheads has arrived."

"By all means, send them in," Raj said. Campfires were blossoming, and there was a bleating of sheep being led to the slaughter.
The dogs are going to resent going back on a mash diet
,
Raj thought idly.

you have not entrenched,
Center's voice, prompted, inside his ear. He continued chewing stolidly on his drumstick while a ghost-image of men wearily digging trenches and firing-pits overlaid the landscape.

No, he thought. This is a raiding party, not an invasion. There's a whole company out on vedette duty, and the men are camping with the dogs loose-saddled and their boots on. Good scouts and quick reaction are the best protection we can have, and we can't get our job done if we waste three or four hours every day. 

No flat-toned words spoke in his mind, surprising him. Instead Stanson spoke. "You're bringing all your people in every night?" he said in a tone of tolerant disapproval, nodding to a two-squad column trotting home, silhouetted against the sunset and the red glow of the burning buildings. The men were hung about with loot like luggage racks, and there was a train of pack goats behind them. Servants on Colonial whippets brought up the rear, laughing and waving the repeater carbines in their hands.

"They're out in groups of ten to twenty all day," Raj said. "Patrolling, as well as scorching the earth, it's a good compromise. Seems to be working quite well, in any event. We'll have to pack it in, soon, since the message got through Ksar Bourgib."

Stanson returned his attention to his plate. Ksar Bourgib had fallen after a day of hard fighting; the 2nd had lost heavily, and the town had burned before it could be plundered. Worst of all, the heliograph had gotten a message out to the east before it was destroyed. The 2nd's commander had ridden into the rendezvous with no more than his artillery, a platoon or so of walking wounded and a huge straggling trail of plunder on captured transport; the rest of his troops were out in penny packets, no more than a pair sometimes, from here all the way back to El Djem.

"Effendi." It was the Colonist delegation under a flag of truce, led by an old man in a green turban and beard, an imam of some sort. Their first tentative bow was to the gorgeously-robed chamberlain, who made scandalized gestures until they realized the dusty officer in the three-day stubble and plain uniform was the Civil Government commander. A long, sonorous, throaty roll of Arabic followed.

"Fanciful greetings and plea for mercy from all of these wogboys," Muzzaf said, pushing aside his plate and unbuckling a brass-clasped ledger book. Suzette handed a key to a servant, and the man dragged a steel trunk from under the table, opening a heavy padlock and throwing back the hasp.

"Tell him the terms are agreeable," Raj said. "And any appropriate circumlocutions."
Every ounce of gold or silver is so many tools or days' wages or livestock
,
he thought. Better to lay waste to the remaining farms, but draining the capital resources of the local landowners was a good second-best.

The eyes of the imam were cool and free of fear, despite the armed men who ringed him. Small sacks of coin were produced, weighed, checked off against names in the ledger; stumbling captives were prodded forward, many weeping with joy as their relatives in the delegation embraced them.

The Komarite's Arabic was fluent; Raj remembered him saying his mother had been a slave-concubine from the Colony. "It is a providence of the Spirit that the Muslims forbid usury," Muzzaf chuckled, transferring the coins to the box and handing the key back to Suzette.

Raj nodded; the Colony was as civilized as the Civil Government, possibly richer, but its banking system was rather primitive by comparison, and largely in the hands of Jews and Christos. A comparable group of gentry back home would have kept most of their cash in paper, letters of credit and such. Nor was it surprising how much they were willing to pay to get the attackers out of their neighborhood; several of these salt-marsh manors had been looted
before
his men arrived, by the slaves who worked them, and the only things left there for relatives to retrieve would be the makings of a closed-casket funeral.

"We do not grudge the money, Messer Captain," the imam said suddenly, in good Sponglish with the accent of the southern border. Raj looked up sharply. "Such is pleasing to the Merciful, the Beneficent." A slight smile. "And who knows, perhaps someday you will need the gold to ransom yourself. Peace be with you,
kaphar
."

The delegation had brought spare dogs for the men they ransomed; the whole party trotted off with the white flag flapping in its midst. The sun was nothing more than a glow, less bright than the dying fire consuming the buildings. Sparks drifted skyward, embers against the stars. Raj met Suzette's eyes across the table; they crinkled slightly with that secret smile.

Crack
.
Raj glanced up. It could have been heated stone, splitting in the ruins as the cool night air descended
 . . . 
His body did not believe that, and it was rising and cinching tight his gunbelt.
Crack-crack-crack
,
northward, shots from behind the low bulk of the slave barracks and the line of eucalyptus trees near it, spiteful winking red eyes of muzzle flashes. Shouts and screams followed, the long slave-chains yammering and thrashing and the huge chaotic sprawl of the 2nd's baggage camp erupting into chaos. The 5th's troopers were diving for rifles, some mounted already but uncertain of the direction of the attack. Firing was crackling from the baggage camp, probably the 2nd's people and
certainly
the servants. A round went through the marquee above him, and it had to be an Armory 11mm from the sound, not the light pistol-calibre bullet from a Colonist carbine.

"Spirit of
Man
,
get your people to fucking cease fire, Stanson!" Raj barked. "Trumpeter, sound
stand to
!"
Just what they needed, a blindsided firefight in the cursed
dark
,
there couldn't be many of the enemy if they'd gotten through the vedettes but friendly fire could kill dozens in a few seconds—and the Companions, his core command group, were mostly out with raiding groups, it was going to be near impossible to get things organized—

"Ul-ul-ull-ull Allahu Akbar!"

