Sixty or so dogs waded out on the beach in a group; they shook themselves in a salt-water thunderstorm and fell to greeting each other after the voyage in an orgy of tail-wagging, behind-sniffing, muzzle-licking, growling and stiff-legged hackle-showing.
"Just like a bunch of East Residence society matrons at a ball," Suzette observed in passing, shouldering her Colonial-made carbine.
The command group gave a harsh collective chuckle and turned back to the map pinned to the stunted pricklebark tree.
"Landing's going well," Jorg Menyez observed.
"Ought to, the practice we've had," Raj said.
The Civil Government fleet lay off a low coastline of sand, scree, heather and reddish native groundrunner; inland it rose to clumps of dark oakwood separated by meadows where the grass was thigh-high and straw yellow. Sandspits a kilometer offshore broke the force of the surf, and a gently shelving sandy bottom made it easier to beach the smaller vessels. Those had been run in at high tide a few hours ago, and a steam ram was already towing an empty one off stern-first to make room for the others. Piles of bales and crates and square-sided, rope-handled ammunition boxes were going up above the high-water mark; there were even a few determined camp-followers, soldiers' women and servants—cavalry troopers were allowed one per eight-man squad—wading ashore already as well.
A 5th master-sergeant and two other troopers came up to the dogs; they each bridled the dominant animal in a platoon-pack and led it off after a few warning nose-thumps with the handles of their dogwhips convinced the beasts that it was time to go back to work.
"Follow t'heel, ye bitches' brood!" the noncom shouted, and set off at a trot upslope to the perimeter the first-in units had established. Cavalry might fight mostly on foot, but they felt extremely uncomfortable without their mounts to hand. The rest of the giant carnivores followed along after, heads up and sniffing the wind blowing from inland. More dogs were swimming for the shore; from the way a few pursuing longboats darted about out by the skerries, the usual scattering of animals determined to try swimming back to their last port of call were being rounded up.
The larger ships, four hundred to eight hundred tons, were anchored offshore. Cargo nets swung stores and equipment down to boats; or a field-gun down to a stout raft of barrels and timbers Dinnalsyn's men had knocked together. Rowboats towed it toward the shore, the brass fittings of its breech glittering in the morning sun, as bright as the droplets of spray cast up by the oars. Company after company of infantry scrambled down nets from the grounded ships, fell in to the shouts and whistles of their officers, and marched upslope. The metal-leather-sweat-dogshit smell of an Army encampment was already overlaying the clean odors of sea and heath.
Twenty thousand humans and ten thousand dogs were coming ashore, and Raj intended to have the whole process completed by nightfall.
"Jorg," he went on. The infantry colonel sneezed and nodded. "I want your infantry to—"
"Make the standard fortified camp, I know," he said. "We also serve who only dig ditches." The ground was fairly flat, so the men would scarcely need the artillery to drive stakes for layout; they could make a standard camp in their sleep, and sometimes did after a forced march. He looked around; there were no large Brigade settlements within a day's march, by the map.
"Since we're only staying a few nights, is that entirely necessary? There's a great deal else for the men to do."
Raj grinned like a carnosauroid. "That's what I thought at Ksar Bourgie," he said. "And nearly got converted to a hareem attendant by Tewfik. Dig in, if you please. The men can set up their tents or not, the weather looks to stay fine, but I want the firing parapet, the pit-latrines and the water supply laid on as if we were going to be here a month."
"Ci, mi heneral."
"The armored cars are coming ashore," Dinnalsyn noted. "Do you want them assembled?"
The artilleryman sounded slightly ambivalent. Raj knew how he felt. The vehicles were boiler-plate boxes on wheels, propelled by the only gas engines in the Civil Government, expensively hand-made. They were temperamental and delicate, required constant maintenance, and had to be hauled by oxen if they moved any distance overland. They were a hell of noise and fumes and heat for the crews in operation. Still, with riflemen or light cannon firing from behind bulletproof cover, they could be decisive at a critical point—and that made up for the endless bother of hauling them around.
Raj nodded. "Just the frames and shells," he said. The engines and armament could be fitted in a day or two and the empty shells were much easier to transport.
"Right," Raj went on, "this is the Crown Peninsula." He tapped the thumb-shaped outline on the map; it stuck out from the main coast of the Western Territories on the eastern fringe. "We're here." On the west coast, a hundred kilometers up from Lion City, the provincial capital, and across five hundred klicks of open water from the coast nearest the Old Residence.
