David Drake - Conqueror

"See you in Sandoral," he said to the little Komarite, and ran for the second train.

It was moving as he clamped his saber hand on an iron bracket and swung up onto the rear platform. This car had been tacked on at the last minute; it was the type used to carry railroad company guards through bandit country, with bunks and a cookstove inside. He'd found it parked on a siding, and be damned if he wasn't going to keep it all to himself; that way he'd stand some chance of getting a little sleep in the fifty hours or so it would take to get to Sandoral. There was some hardtack and dried sausage in his duffel-

The smell of curry startled him as he opened the rear door of the guardcar; his stomach growled a reminder of how long it had been since he ate. Fatima cor Staenbridge — the cor meant freedwoman — glanced around from the little stove.

"Ready in a minute, Gerrin," she said.

He opened his mouth to roar, thought better of it, and sat down, sighing and unbuckling his sword belt. My own damned fault. He'd rescued the girl during the sack of El Djem more or less on impulse; rather, she'd picked Bartin Foley to rescue her from a gang of Descotter troopers bent on gang rape, and he'd helped out. He'd kept her on impulse, too; Bartin had needed some experience with women — a nobleman had to marry and carry on his line eventually, whatever his personal tastes. She'd managed to keep up in the nightmare retreat through the desert, after Tewfik mousetrapped them, which demanded some respect; she'd also gotten pregnant — whether by him or Bartin was a moot point and no matter — which was more than the wife he visited once a year for duty's sake had managed to do.

"Imp," he said.

She stuck out her tongue at him and handed him the plate. Spirit, she's still only twenty. He'd freed her, of course, and acknowledged the child — two, now — his wife hadn't objected at all, since by Civil Government law he could divorce her for not giving him an heir. The children had to stay with her back on the estate most of the time after they were weaned, of course, as was fitting.

He began shoveling down the fiery curry, washing it down with water and a surprisingly drinkable red. Drinkable compared to ration issue, that was. And to think I was accounted a gourmet once, he thought. Polo, hunting, balls, theater, fine uniforms and parades and good restaurants, handsome youths, witty conversation. . surprising how little he'd missed them, in the five years since Raj Whitehall had been given command of the 5th Descott and sent out to teach the wogs not to raid the Civil Government borders.

I resented him then, he mused. Gerrin had been senior. . but he'd needed a commander to bring out his best. A furious perfection of willpower possessed Raj; Gerrin could recognize it without in the least desiring to have it himself. And it's never been boring. Back then, he'd been so bored he'd fiddled the battalion accounts out of sheer ennui.

He finished the plate. Fatima was sitting on the edge of the bunk, eyes demurely cast down; a good imitation of humility. What an actress. The stage lost something when she was born Colonial. Natural talent, he supposed, plus being hand-in-glove with Suzette Whitehall in her impressionable years.

Gerrin sighed again. As far as he was concerned, sex with women was like eating plain boiled rice without butter or salt — possible, but. . On the other hand. A soldier learned to make do with what was at hand; when all you had was boiled rice, that was what you ate.

* * *

The mournful sound of the locomotive whistle echoed through the night. It was evening, and twilight was falling over the rolling hills of the Upper Hemmar River. To their right the last sunlight glittered on the surface of the river below, like a ribbon of hammered silver tracing its way through the darkening fields. The same light caught the three-meter wings of a pterosauroid as it soared over the water, gilding the naked skin and the short plush white fur of its body. Higher, the hills were dusty-green with olive trees, or carpeted with vines in their summer lushness. Terraced fields of barley were brown-gold on the lower slopes; cypresses and eucalyptus lined the dusty white streaks of roadway and surrounded the whitewashed adobe of villas.

Raj looked up from the maps. Center could provide better, holographic projections with all the information you needed, but he'd been raised with paper and it still had something the visions lacked. His father had taught him to read maps, going around Hillchapel — the Whitehall family estate, back in Smythe Parish, Descott County — with compass and the Ordinance Survey, until he learned to see the ground and the markings as one.

" Sentahvo for your thoughts, my heart," Suzette said.

She had her gittar in her lap, gently plucking at the strings.

"Thinking about Descott, and Hillchapel," Raj said. "Damn, but it's been a long time since we've seen it."

Suzette nodded. She'd fitted in surprisingly well; if she considered it a bleak stone barn in the middle of a wilderness, she'd never said so. Well, compared to East Residence, that was what it was; a kerosene lamp was a luxury, in Descott. Most of the County was upland volcanic wilderness, thin forest and thinner stony pasture where you needed ten hectares to feed a sheep. Bandit country too, and bad for killer sauroids.

He missed it.

"This is as domestic as we get, I'm afraid," Suzette said lightly.

Raj glanced around the railroad car. It had been fitted with table and chairs; there was a commode behind a blanket screen, a couple of skins of wine-and-water hanging from the wall, a lantern overhead, and a box of field rations — Suzette's version, and a vast improvement on Army issue. One of his aides was snoring on the floor.

In a car behind, the troopers were singing — they probably thought of it as singing, at least — in a roaring chorus:

* * *

"We're marchin' on relief over burnin' desert sands Six hundred fightin' Descotters, t' Colonel, an' t'band Ho! Git awa', ye bullock-man — ye've heard t'bugle blowed The Fightin' Fifth is comin', down the Drangosh Road—"

"We're luckier than they are," Suzette said, lifting her head and looking off into the gathering night. "We're together, at least. . Their women have to sit and wonder. And every time someone rides up to the farmhouse door it might be a messenger with a bundled rifle and saber that's all they'll see of a lost husband, or a son."

"It's not much of a married life I've given you," Raj said.

Suzette smiled at him. "I wouldn't exchange it for any other," she replied. "I don't think you're one of those who're allowed to have a normal life, anyway."

"Not yet, at least," Raj said. Never, went unspoken between them.

It wasn't as if Barholm would give Raj an honored retirement, even, as a reward for victory.

i have found it unwise to use the term never,Center said.

Suzette's fingers strummed the gittar again. Raj pulled the greatcoat around his shoulders and let his head fall back. Just a moment, he thought. A moment's rest.

* * *

" Git yer arses out offen t'floor," the sergeant barked. "We'll be there anytimes."

Corporal Robbi M'Telgez blinked awake.

"Jist when I waz gittin' t'hang a sleepin' on these things," he said mournfully, picking straw out of his hair and yawning in the hot close darkness of the boxcar, thick with the smell of sweat.

The train was slowing, swaying more from side to side. All around was the flat irrigated plain of the Upper Drangosh. M'Telgez put his eye to the slats in the boxcar; it was good-looking country, dry but fit to sprout shoelaces where there was water. The wheat and barley were in, the fields being plowed for a summer crop of corn or millet; cotton and sugarcane and indigo were all well up, and there were orchards in plenty as well, mostly dates and citrus.