Warlord (30 page)

POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
Shells whirred by overhead, their ten-kilo bursting charges raising poplar tree-shaped plumes of dirt three thousand meters downrange.
POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
In a prepared position like this you could build sloping ramps behind the guns. They recoiled up the slope, gravity killing momentum, then slid down nearly into battery again, ready to be reloaded and pushed the final meter or two; it saved a good deal of time.
POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
Barked orders, and a quivering of the rifle muzzles as the soldiers pushed at the stepped wedges under the rear sights of their weapons, setting them for maximum range.

"Prepare for volley fire," Menyez said. Repetitions like echoes, down to the platoon sergeants.
POUMP. POUMP. POUMP
.
This series on the outermost row of straw figures; fragments and pieces of wooden pole spun up into the air.

"Fire."

The slamming ripple of massed rifles ran along the line, and the staggered rows of targets began to disintegrate; leg-thick poles sagged and fell, and water jugs sent out spectacular fountains of clear liquid to glitter in the late-morning sun.

"Aim low, aim low!" Shouts along the firing line, as shots kicked up dust-spurts beyond the target. There were not too many of them, far fewer than there had been six months ago. Raj listened carefully; the volleys came fast and crisp, none of the telltale stutter between. Thick grayish gunsmoke pooled before the muzzles. Officers with binoculars were standing behind each unit's section of trench, ready to run out and assess the results; drummer boys and corpsmen and stretcher-bearers were stepping up with dippers of water from the buckets they carried, not for the men but to dash over the barrels and breeches of the weapons. It hissed and sizzled as it struck the hot metal; more maintenance work afterward, but it cut down on extraction jams and the even more disastrous occasional cook-off, rounds exploding as the thumb pushed them into contact with an overheated chamber.

"Cease firing!" A long bugle call. "Battalions will pass in review, by the left!"

"Shaping nicely," Raj said to Menyez. "They don't tire as fast, they're starting to
hit
what they shoot at, and they're starting to act as if they believed they were soldiers, too."

"It helps that they know they're not getting fucked over by the people in charge," Menyez replied, cold anger mixed with satisfaction in his tone.

Half the infantry battalion commanders had been transferred or retired since they arrived to join the Army of the Upper Drangosh, and a good third of the Company Senior Lieutenants. For everything from age and incapacity, through persistent absenteeism—several had not seen their putative commands in years—to selling their ammunition allotments.

"You tell people long enough that they're shit," the brown-haired man continued, "that they're not fit for anything but to suck mud in front of the paws of anyone who rides by on dogback, and they believe it and act like it." His pale eyes watched as the thousand men of the two battalions mustered in a row of columns of fours. "They're still nowhere near as steady as I'd like, except for the Ausarians. And my Kelden County Foot."

"Tewfik's going to outnumber us badly, and if I can I'm going to make him come to us," Raj answered. I'd better; if I can't manage to force the enemy to assume the tactical offensive when they are invading us, then I'd better just get circumcised and be done with it. "I think they'll hold, in field entrenchments."

There was a roll of martial music, as the fife-and-drum unit behind each battalion standard struck up; they had rifles slung over their shoulders, but Raj had seen to it that every outfit produced a band. The officers had bought the instruments out of their own pockets; a "suggestion" from Raj relayed through Menyez and backed by his writ of extraordinary authority from Barholm. Some of the infantry outfits hadn't even
had
standards; he had made the men contribute to those themselves, then had the ArchSysup of the Southeastern Diocese bless them in as impressive a ceremony as the cleric and he could come up with together. That sort of thing was almost as important as prompt pay and sound boots and seeing that the sutlers kept their cheating within bounds
. . .

"Pass in review!"

Tramp of marching feet, the whole line moving like a uniform centipede with a blue body and red legs; sunlight glittered on flags and bayonets and polished brightwork.

"Eyes . . . 
right
."
He and Menyez saluted; behind him the standard of the 5th dipped in answer to the flourish of the infantry banners as each passed. The men's arms swung briskly, their shouldered rifles in perfect alignment; officers and noncoms whirled their swords in flourishes. Perfectly useful skills . . .