"We'll secure the Crown and Lion City, then advance north"—he traced a line northwestward—"cross the Waladavir River at the bridge here or here where it's fordable, then move southeast toward Old Residence. What exactly we do then depends on opportunity and the enemy, but I intend to have the city before the winter sets hard.
"Our immediate objective is to pacify the Crown outside Lion City. The city has the only real garrison, about four thousand of the General's regulars; for the rest, it's the landowners' household troops we'll be facing. I expect most of them to give up, but don't count on it in any particular case.
"Gerrin, you take two-thirds of the 5th, the 2nd Residence Battalion and two guns, and head northwest up the coast road." His other hand pointed inland. "Hadolfo, your Borderers and the 1st Cruisers, two guns, northeast. Kaltin, you take the 7th Descott and three guns—you've got a couple of crossroads towns and may need them—and head directly east. Ehwardo, you've got Poplanich's Own and the Maximilliano Dragoons and a battery. Go southeast, to the other side of the Crown, down the main spinal road. Ludwig, you take the 2nd Cruisers and the Rogor Slashers and two batteries. Head straight south down to the gates of Lion City, and make sure nobody gets in or out. The city's going to be enough of a problem without too many household units stiffening their defense."
Suzette returned, with a string of HQ servants bearing trays of grilled sausages in split rolls. Everyone grabbed one; Raj used his to gesture between bites.
"You've all seen the sicklefoot and trihorn matches?"
A chorus of nods. Trihorns were browsing sauroids with bone armor on their head and shoulders, up to six tons of vile temper, common in thinly-peopled wilderness. Sicklefeet were smallish carnosauroids, a little more than man-size with a huge curved dewclaw on their hind feet, usually held up against the leg; they hunted in packs, vicious and incredibly agile, leaping in the air to extend their claws and kick-slash their prey to death. The two species rarely interacted in their natural habitats, but they were often matched in large city stadiums in the Civil Government.
"We're the sicklefeet, the Brigaderos are the trihorns. If we let them use their strength, they'll crush us. We slash and move and let them bleed to death."
Raj put his hand on the map, palm on the landing ground and fingers splayed out across the map. Then he rotated the hand, pulling the fingers together as they approached Lion City.
"You'll move south clockwise, sweeping the countryside repeatedly; Ludwig, you're the anvil for any who filter past. Speed and impact, everyone—don't pee on them, boot their heads. If we give them time to catch their breath, we'll have bands of them hiding in the woods for years, and we do not have enough troops to garrison. Stamp on anyone who actively resists; stamp hard, strike terror. Strip those who surrender of every weapon down to their belt-knives and every man who even looks like a soldier and send them back to base; we'll run them to East Residence in the returning transports and commandeered shipping. I don't want an ounce of powder or lead left available, either. Destroy whatever weapons you can't easily cart away; once we've got the area pacified, Administrator Historiomo will be raising a police and militia from the native population, and we can use the captured weapons to arm them.
"Again, messers, the only way we can dominate so large an area with so few troops is to roll them up before they realize what's hit them. If we look like winners, the native population will also rally to us, and we need their active support against the Brigaderos. What happens in the Crown will be crucial to the whole campaign.
"Jorg, there's going to be plenty for you to do as well. All the flying columns will be sending back prisoners by the hundreds; they'll also be calling on you for temporary infantry garrisons to hold confiscated supplies, weapons, and strategic spots.
"You've all got the intelligence reports," he went on. "I've noted the magnate families I want hostages from. We'll move them back here on a temporary basis until we have something better available, along with the soldiers, but they can't be mixed in. Suzette—"
"I'll see to it," she said.
Keeping the hostages—not happy—but not impossibly demoralized would be difficult, with the stringent limits on resources available. A dead hostage was worse than a dead loss, and a mistreated one could provoke suicidal resistance among the Brigade nobility. Most of them would be women and children, and of noble birth; Lady Whitehall would sooth some of the fears and prickly status-conciousness. Thus keeping them out of his hair, and the families they stood surety for quiet as well. That could be worth more than battalions of troops in garrisons in pacifying the area.
"Muzzaf?" Raj went on. The Komarite had been ashore for a day, operating under cover.
"Seyor, I've already contacted some of the local merchants in the farm-towns. We can expect them, and local peasants and native landowners, to be bringing in supplies within a day at any point we designate. I didn't tell them where, of course."
