Ричард Бейкер - Valiant Dust

“I am afraid I don’t remember.”

“I would not expect you to. You were very young.” The old cleric turned to Sultan Rashid. “I will think on what you have said, Your Highness. I will do what I can, but so many men are ruled by their passions in these days. Changing minds is hard enough, but changing hearts? Only God has that power, I think.” He bowed and withdrew.

Ranya watched the old scholar go, thinking back to her childhood and searching her memory for any recollection of him meeting with her father. It would have been at least ten or fifteen years; Hadji Tumar’s hair would have been gray, not white, and perhaps his beard would not have been quite so long. Why is he here today? she wondered. Had her uncle invited him to the palace to seek his counsel on some question of policy? Or did he hope that Hadji Tumar could use his influence to calm some of the current unrest? Would any of the insurgents listen to him?

Sultan Rashid interrupted her speculation by patting the chair beside him. “Come, sit, my dear. What is on your mind?”

Ranya set aside her curiosity, and sat down. “Have you been briefed by the general staff on our equipment losses in the last few weeks?” she asked.

Rashid sighed. “And here I was hoping that perhaps you merely desired the pleasure of my company. It is not seemly for a young woman to take an interest in military matters, Ranya. You know how I feel about this.”

“I am afraid I had no opportunity to choose my gender, Uncle.”

“While that is certainly true, I think you probably had a little more choice about your interests. Most other women your age occupy themselves thinking about young men in general, not just soldiers.” Rashid raised a hand to forestall her protest. “No, never mind that now. I can see that you have something important on your mind. Tell me what it is you think I need to know.”

“We are using up equipment and supplies too quickly to sustain the offensive we launched after the missile attack, Uncle.” Ranya pulled her dataslate out of a hidden pocket in her caftan, and brought up the figures she had been looking at. “We might succeed in reducing a couple of the Caidist strongholds in built-up provinces like Nador or Meknez, but our sweep is stalling out in the remote regions. I think we need to consider a change of strategy.”

“Really?” Rashid frowned. “General Mirza told me just yesterday that he was pleased with our progress, and especially pleased that our casualties have not been too bad. We’re wearing down the caids, Ranya. It seems like we should maintain the pressure.”

“I agree that we haven’t suffered too many personnel losses—well, I agree that no serious casualties have been reported so far. But the problem is the same one we’ve been experiencing for years in dealing with the Caidists. They’re avoiding contact with our heavy forces and allowing us to wear ourselves out chasing them all over the desert. There is not much fighting, but it’s brutal on our equipment. Almost fifteen percent of our brand-new Léopards are out of action already, just from operational tempo. And when the Caidists choose to stand and fight, the casualties will be a much different story.”

“If all this is accurate, why does the general staff remain optimistic? They can certainly count up tanks and vehicles as well as you can, Ranya.”

“Because they’re looking at maps, not logistics reports,” Ranya told him. “General Mirza sees that he has a heavy brigade operating out in the Harthawi Basin where the Royal Guard hasn’t dared to patrol in three years, and he thinks that he is winning a war. I see that next month he’ll be lucky to have half that force still ready for operations, and I worry about what happens when the Caidists launch their counterattack.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Rashid asked.

“Suspend the offensive, or at least the parts of it that we know are going nowhere. Bring those forces in to rest, reequip, and train before we launch another effort.” Ranya took back her dataslate. “Or see if we can open direct talks with key caids, and buy their loyalty with the right concessions. Settle this uprising at the negotiating table before we lose in the field.”

“Lose?” The sultan sat up sharply, and winced as his wounded shoulder repaid him with a jolt of pain. “The caids don’t have a single modern war machine, Ranya! Even if we can’t run them to ground in the desert, they have no ability to take the battle to us in the cities. General Mirza has pointed out to me a dozen times that, down through history, irregular skirmishers have never managed to defeat a well-organized, well-armed professional army fighting on open ground.”

“General Mirza might do well to acquaint himself with the Peninsular War or the Narnian Uprising,” said Ranya. “And it’s not clear to me that our army is terribly professional.”

“I doubt that General Mirza would be pleased to hear you say that.”

“Probably not. Still, the fact remains that continuing the campaign risks overextending ourselves, Uncle. If General Mirza does not recognize that, you might need to find a commander who does.”

Sultan Rashid shook his head. “Replacing General Mirza is simply not possible, Ranya. He is the choice of the beys, and if the beys withdraw their support for us … well, whatever follows will not be our concern, because the house of el-Nasir will be finished. Allowing our current offensives to end without achieving their goals might be just as dangerous. Not only would the Caidists be emboldened by their victory, the more ambitious beys would be emboldened as well. And what would happen if Montréal decided to write off our house as a lost cause? No, for political appearances, we cannot admit to weakness at this moment.”

Ranya was silent. It greatly surprised her to hear her uncle voice such a clear summary of his concerns; she’d fallen into the habit of assuming that he was disengaged on matters of state. His generals don’t know how to win this war, she decided. And he doesn’t know how to replace them. “Then we must have more help from offworld,” she finally said. “We need a commitment from Montréal to suppress the caids and make sure that none of the beys decide to move on the throne.”

“That would be helpful,” Sultan Rashid agreed. “But of course, Montréal refuses to commit ground forces. They don’t want to be drawn any further into our war—which, by the way, would expand tenfold if Republic troops were called upon to suppress the desert tribes—and their own rivals among the Coalition powers won’t stand for a Montréalais occupation of our world. For that matter, I should not like to live out the rest of my life as nothing but a Montréalais puppet.”

“I am sorry, Uncle. I—I think I have not appreciated the difficulties of your situation until now.”

“You mean that you thought I was not paying attention,” said Rashid. He smiled wryly. “I look up from my gardens every now and then, my dear.”

She smiled, but she could not completely dismiss her concern. “We still have to figure out a way to conserve our strength, Uncle Rashid. I can promise you that unless something changes soon, the Royal Guard is going to exhaust itself in our current offensives. It seems to me it would be better to negotiate from a position of relative strength, so if we have a way to bring any of the caids to the table, now is the time to do it.”

“Keep this to yourself, my dear, but I am working on that already,” the sultan replied. “Why do you think Hadji Tumar ibn Sakak was here?”

Ranya regarded her uncle for a moment, surprised. “I didn’t know that any of the moderate clerics had any influence over the caids. What does he want for his support?”