"Purty," one of the cavalry troopers behind him muttered.

 . . . not least because they reminded the foot soldiers that they were something other than men who had the bad luck to be visible when the press gang came around, and too poor to bribe their way out. His Descotters and the other cavalry units were mostly here because they'd
wanted
to be, or their families had . . . or at worst, because a father had come after them with compulsory weddings in his eyes and a loaded gun in his hands. They didn't need as much prompting to think of themselves as fighting men rather than victims.

Of course, it was debatable whose perception was more accurate.

The column had passed down to the end of the trenchline, wheeled and marched back. This time as the midpoint passed the mount, different orders rang out:

"Halt. Ay-bout
face
,"
A wheel and stamp, and they were facing him and Menyez. "Ground . . . 
arms
."
The rifle butts thumped the ground, held rigidly between left arm and flank; the tips of the bayonets were shoulder-high. "Stand at . . .
ease
."
Each right foot moved out to shoulder-width from the left, while the rifles swung in to rest slanted across the body and held at the muzzle in the folded hands; it was an easy posture to maintain, where the rigid attention would produce a crop of men fainting, under a sun like this. Many of the men before him were from the northwestern provinces, as naturally pale-skinned as the officer beside him.

Menyez's leather-lunged Master Sergeant bellowed, "All units, attention to orders! Stand by for address by the Honorable Messer Brigadier Raj Whitehall, Commander of the Army of the Upper Drangosh."

Raj leaned forward, pommel under his palms. "Right, fellow soldiers," he said, his voice pitched to carry. There was no other sound besides the soughing of the wind through the banner behind him, and a distant hissing from a flock of dactosauroids flying toward the river.

"Today you've shown that you can march, dig, and shoot," he continued. "All good preparation for your real work, which is to kill the enemy." An almost imperceptible rustle of uneasiness; that enemy would outnumber them badly—Sandoral traded across the river into the Colony, rumor abounded, and it had exaggerated what was coming up from Al-Kebir even beyond the unpleasant probable truth.

"Before they get a chance to kill you." No harm in reminding them of the unfair but inescapable fact that in the event of defeat cavalry had some chance of getting away, and infantry none at all. "Just remember this: men aren't any more bulletproof than those scarecrows you just blew the hell out of. Put a bullet through a man, and he falls down and dies. Messer or cropper, raghead or believer, the bullet doesn't care. And if he's on a dog—" Raj slapped Horace's neck, which twitched "—it just makes him a bigger target. Spirit of Man of the Stars firm your aim, for the restoration of the Holy Federation!"

"Endfile," the soldiers murmured in unison.

"Carry on."

Menyez nodded. "Carry on, Top," he said to the senior noncom.

"Attention to orders! 17th Kelden County Foot, Fifth Company, second platoon, is hereby judged best unit of today's exercise, and will be issued a 24-hour pass to Sandoral, effective from 12:00 hours tomorrow! 21st Olgez County Rifles, First Company, first platoon, is low-ranked and will do double fatigues for the next week. Dismissed to duties!"

"Ah, Raj," Menyez coughed; it sounded embarrassed, a social gesture rather than the product of his affliction. "Your lady was kind enough to invite Aylice and myself to the entertainment tonight. Shall we arrange a carriage together?"

Semul Falhasker was staging a revival of Minalor's
Foreshadows of the Fall
,
classical mime-drama. No expense had been spared: a full orchestra and troupe from the East Residence, with fireworks and illumination on the Drangosh to follow. Little enough, for the richest merchant in Sandoral.

"No, thank you," Raj said, looking aside. "I'll be, ah, that is, too busy. I'll be dropping by for the banquet and review afterwards." On torchlit barges out on the river;
that
was being staged by Wenner Reed.
Captain
Wenner Reed, if you please; Falhasker's bitter rival, second-richest merchant in Sandoral, and commander of the city militia. That made it a matter of military courtesy to attend
 . . . 
"Enjoy yourselves by all means."

He straightened. "No rest for the weary; I've got to go drop by on the Skinners, before they forget why they're here and decide to burn down the city on a whim."

Menyez nodded, compassion flickering in his eyes for a moment.