Raj nodded approval. "Do so now. What with prisoners, camp followers and troops we'll have to feed forty thousand or better soon. Now, you may all have noticed that it's cooler here." They all nodded; the temperature was warm-comfortable, rather than the blazing heat of Stern Isle in late summer. "The rains start earlier here—and it rains more than back home. We're racing against time. Questions?"
"Sir," Cabot Clerett said "My mission?"
Raj looked at him for a moment, then slid his finger up the map. "Major Clerett, I'm giving you a rather different role. You'll take your 1st Residence Life Guards, and the 21st Novy Haifa, and move right up here to the Waladavir River."
Clerett looked crisp and warlike in the bright sun, helmet tucked under one arm and black curls tossing. "I'm to perform a screening function, sir?"
"Rather more than that," Raj said. "I want you to secure the bridge over the Waladavir at Sna Chumbiha and the fords—put in earthworks and your guns—then send appropriately-sized raiding parties from the two cavalry battalions over the river westward to attack the magnates' estates and small garrisons. Colonel Menyez will be moving four battalions of infantry up to occupy the bridge and the fords and relieve your men; they and the 21st Novy Haifa will anchor our line of advance.
"We want to conceal our intentions, and hopefully to panic every Brigadero between the Waladavir and the Padan River into thinking we're on their doorstep. I want them running for Carson Barracks, carrying the family silver and howling about the boogeyman. Don't try to hold territory west of your bridgeheads; kill and burn, but selectively, just the Brigaderos and men only as much as you can. I don't want to have to march across a desert in a couple of weeks. Make the refugees overestimate your numbers by moving quickly so they think you're everywhere at once. With luck the natives will rise on their own."
"Sir!" Cabot was quivering with surprise and suspicious delight. It was an assignment with plenty of opportunities for dash and daring; he'd expected to be kept to something dull and safe.
"Major Clerett," Raj went on. "Pay careful attention." He waited an instant. "I'm confident of your courage and your will to combat; a cavalry officer without aggression is a sorry thing. This mission will also test your skills; I'm familiar with the weaknesses of aggressive young commanders, having been one myself back in the dawn of time."
There were grins at that; Raj Whitehall was the youngest general in five hundred years, and his battalion commanders were nearly a decade below the average age. Only two of the Companions were over forty.
"Remember that the Brigaderos are thicker on the ground the further west you go; some of the great nobles have private armies of battalion size or better. Do not get out of touch, do not go too far in, and do not let your men get out of hand—a raid makes discipline difficult but more essential than ever. Colonel Staenbridge will be in constant communication, and he's your reserve if you run into something bigger than the intelligence reports indicate; do not hesitate to call for help if you need it. You're being sent to give an appearance of strength, so if any of your units is mousetrapped we'll have a real problem up there. Give them the taste of victory, however small, and they'll be attacking us instead of running away. We can beat any nobleman's following, but that would take time. Keep your men moving, and don't let yourself get bogged down."
Which meant, among other things, keeping them from burdening themselves with too much loot; a real test of command skills, when they'd be fanning out on razziah across rich countryside.
Suzette spoke softly. "I'm sure Major Clerett won't disappoint us, Raj."
probability clerett will act according to instructions within acceptable parameters, 82% ±4 based on voice-stress and other analysis, Center said.
And Barholm can't complain I'm not giving his nephew an opportunity to shine.
Cabot clicked heels. "Rest assured, Messa."
Raj nodded. "I'm giving you no more than one week of raiding," he went on. "Then I'll need you back at Lion City. Throw out a wide net of scouts west of the river—the native locals will probably give you information enough, especially with some—" he rubbed finger and thumb together "—but you'll have to check. Then turn over command to Major Istban and make tracks for the city, which will be invested.
"This is a complex set of movements, gentlemen, to be carried out at speed, but you're all big boys now. Exercise your initiative."
Gerrin cleared his throat. "What'll you be doing, Raj?"
"Ah, well, our tribal auxiliaries have arrived. Including eight hundred Skinners."
"The gentle, abstentious people," someone muttered.
"A two-edged sword, but a sharp one," Raj admitted. "They, and the two companies of the 5th, will form a central reserve under my direct command. When you run into anything unusual, gentlemen, tell me and I'll bring them up. After that happens once or twice, even the most onerous surrender terms will start looking very good indeed.
"No more questions? Then let's get our men together and be about our business." The Companions and a few of the other battalion commanders stepped closer, and they slapped their raised fists together in a pyramid. The leather of their gauntlets made a hard cracking sound.
"Hell or plunder, dog-brothers."
