Warlord (71 page)

"No, Mekkle," he went on, "I'm not relieving you. Quite the contrary—you kept your head when all about were losing theirs, and turned what could have been an unmitigated disaster into a mitigated one."
Although when I find Major Dalhouse . . . 
Thiddo looked stunned; until then he had been a mixture of relief at having someone to take the responsibility off his shoulders, and dread of what his leader would say.

Raj leaned forward and slapped him on the shoulder. "If you'd lost those guns and come barreling into camp with the barbs on your heels . . . well, you didn't. My friend, this is not a business in which elegant plans buy you any yams. The ability to retrieve matters when someone screws up is much more important.

"Now," he said, viewing the field.

They would have to pull back soon; someone on the other side was finally realizing they were in a meeting engagement. The Squadron host was clumping into four main groups—what he could see of it—with the transport train far behind pulling into a classic Military Government-style circular wagon-fort. And dismounted Squadrones were working their way to the east through the patch of broken country that was protecting his left. Fairly soon they'd be through it—and he couldn't afford to be pinned. Raj massaged the back of his neck under the leather and chainmail guard; the day—he glanced up; about 1100 hours, morning rather—had been a real surf-ride.
In garrison, we complain about the boredom. But when you consider the alternative
 . . . 

"Sir?" Thiddo asked. "Ah, I expected—"

"You can't," Raj went on, "let yourself get too focused on a plan, Mekkle. Actually things are going rather well. We've lost, oh, two hundred men"—da Cruz's face came before him for a moment, and he pushed it away—"including those who just buggered off, and how many do you think the Squadron's lost? Two thousand? Four? Six?"

They both glanced to the front. It was difficult to tell through the drifting mass of powder smoke, but there was a positive carpet of unmoving figures on the ground out beyond the Civil Government line. Another series of volleys slapped out, hiding the Squadron front for a moment; smoke billowed from the enemy, too far away to do any real damage.

"And more important, they're still coming on the way we want them to. Notice anything about them, Mekkle?"

"Ummm—they do tend to react like a bull stung by a
pihkador,
sir. Confirms what we were told."

"Hit them in the nose and you can lead them by it," Raj nodded. A trooper came up with a flagstaff; the banner on it was pure white. "I've got something for you to take to the Admiral," he went on, reaching for a bag tied to his saddle "that will concentrate his mind even more. Yes, things are not going badly at all. Trumpeter, call
cease fire.
"

"Hnnnng."

The soldier arched his back as the Renunciate cut away the remains of his boot. Sticky blood had pooled inside the leather, and it slid out in a gelatinous mass. One of the assistants wilted and began to sag; Fatima cor Staenbridge reached out and shook her sharply.

"Scrub," the nun said; the pants-leg had been slit far back. "
Come
on, I've got to see what I'm doing here."

The soldier—the boy—was glassy-eyed from opium, but it was dangerous to give too much when shock was involved. Fatima gripped his wrist and hand more firmly and leaned over him, smiling; it seemed to make it easier for them to bear, if someone was looking at them.
At least there aren't many.
A Descotter trooper with a shot-broken thigh right at the beginning, and a few more ever since; they had even had time to treat some enemy wounded. Not like Sandoral; she remembered the tubfuls of amputated legs and arms at the bottoms of the operating tables . . . just a trickle so far. The word was that the north force was almost to the city. Soon they would be there, under the walls and the cannon. Gerrin and Barton would be there.

The boy with the mangled foot had a shield-shaped shoulder—flash with crossed sabers over a black numeral "5," and the motto
Hell o Zpalata
above—"Hell or Plunder." The 5th Descott Guards.

"What's your name, soldier?" she asked.

His eyes darted to her, and his teeth showed in something like a smile; they were yellow-white in the muddy shock-molded brown of his face.

"Hylio Carasyn," he gasped.

"You're in the 5th, aren't you?" she said.

"Yis, ma'am," he said. A probe clicked down by the foot of the table, and his hand gripped hers until the bones creaked; it was his saber hand, and he was a strong young man. "Yer t'Major's lady, eh?"

