David Drake - Conqueror

" Hadios, Jorg. See you downriver."

He turned Horace. Raft after raft was heading downstream, casting off behind its towing-barge. Sweeps tossed up small chuckling ripples of green water, a faint sheen under the crescent of Miniluna. As each loosed its ties to the anchor cables, another cluster of dogs and guns would trundle out across the linked rafts to the outermost. War-dogs whined as chain staples fastened their bridles to pins in the decking; the wheels of guns and limbers were lashed down, and another raft and barge combination was under way. Beyond the rafts boats speckled the water, sloops and ferries, and score after score of the pontoon barges.

Messengers trotted up, reported, left. Damn. Amazing. Only one traffic jam. And that caused by rubble blocking a street and the battalion assigned to it swerving into another's route. Paws and feet and wheels filled the night with a low rumble of purposeful noise, none of it as loud as the whistle and crash of two hundred Colonial guns bombarding the city. More starshells lightened the sky to the west, Colonial this time, put up so their artillery had better visibility.

* * *

"Shall I order a cease-fire?"

"No, Hussein," Tewfik replied, also in a whisper.

The central roof of the bunker had caved in, but the beams had not given way completely. They sagged to the floor, their jagged breaks splintered, like bone-white teeth. Dry dirt poured down still, pooling and spreading; soldiers dug bodies out of the pile, some wounded and some dead, and carried them up the stairs. Ripped down and stamped in a pile, the tapestries still smoldered from the burning kerosene that falling lamps had sprayed across them — sprayed across men, as well.

Although not, unfortunately, across my brother, Tewfik thought. It would be a disaster if Ali died just now. It might be salvation if he were struck down by an incapacitating injury; the longer, the better. There is no God but God, and all things are accomplished according to the will of God. But sometimes it was difficult to understand His tactics. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of burning carpets. More waste. The cost of them was enough to pay a brigade of cavalry for a year, and now they would be replaced. Transport would be commandeered to replace them, while the guns ate a month's reserve of ammunition.

" Amir, we will lose guns soon if we keep up this rate of fire," the officer warned. "The barrels are so hot we'll have cook-offs during reloading."

"Reduce the rate, but not so much that he " — he nodded to the other chamber of the bunker; Ali's sputtering curses could still be heard there, and occasionally a woman's scream— "will notice. Better to shoot the lands out of the barrels than have more executions."

The officer stroked his beard and leaned close. " Amir , it is time to consider if the House of Peace can stand, with this man at the head of it."

Tewfik stared into the other man's face for a moment; the brown eyes met his single one unflinching. Good. I have no cowards on my staff.

"He has no sons," he said quietly. "Nor do I."

"The Prophet Muhammed had no sons; but many rulers sprang from his daughters."

"And many wars sprang from the claims of his daughters' descendants and the orthodox caliphs, beginning with Kharballa," Tewfik pointed out. That had started a split that echoed down millennia, not even ending with the Last Jihad. "There are also too many nobles with enough of the Settler's blood to make a fair claim. Ali is no fool, he's killed the only ones with indisputable claims or great ability, or both. If we have civil war now, the kaphar and the Zanj and the northern savages will race each other to pick our bones. We must continue."

"For the present."

"For the present," Tewfik agreed. Until Ali alive becomes more a menace to the House of Islam than Ali dead, went unspoken between them. "Now go, and have the gunners reduce their rate of fire by one-third. On my authority."

I control the Host of Peace, but I cannot rule, he knew bitterly. Not in his own name. If only there were a male heir, a regency might be possible — but there was not. The mullahs would not issue the Friday prayer for one-eyed Tewfik; men would not obey, not without a soldier standing behind them. He would shatter what he most wished to preserve, if he tried that.

"Insh'allah."

The acrid gloom of the bunker was stifling. Left hand on the hilt of his yataghan, he strode up the stairs, past the protective curves and the intermediate guardroom. The blue-white sputtering light of starshells made him slit his eyes at the dark motionless bulk of Sandoral's low-slung walls. They mocked him from behind the moat, tantalized him. Men and dogs labored to bring the ammunition forward to the siege guns from the bombproofs set behind the main line, along pathways sunk into the ground with protective berms on either side. The gunners toiled, stripped to the waist, their faces and torsos black with powder smoke. Many had balls of cotton wool stuffed in their ears, but they courted deafness as well as death with every shot. It did not stop the smooth choreographed sequence of laying, swabbing, loading, ramming, firing.

A heavy shell bit a section out of the firing parapet in a clap of orange flame and rumble of sound. Water spurted up where the stone fell into the moat, leaving a ragged gap in the concrete core. No fire replied from the city.

"Was that your plan, Whitehall, to weaken our artillery? Did you know how my brother would respond to your taunt?"

The stonk on the command bunker had been wickedly well-placed. Whitehall was well served, good officers, brave and well-trained troops, well equipped. Does he know us well enough to predict that my brother would waste ammunition and guns like this? He nodded. Certainly.

"Yet it cannot affect the outcome of the war," he mused.

Could it be cover for another raid? Unlikely. With a pontoon bridge for rapid withdrawal and a secure fortified base, Whitehall had still been unable to do more than divert him temporarily. Now the land across the river was unfit to support moving troops. What could the infidel accomplish with the smaller number of men they could smuggle across the river now?

That was the problem. He did not know.

"Lord Amir . The Settler requires your presence."

Tewfik ground his teeth. He has beaten enough women to feel brave again, he thought. Now he must play at commander. And waste my time!

With an enemy like Whitehall, time was one thing you never had a surplus of. From all reports, Barholm Clerett was almost as difficult a master to serve as Ali ibn'Jamal — but at least he was far away.

* * *

The little galley Raj was using as his HQ had been some rich merchant's toy before war came to Sandoral, or perhaps belonged to a landowner with estates on the riverbank who wanted to be able to commute to his townhouse in the district capital. For a moment Raj wondered where he was, that little provincial oligarch. On the road west, grumbling in his carriage with a nagging wife and the nurse fussing with the children and a train of baggage carts behind? Perhaps already in East Residence, imposing on some distant relative or dickering with a lodging-keeper not at all impressed by anything from beyond the walls of the city. Or caught on his country property by Colonial raiders, and now tumbled bones in a ditch.

We must be making ten klicks per hour, he thought.

a range of 9.7 to 10.1, averaging 9.9 overall,Center said.

Tonight and tomorrow to reach their destination, traveling with the current. The men in the barges and boats were sculling, but more to keep station and direction than for propulsion. There were enough in each vessel to change off at frequent intervals, too.