David Drake - Conqueror

A man further down the table cleared his throat. "What matters," he said, "is that the longer we obey Whitehall, the more likely Ingreid is to cut all our throats when he takes the city. The commons have made their bed by throwing in with the easterner — but I don't care to lie in it with them."

"Worse still, he might win ," a merchant said. Paratier recognized him, Fidelio Enrike.

Everyone looked at him. Azaiglio cleared his throat. "Well, umm. That doesn't seem too likely — but we'd be rid of him then too, yes. He'd go off to some other war."

"He'd go, but the Civil Government wouldn't," Enrike said. "The Brigade are bad enough, but they're stupid and they're lazy, most of them. If they go down, there'll be a swarm of monopolists and charter-companies from East Residence and Hayapalco and Komar moving in here, sucking us dry like leeches — not to mention the tax-farmers Chancellor Tzetzas runs."

Azaiglio sniffed. "Not being concerned with matters of trade, I wouldn't know," he said.

It had been essential to invite Azaiglio — he was the largest civilian landowner in the city — but Paratier was glad when one of his fellow noblemen spoke:

"Curse you for a fool, Vihtorio, Spirit open your eyes! Carson Barracks always listened to us, because we're here. East Residence is a month's sailing time away if the winds are favorable. Why should they pay attention to us? What happens if they decide some other frontier is more important a decade from now when they're fighting the Colony, and pull out their troops and let the Stalwarts pick our bones?"

Everyone shuddered. An Abbess leaned forward slightly, and cleared her throat.

"Seynor, you are correct. No doubt the conquest was a terrible thing, but it is long past. The Brigade needs us. It needs our cities—" she nodded to Enrike " — because they have no arts of their own, and would have to squat in log huts like the Stalwarts or the Guard otherwise. They need our nobility because they couldn't administer a pig sty by themselves."

"They are heretics," another of the nobles said thoughtfully.

"They may be converted in time," the Abbess said. "East Residence would turn all of Holy Federation Church into a department of state."

There were thoughtful nods. The civilian nobles of the Western Territories in general and the provinces around Old Residence in particular had turned having the second headquarters of the Church among them into a very good thing indeed.

"The Civil Government was a wonderful thing when it was run from here," Enrike said. "As I said, being the outlying province of an empire run from East Residence is another matter altogether. Effectively, we run the Western Territories under the Brigade — who provide us with military protection at a price much more reasonable than the Governor's charge."

"Not to mention the way Whitehall's stirred up the commons and the petty-guilds against their betters," someone said irritably. "The Brigade always backed us against those scum."

Paratier raised a hand. Silence fell, and he spoke softly into it: "These temporal matters are not our primary concern. Love for Holy Federation Church, the will of the Spirit of Man of the Stars — these are our burden. Raj Whitehall is zealous for the true faith, yet the Handbooks caution us to be prudent. If General Ingreid takes this city by storm, he will not spare the Church."

Needless to say, he wouldn't spare anyone else either.

"However, if he were to receive the city as a gift from us — then, perhaps we might appease him with money. This war will be expensive."

The Brigade troops had to be paid and fed from the General's treasury while they were in the field. It was full right now, Forker had been a miser of memorable proportions and had fought no wars of note, but gold would be flowing out of it like blood from a heart-stabbed man. The conspirators looked at each other uneasily; there was no going back from this point.

"How?" Enrike asked bluntly. "Whitehall's got the militia under his control."

"His officers," the head of the Priest's Guard said. "But not many of them."

"The gates are often held by these battalions of paid militiamen he's raised," the Abbess said thoughtfully.

There were forty thousand of the militia, but most of them were labor-troops at best. Half of them had volunteered when Raj Whitehall called; a thousand of the best had gone into the regular infantry battalions. From the rest he had culled seven battalions of full-time volunteer troops, uniformed and organized like Civil Government infantry but armed with captured Brigaderos weapons. The training cadre came from his regulars, but the officers were local men.

The Priest's Guard officer snorted. "Every one of the battalion commanders he appointed is a rabid partisan of Whitehall's," he said. "I've checked, sounded a few of them out very cautiously."

Paratier nodded. "Many men of sound judgment, devoted to Holy Church, were considered for those positions," he said thoughtfully. "Yet every one ready to take Our counsel was rejected."

The officer nodded. "It's unnatural. You can't lie to him, to Whitehall. He looks at you and, well, he can tell. " The priest-soldier touched his amulet. "There's a shimmer in front of his eyes sometimes, have you noticed? It's not natural. "

The Priest coughed discretely. "Yet men change. Moreover, not all of the officers chosen for those battalions were hand-picked by the heneralissimo. He is but one man, with much to do."

The others leaned forward.

* * *

"Fun while it lasted," Grammeck Dinnalsyn said dismally.

Raj nodded. The first set of Brigaderos gun-rafts had burned and exploded spectacularly when the mortar shells dropped on them — and the steamers had brought in cargo ships unhindered for several weeks.

Today was a different story. It was a cold bright day, with thin streamers of cloud high above, cold enough to dull scent. The waterspouts and explosions across the river were clear and bright, like miniature images in an illustrated book. The long booom of heavy guns echoed flatly, and huge flocks of wintering birds surged up out of the reeds and swamps at the sound. The new enemy rafts had their sloping sides built up smoothly into peaked roofs, and the whole surface glinted with the dull gray of iron. Hexagonal plates of it, like some marble floors, as thick as a man's arm and bolted to the heavy timber wall beneath. A mortar-shell struck one as he watched. It exploded, and the water surged away from that side of the raft in a great semicircle. When the smoke cleared and the spray and mud fell, the iron was polished brighter, but barely scarred.

A port opened in the armored side of the raft, and the black muzzle of a fortress gun poked through. The hole in the center was twice the width of a man's head. Red flame belched through the cloud of smoke. The forty-kilo shot struck the side of the Civil Government mortar-raft only a thousand meters away. White light sparked out from the impact, and a sound like a monstrous dull gong. The smaller mortar raft surged backward under the impact.

More roundshot were striking around the mortar raft, raising plumes of water or bouncing off the armor.

"The son of a whore's keeping his rafts fairly close to the shore batteries, too, in daytime," Dinnalsyn said. "Enough hits and they'll break the timber backing or spall off fragments on ours."

Raj sighed. "Recall them," he said. "This isn't getting us anywhere."

Dinnalsyn nodded jerkily, and signed to his aide. Rockets flared out over the water. After a few minutes, the mortar rafts began to back jerkily, as the crews inside winched in the cables and paid out on the ones attached to the anchors set closer to the southern shore.