Warlord (30 page)

Raj touched his foot to Horace's leg, and the dog crouched. He stepped across the saddle, feet finding stirrups as the hound came erect. "Dismissed to duties," he said, as the men of the 5th fell in behind him. "Oh, and your Company is being rotated back next week. A detached Company of the Novy Haifa Dragoons is coming in, and they need a tour of the beauty-spots."

Jorg Menyez sneezed.

"Sorry," Raj said, and maneuvered Horace around to the other, downwind side of the Kelden County officer. Menyez was mounted on one of the long-legged riding steers some of the nomads north of Pierson's Sea used, bridled with a ring through its nose; the great forward-sloping horns were tipped with steel, and it rolled its eye at the hound.

"Muuuuuuh," it said warningly.

"Werf?" Horace's head went down towards its ankles; Raj freed a foot from the stirrup and thumped the dog on the side of the jaw with it.

"Not bad at all," Raj said, as they finished their tour of the field fortifications Menyez's men had been working on for most of the morning.

Two battalions digging, and two making a route-march through the scrubby wadi-and-gully country to the west, to simulate an attack. The trenches were neatly aligned at the bottom of a low ridge, fronted with cloth sacks full of the dirt.
Good idea
,
Raj thought.
Bloody good idea
.
Menyez had thought of it, back in the fall when the mud had been too soft to keep its shape as the men shoveled. They'd bought the cloth wholesale in Sandoral and put the camp followers and peasant women for fifty kilometers around to sewing them. Reusable, with a slip knot to fasten them, and the foot soldiers could hump them around by the hundreds when they were empty. More up on the crest of the hill, semicircular waist-high positions where the field guns could be pushed up to fire and then recoil out of sight for reloading.

"All right, let's get on to the next bit," Raj said. They trotted in across the field of fire, past rows of straw figures on stakes, woven to roughly human shape and given sticks for rifles. There were clay jugs full of water in the stomach of each. Up to the low parapet of the trenchline, with the helmets of the troops below, waiting to step up onto the firing platform. As the two officers walked their mounts across a board bridgeway that spanned the trench, a soldier somewhere down the line called out:

"General salute for the King of Spades!"

"Silence in the ranks!" an officer or noncom shouted; Menyez saluted.

The men had thrown up a low observation platform behind the trenches; Raj and Menyez took their positions there, beside the infantry commander's personal guard and standard, and the lounging figures of a 5th Descott squad around Raj's banner.

"Proceed," Menyez called.

Drums and bugles sounded, and orders relayed down the long trench. The men stepped up onto the firing platform; their heads were still below the top level of sandbags, but regularly-spaced gaps had been left below that, and the rifles slanted through. Raj looked over his shoulder; the barrels of the 75's were sliding out.

POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
Shells whirred by overhead, their ten-kilo bursting charges raising poplar tree-shaped plumes of dirt three thousand meters downrange.
POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
In a prepared position like this you could build sloping ramps behind the guns. They recoiled up the slope, gravity killing momentum, then slid down nearly into battery again, ready to be reloaded and pushed the final meter or two; it saved a good deal of time.
POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
Barked orders, and a quivering of the rifle muzzles as the soldiers pushed at the stepped wedges under the rear sights of their weapons, setting them for maximum range.

"Prepare for volley fire," Menyez said. Repetitions like echoes, down to the platoon sergeants.
POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
This series on the outermost row of straw figures; fragments and pieces of wooden pole spun up into the air.

"Fire."

The slamming ripple of massed rifles ran along the line, and the staggered rows of targets began to disintegrate; leg-thick poles sagged and fell, and water jugs sent out spectacular fountains of clear liquid to glitter in the late-morning sun.

"Aim low, aim low!" Shouts along the firing line, as shots kicked up dust-spurts beyond the target. There were not too many of them, far fewer than there had been six months ago. Raj listened carefully; the volleys came fast and crisp, none of the telltale stutter between. Thick grayish gunsmoke pooled before the muzzles. Officers with binoculars were standing behind each unit's section of trench, ready to run out and assess the results; drummer boys and corpsmen and stretcher-bearers were stepping up with dippers of water from the buckets they carried, not for the men but to dash over the barrels and breeches of the weapons. It hissed and sizzled as it struck the hot metal; more maintenance work afterward, but it cut down on extraction jams and the even more disastrous occasional cook-off, rounds exploding as the thumb pushed them into contact with an overheated chamber.

