Warlord

mission, they'll have to split up into smaller groups and perform on their own, without always having me there to hold their hands.'

Suzette's fingers tapped her chin. 'You do know, Raj, that they're understrength because those officers are pocketing the pay and rations of the men who aren't there?'

Raj nodded. 'Well, of course,' he said, grinning. 'I have been in East Residence for four years, my sweet. That proves they're sharper than the 12th, doesn't it?'

'But they're still short two hundred men,' Suzette said thoughtfully. 'Perhaps an order to draft replacements?'

Raj shrugged ruefully. Center, this had better work, he thought, then corrected himself for doubting. . the Spirit of Man of the Stars? An angel, at least. 'I'd look pretty silly, asking the Vice- Governor for that,' he said. 'After asking for the 5th in the first place.'

'You might,' Suzette said. 'Men care about things like that. I'll talk to Anne, and I don't think she'll feel silly at all, when she talks to the Reassignments officer. I will not-' her voice took on an icy clarity '-have you endangered needlessly, Raj.'

He inclined his helmeted head. 'It's good of you to have made a friend of her, back when Barholm wasn't the heir,' he said seriously. 'And smart, too.'

Suzette looked at him with a slight flare of her patrician nostrils. 'The only difference between Anne and me,' she said coldly, 'is that I was older and had more money and choices when I was thrown out on my own. And a few contacts. She was sold to be an 'entertainer' at ten. I'll see you at dinner.'

* * *

'Whew,' Raj muttered, following more slowly. 'Nobody can say married life is dull.' A glance back at the rumpled bed. 'Or uninteresting.'

The first task would be a general inspection, without warning. As Raj stepped out into the anteroom he slipped out his watch and clicked open the heavy brushed-brass casing. 1100 hours, he thought.

The couriers were waiting, some leaning against the walls, a few chatting-up the more presentable of the maids-two were even helping with the lifting, true dedication-and one was even reading; Raj noted his face and name.

'At ease,' he said as they braced to attention. A Palace courier was equivalent to a corporal in a line regiment; the post was a plum and eagerly sought. 'First, to the officers of the 5th Descott Guards, platoon level and above; with the warrant officers, the Battalion Master Sergeant, the vet and the quartermaster. Battalion meeting at-' another glance at his watch. '-1550 hours, in the wardroom. Have the Surveyor General's office send down the designated maps, please.'

He turned to the next brace of couriers. 'You boys are going to have to earn your pay: this does not go out on the heliograph.' Mirrors, signal-towers, telescopes, and lanterns provided the fastest means of long-distance communication, but they were unfortunately wide open to counter-intelligence. 'Take the following, to depots 7 through 38, East Residence, all station commanders. 'Greetings. By order of the Civil Government, all supplies and refreshments necessary to the passage of the 2nd Gendarmerie and 5th Descott Guards, minimum 900 effectives-' an exaggeration, but better safe than sorry '-with the usual dependents, to be available from this date until further notice.'

The couriers scribbled. They were all young men, fit and dressed in tight fringed leathers, armed with shotguns; they would ride fast down the post relays, changing dogs every fifty kilometers. The next five finished their messages, sealed them with prestamped wax and saluted before dashing off towards the stables. Raj followed them out the door, his remaining couriers trailing. The orders continued, metronome-steady.

'To the Master of Ordnance,' he said. 'Indent for three 75mm fieldguns, with full limbers and teams to report not later than-'

observe.

* * *

This time he could manage to walk, talk, despite what Center was showing him.

— Colonist banners waving above a walled village; he recognized the green-and-silver of the Lions of Medinha, Tewfik's personal guard regiment. The lean brown dogs were staked on picket lines, lying and panting resignedly in the bright sun; their masters and the camp followers were digging in, shoveling the earth out of rifle pits. The hologram swooped in, showing muscular, brown-skinned troopers stripped to their baggy pantaloons, sweating as they threw basketloads of sandy dirt out of the entrenchments. Quick-firers were being manhandled into revetments; a detachment of mounted scouts trotted out into the fields in column of twos, the butts of their carbines resting on their thighs. He focused on the leader's hairy brown hawk face, the beard trimmed to a rakish point under a spired helmet with a spike and canvas neck flap. The man turned and said something to the troop sergeant riding to his rear; the NCO laughed, making the brass hoop earring in one ear dance.

A blur, and he saw the command council of the regiment on a hilltop, the same red jellaba robes but more gorgeously embroidered. Military engineers were working over a mapboard, with slide rules and compasses and steel straightedges; the commander peered through a tripod-mounted telescope, and a detachment was putting up a heliograph tower.

— and in a riverport town on the Drangosh a train of barges was unloading, muscle-powered cranes squealing as they swung crates with the Settler's phoenix stencil on their sides to the dock. Wardogs were being led down a ramp, and black-tanned porters in loincloths and headdress were trotting down another gangway with 50- kilo sacks of soya dogmash meal on their backs, filling ox-drawn wagons that moved out with a squeal of ungreased axles.

There were lighter-skinned folk on the docks as well, more naked than the porters but wearing chain hobbles on their ankles, bound neck-and-neck with long ropes. They crouched, waiting to be loaded on the barges for the return trip downriver when the munitions were ashore. The porters sometimes paused to kick them as they passed, or loft a gobbet of spit in their direction, and a group of boychildren lurked at a distance, throwing clumps of garbage or occasionally darting forward to poke with a stick. Many of the chained slaves were slumped in an apathy so deep they did not even dodge the lumps of ordure. Flies buzzed, and Raj could imagine the stink so well that it was almost a physical presence, on the slow-moving river.

Clumps of townsfolk, all men in long robes, examined the fresh-caught slaves from the Civil Government. One wore a robe of dazzling white linen edged with silver, and a cord-bound ha'ik headdress. He was bargaining more seriously with a uniformed officer in charge of the prisoners; at last they slapped palms in a bargain-sealing gesture.

'By Allah,' the civilian said, smoothing his gray-streaked beard with one hand, 'I would have bought more if they were in better condition. Not worth my while to pay for transport if all they're fit for is the mines or the sugar plantations.'

They were speaking Arabic, but somehow Raj understood far better than his nodding acquaintance with that language would allow.

'Look at that moon-faced beauty!' the slaver continued. He pointed with a long ebony staff at a plump girl who sat staring before her, ignoring the hardtack in her hand and the woman beside her who urged her to eat. 'I could have gotten, two, three hundred for her in Al-Kebir, except for those infected bites all over her breasts. And she's mad besides; now, no more than fifty for a sailor's brothel.'

The officer shrugged, glanced up at the cloudless sky and pulled a fold of his helmet's cloth neck-guard across his face. 'By the Prophet, you can't keep troops too much in line when the loot's so scanty,' he said, clapping his hands and pointing out one slave, then another. The guards untied them and hustled them forward; the slave trader's assistants formed them into a new coffle with bonds of woven coconut-fiber rope. All were males, prepubescent.

'But look at these,' the soldier continued. 'All healthy, sound of mind and limb; you'll get good prices for these, even if the fashion is for black harem guards.'

'Kaphars have a certain value as well,' the trader nodded. 'But we lose half when we geld them; sometimes more, and then where is my profit?'

There was a crash behind them. Both men wheeled to look; the ropes had slipped unloading a heavy gun from one of the barges, a muzzle-loading siege gun with a barrel shaped like a soda bottle, built up with extra bands around the breech. It hung for a moment, teetering, then crashed onto the dock as the crew pulled frantically