Warlord (54 page)

Silence fell as the three dogs walked over the ridge and down the long slope, rippling out like rings in water from the men who noticed them first. The chant that had been growing—had been whipping the whole six hundred or so of the savages into a blood-frenzy—faltered and died as the mercenaries recognized the general. Many of them had been with the Army of the East in Sandoral last year, and most of the rest had seen him since. Raj kept moving at the same slow swaying walk until they were a hundred meters down the shallow slope, more than halfway to the first of the straggling hide shelters. Close enough to see the faces of individual men, and to see the round muzzle-holes of the big rifles. A hundred or so were pointing his way, enough to tear him and Horace both to butcher's-meat gobbets.

Him and Horace and Suzette too.

Raj let the reins slack on Horace's neck and clicked his tongue softly. The hound stopped and stood stock-still, lowering his head and lolling tongue. Then Raj stood in the stirrups and raised one hand in the air.

A buzz of sound came from the Skinner camp. Behind him came the thud of nearly a thousand feet, and the multiple rattle of equipment. The 5th Descott's color-party stopped on the ridge, the bannerman planting the staff and letting the bullet-marked silk and the campaign ribbons flutter free, trumpeter and drummer to either side. All along the ridge the unit deployed in dismounted close-order, the first rank marching over and going to one knee, the second halting when head and shoulders showed over the ridge. Bayonets flashed as the rifles went to slope, held at a forty-five degree angle across the chest. Not aiming, but ready. Regularly spaced along the line were the company pennants. A few sharp calls came from noncoms and junior officers, correcting dressing, and then the loudest sound was the wind snapping the banners.

Raj waited until the voices died down among the Skinners, then slowly swung his arm and pointed to the right, the east. Barked orders sounded, and the ridge sprouted a crop, glittering bayonet points and the burnished gilt bronze of the Stars on the tops of the flagstaffs, then the rounded helmets of the men.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap
went the drums, over the crunching of boots in the soft soil; Kaltin Gruder called halt beside the banner of the 7th Descott Rangers, and the whole long formation crashed to a stop, then rippled as the front rank knelt and both brought their rifles to port.

He swung his arm over left, and the spectacle was repeated. The Rogor Slashers this time, frontiersmen from the southeastern districts. Then Raj pointed ahead, due south, where there was low ground and a view of sandy flatlands and the curve of the beach. Another battalion double-timed into view to close that gap, trotting in earth-shaking unison in column of fours, a long snake of steel and blue coats and maroon legs; the officers beside their units with their sabers sloped back over their shoulders. Jorg Menyez and the 17th Kelden Foot: big fair men from the northwest, no better than any other despised peons in uniform, until their commander convinced them otherwise. He called, and the color party around him turned smartly left and marked time. Officers fell out and stood beside their pennant-bearers, holding out saber and arm to mark the line. The drum tapped one last time and the trumpet blew; the foot soldiers halted and faced left like one man.

Behind them two eight-hitch teams of dogs appeared, each pulling a 75mm field gun and caisson. The gunners rode the guns, or the lead pair of dogs. Both weapons turned right and halted; the crews were leaping down before they fully stopped, unhitching, riding the teams out of range, the rest opening the caissons and pushing the fieldpieces forward through lanes between companies of the 17th. Ready to spill their canister loads of shot into the Skinner camp. Behind guns and infantry a battalion of cavalry came into view: smart-looking men in green-and-gold uniforms on currycombed Border Collies, sauroid-plume crests nodding from their helmets. Poplanich's Own, recruited from the estates of his old friend,

And the estates of his brother I killed to keep Barholm Clerett on the Chair, but let's hope they overlook that, Raj thought.

The cavalry halted and reined about, the dogs' muzzles dipping and rising as they turned. A shouted command, only a blur at this distance, and six hundred hands slapped down on saber hilts. Another, and the blades came out with a rasping clatter, bright and long, flashing up and then back to rest on the right shoulders of the troopers. The glitter was like sun on rippled water, almost painfully bright, moving as the dogs shifted weight from foot to foot and growled in basso unison. The Skinners were shouting again now, and a few random shots banged into the air. Solid as stone, the soldiers of the Civil Government waited.