She nodded. "What happened up there?" she said.
Allah—Spirit of Man—
she prayed silently, remembering Foley on the table, his ruined hand . . . 
Please, let anyone die but them.
 

The soldier was panting, and his eyes slid out of focus. "Barbs," he muttered. "Gunmen, swordsmen. Barbs, thousands, I shot 'im and he—
nnnnnnn!
"

"Ah,
got
it," the stern-faced Renunciate said, her arms glistening red to the elbows. The probe held a misshapen piece of lead a little larger than a pea. "Clamp there, move sharp!"

There was a clatter at the door of the tent "Mediko, mediko! More of 'em!"

Young Hylio Carasyn had fainted. Fatima put her hand on the sweat-cold forehead.
You don't know any more of what's going on than I do, poor baby,
she thought

The doctor looked up. "Get me that damned catgut," she said, frowning. The assistant handed her a curved needle. "Time to close this one up."

"Took them long enough," Raj grunted, raising his binoculars. He had drawn a little ahead of the group around his banner, messengers, and aides.

The firing had finally stopped, along the front at least. Wind drifted the smoke away; unfortunately, it also showed the true size of the Squadron war-host again, looking all the more terrifying because it had hauled itself together. It would show them how few their enemies in this particular skirmish had been, as well—which might be either good or bad, depending on how bright they were. Raj turned and looked down the ranks. The men were resting stolidly, faces and hands black with burnt powder; a few were taking sips from their canteens and carefully spraying a fine mist into the open breeches of their rifles, then wiping them with the tails of their coats. Hell on maintenance, but you did what you had to when it came down to cases.

"Did we really have to send Mekkle?" Suzette asked.

"It's a favor," Raj said absently. "I'm demonstrating that he's still trusted. Which," he added quietly, lowering the binoculars for a moment, "might not have been necessary if somebody hadn't interfered in the chain of command this morning."

Suzette looked away. "That was a mistake," she said.

"It was. My heart," he went on more softly, "we're partners, I know that. You were concerned . . . but I don't take unnecessary risks. Don't second-guess me on my specialty, or you
will
get me killed."

She nodded stiffly, and he raised the glasses again. "And it would be an insult to send a man of no rank to treat with the Admiral," he went on.

The group around the Admiral had advanced a little to meet the party of Civil Government troops under the white flag. Admiral Auburn was a tall portly man, with a spray of gray-brown beard covering half his chest, and small sapphires and diamonds on the ends of the leather thongs that fringed his jacket. He glittered as he moved, leaning forward with a hand cupped to his ear. It was like watching a puppet show; the big barbarian reared back in the stirrups, shaking his head.
Probably refusing to believe his brother Conner's been defeated and killed,
Raj estimated.

Mekkle was handing over the canvas bag. Auburn ripped it open and sat gasping for a moment, while men recoiled all around it and his dead brother stared at him in eternal surprise. Then he dropped the head, fumbled for it as it bounced off his saddle and fell to the ground, rolling. Buried his hands in his beard and began to scream, half-falling as he slid from his dog's back to the object it was sniffing curiously. Screaming and moaning, he rocked back and forth over the head, and one of his hands came free with a handful of hair in it. There was chaos around his banner, as men turned to each other, shouting into faces, waving their weapons. Sections of the Squadron line surged forward; the news spread outward as ripples did from a stone dropped in a pond.

Good man,
Raj thought, as Mekkle and the trooper carrying the flag of truce turned and began to canter back to the Civil Government line. Then he stiffened as dozens of weapons leveled behind the envoy.

"Son of a bitch—son of a
bitch
!" he shouted, as they fired in a flicker of smoke-puffs with red spearhead cores of fire.

The flag of truce went over as the trooper and his dog collapsed. Mekkle slumped forward over the neck of his dog; the animal laid back its ears and ran, howling, one paw flinching every time it struck the ground. Raj and his color-party were galloping forward too; they met the wounded man a hundred meters in front of the Civil Government line. The wounded dog crouched, and Horace sank to the ground beside it, snuffling and licking at the injury. Raj took Thiddo's shoulders, easing him to the earth; Suzette ran up with her medical box, then halted, eyes wide. The shotgun blasts of the Squadron had pulped the muscle off the young officer's back, and the yellow bone of spine and ribs snowed through it, along with loops of gut. The flow of blood was slowing even as they watched.

