David Drake - Conqueror

* * *

"Sovereign Mighty Lord," Raj said quietly.

Silence fell; even Barholm checked himself, dropping the finger he'd been wagging under Chancellor Tzetzas' nose.

"With your permission, lord, I'll take command in the East. Superseding the Commander of Eastern Forces and the garrison commandants."

There were nods all around the table, even from Gharzia. Right now the high command in the east was the sort of honor you took with you to an unmarked grave.

"And I'll take seven thousand cavalry to the border."

"Ridiculous—"

"That'll strip the garrisons of—"

"D'you want Ali to march right into East Residence—"

Raj raised his hand. "Sovereign Mighty Lord, the troops are on their way to East Residence as we speak. Most of the garrison of the Western Territories. Veteran fighters, the cream of our armies."

Barholm looked at him narrow-eyed. And the soldiers most loyal to you. The thought needed no words.

"That's forty-five hundred men, perhaps a little more. I'll take another two thousand of the Brigaderos prisoners who've been reequipped and organized along Civil Government lines, and some of the battalions who were with me in the Southern Territories campaign and are now attached to the Residence Area command."

Gharzia was scribbling on his pad. "Heneralissimo—" he began, giving Raj the title he'd been formally stripped of " — that'll still leave you well below Ali's numbers, discounting his infantry and line-of-communications troops. Shouldn't we pull back more of the Southern and Western Territories garrisons?"

Raj spread his hands. They were brown with sun, battered and nicked and callused from swords and reins, as out of place in this quiet elegant room as the man himself.

"That would take too long. Messers, Sole Autocrat, we don't have the time. Please understand, no matter what I do, the border area is going to get the worst working-over it's had in a century or more."

observe, Center said.

* * *

— and Colonial dragoons rode through a Borderer hamlet, tossing torches through the windows. Fire belched back, red flames and sooty smoke turning the whitewash black above the openings. Here and there a limestone lintel burned with white-hot fire as it sublimed.

— the last of a line of Arabs picked himself up off a woman and adjusted his robe. She lay motionless in the dust of the street, eyes empty, spittle running down from the corner of her mouth. The Colonial kicked her in the ribs, then called an order to the others. He had the crossed lines of a naik , a corporal, on the sleeve of his djellaba. Two of the troopers picked the woman up by the ankles and wrists, grunting at the limp dead weight. The naik jerked a thumb, and they dumped their semi-conscious victim head-first down the well.

— bursting charges spouted plumes of smoke and rock and pulverized dirt across the massive sloping front of the dam. It stretched two hundred meters across a U-shaped valley amid dry rocky hills, a stone-paved road on its top and stone and iron gates at one side where the tumbling water of the flume was channeled into a canal. For long moments nothing seemed to happen, and then water sprouted from the surface where the explosives had been laid. It gouted like erupting geysers, turning to rainbow splendor at the edges under the bright noon light. The sappers whooped and danced as the rushing torrent eroded the earthwork of the dam like a lump of sugar under a spout of hot tea. Then the earth shuddered as the dam collapsed in earnest, and the lake headed downstream in a roaring wall of brown silt and tumbling rocks.

* * *

"Yes, yes," Barholm said. The other advisors were silent as the two Descotters met each other's eyes.

"I think I can retrieve the situation," Raj said calmly. "Provided, of course, I have my Governor's full confidence. Do I have your confidence, my lord?"

Barholm's lips tightened. "Yes, yes," he said again. He snapped his fingers for a parchment, wrote, signed, extended his hand for the Gubernatorial seal. It thwacked into the purple wax with an angry sound.

He pushed it across the polished flamegrain wood of the table. Raj picked it up. It was a delegation of viceregal power, requiring all officers and officials of the Civil Government to tender him full cooperation — rare for a commander sent out into the barbaricum , unheard-of within the borders.

If I smash the Colonials, Raj thought — unlikely as that seemed right now- that'll be the last strong opponent the Civil Government faces. He'd reconquered the Southern and Western Territories; the Base Area was far away, and the Zanj states of the Southern Continent even farther. Once the Colony had been beaten back, Barholm Clerett's position would be safer than any Governor's in the past five hundred years. Safe enough that he would certainly no longer need a heneralissimo supremo .

"Yes," Barholm repeated. "Who could doubt that you have my full confidence?"

Raj stood, bowing and tucking the Gubernatorial Rescript into the sleeve-pocket of his uniform jacket.

"Then if you'll forgive me, Sovereign Mighty Lord, Messers."

His face held an abstracted frown as he left the room, ignoring the murmur behind him. Landing five thousand men and thirty guns, with all their dogs and stores, wasn't easy at the best of times. Getting them straight off the ships and headed east fast without a monumental foul-up would be real work.

disembarkation would be most efficiently achieved as follows,Center began.

CHAPTER FOUR

Corporal Minatelli clattered down the steep wooden steps into the hold of the freighter, his hobnail boots biting into the pinewood. The ship was pitching less now that the sails were furled and the steam tug was bringing it into port.

Minatelli shook his head, still a little bewildered at the sight. He'd grown up in Old Residence, in the Western Territories, and he was familiar enough with fine building. But Old Residence had shrunk steadily since the Brigade conquered it, with forest and groves and nobles' country-seats spreading over the old suburbs. These days it was just a big city.

East Residence was a world . It sprawled over the seven hills on all sides of its deep U-shaped harbor: houses and factories, up to the heights where gardens and marble marked the patricians' quarter and the Gubernatorial palaces. A haze of coal-smoke hung over it, a forest of masts and smokestacks darkened the water; squadrons of low-slung steam rams with their paddles churning the water, big-bellied merchantmen with grain from the Diva country of the far north, or ornamental stone and wine from Kelden, whole fleets of barges down from the Hemmar River. And all over the hills, the tracery of gaslight like fairy lights, still bright in the predawn hours.

He hoped he'd have time to see the great Star Temple that Governor Barholm had built. It was supposed to make the one in Old Residence look like a hut — and now, that seemed possible.

Minatelli's feet and body took him through the crowded hold of the troopship without more than an occasional jostle; after the cleaner air on deck, the stink of it hit him again. His eight-man section was waiting by their gear.

"What's t'word, corp?"

"We're heading east," Minatelli said.

His own Sponglish was fluent now, but it still carried the accent of the Spanjol more common in the Western Territories. He'd been recruited into the 24th Valencia when Messer Raj came to make war against the Brigade; before that his local priest in Old Residence had taught him his letters and numbers, which was one reason he'd made watch-stander and then corporal so fast. Most of the Civil Government's infantry were of peon stock, and almost all illiterate.