Warlord

Crack. The pack male leaped straight up, an astonishing fifteen-meter jump, landed spinning and snapping at its flank. Crack-crack-crack, thirty rifles on independent fire, in the hands of men whose livelihoods had depended on guarot. The heavy hollow point bullets hammered at the sauroids, punching fist-sized exit holes that gouted blood a darkish brick color. The pack scattered like glass exploding away from a sledge hammer, but none escaped; sicklefeet were open-country creatures, and their instinct was to run rather than shelter in the bush behind them.

Raj looked up at the sun, westering; the Battalion had made more time on the side roads in the course of its training exercises than the transport column would have all day. They would cut back north and west to intersect it.

'Skin them,' he said. Sicklefeet heart and liver were quite tasty, and the tail made acceptable stew. The dogs would be glad of the rest. 'Then mount up, and we'll head back.'

* * *

'Sir-'

Raj looked around; it was young Lieutenant Gruder, looking much like a model of his older brother Kaltin in nine-tenths scale, without the self-assurance.

'Just a second, Lieutenant,' Raj said, and turned back to the local landowner who had ridden up to the head of the column just as they were about to pull out. 'Excuse me, Messer. .'

'Minh, Messer Captain,' the noble replied. A wave to indicate the estate. 'Stevin Trahn Minh, Guardian of Twinford.'

'Raj Ammenda Halgern da Luis Whitehall,' Raj said, using the older long form common at home.

Trahn's mount was a cream-colored wolfhound, worth half a year of Raj's pay; there was an equivalent amount in the jeweled clasp that held a spray of peacock feathers to the side of his beret, and the buckle on his gun belt. His clothes were almost offensively fashionable, long-sleeved tunic and white-silk roll-necked shirt, baggy trousers, tooled boots. The half-dozen guests behind him were similar, and there was a positive train of attendants.

'I must protest, Messer,' Minh was continuing, 'over this high-handed violation of the game laws.'

'Game laws?' Raj rocked back in his saddle, surprise striking like a physical blow. He had been expecting a complaint of damage to the timber, and a demand for compensation. No problem with that, write out a chit and let this big frog learn what size puddle the Ministry of Finance was. Game laws, though?

'Messer, I grant that the forces of the Civil Government have the right to conduct exercises on my land, but this wanton slaughter of my carnosauroids is inexcusable! The Law clearly states that sport hunting on any Messer's land is his and his alone; these sauroids have been preserved at enormous expense and trouble for the sport of my guests.' He waved a hand over his shoulder to indicate the bright-clothed assembly. 'Those were the last pack between here and the coast range.'

'Slaughter?' Raj asked. 'Of sicklefeet? Messer, you mean you were keeping those vermin around deliberately?' Raj looked at him, a tall slender man with a narrow face and eyes so black that the pupil merged with the iris; thirty, and in good hard condition, the way you'd expect an enthusiastic hunter to be. 'In Descott County, there's a bounty on them.'

'Ah. Descott.' There was a freight of meaning in the single syllable, in the hard-edged accent of the Home Counties. 'Well, Messer Captain,'-he stressed the honorific as if Raj was a member of the gentry class only by courtesy '-this is Harzon County, don't you know.'

A slight tension at his back, as the other officers heard the implied insult to their birth County. Is this man insane? Raj wondered, forcing back the pounding at his temples. No, he decided, watching the eyes that held no trace of fear or doubt; it was the face of someone who could not imagine contradiction or opposition on his own territory. No doubt this Trahn could drop the purchase price of Hillchapel across a gaming table and laugh at the loss, but it required an arrogance of truly interesting proportions to act this way with three hundred killers at Raj's back. A Descott squire could be stiff-necked enough behind the ramparts of his manor. . but the biggest landowner in the hills wouldn't have this sort of gall.