"Anither seven in t' trees, ser," M'lewis said, without turning his head. "Half a klick, loik."
"Good eyes, Lieutenant," Raj nodded.
Skinners didn't set lookouts, really. It was just that there were always groups of men lying-up around one of their camps, and they saw and heard and probably scented everything. At home on the plains of the far northeast they lived by hunting sauroids. All shapes and sizes, from sicklefoot packs to the big grazers to carnivores ten meters tall. Bellevue's sauroids hadn't had a million years of exposure to hominids to give them an instinct to avoid men. Most inhabited areas had to be kept shot out of all the larger types; the Skinners lived among the native life, and throve.
"Trumpeter, sound the canter. Remember the instructions."
The cool brassy notes sounded, and the two hundred men broke into a swift lope, the butts of their rifles resting on their thighs. As they broke through the screen of brush around the big meadow, they raised them and fired them into the sky, then flipped the long weapons down and sheathed them in the scabbards before their knees. A gesture of contempt, not reassurance . . . a statement: you're not worth carrying a loaded gun to meet.
There was an etiquette to dealing with Skinners.
Nobody got up as the soldiers approached, unless they happened to be standing at the moment. Those who wanted to stare did; those who were sleeping or drinking kept on doing so. One man did amble out, peering as if in surprise.
"Eh, mun ami!" Chief Juluk Paypan said. He turned and shouted in Paytoiz, the Skinner tongue:
"Iles de Gran' wheetigo! E' sun bruha. L'hum qes' mal com nus!"
Many of the Skinners looked up at that; a few gave quick yelping barks of greeting, and started drifting toward their chief and the general who was—theoretically—their commander.
"Which means?" Suzette asked. She had ridden into a near-riot in the Skinner camp with him on the last campaign, to face down their chiefs after Raj hung two Skinners for murder. This was her first glimpse of them in a peaceful mood.
Of course, on that occasion they'd had four battalions with leveled rifles and a battery of artillery behind them.
Raj translated: "It's The Big Devil and his witch. The man who's bad like us."
"Is that a compliment?"
Raj grimaced. "To a Skinner."
He had never learned the Skinner tongue, not himself—the knowledge had the ice-edged hardness of something Center had implanted. Thinking about that always gave him a queasy feeling, like a mental image of bad pork.
It was not a good idea to think of smells when you were around Skinners. The bandy-legged little nomads had only been ashore a day, but the stink of their camp was already stunning. One man was standing in his sketchy saddle to urinate as they entered; he waved cheerfully and readjusted his breechclout without embarrassment, then rode off with a whoop. A few of them had put up leather shelters on poles, but most of the nomad mercenaries slept as they ate, defecated and fornicated—as and where the impulse took them. Dung, human and canine, and bits and scraps of things unidentifiable dotted the encampment. A monohorn carcass lay in the center of a ring of fires; those were medium-sized browsers, about twice the weight of a large bull, with columnar legs and a bone shield that extended from the long horn on their nose to the top of their humped shoulders. A single round hole above one eye showed what had killed it; the Skinners had probably camped where it died. The body and the ground for meters around was black with a carpet of flies.
As Raj watched, a Skinner backed out of its stomach cavity with a length of huge glistening purple-grey intestine in his teeth. He sawed it free a foot or so from his mouth, then threw back his head to swallow it without chewing. A visible bulge went down his throat to the already rounded stomach as they watched.
Juluk was grinning from ear to ear. He was fairly typical of his race, shorter than Suzette but twice as broad, a normal man compressed halfway down to dwarf size. Face and body were the color of old oiled leather; it was difficult to tell what his shaven scalplocked head and round button-nosed face would have looked like naturally, because of the mass of scar tissue. About half of it was tribal markings. He wore fringed leggings and breechclout of soft-tanned sauroid leather, with long knives on his thighs; crossed belts on his chest held shells for the two-meter tall rifle he leaned on, and each brass cartridge was longer than a man's hand, each bullet bigger than Raj's thumb. His hound lay at his feet; it cocked an eye up at Horace and went back to sleep.
Only Skinners habitually rode hounds, and entire males at that. Horace was one reason they regarded Raj as a human being. Most of it was the number of bodies his battles had piled up, impressive even to the tribes the Church called the Scourge of the Spirit's Wrath.
Juluk drank and passed him up the leather flask. "Hey, mebbe we kill you now, sojer-man, wait too long anyway. You come to hang more of mes gars for killing farmers? That why you bring half-men?"
