Warlord

pockets of resistance, and then the swords were out when there was no time to reload. Raj saw the marquee looming, a table overturning; a tall man in blue falling with one arm nearly severed at the shoulder. .

* * *

'Sir, are you all right?

'Better than I'd have been if that bullet'd gone a handspan to the left,' Raj barked, as his surroundings faded back to normal; he wiped a sleeve over his face again, to remove the last of the brains. 'Because in that case I'd be bloody dead, wouldn't I?'

Thiddo made an incoherent apology; Raj waved it aside as he wiped and sheathed his sword and snapped out the cylinder of his revolver. Anguished embarrassment was making Thiddo's speech impediment worse; that was unjust, the fight had lasted about forty seconds before relief arrived, not bad time. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm as his fingers handled the tubes of brass and cardboard and lead.

'And somebody shut up that damned dog!' he continued; the Basiji was still howling. Thiddo made a hand signal and several of his men faced left, firing a volley with their muzzles almost touching the animal's side. The nine hundred pounds of it fell with a thud that made the ground shake slightly under their feet; it whimpered, twitched, laid its pointed muzzle across its master's legs, and died. Relative silence fell; there were still shots from the baggage park, shouts, the sound of men and dogs moaning or whimpering in pain, but conversation became possible.

'Sir. Report.' Thiddo's voice had a strained sound, as if he were making it obey by an effort of will. 'Perimeter is on alert. No further enemy forces within the perimeter. Contact established with First Company on vedette; nothing to report. My men are reestablishing order among the camp followers, sir. Orders, sir?'

'Carry on, for the moment,' he snapped aloud. Why now? Why didn't you show me that five minutes ago, curse you?

you felt it was unnecessary to entrench, despite my warning. Raj felt himself shaking, the world narrowing to a pinpoint concentration of rage. I could have been bloody killed, and so much for unifying Bellevue!

i have waited a thousand years, the voice said, in the same chill tones, it is necessary to educate you. if the process kills you as well, there will be another, if not in this cycle, then the next.

* * *

Suzette picked up the derringer she had thrown at her feet and walked to meet Raj; that turned into a sprint, and a quick fierce hug. He returned it, as the trigger guard of the carbine she was still holding in her right hand dug into his back. The place where Center's visions had shown his own death was not two meters from where he stood, and he stared at it for a moment over his wife's shoulder, dizzy with the memory of himself falling/might have fallen, arm hanging by a thread. .

'Shit!'

That was Stanson, prone on the ground as a priest-doctor probed at his buttock; the trouser had been cut away, exposing a bullet hole in the great muscle. Next to him Merta sat, having a long shallow saber cut on her back bandaged by another. The priest grunted, twisted the probe expertly and withdrew it, holding up the piece of flattened metal that glinted dully in the lantern light.

'Got it,' he announced. 'Hmm, pretty small-even for a raghead carbine, more like a small caliber. . hmmm, better see if there's more.' The 2nd's commander, grey-faced and sweating, bit down on a cuff while the probe went back in. Shaking his head, the priest strapped an iodine-soaked dressing over the wound.

'Minor wound, Messer. Couple of weeks and you'll be good as new.'

'Shit,' Stanson muttered again. He craned his neck up and met Raj's eyes, managing a shaky smile. 'I'll never live it down, Whitehall; one minute I'm pistoling them, the next I'm down, shot in the arse, by the Spirit. Didn't see any of them behind me, must have been a ricochet. .' His gaze met Suzette's. 'And then one of them was cutting at me, I think he pulled the first one because it hit Merta. And Lady Whitehall shot him out of the saddle before he could strike again. We owe you a debt, I think.'

Suzette smiled, one of her charming Court expressions. 'No debts between friends, Helmt,' she said coolly. 'You must have gotten four or five of them before you were hit. . and better the buttocks than the spine or kidney.'

Stanson shuddered. 'Spirit of man, yes, only fifty millimeters difference.'

Muzzaf hobbled over, clutching his stomach. 'Just winded,' he wheezed. 'Kicked.' From the way he clutched his ribs one or two might be cracked, but you could move with an injury like that. His voice took on more strength. 'Those men were in the uniform of regular cavalry,' he said.

Raj nodded grimly. 'Here's where those irregulars earn their keep,' he said. 'Muzzaf, find Bani Crodor,' the closest they had to a leader. 'And get me da Cruz; at first light, we-'

* * *

'Lord,' Crodor croaked, then hawked and took a quick swig from his canteen. 'We found them.'

That was obvious; the irregulars had limped in with an escort from Raj's outlying vedettes, as the huge column of soldiers and plunder finally creaked into motion. There were dogs with empty saddles among them, and others missing altogether; one saddle had a black fletched arrow standing up like a quill, and several of the bordermen were clutching wounds, gunshot and sword. Their dogs had even found climbing the last small hillock where the officers of the 5th and 2nd waited a burden.

Crodor continued. 'Ten, perhaps eleven kilometers from here, lord, and coming fast. Their scout screen is Bedouin, with some of the local landowner's retainers perhaps, but we pushed through'-risking death at the hands of vastly superior forces, or capture which would be worse '-and we saw regular cavalry of the Settler, riding in columns of twos. No artillery or wagons that we could see, lord.'

Stanson cut in. 'How many?' he said, shifting in the saddle. The doctors had packed the wound with sterile gauze at his insistence, and he was mobile enough. It was fiendishly painful, though, and obviously not improving his disposition.

Crodor pulled at his beard. 'I cannot say, Messer,' he replied. 'No less than five hundreds. But there was much dust further back; another five hundred again, it may be. Perhaps more.'

retreat quickly, Center's voice advised: your mission is essentially completed, destroy the remaining baggage and pull back to komar.

'Hmmm,' Raj said aloud. 'This collection of junk,' he indicated the transport, 'is going to slow us down. We're not here to fight the Colonial army. . if we dumped it. .'

'What?' Stanson asked. From their expressions, some of his officers would have liked to say more; one or two let their hands fall to their pistol butts. 'That's our loot down there, man!' The 2nd had preferred to keep theirs all under their eyes, rather than taking the trouble to send it off as it came in. Three-quarters of the booty here was theirs.

Raj glanced at his own Companions and officers; the reluctance on their faces matched his. Retreating was one thing, running away another. 'Recommendations, gentlemen?'

Gerrin Staenbridge nodded south. 'They travel fast. Even with nothing but the artillery, we wouldn't be able to break contact unless they let us.' The Colonists were lighter men on slender dogs. 'But even if they can match our numbers, we can give them a bloody nose as long as they have to come to us.' Colonial weapons had a better rate of fire than the ones used by the Civil Government's forces, but less stopping power and considerably less range.

'Thank you, Senior Lieutenant,' Raj said formally. 'As long as we can avoid a meeting engagement or a melee, I don't think enemy forces of this size are much of a threat, yes. What we can do-if you concur, Captain Stanson-is to send on all the more mobile transport to El Djem; we burned the buildings, but the stockade's intact and there's water. We'll fall back more slowly, they won't dare try to send a substantial force around us under these circumstances. From El Djem we can either stand them off if they're so foolish as to attack the stockade, or simply repeat the process on a larger scale back to Komar. Agreed?'

Stanson nodded, and his followers relaxed; some of them still looked a little contemptuous of Raj and the 5th, for even suggesting a retreat.

'Why can't we take the offensive?' one asked.

Because it would be stupid, Raj thought. The man was a lieutenant; Evrard Gruder answered him, as the equivalent in the 5th.