Much closer, well within their perimeter, the rapid crackle of Colony repeaters and the sudden clash of metal, something flammable went over on a campfire with a gout of white light. He could see them now, a solid wedge driving straight for his marquee, shooting and slashing at anything in their way.

"M'lewis—" he began, his voice steady and pitched to carry despite the crawling in his stomach: Suzette was here. "Turn out the guard, they're headed this way—"

Too late; they were
here
.
Suzette's chamberlain had come running to see what the trouble was; six of the attackers crowded their dogs around him, lean whippets and greyhounds dancing and snarling as the robed soldiers leaned far over to slash. The man screamed in fear, flailing about him with his staff to win a few seconds more life. The others drove for the group about Raj.

Shove
.
He knocked the heavy table over with his hip, making a chest-high barricade for the noncombatants. Stanson was on his feet, and whatever his other faults there was nothing wrong with his reflexes or marksmanship. There were two revolvers in holsters strapped to his thighs; he had them both out, firing alternately in a ripple of blasts like a trip hammer, using the muzzle flash of each shot to aim the next, emptying saddles. Out of the corner of his eye he could see M'lewis unsling his rifle and take careful aim. A shot, and a dog went down in a yelping, thrashing tangle that rolled right over its rider. He worked the lever, and then gave a snarl of frustration as it jammed half-open, the fragile wrapped-brass cartridge disintegrating under the pull of the extractor.

Raj leveled his own pistol, carefully centering the foresight and V on one of the men aiming a cut at M'lewis' head. The recoil was a surprise as it always was when you did it right, and the man pitched backward, his sword making a spinning circle of light as it flew off into the darkness. The little Companion had dropped his rifle and drawn the skinning knife; he rolled under the next attacker's blade and under the belly of the dog. The animal gave a deafening yelp-howl and collapsed as its intestines spilled out of a two-foot slash, and then Raj had troubles enough of his own.

Flickering light, wet white teeth and steel coming for his life; the Colonists had shot their weapons empty on the way. The muzzle of his pistol was almost inside the long wedge gape of one greyhound's muzzle when he fired; the hollow point bullet tore out the back of its palate, through the spine and into the belly of the rider. Another shot, a miss. Another, and a dog was down but the soldier on its back rose and came forward on foot. Raj dodged backward, into the protecting guy ropes of the marquee, leading them away from the overturned table where his wife and Muzzaf fought back-to-back. Stanson was down, and his mistress Merta had thrown herself protectively over his body in a gesture that showed plenty of courage if little sense.

Raj swung himself around a pole and slashed at the muzzle of a whippet. The tip of the blade connected, and the dog bolted into the interior of the marquee; its master's head hit the ridgepole with a
bong
of wood on steel helmet and he dropped boneless from the saddle. A bound backward put Raj in the clear, and another rider was coming at him. He waited, weight on the balls of his feet and his own teeth showing, then dove forward when the Arab heeled his dog. The butt of the pistol thumped down on the sensitive nose of the Basiji, with the weight arm and shoulder behind it. The dog yelped and jerked back its head involuntarily, and then he was in past its teeth for a moment, by the Colonist's stirrup. Bright and long, the scimitar swept down in an expert overarm cut.

Raj caught it on his own sword, and it slid the length of the steel in a ringing descent, until they locked hilt to hilt. That brought them almost face to face, the Descotter staring into the set eyes of a man who had accepted his own death in order to accomplish a purpose. His left hand rammed the muzzle of the dragoon pistol into the green sash that girdled the enemy soldier's crimson robe. The Arab's eyes flew wide as the bullet hammered into his gut, filled with rage more than pain, and then he slumped away. Raj skipped back again, to get out of range of the dog, but the lean brown animal stopped stock-still, nosed its master's body frantically and then sat, throwing back its head in a mournful howl of grief.

The dismounted Colonist was coming in with his scimitar, a dagger in his left hand. Holding both as if he knew how to use them, and moving fast and smooth. Raj switched into a fencer's stance, right foot and arm advanced; the twin blades poised, and—

—a bullet snapped the Arab's head forward and to the side like the impact of a sledgehammer. His features ballooned, the right side of the skull erupting as the half-ounce pellet of soft lead blasted out an exit wound the size of paired fists over his left eyebrow. Bone fragments and something with the consistency of warm jelly

"Sssir! Are you all right?" Lieutenant Mekkle Thiddo ran up, with half his platoon behind him.

Raj opened his mouth and took the first step toward the overturned table, wiping at the brains on his face and spitting to clear the nauseating soft-boiled-egg feeling from the corner of his mouth.

observe. 
 

Not
now,
for the Spirit's sake
!
he thought furiously. precisely for the Spirit's sake, in your terminology. observe. 

A column of Colonial scouts waited silently in a gully sheltered by feathery tamarind trees; the forested bank was higher and more steep than the other, and the red-robed soldiers crouched with their dogs at its base. Looking up from their position, Raj's disembodied viewpoint could see the branches and scrub outlined blackly against the moons. There was still the tired-orange light of sunset in the air, but the base of the cliff was in deep shadow.