He jerked his head at the two companies of the 5th sitting their dogs behind Raj and Suzette. Half-men was a compliment; the Skinners had a quasi-respect for Descotters. Their name for themselves translated into Sponglish as Real Men. Or The Only Real Men.
Raj took a long swig of the arrak, date gin yellow with distilling byproducts and spiked with cayenne peppers, chile and gunpowder. Then he leaned over and spat half of it on the nose of the Skinner's dog. The big animal leapt to its feet, growling: Raj's boot and stirrup-iron met its nose with a nicely-timed swing, and Horace showed teeth as long as a man's fingers centimeters from the other animal's throat. It reconsidered, turned its back and ambled off, dishcloth-sized ears flapping.
"I only keep you alive to make me laugh, Juluk," Raj said, drinking again. He'd eaten half a loaf of bread soaked in olive oil just before coming to the Skinner camp. "I brought real men here to show your little boys how to fight. Where'd you get this sauroid-vomit? I piss it out on your bitch-mother's grave."
This time he swallowed most of it, forcing himself not to gag. To his surprise, Suzette took the skin next and managed a healthy swallow. Some of the Skinners frowned at her presumption, and one or two shook medicine bags at her, but most of them laughed uproariously, Juluk included. A woman with baraka, spirit-power, was an even bigger joke than a non-Skinner with real balls. His necklace of finger-long sauroid fangs clattered against his bandoliers.
"Eh, even your woman got balls, sojer-man! Big stone-house chief, he tell me you make war on the long-hairs of the west. Good fighting where you make war."
"Where's your friend Pha-air?" There had been two chiefs with this band on the last campaign.
"Oh, I kill him a season ago," the Skinner chief said with a shrug. "He give me this—good man with knife." A grimy thumb traced a new scar, still shiny, across the chief's belly.
Raj raised his voice: "Are you women ready to go fight, or are you only good for drinking and eating sauroids that die of disease?"
More hoots and trills of laughter; the Skinners looked and smelled like trolls but their voices had the high pitch of excited schoolgirls.
Juluk fired the huge rifle over his shoulder without bothering to move it. The brass-cored 15mm slug cracked by within a meter of Raj's head, but he was as safe as if the weapon had been in East Residence. The Skinner chief would slit his own throat in shame if he ever shot a man without intending to.
Men and dogs boiled out of the camp, and out of thickets roundabout. It was chaos, an instant change from sleepy lethargy to whooping, screeching tumult—but in less than five minutes the liquor and ammunition had been thrown on spare dogs, and the warriors were mounted and ready to move.
Center had taught him Paytoiz, but Raj had always been able to get on with the Skinner mercenaries.
"Are they really worth the trouble?" Suzette asked, as her escort fell in around her for the short journey back to the base camp.
"My sweet, you've only seen them twice, and in camp," Raj said. "As soldiers, they're a disaster—they devastate any place you station them, and you might as well try to discipline sauroids, and when they're drunk, which is usually . . . But if you could see them fight—" He shook his head. "Yes, they're worth the trouble."
"Why's the road so far inland?" Bartin Foley asked.
"Pirates," Gerrin Staenbridge replied. "More profit in longshore raiding than attacking ships, if you've got a target that doesn't have signal heliographs, a fleet of steam rams and quick-reaction forces the way the Civil Government does."
Company A of the 5th was lead unit on the ride north, next to the battalion banner and the HQ squad. They were staying in column, for speed's sake, with outriders flung out ahead and to either side; they could see them dodging into small woods and jumping fences occasionally, off at the edge of sight.
"Squadrone pirates?" Bartin went on.
"Probably not the last generation, but there are plenty of freelancers operating out of islands like Blanchfer and Sabatin, just south of here . . . Ah, that should be our Hereditary Colonel Makman's place, coming up."
The maps said this was a main military highway; in the Civil Government, even in Descott, they'd have called it a track and left it at that. Mostly it was beaten earth, possibly it had been graded with an ox-drawn scraper within the last couple of years, and somebody had scattered gravel on the low points at some time in the past. Snake-rail fences edged it on either side; inland of the belt of forest along the coast the country opened up into rolling fields. Small shaws of oak, hazelnut and some native tree with hexagonal-scaled bark and scarlet leaves topped an occasional hill. The wheatfields were long since reaped, but there were many fields of mais—kawn in Namerique and gruno in Spanjol—full of dry, rustling stocks chest-high to a rider.
