March To The Sea

just us and the humans in the end.'

'May the gods forfend,' Rastar said with a grimace. 'We've taken their gold and their food, and I would be bound to our agreements. But I truly wouldn't care to try for K'Vaern's Cove with the Wespar between us and the hills.'

'Aye,' Honal said as he spurred forward to 'explain' to the other Northern lordling that 'drill' meant doing things in a certain way, at a certain time, the same way, every time. And beyond the hills? The rest of the fucking barbs—including the true Boman.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

'What are you guys so enthused about?' Roger asked.

There'd been little change in the week since his inconclusive meeting with Gratar. Training went on, and the inexperienced workmen were slowly turning into drilled units under the tutelage of the Northerners and the Marines, but other than that, things seemed to be coming slowly but inexorably apart.

More and more of the Council had begun siding with Grath as the floodwaters rose and dikes washed away without workmen to maintain them. From all reports, these were normal events precipitated by heavier rains than usual, yet each fresh inroad was another nail in the coffin of the policy of using the laborers as a military force. The calls to have them out in the rain working on the failing flood controls had already become clamorous, and every sign said that it was only going to become still worse.

At no point were the city, its inhabitants, or even the fields seriously threatened by the water, but that didn't seem to matter. The combination of the endless, enervating rains and a constant drumbeat of pressure from the cabal of carefully orchestrated tribute proponents eroded the confidence of the Council further with every failing dike, however inconsequential.

At the same time, the company's bugs provided constant tidbits of information about the second cabal working on its unknown 'Great Plan.' Whatever that plan was, it was large, for Julian had already identified no less than ten Council members, including several on the tribute side, among the conspirators. Whoever the Creator was, he'd amassed a sizable following and had excellent operational security, and so far no one who might have been in the know had used his actual name where the bugs might have overheard it. One of the reasons for that, apparently, was a suspicion that the humans might have listening devices like those they were, in fact, actually employing. All of which made the pleased expressions on everyone's faces seem particularly out of place to the gloomy prince.

'We think we intercepted a message to the Creator,' Julian said, tapping at his pad. The handheld device was attached to the top of the all-purpose tactical intel computer the NCO had packed along, a helmet-sized, half- kilo device which contained fifteen terabytes of multiuse memory and a host of Military Intelligence software.

'What? It had an address on it?'

'No, Sir,' Kosutic said. The sergeant major and Poertena were watching the intel NCO as if he were a woman giving birth to their first child. 'We had an intercept that said a message was going to be passed, and we decided to have Denat stake out the pass in hopes of seeing who got it. But they used a dead drop, so Denat went ahead and picked it up.'

'Won't that tip them off?'

'Dead drops go missing,' Pahner said with a shrug, chewing calmly on a bisti root slice and pointedly ignoring the intel NCO. 'Often. But one of the Council members who's involved in the Great Plan called this 'a very important message,' which seems to be a code phrase for messages directly to and from the leader. So Denat followed the messenger until the guy dropped the tube with the message in it into a chube. When I realized it could be going anywhere, I told Denat to pick it up. I doubt that we could have rolled up the whole line to the Creator no matter what happened; as crafty as this guy has been, there were probably a half dozen links in the chain. Not to mention that it would have been obvious that we were onto them with Denat trying to trot after it watching it float along.'

'What's running?' Roger asked, watching the cavorting critters on the tiny screen of Julian's handheld. The device was running a query program, and the NCO had replaced the ubiquitous purple sundial of most programs with the graphics from a popular game program. The spinning and dancing hedgehogs formed into lines, and once all of them were in place, they blew up. There looked to be only about five or six explosions to go, which suggested the program was nearing the end of its run.

'Pocker was in code,' Poertena said.

'I had to load the local written language before we could do anything else,' Julian added. 'We'd never gotten around to doing that. Then I scanned in the message, and now we see if it decodes it.' The intel NCO beamed. 'And it seems that it does,' he added as the hedgehogs performed a final unnatural act and then exploded. 'God, I love that game.'

'B-T-H was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, too,' Kosutic agreed. 'Which I suppose says something about my childhood. So, what does it say?'

'Hmmm,' Julian murmured. 'Flowery for a secret message. 'Estimable Leader. Attempts to suborn human Marines have thus far failed. It is recommended that direct contact with their senior officers be made at the soonest possible moment. Aid in the Plan from the humans would be useful. Their resistance to the Plan might be disastrous.' '

'Well,' Pahner said, climbing to his feet and beginning to pace in the small room, 'that was refreshingly cryptic. What attempts to suborn our Marines? Sergeant Major?'

'Nothing reported to me,' Kosutic said, pursing her lips.

'Maybe tee people tryin' to pay me off?' Poertena asked.

'Maybe,' Julian said. 'Anybody in particular come to mind?'

'Nah,' the armorer replied with a shrug. 'T'ey all try to give me gif's. I said 'no.' '

'Maybe he should have said 'yes,' ' Roger suggested.

'For that to work, he would have had to do it from the beginning,' Pahner disagreed with a frown, 'and we didn't know we were going to have these problems when we started here. Twenty-twenty hindsight.'

'Something we need to think about as an operating procedure for the future, though,' Roger said. 'Maybe the order should be 'Take the bribe and report it so we can find out where the string leads.' '

'The standing orders of the Empress' Own already call for anyone who's 'tapped' for an intel request to report it,' Pahner told him, still frowning. 'But the Sergeant Major says no such reports were made. Right?'

'Right,' Kosutic confirmed. 'I'll ask around and make sure.' She got to her feet. 'Keep me updated, Julian.'

'Bet on it, Smaj,' the NCO said. 'I want to know what they mean by 'direct contact.' '

* * *

Roger stood by his window, watching the pike units forming up and drilling, and frowned. The morning of Drying had dawned unusually hot and steamy, but the newly minted soldiers appeared unaffected by the heat or humidity.

The units were colorful. They'd scared up enough leather to make a short leather cuirass of sorts for each soldier, and the Leathermakers' Guild had dyed them in the colors of the different companies. The company shields matched, turning the gathering forces into a panoply of colors as the companies wheeled and formed like a huge kaleidoscope. The casual observer might have concluded that all that martial color was simply to make a splendid show, but Roger had enjoyed more personal experience than he'd ever wanted of just how difficult it was to keep track of who was who in the howling bedlam of combat. Identification of who was a friendly and who a hostile was always difficult from inside the furball, even for the humans with their sophisticated helmet sensor systems. For Mardukans fighting other Mardukans and equipped only with Mark One Eyeball scanners, it would be even worse, but the strong visual cues of the company colors ought to help greatly. Or that was the idea, at any rate.

The new troops' drill was excellent, he reflected. The days of pounding rain had rung to the sound of marching formations as the Marines first drilled the original cadre and then acted as advisors as the cadre trained the next layer of units. Roger had participated in that as well, while trying to run down support and supplies and figure out what cabals they faced. All in all, it had been a good time, despite the unrelenting workload and the