Hope Renewed (13 page)

The three men he’d sent up came down again, one holding a small wooden box. “Found ‘er in t’rafters, loik,” he said, grinning broadly. “Coin, by t’Spirit.”

Looking on the bright side, the wogs hadn’t had time to really hide much.

Another herded a group of children, the oldest leading or carrying the younger. They set up a wail at the sight of the bodies in the courtyard, then surged back again when one of the troopers scowled and flourished his bayonet. Thumping and crashing sounds came from the ground floor, as the rest of the squad searched.

“Git t’kiddies out an’ a-down by t’church, t’mosque, whatever.” Orders were to spare noncombatants and the unresisting. “Yer!” He shouted through the ground-floor door. “Whin yer finished, set t’cookin’ oil around.”

That would start the fire nicely. He took a deep breath and exhaled, letting the tight belly-clamping tension of action fade a little. A pissant little skirmish, but he’d been in the Army seven years now, since he turned eighteen, and he knew you could die just as dead that way as in a major battle.

“And Smeet, plug that.”

Trooper Smeet had a tear in the side of his jacket, and it was sodden and dripping. “ ‘Tis nuttin’,” he said. “We’ll a’ git kilt anyways—”

“Did I
asks
yer?” M’Telgez said, scowling. “Did I?”

“Co’pral half a year and already drunk wit’ power,” Smeet said, grinning with an expression that was half wince. He was coming down off the combat-high too; often you didn’t really feel a minor wound until you had time to think about it. He leaned his rifle against a wall and shrugged out of his webbing gear and jacket. “I bin co’pral six, seven times—t’ feelin’ don’t last nohows, dog-brother.”

There was an ugly flesh wound along his ribs, only beginning to crust. One of his comrades washed it from his canteen, then applied the blessed powder and sealed, the priest-made bandage they all carried in a pouch on their belts. Smeet yelped and swore; the stuff stung badly, and many of the less pious men wouldn’t use it on a cut unless you stood over them. M’Telgez wasn’t much of a Church-going man, but Messer Raj insisted on following Church canons in such things, which was good enough for him.

The attending trooper used his bayonet to cut off one of the tails of Smeet’s jacket, ripping it in half and using it to bind the padding over his ribs.

“An’ git t’priest at it, soon as, or ye’ll feel me boot up yer arse,” M’Telgez warned. Smeet was a good enough fighting man, but he tended to be slack about kit and such.

M’Telgez looked down at the woman and smiled.

Pillars of black smoke stood out against the northern horizon. The smell drifted down with the wind, full of the unpleasant smells of things that should not burn. White-hot, the noon sun burned most color out of the land, turning the reaped grainfields to a pale yellow dust. Blocks of alfalfa and
berseem
-clover were almost eye-hurtingly vivid, and the odd patch of fruit trees or olives cast shade dense and black and sharp-edged. Where the 7th Descott Rangers waited beside their dogs, there was welcome shade from rows of eucalyptus on either side of the road, but the air was still and very hot. Insects shrilled in the dust, and a few tiny pterosauroids swooped after them, their long triangle-tipped tails flickering as they scooped cicadas into their needle-toothed little jaws.

The men squatted patiently beside their mounts, the gun teams lying down in their traces, satisfied after their drink in the roadside canal. The beasts looked glossy-coated and strong despite the heat and hard work; the all-meat diet of plundered Colonial stock agreed with them, after the usual mash of grain and beans eked out with bones and offal. Kaltin Gruder stood, eating grapes from the bunches in the helmet he held reversed in his left hand, waiting with the same stolidity as his troopers.

He ate more grapes and smiled. He’d soldiered against the Military Governments in the west without passion, and as much occasional mercy as advisable. He was a noble of the Civil Government, a Descotter, and a professional; war was his trade, the only trade unless he wanted the Church or to go home to the County and chase rustlers. The Colonials, though . . . his younger brother had died from a Colonial shellburst, in the El Djem campaign. He rubbed one thumb down the deep parallel scars that seamed the left side of his face.

This was personal.

The sound of paws came from the north, and the whistle of the pickets in their ambush positions passing them through. The scouts trotted up to him, sitting easily with their rifles across their thighs. The lieutenant who led them saluted.

“Seyhor,”
he said. “Sir. About two thousand of them; many carriages and dogs, and a substantial number of armed men.”