"Cease firing!" A long bugle call. "Battalions will pass in review, by the left!"

"Shaping nicely," Raj said to Menyez. "They don't tire as fast, they're starting to
hit
what they shoot at, and they're starting to act as if they believed they were soldiers, too."

"It helps that they know they're not getting fucked over by the people in charge," Menyez replied, cold anger mixed with satisfaction in his tone.

Half the infantry battalion commanders had been transferred or retired since they arrived to join the Army of the Upper Drangosh, and a good third of the Company Senior Lieutenants. For everything from age and incapacity, through persistent absenteeism—several had not seen their putative commands in years—to selling their ammunition allotments.

"You tell people long enough that they're shit," the brown-haired man continued, "that they're not fit for anything but to suck mud in front of the paws of anyone who rides by on dogback, and they believe it and act like it." His pale eyes watched as the thousand men of the two battalions mustered in a row of columns of fours. "They're still nowhere near as steady as I'd like, except for the Ausarians. And my Kelden County Foot."

"Tewfik's going to outnumber us badly, and if I can I'm going to make him come to us," Raj answered. I'd better; if I can't manage to force the enemy to assume the tactical offensive when they are invading us, then I'd better just get circumcised and be done with it. "I think they'll hold, in field entrenchments."

There was a roll of martial music, as the fife-and-drum unit behind each battalion standard struck up; they had rifles slung over their shoulders, but Raj had seen to it that every outfit produced a band. The officers had bought the instruments out of their own pockets; a "suggestion" from Raj relayed through Menyez and backed by his writ of extraordinary authority from Barholm. Some of the infantry outfits hadn't even
had
standards; he had made the men contribute to those themselves, then had the ArchSysup of the Southeastern Diocese bless them in as impressive a ceremony as the cleric and he could come up with together. That sort of thing was almost as important as prompt pay and sound boots and seeing that the sutlers kept their cheating within bounds
. . .

"Pass in review!"

Tramp of marching feet, the whole line moving like a uniform centipede with a blue body and red legs; sunlight glittered on flags and bayonets and polished brightwork.

"Eyes . . . 
right
."
He and Menyez saluted; behind him the standard of the 5th dipped in answer to the flourish of the infantry banners as each passed. The men's arms swung briskly, their shouldered rifles in perfect alignment; officers and noncoms whirled their swords in flourishes. Perfectly useful skills . . .

"Purty," one of the cavalry troopers behind him muttered.

 . . . not least because they reminded the foot soldiers that they were something other than men who had the bad luck to be visible when the press gang came around, and too poor to bribe their way out. His Descotters and the other cavalry units were mostly here because they'd
wanted
to be, or their families had . . . or at worst, because a father had come after them with compulsory weddings in his eyes and a loaded gun in his hands. They didn't need as much prompting to think of themselves as fighting men rather than victims.

Of course, it was debatable whose perception was more accurate.

The column had passed down to the end of the trenchline, wheeled and marched back. This time as the midpoint passed the mount, different orders rang out:

"Halt. Ay-bout
face
,"
A wheel and stamp, and they were facing him and Menyez. "Ground . . . 
arms
."
The rifle butts thumped the ground, held rigidly between left arm and flank; the tips of the bayonets were shoulder-high. "Stand at . . .
ease
."
Each right foot moved out to shoulder-width from the left, while the rifles swung in to rest slanted across the body and held at the muzzle in the folded hands; it was an easy posture to maintain, where the rigid attention would produce a crop of men fainting, under a sun like this. Many of the men before him were from the northwestern provinces, as naturally pale-skinned as the officer beside him.

Menyez's leather-lunged Master Sergeant bellowed, "All units, attention to orders! Stand by for address by the Honorable Messer Brigadier Raj Whitehall, Commander of the Army of the Upper Drangosh."

Raj leaned forward, pommel under his palms. "Right, fellow soldiers," he said, his voice pitched to carry. There was no other sound besides the soughing of the wind through the banner behind him, and a distant hissing from a flock of dactosauroids flying toward the river.

