David Drake - Conqueror

The first pontoon was already ready to launch down by the river's edge, a simple breast-high wooden box of planks on rough-cut stringers, eight meters by twelve. The stink of hot asphalt surrounded it, as sweating near-naked soldiers slathered liquid black tar from pots onto the boards.

Dinnalsyn pulled out his slide rule. Si. Now, the river's nine hundred meters; make it eight meters per barge, allow a reserve of ten percent, and—

A dog pulled up beside him with a spurt of gravel. He looked up and pulled himself erect. "Mi heneral," he said.

Raj nodded, his eyes light gray in the shadows under his helmet brim. "How's it coming, Grammeck?"

"On schedule, more or less."

"Will they float?"

"After a fashion, if we use enough tar and the wood swells tight. I'm going to float them as we finish them, that'll give the timber some time to soak."

"Good man," Raj said. "While you're at it, have your people run up steering oars and paddles. We'll put some of the garrison infantry to practicing maneuvering, that'll be important later. Here in the Drangosh valley, quite a few of them were probably riverboatmen before the press gang came through."

" Si, mi heneral. The Forty Thieves aren't with you?"

Raj was riding alone, save for his personal bannermen, buglers, and galloper-messengers. He nodded.

"Too much temptation in the city, under the circumstances. They're out living up to their official designation. M'lewis will get it done; he's a soldier, in his fashion." Raj turned in the saddle to watch the first pontoon boat being manhandled into the water. It splashed into the Drangosh and bobbed, riding unevenly. "They'll be enough?"

" Mi heneral , consider it done. I can finish the rest in time, if I get enough of the raw materials."

Raj's teeth showed slightly. "Oh, that ought not to be a problem. Poplanich's Own just detrained, they're out helping the 5th get the timber in, and we're moving quickly."

He paused. "One more thing; send out some of your people, use the garrison if you must, and confiscate every boat you can find; every fishing smack, barge, canoe, whatever. Not just here, in the suburbs and every section of the valley we can still reach."

* * *

"And back , ye bitches' brood."

The civilians still crowding the street wailed and stampeded; which was just fine as far as Robbi M'Telgez was concerned. Handling a lariat and a dog was second nature — his family were rancheros , yeoman tenants who herded on shares back in Descott — but this was tricky. One end of the braided leather rope was snubbed to the second-story end of a roof beam; the other was wrapped three times around the pommel of his saddle. Pochita sank down on her haunches and backed one tiny step at a time, and he could feel the thousand-pound body arching like a bow between his thighs. The rest of his platoon were doing likewise, one or two dogs to every rafter. The animals were used to working in unison, and they snarled beneath their panting as they hauled.

The adobe wall smoked dust for an instant and then collapsed towards them. Released from the pull, Pochita skipped back nimbly until her hindquarters touched the house on the other side of the irregular little plaza. M'Telgez coughed through the checked bandanna over his face; his dog sneezed massively and shook her head, the cheek-levers of the bridle rattling. Got t'check 'em, he thought. They should be snug, not loose.

Foot soldiers waded forward into the dust, rummaging for the planks and beams. They'd done the same thing here in Sandoral for material to build earthwork forts, in the last campaign against the wogs a few years ago; now they were tearing down rebuilt houses to make boats.

Always something new with Messer Raj.

* * *

Antin M'lewis sank closer to the earth, hugging it for shelter and trying to think dark like the moonless night. It was homelike, in an unpleasant sort of way; as a rustler by hereditary profession, he'd spent enough time like this back home working his way in past the vakaros pulling night guard on some unsuspecting squire's herds. Darkness, the dogs belly-down too in a gully a few hundred meters back, his face blacked with lamp soot or burnt cork. The wind moving into his face, so no scent went to the target or his dogs — infantry ahead here, but why take a chance, and there might be a mounted officer. Just like home.

Descott was rarely this hot, though. And most Descotter vakaros would be more alert than the wog ahead of him.

He eeled forward on his belly, moving every time the Colonial sentry's pacing turned him back toward this angle of approach. Useless sentry, the bugger was smoking a pipe and M'lewis could see the ember light with every draw, even smell the strong tobacco. Backlit by a watch-fire too, which must be playing hell with his night-vision.

Mother. The wog had stopped, and his spiked helmet was turning as he looked outward. He hesitated, almost taking the carbine from over his shoulder, then resumed his steady pacing. Mother. Spirit.

Forward another five meters. The dust was trying to make him sneeze, but Goodwife M'lewis hadn't raised any of her sons to be suicides. Now he was behind a head-high clump of alluvial clay, right where the towel-top would pass on his next circuit.

Come on, he thought. Git yer wog arse over here. Come t'pappa. His weight came up on his knees and one hand. The other went to the wooden toggle in his waist, callused fingers around satin-smooth pearwood. Ready. Ready. One knee bent under him, bare toes gripping the dirt.

The Colonial muttered something in Arabic and stopped. He bent, raising one foot and knocking the dottle out of his pipe on the heel of his curl-toed boot.

Thank you, Spirit, M'lewis thought, and moved very quickly. Straighten the knee, rising, right hand whipping forward and to the left in a hard sideways flick. Following the toggle and the wire it dragged, as if they were pulling him out of the dirt. Perfect soft weight on the hand, as the wire struck the left side of the wog's neck and whipped around, slapping the other toggle into his reaching left hand — practiced ten thousand times since he was a lad, and it worked when you had to. Wrists crossed, jam the knee into the wog's back, heave.

The sudden coppery smell of blood filled the night. M'lewis went down with the Colonial, abandoning the garrote that had sawn halfway through to his backbone and grabbing his equipment to muffle the clatter. Figures had started upright at the campfire; one of them seemed to be dancing a jig for an instant. The sounds were slight but definite. A meaty thock , the sound of a steel-shod rifle butt in the side of a head. The wetter, duller sound of steel in flesh. And once the unmistakable crackle of a breaking neck, like a thick green branch being popped. Then silence.

M'lewis jerked the garrote free and wiped it clean on the dead Arab's pugaree. The campfire was quiet when he came up, his men finishing rifling the pockets of the dead — he could have forbidden that, and he could tell a pig not to shit in the woods, too — and sitting calmly in the same positions with wog helmets on their heads. The Scout commander nodded to them as he passed, walking out into the dark and to the edge of the little cliff. There was a gully beyond it, then low eroded clay hills, and then flat farmland. Dim enough normally at two hours past midnight, except for the hundreds of neatly spaced campfires. More lights crossed the river, over to the western bank where the smoking ruins of Gurnyca lay.

He settled in with his sketchpad and pulled out his binoculars. Railroad to the riverbank; he checked, and saw fatigue parties still working on it. Laid on t'dirt , he noted on his pad as he sketched. No embankment or crushed-rock bedding for the ties. Emergency line, low capacity, but still enough to carry supplies. Mounds of supplies throughout the basecamp, within the normal earthworks and ditch. Ammunition boxes, shells, sacks with dogmash and dried fish and jerked meat, skins of vegetable oil, all the hundred-and-one items that an army on the march needed. Convoys were moving across the pontoon bridge even at night: wagons drawn by skinny long-legged oxen, and long guns with the distinctive soda-bottle shapes of built-up siege weapons, battering pieces. 130mm and 160mm, he decided. Rifled guns, good artillery, but bitches to move.