“Regulars?”

“Ferramenti, danad, seyhor,”
the young officer replied. “I’d swear, nothing, sir. Household guards, no twenty in the same livery.”

That was the advantage of counter-attacking. Most of the military nobles, the
amirs
, and their
ghazis
would be over on the west bank, with Ali—all the ones who had any desire to fight and die for Islam, at least. Ali had gotten overconfident.

Still, it wouldn’t do to emulate his mistake. Fighting for their homes and families could make even rabble desperate.

“Company commanders,” he said.

Back along the road men shifted as the word passed down, fastening their webbing, here a man checking his rifle or tightening the girth on a dog. The mounts took their cues from their masters, keeping a well-drilled silence, but they bristled. The unit commanders gathered around Gruder’s banner.

“The objective,” he said, crouching and drawing in the dirt with a twig, “is a column of refugees about half a klick north. They’re coming at fair speed for civilians, but we’ve gotten ahead of them. We’ll debouch, deploy—
so
—and put in an attack. Captain Morinez, bring your guns along at the trot, if you please.

“The general order is to kill anyone who resists; let the rest run, as long as they do it on foot. We’ll take provisions, spare dogs—I want to put the ammunition reserve in pack-saddles—and any high-value loot.” He dumped the grapes out of his helmet and buckled it on. “Burn or smash whatever we don’t take. Oh, and we’re not taking any hundred-pound bundles of loot, either, so wooers be swift—or refrain.”

There was a harsh chuckle, and nods. This was a military picnic so far; it wouldn’t stay that way, but there was no reason not to make the most of it while they could.

“Hell or plunder, dog-brothers.” He straddled his dog Fihdel and his feet found the stirrups as it rose. “Boots and saddles, gentlemen.”

“Approximately one hundred seventy-seven thousand four hundred FedCreds. Gold,” Muzzaf Kerpatik added. “That’s allowing for the usual discounts on sales.”

Raj grunted noncommittally, leaning one hand against the tentpole. It was a captured tent, from the baggage train Kaltin had overrun; they’d leave it behind in the morning. He looked out across the camp—not much of one, just the picket lines of staked-out dogs, the men cooking around their campfires. Odd to be in a camp where you heard more Namerique than Sponglish, but the central group was mostly MilGov troopers.
Fruits of conquest.
That was the true spoil of war; peace in the lands he’d retaken, and their fighting men here defending the Civil Government.

The MilGov soldiers, the ex-warriors of the Squadron and Brigade, were happy enough. An easy campaign so far, under leaders they trusted; they were warriors by birth and professional soldiers by the trade he’d given them, and indifferent to who they fought.

The sun was setting in the west, over toward the Drangosh thirty kilometers distant. It was hazed with burning, crops and buildings and towns; the raiding force had smashed a path of devastation a hundred kilometers southward. He could smell the smoke, faint under the cooking and dog odors of a war-camp.

“How much of that plunder is from Osterville’s group?” Raj asked.

“Ah, unfortunately Colonel Osterville’s battalions have had poor luck. Less than two thousand from them.”

A chuckle ran around the table behind him. “I don’t think,” Raj said, “the men are going to find it amusing that Osterville’s boys are holding out on them. Particularly given the recent service records, respectively.”

“Raj, darling,” Suzette said. “
Do
come and sit down. Or pace like a caged dog, but make up your mind.”

He shrugged a little sheepishly and returned, sitting and taking up a drumstick. It was sauroid, but tasted pretty much like the chicken that was the alternative. As usual, Suzette had managed to find something better than you had any right to expect in the field; of course, the pickings were good. He stoked himself methodically.

“You don’t like this, do you, darling?” Suzette said.

“No,” Raj said. “I’m a thrifty man. The looting’s good here because this area hasn’t been fought over in a long time. It’ll be generations recovering.”

“Which will weaken the Colony,” Gerrin Staenbridge pointed out.

He’d managed to shave and find a clean uniform, which was a minor miracle when they were all living out of saddlebags.
Every man pays the price he will for what he values,
Raj thought. Gerrin dressed for dinner the way he dressed line for a charge, with finicky care, as a mark of civilization.

“That’s assuming the stalemate continues out here,” Raj said. “The Civil Government of Holy Federation is the legitimate ruler of
all
humankind. The Colonials included.”