Raj leaned over the dying man. Thiddo's mouth moved, but nothing came out of it but a spatter of blood that flecked across the general's face. Dust from near-misses spurted around them both as Raj set the dead man's head back on the ground and rose; several of the others flinched slightly as he turned back toward the enemy.

"Get a record of those banners," he said, pointing to the standards of the noblemen grouped around the Admiral. The whole Squadron force seemed to be paralyzed for the moment. "Get a record of every one of them, because afterward I want to identify them."

The Admiral was still kneeling by his brother's head, wailing and beating the ground with his fists; many of the men around him were doing likewise, or gashing their faces with their knives as a sign of mourning. Their howls were nearly as loud as those of their dogs, and as inhuman.

Children, Raj thought. Vicious grown-up children, and nothing but the Army to keep them from wiping out all the adults in the world. 

in the universe,
Center said.
a universe of vicious children for us to school, as we will do in time. 
 

"And now," Raj went on, "Major Thiddo bought us some valuable time. I suggest we use it."

The sun was nearly overhead and a little to their west; Raj squinted into it as he and his command group rode down the front of the Expeditionary Force's position. His personal banner dipped each time he passed a battalion standard, and he saluted; the men raised a rolling cheer that swelled and pulsed in his wake. At each he stopped for a moment.

"It's all very simple now, lads," he said for the tenth time. "They run up to us, we shoot them down. Mind the orders, keep the muzzles down, and everything will go fine. Spirit of Man with you!"

The cheer swelled and then died down again as he galloped back to his post on the west corner of the formation, next to Poplanich's Own. The palisade of the overnight camp was just visible behind, and closer were the light two-wheeled ambulance carts. It was intensely hot in the early afternoon. Insects whirred, and a bellows sound came from the rear, where the dogs lay and panted. The men were down on one knee in orderly rows with their rifles held in the right hand; sweat darkened the blue tunics. The air smelled of it, and dust; on the border of sight to the east, the sea added its tang of salt.

"Here they come," Ehwardo Poplanich said.

"Took their time," Raj replied, looking at his watch: 1300. "Better than an hour."

He looked left and east, along the Civil Government position. It stretched between the two ravines like a huge shallow C; the infantry in the center had had time to dig sketchy fieldworks, throwing up a meter-high ridge of dirt. With the front rank prone and the second rank kneeling that would give them excellent cover if the enemy came close enough to hit anything. The guns were more elaborately protected; each had a man-high bulwark in front of it with a V-shaped cutout for the muzzle, and a sloped earth bank behind it so that it would rise with the recoil and run back into the battery. Three battalions of dismounted cavalry under Hadolfo Zahpata held the seaward flank; the other four were anchoring the right wing, under Raj's personal eye, although that included the still-shaky Cuirassiers and Novy Haifa. There had been time to bring water carts up, as well; water the dogs and men, issue bread, stack spare ammunition close at hand but protected by sandbags. Time to have the priests parade down the front, sprinkling each banner with holy water and censing it with fragrant smoke.

The horizon to the south turned black as the Squadron came on—black edged with winking brightness from their weapons and flags. There was a rumble that seemed to shake the earth, the paws of more than forty thousand dogs pounding the dirt; dust towered into the sky over the barbarian host. They slowed as they approached, less from caution than from the way the terrain was squeezing them down like a wedge. Those in the front were nobles with a reputation for valor, or the desire for it. They were there of their own free will; the Admiral could direct their advance, but not stop it. The Civil Government line looked frail and still by comparison, delicate and structured as a snowflake.

Raj leveled his binoculars. The area in front of his position was bare, except for the poles marked with colored rag that gave the distances.

"Major Dinnalsyn," he said. "Commence firing for effect at four thousand meters on my signal. Don't get fancy; rapid fire at the foremost edge of their formation." The artillery chief nodded.