Of course, they still practiced the vendetta back home, and not just between social equals, either; a sniper behind a rock could vanish into the canyon lands, and who could say it wasn't bandits? There are times I'm glad I come from the backwoods, Raj decided. Lieutenant Gruder's voice broke in again.

'Sir, you should see this.' There was something strange in the tone. 'We found it when we paunched the last sicklefoot.'

Raj turned in the saddle; Horace kept up his curious sniffing at the muzzle of Minh's wolfhound. The other dog was uncertain how to handle it, unwilling to reciprocate and too well-trained to back.

A trooper was riding beside the younger Gruder, his face as green as his commander's. He had a scrap of bloody sauroid hide in his hands, with a lump of something half-digested on it. It took a minute's stare to realize it was a leg; of a child about six, from the size, still wearing the remains of a hide shoe. Home-made, a peasant's moccasin, but with blue beaded flowers on the toe. Raj swallowed, looked from the trooper to Minh.

'Well?' he said.

'I told you, Messer, it was expensive to keep the beasts in the neighborhood.' A shrug. 'They got two other brats, and chopped up a team of perfectly good plow oxen, and the Spirit of Man of the Stars alone knows how many sheep. Crafty devils, and good sport.'

Raj heeled his mount forward, to within hands-reach of the landowner. Horace shouldered into the wolfhound, which tried to push back and rebounded from the bigger dog's weight; the hound's lips were drawn back just enough to show his teeth, and he raised his head to look down on Minh's slender mount. Raj reached out, grabbed the wrist of the hand that had begun to swing the dogwhip towards him.

'Now that, Messer,' the officer said, 'was unwise. It might be construed as an assault on a serving officer, highly illegal.' The muscles of his forearm tightened; Minh tried to jerk free, found himself in a grip as unyielding as a vise. He looked down, and his eyes widened slightly as he took in the thickness of Raj's wrists; the Descotter was a big man, but they would have been impressive on someone half again his size. The fingers clamped inward, and Raj felt bones bend towards their breaking points.

What? he said inwardly. No disastrous consequences?

none that i can calculate, Center replied dispassionately, act as you think advisable. Minh was snarling himself, white about the lips and sweat beading on his forehead.

'I. . apologize!' he said tightly. Raj squeezed again, then slacked at the sickening rush of pleasure he felt, as fear invaded the other's eyes for what was probably the first time in decades.

'Accepted, Messer,' Raj grated, working his hand. It had been years since he last slipped his tether like that, and he did not like to think about what the consequences had been then. A thought struck him. 'Your estate, Messer; it includes a town?' That was a legal term rather than a descriptive one, but it usually meant something bigger than a village.

'Yes,' Minh said, with the glazed look of one who cannot believe what is happening to him. 'At the ford over the Toluravir.' That was a left bank tributary of the Hemmar, and they had to cross in any event, heading south for the passes over the Oxheads and into the border Counties.

'Expect two Battalions and complement, for billeting, sundown tomorrow,' he said crisply. Minh's face fell slightly; the soldiers would pay for their supplies, but they would do so in Government script. . re-claimable in East Residence, two weeks travel away. A banker would take the paper, at a 10 % discount. And it would empty storehouses that would otherwise have turned a healthy profit. 'Now, if you'll give us the road, Messer?'

* * *

The first thing that Raj noticed as he rode down the expedition's column of march was Suzette stepping down from Captain Stanson's carriage. She waved gaily to him, before turning and extending her hand. Stanson bent over it as she laid fingers on his palm, touching it to his lips; standard courtesy, from an officer to a Messa, a lady of the Messer class. Horace gave a short complaining whuffle-whine as Raj reined in with a brutal jerk at the bridle. Suzette's dog Harbie was tied to the rear hitch of the passenger vehicle on a leading rein.

'Oh, Raj!' his wife said, with a glow. 'Messer Stanson so kindly invited me to ride with him and Merta.'

'Good evening, Captain Stanson,' Raj said shortly. The co-commander of the expedition was leaning back