A hogback ridge rose ahead and to the right, eastward of the road. The two officers raised their binoculars; the manor was a big foursquare building, whitewashed stone, with a squat tower rising from one corner flying the double lightning flash banner of the Brigade and a personal blazon of complicated interwoven loops, white on dark gray. The lower story was pierced only by narrow windows, but the upper had balconies and broad stretches of glazing. A number of long low structures stood nearby; stables undoubtedly, and the barracks.
"Almost homelike," Gerrin said dryly.
Descott architecture had some of the same features and for the same reason, except that things had never been either peaceful or prosperous enough for long enough to widen the second-story windows.
Staenbridge threw up a hand, and the trumpet sounded. "Battalion—"
"Company—"
"Walk-march . . . halt."
"Let's hope Makman sees sense," the commander of the 5th said.
"I hope so too," Foley replied. He turned in the saddle: "Flag of truce, Lieutenant, and follow me if you please." He turned back to Staenbridge. "Probably won't, though. Not the first one we call on."
"You what?" the old man roared.
"Summon you to surrender in the name of the Civil Government of Holy Federation," Foley said tightly.
His hand was on his pistol, but he was fully conscious of what a sniper could do. The white pennant snapped from his bannerman's pole. That had been cold comfort to poor Mekkle Thiddo last year, after he'd delivered Connor Auburn's head to his brother the Admiral. His mind tried to replay scenes of the Squadron blunderbusses belching smoke, the white flag falling . . . and instead it insisted on showing him Raj Whitehall's face, as he rode down the row of thirty-one crosses, each bearing the twisting body of one of the men responsible for that violation of the laws of war.
That had probably been cold comfort to Thiddo too.
A bell was tolling in the tower of the estate; frightened faces peered out at him from the second-story window, and dogs were yowrping in the stables as men rushed to saddle them. Behind him the platoon's mounts shifted and growled softly, conscious of the aggression of intruding on another pack's territory but trained out of instinctive reluctance. The gravel of the driveway crunched under their paws; the smell of their massed breath was rank, overpowering the scents of woodsmoke and garden.
Hereditary Colonel Makman was tall, about a hundred and ninety centimeters, with little spare flesh on his heavy bones, and his red face contrasted violently with the white muttonchop whiskers that framed it. The unexpected visitors had evidently surprised him at lunch, and a napkin was tucked into the collar of his shirt.
He glared at Foley. "Grisuh, you've got your nerve, coming on to my land with a story like this," he snapped, in the tones of a man who hasn't been contradicted in a very long time.
Foley smiled and raised his hook. "Messer, that term grisuh is impolite, not to mention inappropriate. The last man to use it to me was one of Curtis Auburn's house-troops, and he came to a bad end." Sudden doubt washed over Makman's face.
"Seyor," the platoon commander said. Sir.
Foley turned his head; a group of men was double-timing up the grassy slope to the right. In bits and pieces of hastily-donned uniform, but all carrying rifles and wearing their swords. They checked at the sight of the mounted men, then came on again at a more measured pace.
The young captain nodded. The lieutenant barked an order, and half the platoon turned their dogs with a touch of the foot. Another, and the animals crouched; the men stepped forward with their rifles at port
"Slope arms! Fix bayonets!" Smooth precision as butts thumped and hands slapped the hilts, not parade-ground stiffness but the natural flow of actions performed as part of a way of living, a trade practiced daily. The bayonets came out, bright and long as a man's forearm, and rattled as they clipped to the ring-and-bar fasteners. "Shoulder arms—front rank, kneel—ready—present—pick your targets—prepare for volley fire. On the word of command!"
Hands slapped iron and the long Armory rifles jerked up to shoulders. Behind the kneeling riflemen the second file drew their sabers and sloped them back, resting on their shoulders. The dogs barred their teeth and growled like boulders churning in a flooded river, long strings of slaver running from their opened half-meter mouths.
Makman surprised Foley; he spoke quietly. "You came under a flag of truce."
Bartin Foley's face had been delicately pretty once; it was still slim-lined and handsome in an ascetic fashion. Black eyes met blue, and the Brigade nobleman's narrowed in memory. From the battered look of his thick-fingered hands he had seen action enough once; enough to recognize the look of a man poised on the edge of killing violence.
"Messer, I also once saw an officer murdered under flag of truce by the barbarians of the Squadron," the young man said.
Makman snatched the handkerchief from his shirt and half-turned. "Siegfrond!" he snapped. "Ground arms, you fool."