"And I don't envy you the Skinners," he continued, changing the subject with a slight shudder. Nobody liked the barbarian mercenaries from the far northeast; compared to them, the western tribes of the Military Governments, the Brigade and Squadron and even the Stalwarts, were models of civilized sophistication.

"Well," Raj said, "they do have one great qualification."

"Their marksmanship?"

"No," he said, reining around. "The fact that they're the only people around here, Tewfik possibly excepted, who are really
looking forward
to the fighting."

"Ser," M'lewis and da Cruz said, almost simultaneously. They eyed each other, and the Master Sergeant continued first. It was his responsibility to inform the commander of possible threats, after all.

"Skinner, left about one thousand, in t'ditch, ser," he said. "Lookin' real unobtrusive like, but he's aimin' at us."

Raj rolled his head as if stretching his neck muscles. Was that a glimmer of sun on iron? Impossible to tell, and the wind was in their faces, no warning from the dogs.

"Right an' behinds us, in t'tree, ser," M'lewis said. Da Cruz was startled enough to whip his head around, swearing.

"Eyes front," Raj said. Better to ride right in and let the barbarians think all their scouts had been spotted and ignored.

There were probably more of the Skinners watching behind their heavy two-meter sauroid-killer rifles. Not because anyone had assigned them to it, simply because that was what those particular warriors had chosen to do. The camp up ahead contained half his Skinners, it would be an offense against the patron Avatars of the Army to call them a battalion of soldiers . . . and this was better organized than his
other
war band of them; he kept them well north and south of the city respectively, they came of different clans and had a habit of casual sniping whenever he brought them in range of each other. The chiefs assured him that would stop when a real enemy came in sight.

The Skinners had been assigned an evacuated village on the fringe of the cultivated lands as their camp; it was almost all destroyed now, the huts burned down, the orchard trees hacked for firewood or used for target practice or simply destroyed in idle vandalism. Some of them had rigged sun shelters of sauroid hides—they were hunters, mostly, at home on the northern plains—and more simply dropped and slept wherever impulse took them. The stink was enough to make the troopers behind him gasp and breathe through their mouths; enough to make him, too, if dignity had not prevented.

There were flyblown half-eaten sheep carcasses lying in the muddy patches between shelters, some writhing with maggots; flies clustered blackly on the mouths and eyes of men lying sleeping against their saddles. Dogshit and human dung littered the ground; as they watched, a Skinner undid his breechclout and squatted. Another staggered out of a roofless hut with a jug clutched in one hand, swayed, pirouetted, vomited, and fell facedown in the result, twitching and mumbling. Hounds of every color raised their massive flop-eared heads as the party from the 5th trotted by, scratched at fleas or simply slept.

Raj suspected that his own relative popularity with the Skinners was based on Horace; few other peoples rode hounds, with their incorrigible tendency to do exactly as they pleased with very little regard for consequences . . . which, come to think of it, was very much like the Skinners themselves.

"Spirit on crutches, this place looks like an invitation to an attack," one of the troopers in the color party muttered to another.

"That's what
they
thought," da Cruz replied with grim amusement; he had been here with Raj before.

They were coming up on a relatively intact hut, one that had not been burned down, at least, and whose tile roof was mostly still there. Also there were at least fifty heads, identifiable as Colonists by the spired helms, lined up in the eaves trough of the house or dangling from the branches of a dead orange tree beside the door; some had fallen, and been casually kicked into corners. The trooper took a look and went eyes-front, making an audible swallowing sound.

There was a hound lying on its back beside the door, rumbling a deep snore and occasionally twitching one of its splayed-out paws as it hunted in its sleep. The Skinner chief was kneeling on the threshold, behind a woman with her dress thrown up over her head; he took one hand off her hips and waved as Raj and his men reined in, without interrupting the rhythm of his thrusts. They jingled the long cartridges in the belts slung across his chest; for the rest, he wore the fringed leggings and beaded moccasins of his people's dress; the breechclout was thrown aside for the moment. Two-inch sauroid fangs were sewn onto his vest and tangled in the scalplock of hair that fell from the crown of his head to his waist; for the rest the head was as bald as an egg and brown as the rest of his body.