Behind him Suzette's voice whispered. "I love you," she said.

"I love you too," Raj said quietly, through a focus that was narrowing his vision like a tunnel, down to the strait confines of the next five minutes.

The standardbearer chuckled softly. "Spirit bugger me blind, 'tis a honeymoon."

That brought Raj back to reality; he turned slightly in the saddle to bring the man's face into view. He was grinning, as if to ask what punishment Raj had in mind—being sent on a suicide mission, perhaps?

"What's your name, soldier—ah, Hallersen M'kintok, isn't it?"

"Yesser," the trooper said. "Yer won't catch me sleepin' this time, ser."

Ah, that snap inspection last year, Raj thought, facing front once more. Now, just enough time for the realities to sink in. 

The Skinners were in a box; all the Regulars could deliver plunging fire without hitting each other, the cannon could rake them, and anyone who broke through would be cut down by the mounted men. Not that many would, with nearly three thousand rifles firing volleys at close range, not to mention the canister rounds from the guns. The Skinners' range and accuracy would be irrelevant, and the Armory rifles were faster-loading than the long guns the barbarians used.

The Skinners were savages but not stupid. The problem was that physical hardihood and courage were practically a religion with them. Skinner warriors would not,
could
not admit that fear of death altered their actions, especially not to themselves. No threat alone would be sufficient, no matter how deadly. He touched the heel of his boot to Horace's side again, and the three walked their dogs forward. Dead silence fell as they passed the perimeter of the Skinner camp, if anything so loosely organized could be called by that name. It stank, although not too badly after only one night ashore, just smelled as you'd expect where six hundred men and riding dogs had all been pissing and crapping wherever the impulse took them; he shuddered to think what their transports must be like. More and more of them fell in behind him and followed, a few mounted, most walking afoot with a bowlegged swing. When he drew rein before the skull-standard there were hundreds pressing about him, their breath and body-odor rank.

The chiefs looked up at him silently. That was bad; no ritual insults, no half-serious threats, and no offer of liquor. Raj waited impassively until the senior chieftain spoke; it was the same man who had commanded them last year. The one who had brought him the head of Jamal, the Settler of the Colony, when they drove the wogs back over the border in defeat.

"You kill
mes gars,
my men, sojer-boy," he growled. "I, Juluk Paypan, no like! Hang on rope, not warrior death, no death for
fraihum,
Real Man."

"Yes, I killed them," Raj replied loudly in the man's own language; he saw the Skinner blink at his sudden command of Paitoiz. "They killed a Civil Government tribesman"—as close as you could get to "citizen" in this hog-tongue—"and one of
my
men, without cause."

He stood in the stirrups. "Any warrior who feels a wrong can come to me with it, as a free man to his chief. Anyone who mutinies, anyone who kills his comrade, I will kill like the mad dog he is!"

Another murmur from the Skinners, and the long rifles slanted up and away from him.

Juluk Paypan scratched himself. "You got balls need both hands to carry, sojer-man," he said half-reluctantly; he eyed Suzette sidelong, fingering charms against witchcraft. "Wrongs—we got plenty wrongs!"

"Then come and tell them to me, in one hour at my tent. Tell me to my face, not whining in corners like old women."

He turned Horace sharply, the dog twisting into a U to reverse in its own length, then rode at the same ambling walk directly at the wall of Skinner bodies, free hand on his hip and eyes raised to the middle distance. The barbarians parted from them; he heard whispers.
Baraka,
spirit-power;
wheetigo,
devil-saint-wizard. None of them looked back until they were through the ranks of the 5th and over the slope from the Skinner camp.

Raj hung over the pommel of his saddle for a moment, gasping.

"Darling! Are you all right?" Suzette asked; her face was gray as well, white around the lips.

He took a deep shaky breath, and scrubbed a hand across his face. The palm came away slick.

"I just didn't expect it to work," he said frankly, and then grinned, fighting a surge of light-headed well-being as dangerous as panic. "I
thought
it would work—wouldn't have done it, otherwise—but I didn't
believe
it would work, not really."

my calculations,
Center said with a trace of reproach,
are invariably accurate within the limits of available data. 
 

