David Drake - Conqueror

A platoon of infantry passed him, rifles at their right shoulders and blanket rolls over the left. He read their shoulder-flashes, and gave the officer a salute.

"Glad to have you with me again, 24th Valencia," he said. "That was good work you did at the siege of East Residence, and the pursuit."

The lieutenant at their head snapped out his sword and returned the salute with a flourish. The men raised a deep shout of Raj! Raj! Some others picked it up, until he waved them to silence. In the relative quiet that followed, he heard a noncom cursing at a fatigue-party:

"Didn't hear t' General tell ye t'stop workin', did ye? Move yer butts! Put yer backs inta it."

What with one thing and another, it's probably for the best there's no time to address the men, he thought mordantly.

A speech from the commander was customary before taking the field, but the last thing he needed right now was the inevitable spies — in East Residence they were even thicker than fleas and almost as common as bureaucrats — giving a lurid description of his troops crying him hail. Far too many Governors had started out as popular generals; bought popularity more often than not, but winning battles would do as well. It made any occupant of the Chair suspicious, and usually more comfortable with mediocrities holding the high military ranks.

He looked around at the bustling yard: chaotic, but things were getting done.

"Good work, Muzzaf," he said to the man riding at his side.

The little Komarite looked up from his clipboard; there were dark circles under his eyes. "A matter of times and distances, solamnti ," he said. "No different from calculating tonnages or profit margins." He grinned. "A pleasure working for a man who understands numbers, at that, my lord. Too few military nobles do."

Few nobles have Center advising them, Raj thought. Aloud: "I say again, good work."

It was that: a formidable bit of organization. Railways had been around for a long time now, but there had never been enough of them, or enough uninterrupted kilometers of line, to move large forces. He'd had enough to do managing the men; Muzzaf had been invaluable once Raj explained the basic idea. This was going to change warfare forever. Not that the railways were that much faster than dogback yet, but they were untiring — and more importantly, they could carry heavy supplies long distances at the same speed as light cavalry, without draft beasts eating up their loads or dying.

And it never hurt to acknowledge when a man did something right, either. Another thing too many nobles did was simply snap their fingers and expect things to fall into place. It was the engineers and administrators that made the Civil Government more than another feudal pigsty.

Muzzaf grinned. "Half of it was your lady's labors," he said. "Without her keeping the patricians off my back. ." He shrugged meaningfully.

Raj nodded. Suzette Whitehall had been born in East Residence, to fifteen generations of city nobility. Nobody knew how to work the system better. It was one of her manifold talents. The wonder is she picked a hill-squireen like me, he thought with a smile. He'd been nothing in particular then, just another land-poor Descotter nobleman making his way in the professionals like his fathers before him.

And where-

"My lady," he said.

She stood with the command group, but she turned quickly at the sound of his voice. Her smile was slight, but it warmed the slanted gray eyes; Horace crouched, and Raj stepped free of the stirrups and bent over her hand. She was in Court walking-out dress, lace skirt split at the front and pinned back to show embroidered leggings, mantilla, the works. It surprised him; he'd expected her traveling gear. Fatima was beside her, carrying a tray with a bottle of Kelden Sparkler and several long-stemmed glasses, each with half a strawberry on its ice-cooled rim.

He reached out a hand — not for the wine, it was too early for him — but for the fruit. She touched his fingers with her folded fan.

"That's ammunition, my knight," she said.

A party of officials was picking their way through the shouting chaos of soldiers and guns and dogs, heading his way. He recognized the Municipal Prefect of East Residence — the Governors didn't allow the city an alcalle of its own, knowing the fickleness of an East Residence mob — and he looked deeply unhappy. Raj braced himself.

" More time lost," he growled deep in his throat.

Suzette touched him on the arm. "A minute, darling," she said. "I expected this. That's Rahol Himentez, and he had a mob stone his townhouse when the coal ran out one winter. He's had a bee in his breeches about it ever since."

She swept off towards the dignitaries.

"— winter reserves," Raj could hear the Prefect bleating. "And the enemy's on the Lower Drangosh, not the Upper—"

But he stopped, and his flunkies with him, milling around as Suzette's soothing voice cut through the plaintive whine.

Beside him, Gerrin Staenbridge chuckled with admiration. "Cut off by the flying squadron, by the Spirit," he said. "Commandeered my mistress to do it, too."

One of the other officers laughed. "Small loss to you," he said. Staenbridge had an eye for handsome youths.

"Well, she is the mother of my heir," he pointed out, and cocked an eye toward the civil servants Suzette had intercepted. They were beginning to move back towards the headquarters building, in a sort of Brownian motion gently shepherded by the women.

Raj nodded curtly. "Right, gentlemen," he said to the circle of battalion commanders; most of them his Companions, all of them veterans. "Now, you've all got your maps?"

They did, although some of the ex-barbarians, Squadrones and Brigaderos, were looking at them a little dubiously. The Civil Government's cartographic service was one of a number of advantages it had had over the Military Governments. Unfortunately, the Colony's mapmakers were just as skillful.

"This campaign," he went on, meeting their eyes, "is what we've been training for these past five years."

"Conquering half the world was a training exercise ?" Ludwig Bellamy blurted.

Raj nodded, with an expression a stranger might have mistaken for a smile. "No offense, Messers, but we're not fighting barbarians this time. If we hold out a sausage grinder, they're not going to scratch their heads, mutter and then obligingly ram their dicks into it while we turn the crank.

"These are disciplined troops with first-rate equipment, operating closer to their base of supplies than we will be. And they have a first-rate commander; Tewfik ibn'Jamal is nobody's fool. I've fought him twice; lost one, won one — and the time I won, Tewfik had his father Jamal looking over his shoulder and jogging his elbow. Jamal was no commander."

Gerrin nodded. "This time he's got Ali along," he pointed out. His square, handsome face was dark olive, more typical of Descott than Raj's, who had a grandmother from Kelden County in the northwest. "Ali's not only no commander, by all accounts he's a raving bloody lunatic."

"That's our only advantage, and we'll need it. Messers, no mistakes this time. We move fast, and we hit like a hammer. Gerrin, detail two hundred of the 5th to me, and I'll take them ahead on the first train. You'll be rearguard here and come in on the last with the remainder of the battalion."

He held up a hand when the other man began to protest. "I need someone here I can trust to see the plan carried out, Colonel."

"We also serve who only stay and chivvy bureaucrats," Staenbridge said.

"Ludwig," Raj went on. "We're short of rolling stock. I'm giving you the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers" — the former Squadron troops— "and the 3/591, 4/591 and 5/591" — all Brigaderos from the Western Territories— "and you'll follow on dogback. Entrain your baggage, commandeer what remounts you need from the Residence Area pens, and keep to the line of rail. You can pick up supplies at the railstops; nothing on the men but their weapons and personal gear. Understood?"