Warlord (21 page)

The lariat that settled around the sniper's shoulders was almost as much a surprise to Raj as it was to the sniper; his brain had screened out peripheral vision. The trooper galloping his dog down the lane to the gate already had the rope snubbed to the pommel of his saddle; ten meters before he reached the Captain the braided leather cord went bar-tight and the Colonist shot off the roof as if launched by a catapult. He landed in the street with a dull thud that cut his shout of rage off knife-sharp, and dragged fast enough that he rolled to the feet of the two dogs when the trooper reined in.

"Nice work, Companion," Raj said, conscious of breathing once again; an impressive display, even though the lariat was a standard working tool back in Descott County.

"I was a
vakaro
for a while, sir," Corporal Holdor Tennan said. "With an outfit rounding up wild cattle
 . . . 
Senior Lieutenant Staenbridge's compliments, and they've secured the mosque."

There were shouts outside the gate, and Kaltin Gruder jogged through at the head of a column of dismounted troopers with fixed bayonets. Raj held up a hand as he began to speak, turned to the other Companion: "My congratulations, and he's to hold in position, stationing marksmen on the minarets and the roof of the Caid's mansion. Kaltin," he continued, turning to the man standing at his stirrup. The troopers were fanning out down the street, scanning windows and rooftops. "Ready?"

A brisk nod; even after a week's march through the desert the elder Gruder had kept a clean tunic for the attack. He had even
shaved
,
which was devotion, if you liked.

"All the ones who got out are secured, Raj," he said. "Put 'em in a livestock pen, trussed up. Two-twenty, about. No casualties."

"Well. You and Thiddo fan out—" He made an encompassing gesture "—and start doing a house-to-house; First and Fifth already have blocking forces at the intersections and fire teams on the palisade. Quick and dirty; spike anyone who gives you trouble. Separate the men out, move the commoners out to that pen. Women, children, and anyone who looks important into the center of town, we'll use the mosque to contain them. And keep the troops in hand."

"Won't be able to much longer, Raj," he warned.

The soldiers looked alert enough, their fingers on their triggers and eyes moving restlessly, but many of them were grinning. With the primal exultation of having come through an action alive, and with anticipation of the rarest pleasure of a soldier's life, the sack of an undamaged town. Two pounced on the groaning sniper and began frisking him for weapons, tying his hands behind his back; he shrieked as they wrenched at a dislocated shoulder, but it seemed to bring him back to consciousness. The trooper popped it back into place with rough efficiency.

"Off wit' yer, Mohammed," he said, pushing the prisoner toward the gate. "Any messages to yer wife? I'll be seein' 'er before you does!" Barking laughter. "Milio, put 'im in the pen."

Kaltin indicated the byplay with a jerk of his head. "Not much longer at all."

"Well, we'll just have to do it quickly, then, won't we?"

"—and that concludes this phase of the operation, except for finding the Caid. Where is the Caid?" Raj asked in frustration, lighting a cigarette. It had been the sort of action soldiers dreamed of in barracks, a rich town taken with negligible loss, but somehow his teeth were on edge.

The command group was meeting in the loggia of the mansion that had been owned by the Caid, the headman, of El Djem; a narrow, irregular cobbled triangle fronted it, with the mosque on one side and high-walled houses on the other. The Caid's was slightly different, with a sheltered verandah where he could address public meetings, give impromptu judgment, and right now the shade was welcome as the temperature built to its brain-frying noonday maximum. A rather informal type of governance, but this had not been a large town, no more than five thousand or so. It would have been convenient to have the chief administrator on hand for interrogation, but not essential.

"Probably hiding in a basement," Muzzaf said. The Komarite looked as tired as any of them, but more relaxed than he had been since they left the White City. "In any case, the Battalion has done well this day."

Raj nodded. Ten dead, which was derisory for a five-company action . . . except to the ten, of course, for whom it was infinitely significant.

"Double share for the fallen?" he said; everyone else nodded. The loot of a town taken by storm was the property of the troops, less the government's ten percent. Officers and noncoms shared half according to a complicated formula, and the rest went in equal shares to the ordinary soldiers, in Descott-recruited units. Double shares for casualties was more of a custom than a tradition; it would be delivered to the kin with the urn of ashes and the deceased's rifle, sword, and dog.

