Warlord

eight hundred to a thousand pounds.

Few of the attackers were in their camps. Columns and groups and swarms flowed forward into the communication trenches; his training told him the final assault was near. The viewpoint swooped; not to a battle, but into the Audience Hall of the Palace. The decoration was different, but the basic layout the same; the ancient sea ivory and gold of the Chair newer, the jewel inlay more lustrous. The man on it was ignoring the chaos below, the shouts and pleas for orders. Instead he touched the Governor's diadem about his brow, then raised the slender muzzle of a single-shot breech-loader pistol, a type that had been declared obsolete in Raj's grandfather's day. He put the barrel in his mouth and. .

'Wait!' The shot crashed out; the man's body slumped sideways, showing the cratered exit wound and a fan of gray spatter and pink boneshards across the gold and iridescence of the Chair's back. Memory returned, of a portrait in the Gallery of the Governors. 'Wait, that's Muralski IV, he died of the Trembling Plague campaigning on Stern Island, two hundred and twenty years ago, there wasn't a siege of East Residence in his reign!'

next.

Raj opened his mouth to protest, closed it again. There was no battle, and the city was as he knew it; a sprawling chaos of avenues and alleys, streets and plazas, running down from the garden-greened heights of the Palace to the tarry bustle of the docks, all within the double circuit of the walls. He swooped his invisible eyes down to ground level. A lumbering traction engine drew a heavy load from a foundry; a litter went by, and then a squad of Palace Guards, jingling and arrogant on their curriecombed Collies. He withdrew to bird-height again, and looked more closely, felt a prickle up his spine; not quite as he knew it now. The East Railway was still under construction. As it had been on his first visit to the city, a six-year-old in from the provinces, with his brigadier father to show him the sights. A mental push, and he was beside the embankment. Just as he remembered, from that never-to-be-forgotten day, the dirt and gravel, the crossties, the long timber rails with their top-strap of rolled iron; engineers in tailcoats, craftsmen, slave gangs swinging picks and hoes and shovels.

The scene slid away, and he was in a room he knew. The Governor's council chamber, the smaller informal one used for the real work, high up over the Long Galleries. And. .

'Father,' he whispered.

Young again, in his thirties, wearing a Corps General's epaulets, which was five ranks higher than Huego Whitehall had ever risen. Standing braced to attention before the old Governor, Govenor Morris Poplanich. Thom's childless uncle, who had died a decade ago. There was a campaign map on the table; Raj focused, saw the wooden counters arranged to show a massive thrust of Colony troops over the passes of the Oxhead Mountains, down into the Hemmar Valley that was the heartland of the Civil Government.

'No!' Raj shouted.

'And I don't know if you're a traitor or just criminally incompetent, Whitehall,' the Governor was saying. 'And it doesn't matter. I'm removing you from command.'

'But, sir, I know that if you do. . !' Huego Whitehall began. He stopped with a resigned shrug, and made no objection when the Guards seized his arms and began stripping him of insignia and sidearms.

'No,' Raj whispered. Time blurred: East Residence burned, and Colonist soldiers dragged his father from a prison cell, through corridors thick with smoke and littered with the bodies of Civil Government troops. Huego wrenched free as they emerged, onto a vantage point that showed a panorama of East Residence in flames. He leaped to the balustrade of the terrace, but the guards bore Colony lever-action repeaters; they managed to shoot him at least three times before he went over the edge.

'Lies!' Raj shouted. 'All lies!'

calm yourself. consider.

Raj fought his breathing under control, felt the sheen of sweat dry on his skin in the unmoving dead air. 'Those. . battles. They're what might have occurred if. . If what?'

if one earlier than you had been allowed to leave this place, with my help.

He felt the grip on his body relax, and found he could move torso and arms and head. It was inexpressible relief to rub a palm across his face.

'Your help doesn't seem to be worth much,' he said bluntly.

consider a general with faultless intelligence staff, who always knows the most probable results of his actions, The mental voice of. . Center, he supposed. . continued, yet the universe is a structure of probabilities, if the probability of success is sufficiently low, even my assistance is not enough. sociopolitical and economic factors often count for more than winning a battle. outside this complex i can only advise and observe through my agent, not compel. my calculations indicate the time is ripe at last, for your mission.

'What mission?' Raj asked.

to unite bellevue, as a preliminary to the rebuilding of the Tanaki Spatial Displacement Net. Even in the soundless voice, he could hear the capitals on the Holy Name of Faster Than Light Travel.

'To unite Earth?' Raj said incredulously, touching his amulet.

bellevue, Center corrected pedantically. earth will come later.

The young man's lips shaped a soundless whistle. The Whitehalls of Hillchapel had served the Governor in arms for half a thousand years, riding at the head of troops recruited from their home county's tough hill-farmers; the Descott district bred soldiers, not tax-broken peons like the lowlands. He remembered vague boyish dreams of glory, dreams that had grown more specific as he passed into manhood. Beating back a Colony grab at the disputed territories in the southeast, perhaps; there was a border war with the rag-heads every generation or so. Or smashing a raiding column of Brigade troops, over northwest across the Kelden Straits, where the Civil Government kept a foothold in the Middle Territories.

But to reunite the world!

'That's a job for a hero-saint,' he protested.

I am Sector Command and Control Unit AZ12-b14-c000 Mk. XIV. Without sound, the words roared like the thunder of massed cannon. I say you are the One.

Raj genuflected. You did not argue with an angel. 'I know my duty,' he said, straightening.

that is one of your qualifications, Center observed.

A thought struck the young man. 'You don't mean I have to be Governor, do you?' he asked, worry in his voice. 'Governor Vernier has my oath. And Vice-Governor Barholm, too; I swore allegiance as his Guard.'

vernier will die within the year, Center said, his nephew barholm will take the chair. That was no news; Barholm was the real power now, not his ailing kinsman. And Raj was Barholm's man. you will act as governor barholm's shield and sword, and in any case you will be abroad on campaign for many years: your talents are military and administrative, not political.

Raj nodded in instant agreement; he could keep his feet in the snakepit intrigues of the Palace, but knew he lacked the gift to excel. Perhaps only the interest, but that was enough. Politics was like fencing, one mistake, one momentary lapse of attention, and you were dead. He thought of having to deal with the Chancellor, Robert Tsetzas, and shuddered; that would be like having a spitting fangmouth grafted on your hand. There was a joke, whispered rather than told, that a fangmouth actually had bitten the Chancellor one afternoon, at a levee: Tzetzas hadn't even missed a nibble on his truffle, while the poison-lizard had died in convulsions. .

'I took an oath,' he said, 'to uphold the Civil Government against all enemies, to restore it to its rightful place as the Holy Federation's agency on this world. I guess this covers it.'

excellent.

A cone of light focused on Raj's forehead; he slitted his eyes, but honor forbade him to flinch. There was a moment of intense pain, that vanished in a lingering sensation of cold between his eyes and behind the skin. Thoughts moved just below the surface of consciousness, fragments of memories of events that he had never experienced. They died away, leaving a residue of dizziness, a ringing in the ears that was wholly non-physical; he felt as if his body was slightly too small to contain him.

the sensations will fade, Center said, you will now be in constant communication with me at all times, remember that your actions must be yours: my help is informative only.