David Drake - Conqueror

"Watch where yer shootin', fer fuck's soik!" a Descotter voice shouted up to them.

Muzzle-flash showed crimson in the murk from below, and the flat crash of steel on steel sounded for an instant.

"Watch who ye lets in t'fuckin' door, ye hoor's son," the Master Sergeant shouted back.

Raj dragged breath back into his lungs; powder-smoke lay in wisps through the shattered furniture of the parlor. We're not going to stop the next one, he thought with sudden cold clarity.

"Raj." Suzette's voice was raised just enough to cut through the background roar. "Who are those men?"

He stepped to the side window. Just visible to the left — the west — were troops marching down the cleared zone behind the walls. They wore Civil Government uniforms, but there weren't any troops in that direction except the infantry holding the north wall, who had all they could cope with and more right now. And none of the Regulars in his command marched that sloppily. They weren't marching at all, not double-timing, they were running. Running like men fleeing a battle, except that they were running straight into one.

Raj was fairly sure Teodore Welf was still alive, from the speed of the reaction. A block of Brigaderos peeled off from the stream coming over the wall and swung out to confront the-

Militia, Raj realized. It's the local militia.

The confused-looking group halted and gave fire; too ragged to be a real volley, a long staccato flurry. The Brigaderos heading for them returned it, but they didn't bother to stop. They charged, while the militiamen fumbled with ramrods and percussion-caps. Raj gave a silent whistle of amazement; the city troops didn't disintegrate in panic. Some did, running back along the way they'd come, but most stood to meet the gray-and-black tide. They were going to be slaughtered when it came to hand-to-hand, but they were trying, at least.

"Ser," the Master Sergeant said at his elbow. "Got a bunch've t'locals comin' up behind us, say they wants t'help, loik."

The seamed, scarred face of the noncom looked deeply skeptical.

"Bring them forward, sergeant," Raj said. "By all means. Beggars can't be choosers."

* * *

Ludwig Bellamy reined in. "Cease fire!" he shouted, and the trumpets echoed it. The last of the enemy ahead were hoisting reversed weapons, or helmets on the muzzles of their rifles. "Get these men under guard."

Silence fell, comparative silence after the roar he'd grown accustomed to over the last two hours. He waved his bannerman forward, and they rode past the last Brigaderos holdouts within the walls of Old Residence and down the wall toward Messer Raj's command post.

Bellamy looked around. "Spirit of Man, " he swore.

The carnage around the gate had been bad. Probably more bodies than here. It had taken a fair amount of time to get the way unblocked. But this looked every bit as bad; smelled as bad, as far as he could tell through a nose already stunned into oblivion today. The whole two-hundred meter width of cleared ground inside the wall was carpeted with bodies, no matter how far they rode; black-and-gray uniformed Brigaderos dragoons, armored lancers, men in the blue and maroon of the Civil Government. Stretcher-bearers had to step on the dead to get at the wounded, and there were thousands. More bodies hung from the walls, or carpeted the earth ramp where the enemy had tried to retreat when they realized what was happening outside. Occasionally a patch of living Brigaderos sat with their hands behind their heads, or putting field-dressings on their own wounded.

He stopped at a mound of dead gathered more thickly around a banner of a running wardog; the pole still canted up from the earth, but the bodies were two and three deep in a circle around it. Armor rattled.

"Stretcher bearers!" he called sharply, reigning aside. A pair trotted over. "This one's alive."

"Sir. Orders are for our wounded first."

"This is an exception," Ludwig bit out. The man's armor was silver-chased and there had been plumes in his helmet. "Get him to the aid station, now. " Although from the amount of blood and the number of bullet holes, it might be futile.

The three-barred visor was up, and the face inside it was enough like Ludwig Bellamy's that they might have been brothers. It was something far more practical that prompted his action, though. If that was Teodore Welf, he had two presents for Messer Raj today.

He swore again when they finally pulled up in front of the forward HQ building. The stone facing looked as if it had been chewed. Men were sitting in the windows, or leaning against the walls, looking a little lost. Another stood in the main entranceway. A tall man, his face black as a Zanjian's with powder-smoke. Suzette Whitehall stood beside him with her arm around his waist.

Ludwig Bellamy drew rein and saluted. " Mi heneral, " he said.

Raj grinned, a ghastly expression in the sooty expanse of his face. When he removed his helmet, there was a lighter streak along the upper part of his forehead.

"Took you long enough," he said.

Bellamy motioned a man forward; he dismounted and laid a flag at Raj's feet. "It's the flag of Howyrd Carstens, Grand Constable of the Brigade," he said. "We would have brought the head, but. ." Ludwig shrugged. A 75mm shell had landed close enough to Carstens that there really wasn't much left besides the signet ring they'd identified him with.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"It seems a good deal of trouble to go to, to hang me healthy," Teodore Welf said; his voice was low, because it hurt to breathe deeply.

He was sitting propped up in the big four-poster bed, swathed in bandages from neck to waist, one arm immobilized in splints. A priest-doctor in the ear-to-ear tonsure of a Spirit of Man of This Earth cleric stood by the bedside, glaring at Raj and Suzette and the Companions; he was of the Brigade nobleman's own household, allowed in during the after-battle truce. It was a cold spring night, and rain beat at the diamond-pane windows, but a kerosene lamp and a cheerful fire kept the bedroom warm. The flames lit the inlaid furniture and tapestries; also the hard faces of the fighting men behind Raj.

"I'm a thrifty man," Raj said, in Namerique almost as good as Teodore's Sponglish. "I've no intention of hanging you, or anything else unpleasant."

"Excellent, your excellency: I've had a surfeit of unpleasantness just lately," the young nobleman said. "Did you take Howyrd, too?"

"The Grand Constable? I'm afraid he died holding the rearguard."

Welf sighed. "Spirit have mercy on the Brigade," he said.

"I doubt that the Spirit will, just now, since the Spirit has tasked me with reuniting civilization and you're trying to stop me," Raj said.

The young Brigade noble looked at him; his eyes went a little wider when he saw the flat sincerity in Raj's.

"Particularly since the Spirit has given you Ingreid Manfrond for a ruler," Raj concluded.

Teodore was a young man, and still shaken by the wounds and the drugs the surgeons had given him. His agreement almost slipped out.

Raj nodded. "We'll talk more when you're feeling better," he said, and raised a brow at the priest.

The cleric bowed his head grudgingly. "Lord Welf will live," he said. "Fractured ribs, broken arm and collarbone, and tissue damage. Much blood loss, but he will walk in a month. The arm, longer."

A servant came in with a tray bearing tea and a steaming bowl of broth, dodging with a squeak as she met the high-ranking party going out through the same entranceway. Nothing spilled on the tray despite her skittering sideways, a feat which required considerable dexterity and some risk of dumping the hot liquids on her own head. Raj absently nodded approval as they tramped down the corridor. It wasn't far to his own quarters; Teodore Welf was one ace he intended to keep quite close to his chest.