Across the way a group of troopers appeared on the flat roof of a building, manhandling a huge clay jar between them. They gave a shout of laughter as it arched out to shatter on the cobbles, spraying a flood of olive oil. The first sweep for obvious loot was over, and the proceeds under guard in the warehouses; the real value had been there to start with, anyway. Now came the "gleaning," when anything a man found was his own to take, or destroy.
Odd the pleasure they get from smashing things
,
Raj thought.
Like extravagance for its own sake, all the pleasure of being a spendthrift with none of the drawbacks
.
Grimly:
They've earned it, or will, before this is over
.
Or the other dues of the victors; clumps of troopers waited by the steps of the mosque, grinning and pushing each other in rough dogplay as they waited. A sergeant stirred bits of paper around in his helmet, picked out one and read: "First Company, second platoon, third squad!" One of the clumps pushed their way forward. The mosque door opened, and a half-dozen young women were pushed out into the sunlight, blinking and cringing. A raw whoop lifted from the crowd, and the Colonist women flinched as if from a blow. One fainted as the squad rushed up the stairs to claim their prize, raising an ironic jeer from the spectators, and most of the others began to scream or whimper as the troopers lifted them in fireman's hoists or simply cuffed them along toward the unit's billet. Jovial shouts followed:

"Good luck, yer bullcocked bastards!"

"Show 'em why Descott girls is bowlegged!"

"Hey, Sandor! This mean yer gonna sell the ewe?"

That nearly started a fight, until friendly hands dragged the heckler away and Trooper Sandor had to make a dash to recover his prize, who made a break for the alleys through the laughing ranks of the Descotters. None of them paid any attention to Sandor's blasphemous calls to trip her; bets were called back and forth, and paid up as he closed a hand on her hair on the second circuit of the little plaza. He kept his hold on the long black tresses and bent her arm up behind her back in an efficient come-along hold, scowling at the mock-tender inquiries of his comrades who wondered aloud if he had the wind to do anything else but catch her.

"All right, yer dickheads," the sergeant on the steps said, making another draw. "Next—Second Company, third platoon, second squad! Come and get it!"

"No, yer gets it and
then
comes!" someone said. "Plunder,
then
burn."

Muzzaf had been searching in the folds of his robe while the Companions idly watched the byplay.

"Ahh, yes," he said. "I have done a preliminary calculation . . . one thousand five hundred silver FedCreds. Per share."

Shocked silence fell.

"Sweet Avatars of the all-knowing Spirit," Gerrin said, at last. He turned and fisted Barton lightly on the shoulder. "War Academy for you in a year or two, my lad! We'll make a two-semester wonder of you."

Da Cruz moistened his lips, remembering a retirement due in five years.

"Squire Dorton said he'd rent Cazanegri Farm to a man who could stock it decent, it don't pay 'im to run it with a bailiff," he said meditatively.

"Don't price the unborn calf," Raj said, and they all spat and made the horn-sign. He eyed Muzzaf narrowly. "How do you figure that?"

The man from Komar smiled, almost his old salesman's grin, and produced a piece of paper. "These are the price estimates for the frankincense I found; this is a collection point for it . . . and I know a factor for the Church, in Kendrun, who will pay 93% of the East Residence price. The specie, the dinars, you can do better than turning them in to the Fisc for recoining—they use their own scales. There are merchants in Sandoral who will give you 3% above metal content, for the convenience in the Colonial trade. Slaves will be a glut in Komar, but—" he laid a finger alongside his nose "—your humble servant knows several mine and quarry firms that would be
delighted
to buy direct."

He continued down the list, and the soldiers looked at each other, uneasy. To yeoman and squire alike, it was a reversal of the natural order of things for mercantile skills to work to their benefit. Descott County's largest town was smaller than El Djem, and the merchants and factors there were mostly outsiders. Yet the Komarite had been one of the first over El Djem's wall . . . 

"Commission for you?" Evrard said bluntly.

Muzzaf looked down, fiddling with the paper. "No," he said quietly. "I pay my debts." A shadow of his old grin: "In Messer Whitehall's service, I may do that, and profit well, and face far less boredom than I did before."