"Come forward, fellow soldiers," Raj said.

He was seated at his table in the command tent, with the front flap pinned open to leave a three-sided room four meters on a side; over the delegations' head he could look down through the bustle of the camp to the beach and the ships at anchor beyond. The tide was coming in, coming quickly with Miniluna and Maxiluna in harmony, and the first black lines of troops were forming up to board the ships small enough to come aground. Longboats ferried more to the big three-masters farther out, and columns of black smoke reached into a cloudless sky as the warships stoked banked furnaces and made steam. There was a fresh breeze setting in parallel to the coast, smelling of salt and coalsmoke.

"Come forward," he said again. The Companion officers were standing behind him at easy parade rest, with their helmets under their arms, and the open flap of the tent was flanked by troopers standing at ease. "No names, no pack drill; I said I'd hear your complaints, and I will."

The delegation was about a dozen men. Not just Skinners; there were the blue coats of Regular officers, and four or five commanders of tribal levies and mercenaries. Two big blond Halvardii, with butter-slicked braids and long halberds and multiple flintlock pistols stuck through their belts; a few Brigade types in their short-waisted fringed buckskin jackets; and a Stalwart from the far northwest, with the back of his head shaved and dressed in a long horizontally-striped knitted jersey and jerkin. His face, arms and legs were pink and peeling with sunburn; the leather jerkin was sewn with bracelet-sized iron rings, a dozen of them serving as holders for light throwing-axes. For the rest he carried two cut-down double-barreled shotguns in holsters, and a full-length model in his hands.

"You Messers first," Raj said to the Skinner chiefs. At a sign an orderly brought them cups of gin.

"Pig vomit," one said after tasting, and then both gulped the clear liquid down.

Good, Raj thought. They've calmed down. 

"Look, sojer-man," Juluk said almost genially, speaking Sponglish for the others' benefit: "We Real Men, we want go home, hunt sauroid, fuck our own women, teach our sons. Bargain with Big Stone-House Chief Barholm say we fight one year, then one more year if we say yes. One year finish in three tens of days, and we say no more. Fight enough. We not like your way, all the time, don't do this, don't do that, get on big water and puke our guts."

The Stalwart nodded somberly, and spoke next in a nasal dialect of Namerique; the man beside him translated:

"True, lord. You are a harsh man; one of my warriors was fined because he beshat as a man should, behind a bush. We do not like this digging of holes. Or walking back and forth while blue-coat soldiers with marks on their arms shout at us. We fight as men should, running forward to meet the foe whenever we see him. Another of my men was whipped like a slave because he took the blood of one who called him a heretic! We do not like your harsh, cruel ways. We will follow you and fight because we are true to our salt. All know we will every man of us die in far lands beneath the Squadron guns and lie in nameless graves forgotten of our kindred. So you should be less harsh and unforgiving and ungracious with us. I, Hwilli Morgen, have spoken."

He thumped himself on the chest for emphasis, making several of the axes jingle. Since he had the shotgun in that hand, the men to the side ducked back to avoid the muzzle.

"Your pardon, Messer General," one of the Regulars said, taking a half pace forward and saluting crisply. "The barb's right, more or less. Spirit knows few enough of us are likely to sail back into East Residence. Sir, doesn't it make sense to cut the men a little slack?"

The Halvardii nodded and thumped the butts of their halberds on the ground; Raj waited, but the mountaineers were as notoriously parsimonious of their words as their money.

"That's all any of you have to say?" the commander said. "Very well." He paused, looking down at his fingers on the table, then back up at the men.

"Messers," he began, meeting their eyes. "I'm a soldier, like yourselves. I know we're going into a dangerous campaign, we're outnumbered, all of that." He let the words sink in. "So our hope, our
only
hope of coming through alive, most of us—and of winning—is with the Spirit.

"Yes, the Spirit of Man"—he left out the "of the Stars"; several of those present were Spirit of Man of This Earth cultists—"is our
only
hope. And the Spirit will not be with an army if that army forgets justice—justice within its ranks and justice to the helpless it is our duty to protect."