Staenbridge raised an eyebrow: “Well, it hasn’t had much luck enforcing that for millennia or so,” he pointed out.

During which time the Colonials had besieged East Residence twice and the Civil Government had reached as far as Al Kebir once.

“I don’t like it either,” Bartin Foley said.

They looked at him, and the younger man dropped his eyes to the cut-down shotgun on the table before him, his single hand slowly reassembling the clean, oil-gleaming parts. They went together with smooth clicks and snaps, and he slid it into the harness he usually wore over his back.

“It’s not real soldiers’ work, harrying peasants like this,” he went on doggedly.

Gerrin and Raj nodded in chorus, and smiled at the coincidence. “Not good for morale, really,” Raj said. “Not too much of it.”

“Gets the men thinking like bandits,” Staenbridge agreed.

Suzette shook her head. “Such perfect knights,” she said with gentle mockery. Then: “Ah, Abdullah.”

The Druze entered with two suspicious troopers at his heel, their bayonets hovering not far from his kidneys, and Antin M’lewis to one side. He bowed: “
Sayyid
.
Sayyida
.”

Raj leaned back in the captured folding chair, some
amir
’s hunting equipment.
I’ll be damned. I didn’t expect to see
him
alive again, I really didn’t.
Suzette had an eye for picking reliable servants, though.

“That’s all, men,” he said to the troopers. They hesitated, and his tone grew dry. “I can handle one Arab, thank you.” They saluted, threw Abdullah a warning glance, and wheeled smartly out.

Damn, this living legend shit can get wearing.
The men wouldn’t leave him alone for a moment, watching, listening, guarding. Damn their dear loyal souls. What was he, an invalid?

you are their talisman,
Center said.
without you they would feel themselves lost.

I’m only one man, Raj thought/protested. And I’ve got competent officers.

belief is its own reality.

Abdullah pulled documents from his ha’aik. He also accepted a goblet of watered wine; his particular brand of exceedingly eccentric shi’a Islam had some liberal notions.

“Lord,” he began. “Ain el-Hilwa is swollen to bursting with refugees. Perhaps a hundred and seventy, a hundred and eighty thousand in all. They crowd the city and the suburbs outside the wall.”

Raj nodded. That was no surprise. The spy’s long brown fingers moved dishes to tack down the map and papers against the warm breeze of evening.

“The garrison includes ten thousand men of the Settler’s regulars and the
ghazis
of the local
amirs
, but of these no more than two hundred are of single
tabors
.”
Banners
, the Colonial equivalent of the Civil Government’s battalions, although usually a little smaller. “The rest have been sent on detachment to the Settler’s army across the Drangosh.

“Likewise, their officers quarrel. The provincial
wali
, Muhmed bin Tarish, is a court favorite; he hides among his women and sends messages commanding the men to stand fast within the walls. Haffez al’Husseini, the most senior of the military officers, is a veteran of the Zanj wars, but slowed by his wounds. He—”

The report flowed on, full and concise; units, strengths, weapons, dispositions, guns, the state of the fortifications and the water supply (which was good, since the city straddled the Ghor Canal). Center drew holographic projections over the map.

Abdullah’s voice ceased. The others waited, in a silence filled by the flutter of canvas in the wind and the muted sounds of the camp; a dog howling, the brass of a trumpet calling, a challenge and response at an outlying vedette. Ten minutes later Raj blinked.

“Yes,” he said, softly, to himself. “That should do.” He looked up. “Excellent work, Abdullah. You won’t regret it.”

Abdullah bowed. “My life is to serve,
sayyid
.”

Raj waved a hand. “If your son still wants that cavalry ensign’s commission—and I’m still around and in command when he turns sixteen—it’s his.”

A very rare honor for one not of the Star Church; although Abdullah’s faith allowed its adherents to freely observe the ceremonies of other religions, where advisable. The Druze bowed again, more deeply.

“Gerrin,” Raj went on. “We’ll be concentrated by 0900 tomorrow?”

“All except for Osterville,” Staenbridge said. “But he’s—”

“—closer nor he said, ser,” M’lewis put in. “Nobbut six klicks east.”

Raj nodded. “Here’s what we’ll do. Bartin, write this up. At dawn—”