Warlord

Abdullah ibn 'Azziz'-the Colony equivalent of 'Saynchez,' it was so common-'who is suspiciously functionless. He seems to have moved here from the west recently. I will try to find out more.'

* * *

The fireworks display ended with a spectacular blaze of red, blue, green, and silver starbursts, almost an exact duplicate of the Holy Federation Flag. Above him on the quarter deck, Raj could hear Suzette's voice:

'Oh, Wenner, they're glorious!'

'Come, come, my dear, after the Governor's Court in East Residence, I'm sure you find it boring and provincial, like all our little amusements. . pretending we're big frogs in our little pond. How all the ladies resent the way you make them seem dowdy and out-of-date!'

'No,' she said seriously. 'That's not true; it's Sandoral-and the people I've met here-who make the capital and the court seem. . artificial, and unreal. . the frontier has such. . vitality.'

Raj let the Gederosian crystal goblet drop, and marched forward to where Barton Foley was backed into a corner by three local society beauties. He seemed to be deriving considerable amusement as he egged them into competition with comments very much in Gerrin's style.

'I'm leaving, Barton,' he said abruptly.

The social smile dropped off Foley's face, as if wiped away with a cloth. 'Where to, sir?' he asked.

'There, first,' Raj said, nodding downstream. The Skinner's barge erupted in shrieks and roars and a volley from the massive 15mm rifles fired skyward that made fireworks of its own; in the dark the muzzle flashes were longer than the weapons themselves. 'To get very thoroughly drunk. And tomorrow, you and I and the 5th/1st/1st'-Foley's platoon, first in the first Company of the 5th Descott Guards-'are going looking for Tewfik. Enough of this sitting on our butts sniffing the wind.'

Chapter Thirteen

'Yer shouldn't be doin' this, ser. 'Tis not yer place.' Da Cruz's scar-stiffened face was rigid with disapproval. 'Er at leastways, yer should be takin' me wit' yer.'

'Well, I am doing it, Master Sergeant,' Raj said, slapping his gloves into his palm. 'And Captain Staenbridge will need you, if anything unfortunate should happen.'

Like the Colonials cutting us all into dogmeat, he thought. The chill seemed to settle in his belly. They're right: I'm supposed to be commanding thirty battalions, not leading forty men on a forlorn hope scouting mission. He put the inner voice aside; arguably it was worse for the men to see the commander vacillate than to make a possibly-stupid decision, Spirit knew everyone fucked up now and then. . and things were going well in Sandoral. . and the Spirit knew it was the one place on Earth. . Bellevue he didn't want to be, right now.

North along the chain of heliograph stations a light began to blink, a slotted cover like a lever-operated Venetian blind slapping open and closed over a mirror-backed carbide lamp. It showed hard and clear against the pale stars of midnight. High overhead Maxiluna was a thin sliver of orange-tinted silver, and the smaller, brighter Miniluna had set an hour ago. It was cold enough to make the uniform jacket and the thousand-pound bulk of Horace at his back welcome. The tower above flicked once to the north to acknowledge the message, then began to relay it south; it was a long one. Pure nonsense, as a matter of fact, meant only to deceive; if there was movement and light at all the temporary chain of towers, no single one would be noticeable to a chance watcher on the other shore. And they would be used to night patrols setting out. .

'He's perfectly right,' Barton Foley said, walking back along the line of men and dogs. 'Barge in place, Brigadier who shouldn't be here, sir. Clear path down to the water.'

'Not you, too,' Raj muttered, and turned to the Lieutenant of the 7th Descott Rangers in charge of the station. 'Message by rider, word of mouth only, Lieutenant: starting tomorrow night, be ready for anything we send from the other side. Otherwise, keep your movements routine. Understood?'

'Sir,' the lieutenant said earnestly.

'Just a minute, Raj,' Gerrin said. 'I really think you should reconsider. . If you think a senior officer is necessary, I'd be glad to go'

'No.' Forcing relaxation: 'After all, you've got an infant son to consider, don't you, Captain Staenbridge?'

He could see the other man's mouth close. 'By the Spirit, you're right. . damnable habit of yours, Raj.'

'Er, excuse me, Brigadier,' the lieutenant said. 'I've got a rather odd request. Squad of my men-a Corporal M'kintok-just volunteered to accompany you.'

Raj snorted softly. 'Who's next, Tzetzas? My thanks to your squad, Lieutenant Meagertin, and tell them they're going to ruin the County's reputation. Now, if nobody else has precious time to waste. .'

Salutes, embraces, fists slapped together. A voice inside his skull, this risk is strictly unnecessary.

Shut up. observe.

I said, shut up: you're the voice of god, but I'm a man, Spirit take it, and this is something I'm going to do! There was a pause that took no time in the observable world. Then:

stochastic effects may randomize even the most rigorous Calculation, the voice of Center said; it was the first time he had heard Center lapse into religious jargon. Consciousness returned to the world of men.

'. . let's go.'

* * *

Raj held Horace's bridle as the men led their beasts onto the barge. It was a normal bulk-cargo vessel, brownish-grey native pigaro wood, hard and impervious and full of tiny bubbles of air. The shallow hold was roofed with arches of willow-withe, and a cover of dark canvas on top of that, also standard for cargoes vulnerable to sun or rain. Just enough room for the dogs, if they walked half-crouched and lay down in neat rows; thirty-two men and mounts of Foley's platoon, the two men and four dogs of the portable heliograph unit, M'lewis, Holdor Tennan, and himself. The vessel sank deeper against the inlet mud as fifty thousand pounds of dog and man and gear filed aboard; the steersman at the rear sweep began to look worried.

'Come on, boy,' Raj said, stepping towards the plank. Last on, first off on the other side.

Horace balked, flopping himself down with a jingle of accoutrements.

'This is no time for that, you sumbitch!' Raj hissed, painfully conscious of eyes watching him, the men from the heliograph tower and others from within the barge. He hauled, with no result; kicked the dog in the ribs with the flat of his boot, and produced nothing but a hollow drum-sound, hideously loud. Dogwhips were useless on Horace; there was only one thing to do.

'Suit yourself,' he said, and walked up the gangplank. Behind him the dog watched, whined when Raj jumped down into the hold of the barge, then picked up its reins in its teeth and followed, testing the footing with each step.

* * *

'Phew,' Foley muttered, as the last of the men disembarked on the east bank. It had grown fairly rank inside the barge, while they drifted down toward the east bank and past the spot where the Civil Government border curved away from the west. They were in the Colony, now, and far from help.

'Avocati,' Raj whispered back. The common dog-fodder along the river, a noxious, flabby sucker-mouthed bottom-feeding scavenger fish with no backbone; the main drawback was that it made the dogs' breath even worse than usual.

He looked up the bank; the floodplain held the same mix of carob and native thorny brush as the other shore, but the ravine-scored silt of the bluff was much higher, twenty meters, notched and slashed by winter flooding. The air smelled of river, dog, and wet mud; Raj took a deep breath and exhaled, grinning up at the dark menace of the hill. I feel young again, he realized with a start; which was very odd, because he had yet to reach his twenty-sixth year. Even in his teens he hadn't shared his peers' pleasure in taking useless risks, in riding vicious dogs or hanging around girls with dangerous male kin; they had called him a sober-sides for it, and for occasionally turning down a hunting trip or a cockfight to crack a book.

It's because this is a comprehensible job, he thought. No huge amorphous army, where he had to leave a dozen crucial things a day in the hands of men he had never