Warlord

great black wardog easily enough.

* * *

Raj looked at the man the legate had sent, frowning slightly as his body adjusted with a lifetime's practice to the up-and-down sway of a dog's travelling pace. This Muzzaf Kerpatik was neither soldier nor bureaucrat, landowner or peasant, nor a shopkeeper or an artisan or laborer. . 'You're a merchant, Citizen Kerpatik?' he said politely.

'Ah, not exactly, Messer Captain,' the man said, gesturing widely as all these southerners seemed to do. 'That is, I have trading interests, yes. And in manufacturies; then again, shares in mines and the alum pits, and in a property of rents in the city.'

Raj made a rapid mental adjustment: 'rent' was familiar, at least. 'My apologies, Messer,' he said.

'Simply 'Citizen' will do. My father was a man of middling rank, and my mother a concubine from the Colony; hence my inheritance was small, and I had my own way to make in the world.' Another of those flashing smiles. 'I am as we would say here in Komar County, a-'

The word that followed was unfamiliar to Raj: something like 'person-of-doing.' 'That's a dialect term?'

'No, no, common in many cities these days, though I think first in Kendrun. One who risks moneysavings in affairs of profit.'

Extraordinary, Raj thought. Getting rich without inheriting or stealing it. Odd, and rather unsettling; and if he had so much wealth in cash and goods, why didn't he buy land, the only wealth that was really real?

The Komarite hesitated. 'Your pardon, Messer Captain. . you think, then, that your force will be sufficient to defend Komar County against the Spirit-Deniers?'

Raj looked at him in puzzlement. 'Defense is the local garrison's concern,' he said. 'We're here for offensive action.'

Muzzaf paused again, moistening his lips as if considering speech, then shrugged. 'As you say, Messer.' Oddly intent: 'Yet if there is any way I may aid you, however humble. . Komar is my home, and it has been good to me. A man should pay his debts.'

Raj nodded abstractedly. Behind him he could hear the Master Sergeant talking, agreeing, by the sound of it. Then a Company noncom bellowed:

'Sound off, 5th Descotters!'

The Captain grinned; they all knew that one, and it was a good sign after a hard day's work in this heat. Five hundred strong young male voices roared it out:

Oh, we Descoteers have hairy ears-

We goes without our britches

And pops our cocks with jagged rocks,

We're hardy sons of bitches!

Raj laughed aloud, drawing a deep breath of the hot dry air. I like this country, he thought. They were angling east of south, now, and the dust column of the 2nd and the transport was visible in the far distance; they rounded a mountain spur, and the valley on the other side was inhabited. The villages were high up along the sides, wherever there was a spring. Like home, he thought, but different. Patches of cultivation around the houses, growing olives and figs to supplement the grain, mostly, rather than the apples and plums and cherries of his homeland. The architecture had a functional similarity, walls and defensive towers, but these lacked the grimly foursquare build of the County's black-basalt farmhouses and keeps. Descott County's prime exports were plum brandy, fighting men, dog trainers and skilled masons; here they seemed to be content with fieldstone cemented by mud, like giant dactosauroid nests.

We fuck the whores right through their drawers

We do not care for trifles-

We hangs our balls upon the walls

And shoots at 'em with rifles.

I like the people, too, he decided, as they passed a shallow depression in the plain; it had collected enough water to grow a catch-crop of barley, five hectares or so. Women were throwing the stooked grain onto two-wheel oxcarts. They wore vests over their striped robes, sewn with coins and brass bangles and bits of shell, and wide hats to shelter their faces from the sun. He had noticed no woman covered her face in the border country, although many men veiled for comfort; it was for the same reason the borderers made a point of eating pork and drinking wine, and spitting at the name of Mohammed, he supposed. The wars in this strip of land had been long and bitter.

Much joy we reap by diddlin' sheep

In divers nooks and ditches

Nor give we a damn if they be rams

We're hardy sons of bitches!

Not much chance of giving offense, Raj thought. The Descott dialect of the common Sponglish tongue was archaic to outside ears, and the local country folk talked a sing-song version larded with Arabic loanwords. The column slowed as the women ran to the edge of the field, holding up leather bottles of water or pieces of dried fruit, giving an ululating cheer to the passing soldiers. Raj swung his hand out, and the order passed down:

'March. . walk!'

The women trotted along beside the dogs, holding up their gifts and refusing offers of payment; the soldiers passed the jugs among themselves, blasphemously happy when they found the water had been cut one-quarter with the strong local wine. A trooper swept a girl up before him one-armed, trying to steal a kiss; she returned it with enthusiasm, then reared back and punched him neatly in the face, hard enough to bloody his nose. He shouted with pain and clapped his hands to it as the girl dropped nimbly down and ran to rejoin her friends; his comrades howled laughter, nearly falling from their saddles.

So did the male kinsfolk of the women who were riding guard for the harvesters. They were men much like those who had been trickling in to volunteer by ones and twos for the past hundred kilometers, drawn by a hatred older than the hills and the smell of loot. Glad they're taking it in good humor, Raj decided, saluting as the riders waved. Slight, lean men, whipcord next to the bull muscle of his Descotters; about the same shade of skin, where they were not burned black, which made them rather darker than most in the Civil Government, and they dressed for rough use, in sand-colored doghair robes and headcloths. Some carried buckets of light javelins, a few lances; more had short horn-backed bows or long-barreled flintlock rifles, and nobody seemed to feel dressed without half a dozen knives up to a foot long.

Raj looked upslope to the rock-built villages, and imagined fighting his way into the foothills. Long guns and hairy hawk-faces behind every rock, screaming rushes out of the side gulleys, ambush, rockslide, guerrillas. . and these people were fanatics, they didn't just hate the Muslim enemy. Apart from Muzzaf he had heard scarcely a person south of the Oxheads who didn't invoke the Star Spirit every second sentence, and every hamlet had a church, usually large, no matter how squalid a flyblown slum the town was.

Raj's hand chopped forward once more, and the 5th rocked into the steady wolf-lope again. The riders who had been guarding the women spurred alongside for a moment, shouting and waving their weapons in the air:

'Aur! Aur! Despert Staahl!' Awake the Iron, the local warcry.

'Star Spirit of Man with you, brothers! Kill many! Kill!'

'I'm surprised the Colony finds it pays to raid,' he said, as they peeled off back to their charges.

'Hmmm, you might be surprised what a Bedouin will do for a sheep, Messer,' Muzzaf said. 'Also, there are mines of precious metals and silver in the mountains. . and,' he added with a smile that seemed less assumed than most of his expressions, 'you have not yet seen the Vale of Komar.'

'Tomorrow,' Raj said, glancing up at the moons. There's something odd about this Muzzaf, he thought. He gave an impression of always being about to sell you a rug, and that was normal enough, yes. But there was also. . as if he can't decide whether to be glad to see us or to run for the hills, Raj mused.

* * *

'Oh, Raj,' Suzette whispered. 'It's. . beautiful.'

They were sitting their dogs on the crest of the ridge, while the long creaking stream of baggage flowed