The Brigadero troopers had formed a ragged firing line. Now their muzzles came down; there were about thirty of them, with more straggling up from the barracks by ones and twos, like crystals accreting in a solution.
"And somebody stop that damned bell."
A servant from the crowd around the Brigade nobleman scampered away, and the bronze clanging faded away to silence.
A woman came out onto the broad verandah of the fortified manor; she was in her twenties, in a long white dress with a yoke of pearls, and a child of four or five was by her side.
"Grandfather," she began, "what's—oh!" She swept the child behind her and put one hand to her throat.
Makman was studying the soldiers before his house, seeing them for the first time, Foley suspected. "Gubernio Civil, right enough," he said, and looked up at their officer. "Is this some sort of raid? You've a good deal of brass, young man, coming this far inland with less than forty men."
"This is the vanguard of General Raj Whitehall's army," Foley said, with a coldly beautiful smile. The woman gasped, and Makman's ruddy face paled.
"He's on Stern Isle," he whispered.
"Was," Foley corrected. "The Sword of the Spirit of Man is swift. And in case you doubt that there are more of us here—"
He drew his saber and turned in the saddle, waving the blade slowly overhead. Downslope of the house gardens was an open field, full of black-coated cattle grazing. Beyond that was cultivated land, with a scattering of small half-timbered thatched cottages, and a line of trees. Red light winked from the edge of the forest Half a second later the flat poumpf of a 75mm field gun came, and the ripping wail. A tall bottle-shape of dirt fountained out of the pasture; cattle were running and bawling, except for three that lay mangled, blood red and intestines pink against their black hides. Steel twinkled all along the distant field edge as five hundred men stepped into the open and the sun caught their bayonets. A frantic voice called from the tower that more were in sight behind the manor, among the peon village.
2nd Residence, right on time, Foley thought.
"What . . ." Makman rasped. "What are your terms?"
"General Whitehall's terms are these; you are to take oath of obedience to the Civil Government and cooperate fully with all its officers and administrators in furnishing supplies and war levies. All arms and armed men to be surrendered; soldiers to be sent to East Residence for induction into our army. You personally will accompany our troops to encourage surrender among your military vassals and neighbors. In return your life and liberty, and one-third of your real property, are spared."
"One-third!"
"It's a great deal more than you'd enjoy in the grave, Messer. Because my orders are that if you refuse this place will be sacked and any survivors sold as slaves." He looked up at the young woman. "I doubt your granddaughter would find life as a whore in a dockside crib in East Residence very pleasant." He cut off the beginnings of a roar. "I've seen it, Messer. I've done it. Believe me."
The old man slumped. Foley's voice went on inexorably; "You will also deliver a hostage of your immediate family as surety for your good behavior."
"Who?" Makman said, scrubbing a hand over his face. "My son is ten years dead, my daughters with their own husbands, and my grandson holds a commission with the Makman Mounted in Carson Barracks—" He halted, frowning.
The young woman turned white and glared at Foley, and Makman's great age-spotted hands clenched. The young man almost laughed, but managed to keep his face grave. Things were not quite out of the woods yet; these were barbarians, after all.
"Your granddaughter-in-law and great-grandson will be under the protection of Lady Suzette Whitehall," he soothed. "She may take one maidservant and a suitable chaperone, and since you'll have to come in to swear allegiance with General Whitehall, you may deliver her to Lady Whitehall yourself. And rest assured, on my word as a gentleman and officer, that her honor is safe with me."
If you only knew how very safe, he thought.
"Upyarz! Upyarz!"
The Brigaderos roared as they fought. Clerett's Life Guards used their sabers with bleak skill; the Governor had carefully picked the men to send to war with his heir. Steel crashed on steel across the fields, pistols banged, dogs howled and men shrieked in sudden agony too great for flesh to bear. The failing light of sundown was blood-red, but the true red of blood was turning to black despite the flames from the burning farmhouse on the north side of it. The wagons the refugees had tried to draw into a circle for defense burned too. Powder-smoke drifted pink-tinged over the heads and thrashing blades of four hundred men. The air smelled of sulphur and feces, the wet-iron stink of blood, and burning thatch.
Cabot Clerett watched narrowly. His hand chopped down, and his heels clapped to his dog's ribs; with a hundred men behind him he swept out of the timber and put his mount at the rail fence. The big mastiff gathered itself and soared as its rider leaned forward in the saddle. The banner of the 1st Residence Life Guards streamed at his side, and all around him the blades of the sabers snapped down in unison to lie along the necks of the dogs, point toward the enemy. They were turning to meet him, a lancepoint flashed by, trannggg and a breastplate shed the point of his Kolobassian blade and nearly dragged him out of the saddle. The Civil Government line smashed into the melee.
