Warlord

the men seemed too tired to be restless and too excited to sleep.

'You sure about the war not being over?' Gerrin Staenbridge said, as he and Foley fell in beside their commander. 'What happened today. . that was about as decisive as anything I've seen or heard of.'

Foley nodded. 'We must have killed, oh, eight or ten thousand,' he said with a slight shiver. 'Toward the end they couldn't fight and wouldn't give up. .' Gerrin reached over and squeezed his shoulder.

Raj nodded absently. 'It was no more trouble than slaughtering pigs in a pen, Spirit strike me blind for a Christo if I lie,' he said. Except to poor Thiddo and a hundred or so others, every one of them as dead as they'd be if the barbs had won. 'I doubt if five thousand of their main force got away: we took twenty thousand fighting men prisoners, and twice that number of civilians. They must have lost nearly thirty thousand dead-over forty thousand counting the ones here and the two thousand the Skinners slaughtered. We'll have plague unless we get them underground fast, in this weather.'

That meant half of all the Squadron males of fighting age were dead or captured, if the Ministry of Barbarians' figures were anything like accurate. Of course, the Squadron could mobilize every non-cripple; they didn't have the vast peon mass the Civil Government did.

'But the Admiral got away, worse luck, and the evil, senile old bastard will probably do his best to get all his people killed. He can still raise another forty or fifty thousand men from the western counties, if they answer the call, and the ten thousand Curtis Auburn has out on Sadler's Island are their best anyway.'

'Gah,' Gerrin said. 'I didn't join the Army to work in an abattoir.'

'Well, we can't count on their being as obliging next time,' Raj pointed out. 'See you in the morning,' he said, as they came up to the villa that was his billet.

He walked Horace into the courtyard, then halted him with a silent touch of the rein. Suzette was sitting on the veranda in a pool of lantern-light, playing her long-necked gittar, and two-score men were crouched motionless on the flagstones at the base of the stairs; roughneck Scouts as quiet as the officers and Ludwig Bellamy, who was looking at her with the expression of a man who has just been struck hard on the head.

'For we are all one way riders-

Riders on that one way street,

That runs across a golden valley

Where the rivers of joy and hope run deep.'

It was her favorite song, one a Stalwart nurse had taught her as a child.

'Rain must fall and winds will blow-

Lost men die in the mountain snow

Souls break their wings on heaven's wall

Night must come, come to us all-'

She rose and set the instrument aside as he walked toward her, lamplight sheening on the raven's-wing hair and gilding her eyes. He knelt and kissed her hand, then swept her up effortlessly in his arms as he rose and carried her indoors. Good-natured cheers followed them as he kicked the door shut behind him.

Chapter Fourteen

A roaring chorus of soldiers' voices echoed back from the houses of Port Murchison, louder than the frenzied cheering of the crowds:

'The heathen in his blindness bows down to dirt

an' stone;

He won't obey no orders, 'nless they is 'is own;

He keeps 'is side-arms awful: he leaves 'em all about-

Then up comes us Regulars and we poke the

heathen out!'

The Expeditionary Force was marching into the city down the Sacred Way in a mass two battalions wide, each in column of fours. Raj and his household first, and then the 5th Descott and Poplanich's Own, in the position of honor at the front; then the Arch-Syssup of the diocese with a chorus of priests and nuns, then cavalry, guns, infantry, long columns of stumbling prisoners roped neck-and-neck, wagons filled with captured banners and weapons. . The citizens were massed on the sidewalks behind barriers of infantry holding their rifles across their chests, on balconies and rooftops; they threw streams of flowers at the soldiers, muck and rotten vegetables and dogshit at their former overlords. Star Spirit priests stood on every corner to bless the return of the True Faith.

'Spirit-damned waste of time,' Raj muttered to himself, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead.

'We all have our burdens to bear,' Staenbridge said beside him. Ehwardo snorted laughter on the other side, brushing flower-petals off his tunic. Suzette smiled regally, nodding and waving to the crowd.

Well, they certainly can't afford to have the Admiral back after this, Raj mused. Which was also the reason Ludwig Bellamy and his father were in the parade a little farther back, conspicuously well-treated and armed.

Gerrin muffled a shout of laughter, looking over his shoulder. Raj snuck a look back himself, pretending a genuflection to a Syssup spraying holy water from a platform. Kaltin Gruder had fallen out by the outer line of the 7th Descott Rangers, sweeping off his helmet and bowing in the saddle as his dog caracoled and pranced. A striking young woman in the mantilla and shawl of a matron was waving from the wrought-iron balcony of an affluent- looking townhouse; she covered her face with her fan and flung a rose. Gruder snatched it out of the air and bowed again with the stem between his teeth before galloping back to his position at the head of the battalion.

'Damned fast work, even for Kaltin.' Staenbridge laughed.

'Damned bad example,' Raj said grumpily. Although Gruder's reputation didn't do him any harm with the troopers, to be sure.

Port Murchison was much like a Civil Government town, of a rather old-fashioned type; the streets were lined with three-story buildings of whitewashed brick and stone, arched arcades on the ground floors and screened balconies above. No gaslights, and not much of a factory district; the fountains were not working, and though the houses and shops were fairly well kept, the surface of the road was not, cracked and uneven and actually muddy in places.

'I just hope they love the Civil Government as much once Tzetzas's tax-farmers get here,' Raj said ironically.

Ehwardo snorted. 'Even Tzetzas only loves Tzetzas because he's paid to,' he said.

They wound into the plaza, a big U-shaped pavement surrounded by public buildings and the townhouses of wealthy nobles. There was a dry fountain in the center, the marble pile of the Palace of the Vice Governors-the Admirals, for the last three generations-at the head. The ancient Star Temple, with a high golden dome and pillared portico, stood to its right; there was no many-rayed Star at its peak, though. Raj's lips tightened in genuine anger. He had been in to survey the route, earlier, and he had seen enough of the damage the Squadron had wrought in the churches, even in the ones they had converted to their own cult. Holy statues splashed with bullet-lead-the Squadrones seemed to have a particular liking for shooting off the noses-mosaics ripped up, icons burned. .

'Vandals,' he muttered. 'Nothing but a bunch of fucking vandals.'

a universe of vicious children, raj whitehall, said Center, and us.

Grooms ran to take their horses as they stopped before the steps of the Palace; he laid the ceremonial mace in the crook of his arm and turned to hand Suzette down from Harbie. She stepped regally by his side, her fingertips resting on his arm and the plumes of her headdress nodding. The officers and civil dignitaries followed him as he walked up, seating themselves as he turned at the marble plinth that divided the stairs and served as a raised podium; that put him nearly a story above the level of the pavement, with a fine view out over the plaza and down to the wall. He rested easily with his left hand on his saber hilt, letting the breeze ruffle fingers through his dark curls and watching the remainder of the Expeditionary force march in and drop to parade-rest. All except the units already busy, of course.

And the Skinners. Not even the Spirit of Man with a thunderbolt in hand could control Skinners in a town; he'd