"Today you've shown that you can march, dig, and shoot," he continued. "All good preparation for your real work, which is to kill the enemy." An almost imperceptible rustle of uneasiness; that enemy would outnumber them badly—Sandoral traded across the river into the Colony, rumor abounded, and it had exaggerated what was coming up from Al-Kebir even beyond the unpleasant probable truth.

"Before they get a chance to kill you." No harm in reminding them of the unfair but inescapable fact that in the event of defeat cavalry had some chance of getting away, and infantry none at all. "Just remember this: men aren't any more bulletproof than those scarecrows you just blew the hell out of. Put a bullet through a man, and he falls down and dies. Messer or cropper, raghead or believer, the bullet doesn't care. And if he's on a dog—" Raj slapped Horace's neck, which twitched "—it just makes him a bigger target. Spirit of Man of the Stars firm your aim, for the restoration of the Holy Federation!"

"Endfile," the soldiers murmured in unison.

"Carry on."

Menyez nodded. "Carry on, Top," he said to the senior noncom.

"Attention to orders! 17th Kelden County Foot, Fifth Company, second platoon, is hereby judged best unit of today's exercise, and will be issued a 24-hour pass to Sandoral, effective from 12:00 hours tomorrow! 21st Olgez County Rifles, First Company, first platoon, is low-ranked and will do double fatigues for the next week. Dismissed to duties!"

"Ah, Raj," Menyez coughed; it sounded embarrassed, a social gesture rather than the product of his affliction. "Your lady was kind enough to invite Aylice and myself to the entertainment tonight. Shall we arrange a carriage together?"

Semul Falhasker was staging a revival of Minalor's
Foreshadows of the Fall
,
classical mime-drama. No expense had been spared: a full orchestra and troupe from the East Residence, with fireworks and illumination on the Drangosh to follow. Little enough, for the richest merchant in Sandoral.

"No, thank you," Raj said, looking aside. "I'll be, ah, that is, too busy. I'll be dropping by for the banquet and review afterwards." On torchlit barges out on the river;
that
was being staged by Wenner Reed.
Captain
Wenner Reed, if you please; Falhasker's bitter rival, second-richest merchant in Sandoral, and commander of the city militia. That made it a matter of military courtesy to attend
 . . . 
"Enjoy yourselves by all means."

He straightened. "No rest for the weary; I've got to go drop by on the Skinners, before they forget why they're here and decide to burn down the city on a whim."

Menyez nodded, compassion flickering in his eyes for a moment.

"And I don't envy you the Skinners," he continued, changing the subject with a slight shudder. Nobody liked the barbarian mercenaries from the far northeast; compared to them, the western tribes of the Military Governments, the Brigade and Squadron and even the Stalwarts, were models of civilized sophistication.

"Well," Raj said, "they do have one great qualification."

"Their marksmanship?"

"No," he said, reining around. "The fact that they're the only people around here, Tewfik possibly excepted, who are really
looking forward
to the fighting."

"Ser," M'lewis and da Cruz said, almost simultaneously. They eyed each other, and the Master Sergeant continued first. It was his responsibility to inform the commander of possible threats, after all.

"Skinner, left about one thousand, in t'ditch, ser," he said. "Lookin' real unobtrusive like, but he's aimin' at us."

Raj rolled his head as if stretching his neck muscles. Was that a glimmer of sun on iron? Impossible to tell, and the wind was in their faces, no warning from the dogs.

"Right an' behinds us, in t'tree, ser," M'lewis said. Da Cruz was startled enough to whip his head around, swearing.

"Eyes front," Raj said. Better to ride right in and let the barbarians think all their scouts had been spotted and ignored.

There were probably more of the Skinners watching behind their heavy two-meter sauroid-killer rifles. Not because anyone had assigned them to it, simply because that was what those particular warriors had chosen to do. The camp up ahead contained half his Skinners, it would be an offense against the patron Avatars of the Army to call them a battalion of soldiers . . . and this was better organized than his
other
war band of them; he kept them well north and south of the city respectively, they came of different clans and had a habit of casual sniping whenever he brought them in range of each other. The chiefs assured him that would stop when a real enemy came in sight.