Warlord

hands and knees. The Descotters came around the desk and the Gruders seized him by ankles and belt; then they used his head and shoulders as a battering ram, to clear what was left of the windows and shutters out of the way. His bloodied hands scrabbled frantically at the frame, careless of the spikes of glass, before the inexorable pressure left him dangling head-down, supported only by their one-handed grips on his ankles. The struggles ceased then, as he realized that kicking free would send him fifteen feet straight down onto the cobbles.

M'lewis came up and pulled off one of his shoes. 'Wouldn't fit nohow,' he said regretfully, standing on one leg while he measured it against his own sole. The shoe went out the window, followed by the other and the red-and- blue checked socks; M'lewis reached behind his back and drew the skinning knife, held the hilt in his teeth while he rolled up his sleeves. 'Tum-te-tum,' he hummed, testing the edge by shaving a patch of hair from his corded forearm. 'Well now, sers, m'father always said, you want a man to accommodate yer, skin 'im from the feets up. Er down, as we has heres.'

'Keep him away from me!' the Director squealed, kicking again as the trooper drew a line of thin red down the bottom of one of his feet. 'I'll sign!'

'I knew you would,' Kaltin said.

* * *

'As per orders,' Mekkle Thiddo said, dropping the documents on the table in front of Raj; the Companions were meeting in the same room as they had the day before. They rustled against the stack of papers already there, as the Companion sucked on a skinned knuckle and then went to rinse the hand in the fountain.

'Three months' rations for the full complement. No killing, but mine's going to be eatin' real careful.'

Raj nodded briskly. And the men these penpushers depend on for their lives won't be begging in the streets, he thought with bleak satisfaction. 'Is that infantry Captain here yet?' he asked. And what sort of a Menyez is he, to end up commanding an infantry Battalion?

* * *

Captain Jorg Menyez was a tall man, with much the same broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped build as the cavalryman he faced; Raj remembered suddenly that his maternal grandmother had been from the Kelden Straits country. There was little resemblance otherwise; Menyez was in his thirties, a pale-eyed, straight-nosed man with russet brown hair, sun-faded and thinning on top. The pale eyes were red-rimmed now, watering behind the wire- rimmed spectacles; he sneezed into his handkerchief and cleared his throat repeatedly as he scanned the documents. His lips thinned as he looked up:

'Thank you,' he said. 'For the men's sake. I tried, but-' A shrug, that turned into a grab for the handkerchief. 'Chooo! What will Colonel Dyaz say?'

'Colonel. . Messer Dyaz has taken indefinite leave of absence for reasons of health, Messer Acting Colonel,' Raj said, in the same gun metal flat tone.

Menyez sat silent except for his wheezing. 'Well.' Another pause. 'It must be. . satisfying, to have such power.'

'No it isn't!' Raj roared suddenly. 'It isn't satisfying at all to have to act like a mountain bandit to get people to do their fucking jobs. It isn't satisfying that the agents of the Civil Government won't perform without a fucking pistol up their nose! But it's better than having this city undefended.' He nodded to the documents in Menyez's hands. 'Now you've got the tools, at least.'

Menyez straightened, saluting crisply, respect in his voice along with the unwilling gratitude of a man who has been given a long-denied due. 'Well, I'd better get out there and do my job, then.' He strode briskly from the room.

'I just realized something,' Gerrin Staenbridge said suddenly. 'Why he's in the infantry.' The others glanced over at him. 'The poor luckless bastard's allergic to dogs.'

* * *

Suzette chewed the end of her pen; the others had left quickly, overdue for the work of preparing their own departure. She stretched, alone with the sound of falling water and the lingering odors of gun oil and leather, dogs and male sweat that went with soldiers. She thought, dipped the steel nib of the pen in the inkwell of her portable writing desk-cum-briefcase, and continued the letter:

. . and I'm sure your husband will be as interested as mine in how Tzetzas' appointee prepared the defenses of Komar, where the Cleretts have so many investments.

Was that a little heavy-handed? No. Unfair, yes; nobody had expected Komar to become a theater of war anytime soon. If he had, the Legate would not have allowed the defenses of his own home to become quite so run down, though it was amazing what men would do with the prospect of short-term gains before their faces.

Tzetzas had gambled and lost, that was all. Luck was good, or bad: bad, for example, when the child- prostitute one brutalized at age twelve became the mistress and then the wife of an up-and-coming Gubernatorial relative named Barholm Clerett. . Coming up from the underclass meant spending long years when assaulting bureaucrats was an unattainable dream. Anne would thoroughly enjoy the description of Raj's tactics, more than the men who had carried them out and far more than the man who had ordered them.

You are too sweet for this Fallen world, my angel, Suzette thought with a sigh. Best not to over-elaborate, let Anne think up her own political tactics. Her pen scritched:

Your loving friend-

And only friend, I'm afraid, she thought,

— Suzette, Lady Whitehall.

She picked up the bell and rang once. The door opened and a small nondescript man in border County herdsman's robes padded in, bowing low.

'Here, Abdullah,' Suzette said, handing over the sealed message. 'To Lady Clerett, and none other. Into her own hands, not those of a servant.'

'Your command, my Lady,' the man said; he bowed again, touching the letter to forehead, lips, and heart. 'It shall be one week, or ten days if Allah is unkind.'

'And watch that!' Suzette added sharply. 'Here, that could get you stoned.'

The full lips quirked. 'Do not worry, my Lady Whitehall,' he said quietly. 'Those Sunni dogs over the line would be even quicker with the rocks; I have passed for a borderer before.' Druze were scarce, these days, and their weird subset of Islam had always allowed a politic lie in the face of persecution. More gravely, 'For you, who saved my family from slavery, my life is always ready to stand forfeit.' A grin. 'And you pay well, besides!'

'Peace be with you, Abdullah. Go.'

'I go, Lady. And upon you, peace.'

Chapter Nine

The first orange rays of the sun were streaking the plain behind Raj's back, throwing shadow over the oasis of El Djem and the fortified hamlet at its center. Left and right the line of the escarpment stretched into black shadow, streaked with touches of blue and ochre as the rock began to catch the light; the high steppe was behind them, the low desert of erg in front. Sand leaked over the caprock of the basin; the water came from the edge below, where the limestone of the hills rested on granite and the water table was shallow enough for wells and wind-pumps or artesian springs. The air was still, a little chilly from the desert night, with a slight green smell from the fields.

Raj raised his binoculars. El Djem was built on a mound of earth two meters high, surrounded by a wall of date palm trunks twice as tall again, bound with ancient iron-hard rawhide and plastered with mud. The minarets of a mosque stood stark and white against the paling stars, one cutting across the yellow circle of Maxiluna. More to the point, so did a heliograph tower built into the stockade. . and the success of this raid depended on how much damage the two battalions could do before substantial Colonist forces came up.

Three figures ghosted in; M'lewis, Muzzaf, and one of the fifty or so border irregulars who had joined the 5th. And none stuck with the 2nd, Raj thought with satisfaction. Thank the Spirit of Man of the