A dismounted trooper was before him, backing with sword working while a Brigadero lancer probed for his life and another kept the soldier's dog at bay.
Cabot spurred forward again. This time the enemy warrior could not turn in time, the inertia of his lance too much for his arm. The young officer poised his hilt over his head and stabbed, down into the neck past the collarbone to avoid the armor. The resistance was crisp and then heavy-soft; he wrenched the blade free and the barbarian reeled away on a bolting dog, coughing blood in sheets down his breastplate. The loose Life Guard's dog snapped, its neck extending like a snake and closing on the lance-shaft below the steel lappets. Ashwood crunched and the Brigadero was backing and cursing as he drew his sword. Cabot let him escape, dropped his reins, and clamped the bloody saber to his side while he drew his pistol and tossed it to his left hand.
"Thankee, ser!" the trooper yelled, straddling his dog as the animal crouched for him to mount.
Cabot flourished the saber with a grin. I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid! he realized exultantly. A sword flickered in the corner of his eye; he blocked the blow with his own near the hilt. The force of it slugged him to one side, leaning far over; he pointed the revolver under his own armpit and fired into the Brigadero's torso. The enemy dog locked jaws with his dog's, both animals slamming at each other's legs with clawed paws the size of plates. Cabot heaved himself back erect and leaned forward to fire again with the muzzle half an inch from the other dog's eye. It collapsed in mid-growl, falling with a thump that made his own mount jump backwards.
The HQ group had caught up with him, stabbing and shooting; the enemy were recoiling under the weight of the flank charge, but they still had numbers and weight of metal on their side. He signaled the trumpeter and the brassy notes rang out over the lessening clamor. Almost as one man the Civil Government troops turned and fled in a rout, pouring across the meadow and into the narrow road that spiked into the forest on the south.
The Brigaderos, household guards and part of a dragoon garrison regiment, scrambled after them four hundred strong. Here the lighter gear of the easterners was their advantage; the big Airedales and Newfoundlands were fast enough, but slower off the mark than the rangy Descotter farmbreds and Colonial-style Banzenjis the invaders rode. Slather flew from the mouths of the dogs as they lunged for the shadowing trees. The narrow wedge of open land at the road's mouth squeezed the larger Brigade force harder than their quarry, and for a moment the whole mass of men and dogs slowed as the warriors on the outside pressed inward.
Four hundred riflemen volley-fired from the edge of the woods into the clumped Brigade troops. In the dusk the muzzle-flashes were long and regular, like spearheads of fire along an endless phalanx. Crisp orders sounded, pitched high to carry. Platoon volleys slammed out like a crackle of very loud single shots, each one a comb of flame licking toward the enemy. Bullets hammered into dogs and men; a few spanged off armor, red sparks flicking up into the gathering night, but the range was close—and for this campaign, half of the standard-issue hollowpoints had been replaced with rounds carrying a pointed brass cap. Four companies of trained men with Armory rifles could put over three thousand rounds in a single minute. None of the Brigaderos was more than a hundred meters from the forest edge when the firing started, and the barricade of burning buildings and wagons was less than six hundred meters away. At that distance a bullet aimed level would strike a mounted man anywhere along its flight path.
The trumpet rang again in darkness, behind the firefly glimmer of the crossfire raking the Brigade men from two sides of a triangle. Panting dogs and cursing men sorted themselves into ranks. Snarls and snaps like wet coffin-lids falling punctuated the jostling, until men soothed their mounts to obedience.
"Damned if it didn't work, sir," the Senior Captain of the 2nd said in Cabot's ear.
He jumped slightly, glad of the darkness; he could feel the glassy stare of his eyes. His hands were steady as he reloaded.
"I rather thought it would, Captain Fikaros," the Governor's nephew said hoarsely. "I rather thought it would."
Both moons were up, enough to see a few survivors scattering across the meadow. Few made it past the burning buildings on the other side, although a number of riderless dogs with jouncing stirrups did.
"Let's collect our wounded and head for the river," Cabot said. "This bunch were a little too numerous for my taste."
"Sir!"
The men cheered as he rode past with the unit banner and the trumpeter.
Wait until Uncle hears about this, he thought. Wait until Suzette hears.
Glory!