"Well," Raj said gently, and touched him on the shoulder. "I think we can spare you a full share, at least; we'll put your name on the rolls as a scout."

Muzzaf swallowed and looked away; it was a sign of acceptance, more than the money. He was still a wealthy man, with what he had been able to salvage from Komar and send west to the coastal city of Kendrun with his wife; her kindred would care for it.

Raj continued briskly, "Remind the men that we're moving out tomorrow, hangovers or no." Luckily a Muslim town wouldn't have much in the way of liquor. "We'll leave one platoon here, for base-of-communications work, and move east along the escarpment in column with two-squad units out to take the outlying farms. Master Sergeant, organize demolition squads from the duty Company, and start the prisoners on felling the orchards and destroying all pumps, wells, and irrigation canals."

Da Cruz nodded; there could be no defenses where men could not live, and they could not live far from the source of their food, not without navigable water to carry it. This raid would weaken the Colony's northwestern border for a generation or more; even then, restoring it would impose enormous expense.

"Ser," he said. "I'll have the date-palms felled an' piled about the orchards, day'r two and they'll burn enthusiastic-loik. Rubble an' bodies down the wells. Blast to cover the springs . . ."

"See to it. The servants and transport should be in by this afternoon. As soon as the ammunition is unloaded, get the prisoners coffled—" there were slavers travelling with the column, they followed war like scavenger birds behind a carnosauroid, and they would have the equipment "—fill every spare wagon and anything local with the loot, and we'll send it all back immediately. They can shuttle between here and Fort Blair while we're in the field; as we move east, everything can be sent back here and staged north in relays. The Colony semaphore net will get the news to the Drangosh Valley soon enough, and I want to keep us mobile as possible."

"Consider it done, ser."

"Oh, and turn captured dogs and weapons over to the servants," Raj said. "They won't be any use for fighting, but they can plunder and burn well enough, which is our job right now."

"Immediately, ser."

"We'll start pulling back as soon as we meet the 2nd, cleaning up the southern rim as we go." The basin that held El Djem was a flattened oval lying east-west; the bulk of the habitations were on the north edge, where artesian springs were most abundant. A lesser scattering rimmed the southern edge; the water that seeped to the surface in the low center of the
playa
was too salty for food crops, but it supported rich spicebush plantations. "When the last load's assembled here—or sooner, depending—we pull back to Fort Blair and then Komar, mission accomplished. Understood?"

Gerrin was lounging against a pillar. "Good, provided the enemy cooperates."

"Mought wish they wouldn't, ser," da Cruz said. "New draft, I'd admire to see how they shape under some weight."

M'lewis spoke up unexpectedly, from where he sat crouched on his haunches trimming a hangnail with his skinning knife. "Mebbe so," he said. The others looked at him, and he responded with a shifty, snaggle-toothed smile. "Summat of the newlies, they thinkin' Messer Captain's a luck-piece, turn bullets to water. Foin while it lasts, make 'em take chances, though, mebbe turn arse when the red wine's served for really."

"Not much we can do about that," Raj said, pushing back the shimmering vision of a firing-line dissolving as men ran, abandoning their comrades . . . no, abandoning strangers they had not learned to depend on, officers they did not know enough to trust. Raj knew his own motivations, knew that he would carry out his mission
whatever
the consequences, but he would not have been an effective leader if he did not realize that most soldiers were governed by different imperatives.

Somewhere in the building behind them wood crashed. Voices shouted, in a yelping exultant falsetto, "
Aur! Aur
!"

"Spirit of Man of the Stars," Kaltin muttered. "It's those
damned
irregulars again. Bloody weasels in a henhouse."

Raj sighed wearily, rubbing a hand over his face and unbuckling his helmet. Tepid sweat trickled greasily from the cork and sponge lining. "They've been willing to listen to reason, somewhat," he said.

"Summat, ser," M'lewis added, "after the boys told 'em what they thought of spoilin' loot." The officers nodded; their Descotters could be a trifle rough—they were soldiers, after all, not schoolgirls on an outing—but they were good lads at heart. "Got a good nose for hidey-holes, true told, once they blood's cooled a bit. Few of the
kaypadros
were goin' around with them, gleanin'-loik."