Warlord

weapons he tucked a long curved skinning knife in its sheath through the narrow waist belt of his trousers, over the small of his back, and took something out of the pocket of his jacket. Raj stepped closer and looked; it was a wire cord with wooden toggles on both ends, and M'lewis tucked it through his belt with care, the handles secured but easy to reach. Then he bent, rubbed dirt over his face.

'Loik old times t'home, 'tis, ser,' he said, and was gone into the night.

'Evrard,' Raj said.

'Sir?'

'Leave four dogholders; we'll go up the lane, quietly please, and wait. Clip the stickers, a round chambered. Quietly is the word, gentlemen,' he repeated to the others around him, drawing his pistol and snapping the cylinder out for a final check. Just habit, but habits saved your life or killed you, in this line of work.

'Forward, Companions,' Gerrin whispered, and the others chuckled softly; they seemed quite taken with the archaic title.

The noncoms relayed the orders, and the men stepped out of the saddles of their crouching dogs, with firm murmurs of stay to keep them in place. A series of rapid click-chick sounds as the forearm-long blades of the bayonets snapped home under the muzzles, spring-clips holding them to barrel and cleaning rod, and the oiled-metal sound of loading. Raj heard the platoon sergeant go down the squads, giving the men a quick check and delivering softly fervent promises:

'En I will cut a new asshole in any yer bastids pops it, unnerstan?'

The trees left a narrow slit of moonslight down the crown of the dirt road; the men of the 5th advanced up the sides by sections, alternating right and left. There was surprisingly little noise, but then these were hunters, after all; part of a boy's training back home was to be sent out with a rifle and one round, with a beating and no supper if he came back without game. Raj could smell the sweet-yeasty scent of barley in the milk ear stage behind the low adobe wall of the field on his left; water gurgled in an irrigation ditch, and pale silver light flickered through the leaves. Then they were coming up to the curve; a vineyard on their right, and broad- leafed tobacco on the left. Good cover, he thought, motioning backward with his hand. The column halted and sank down, men resting on one knee.

'I think I can see light, about four hundred meters ahead on the left,' Foley whispered. Gerrin laid a finger over his lips. Raj strained his eyes. Nothing, but then Foley had the eyes of youth. Damn, stop being a teenager, start dying, he thought, then a figure rolled over the fence wall at their left and landed on noiseless bare feet.

'Ser,' it said, as a dozen bayonets poised. It was M'lewis; Raj motioned his Companions close. 'Warn't no problem, ser. It ain't no bandits, neither. It's them pretty boys from the 2nd.'

'Numbers and positions, M'lewis,' Raj said.

'Four of them carriages out in the yard, dogs tethered an' eatin' on the stock they's killed. Men and boys- I figger five, six, family and mebbe a slave-tied up in one the sheds. Six mebbe seven from the 2nd, officers an' gentleman-rankers, with they whores and slaves, they party pretty loud. No sentries.' M'lewis seemed faintly sorry at that, and touched the garrote at his belt.

'How do we handle it, Raj?' Gerrin asked. As if to punctuate his remark the faint echo of a scream drifted down the road from the farmstead.

Raj opened his mouth. Now, how do I say 'kill them all' suitably? he thought. Then-

observe.

* * *

— troopers of the 2nd falling screaming before their guns and Raj and the companions broke into a farmhouse kitchen. Reaching for their weapons, jerking, dying, slammed back by the lead. Servants and mistresses screaming and bleating pleas for mercy, holding their hands over their faces as troopers of the 5th drove the bayonets home again and again. Blood flowing sticky into the dirt floor, splashing on walls and ceiling in trails of red-

— and Stanson's face behind the pistol on the duelling ground. It was a different place this time, the other/Raj was standing on bare ground beside a road. Spectators, Trahn Minh looking on with satisfaction on his thin arrogant face; Suzette white-lipped with anxiety. Stanson sneering, bringing the pistol up in a smooth arc as the handkerchief touched ground-

— Stanson falling as Raj's saber gashed his throat-

— Tewfik riding his dog into the surf, and the ululating cheers of the Colonist army behind him, the great green banner snapping in the wind.

* * *

'— we do this by the regulations,' Raj said. 'No firing on,' the next words seemed to choke him slightly, 'fellow soldiers of the Civil Government except in self-defense or on my order.' With deadly precision: 'Is that understood?'

'What about the camp followers?' Kaltin asked.

'Fair meat, but don't start anything unless they try to fight or run. . best we keep the platoon outside for a blocking force, unless it drops in the pot. Evrard, send your platoon sergeant around back with M'lewis and half your men. The rest will come with us and secure the farmyard and the vehicles. We'll deal with the scum inside ourselves. Follow my lead. Understood?' A chorus of nods. 'Let's go, people.'

* * *

Raj poised his foot above the doorlatch. The rhythmic screams from the farmhouse had stopped a minute ago; now they started up again, weaker and more shrill, muffled as if they came from a room behind this one. The peasant house was a single-story square, whitewash peeling from adobe walls and tiles missing from the roof; probably this single large kitchen-cum-everything in the front, a bedroom behind, and a half-loft above. The old farmer lay outside, his hands clutching a wooden pitchfork and his eyes staring upward. The face had been recognizable, even after a careless saber slash left half of it dangling down in a slab of meat and gristle, baring the pink bone and an eternal smile. Eight-legged native quasi-insects walked across his tongue to reach the eyeballs.

The air smelled of poverty and dog shit and blood and cooking; raucous noises of celebration and snatches of song came through the plank door, almost louder than the screams. Smoke ghosted white from a squat mudbrick chimney in the center of the roof.

'One,' Raj said. There was a small metallic sound behind him; Foley had brought a sidearm with stopping power, all right. A double-barreled shotgun, cut-down to riot gun size, about 18-gauge.

'Two.' Gerrin was at his side, pistol in one hand and saber in the other, quivering eager. Behind him Kaltin dusted one sleeve absently, and Evrard's lips moved silently in prayer; Master Sergeant da Cruz's mutilated face looked closer to peace than Raj had ever seen it.

'Three.' Raj felt the world pause and go crystal clear, attention narrowing down to a diamond-bright focus. There was a taste of metal in his mouth, somewhere in his head the knowledge that he might be dead in a few seconds. Namelessly dead in this squalid little yard where nothing had ever happened but the endless repetitions of misery. . And there was a job to do.

The sole of his boot crashed against the cheap pine-wood of the door next to the latch, and it came away in a shower of splinters. The door banged open. Raj fired a round into the ceiling as he stepped forward, moving aside to let the others file in.

It took a moment for the activity in the room to cease. It was L-shaped, lapping around the bedroom on two sides, with a single wickerwork door between them. There was another door at the end of L's short arm, out to the rear yard and the well. The long arm was filled with a table, crowded with the remains of a feast, roast piglets, a goose. . more chickens were turning on spits in the fire, and a small ceramic crock of a clear yellowish liquid was surrounded by a scatter of cups. Raj glanced at it and was no longer surprised at the slow stunned looks of many of the feasters; that was the local homebrew, distilled from grape skins left over after the wine was pressed, and it had a kick like a sicklefoot.

There were four people he judged to be part of the farm family: all women, from one who looked to be a blousy-but-attractive forty and was probably a decade younger at least, to a just-pubescent girl; he could tell that easily, because like the others she wore only dirt and bruises. The older three women had been cooking and serving, while the youngest was on her knees before a seated 2nd Gendarmerie officer, her head bobbing up and