Warlord

around them. 'And in only two nights and a day!' he continued. 'I only wish I could get them to work half as hard for me. And I pay them, too.'

Forty thousand pairs of hands had been at work for thirty hours; the five-kilometer stretch of dry valley looked like a garden plot infested with geometric-minded gophers. The basic outlines of the trenches had been dug, the main line for the infantry to hold and the fortlets behind them where the cavalry would support their fire and be ready to block a penetration or launch pursuit. Evenly spaced semicircles marked the gun platforms, and zigzag communications trenches linked them all. The redoubt at the center was a huge pit right now, nearly two stories deep; the fighting deck would have a cellar beneath it. Even as the long timbers went in to support the floor hands were stacking powder and shot on the bottom level.

Temporary ramps had been left, and two hundred soldiers and civilians were backing a cannon down it, heaving against a spiderweb of ropes. The gun was one of the city's defensive weapons, a three-meter tube of black cast iron on wheels taller than a man, throwing thirty-kilo shot. It trundled the last few yards and set-tied onto the overlapping timbers of the redoubt's floor with a rumbling thunder; there was a ratcheting pig-snarl behind it, as one of the armored cars backed and turned, ready to follow the gun. Raj looked at the turtle shape without affection: there were a dozen of the armored vehicles in Sandoral, shells of wrought-iron boilerplate driven by the only internal-combustion engines in the Civil Government. There was room for a dozen riflemen within, and the armor would turn small-arms fire and shell fragments. It would not turn any sort of artillery projectile, and the things were monsters to maintain, broke down at the slightest excuse, suspensions so fragile they had to be hauled to the scene of battle on ox-drawn timber skids. . and potentially decisive, at the crucial moment.

Unfortunately the Colony had them, too.

Falhasker cleared his throat, and Raj started slightly. 'Oh, yes. Well, they're working for their lives, you know,' he said mildly.

* * *

'Falhasker's called Reed out,' Suzette said, when the merchant had walked a little aside to examine the armored car.

'Oh?' Raj said, looking up at the ridge opposite instead of the woman at his side. We should have a skirmish line there, he thought: a lot of things in life were easier to do if you focused on your work. With a goal, everything was easy. A skirmish line would probably mean they'd encamp on the crest. Useful. You did whatever you had to do, to get where you were going.

'Reed called him a damned raghead spy in public.'

'Quite possibly true,' Raj said. Kaltin? Yes, I'll want a Companion for that. The 7th, they could handle it.

'Falhasker said Reed was a damned fool.'

'Certainly true.' They stood silent.

'Suzette,' Raj said after a moment. 'You know, it might be. . advisable to let Falhasker know that we were only able to scare up five generators for the fougasses. So only five on the far right flank are hooked up, the others are quaker cannon.'

Actually, each generator powered a board that would fire six of the flame weapons.

A light touch on his elbow. 'I'll tell him,' she said softly. 'He's very interested in technical things.'

Anything you had to do. Anything at all.

Chapter Fifteen

'Here?' Kaltin said, reining in his dog.

'Here,' Raj confirmed.

They were a kilometer southwest of the defense line; he turned back briefly, watching the torches flaring along it as the finishing touches were hurriedly completed; some of those were to make the fortifications look rawer and cruder than they were, although the Spirit knew it was rough enough, inexpert hands working in desperate haste. It was chill on the ridge, and the noise was feint, as if echoing from another world. The civilians were back in Sandoral, all except the volunteers in the first-aid stations dug in behind the communications road; after three days of their noise and confusion the position seemed almost empty with only the troops.

'Hmmm,' Kaltin said, staring down the opposite slope. 'You know,' he continued, pointing, 'I think that draw there runs all the way to the river.'

Raj turned and looked. It was a steep declivity in the plain to their left and east, zigzagging away and down toward the Drangosh.

'I don't think there's much use the enemy can put it to,' Raj said. 'Pretty thick in there.' Tanglewire weed, throttlebush, wild rose, all infested with poisonmouth and stingworms.

'I don't think the enemy could put it to any use at all,' Kaltin continued, striking one fist lightly into a palm. 'It's definitely pretty thick. Particularly along the edges. You could hide a whole battalion in there.'

They all turned and looked at the Companion. 'And they'd be right behind where the wogs will put their artillery,' he continued; his face was shadowed by the brim of his helmet, but the teeth showed. In Maxiluna's light, they had a slightly reddish cast. Colonist shellfire had killed his brother Evrard, on the retreat from El Djem. 'Payback time.'

Raj nodded slowly. Worth risking three hundred men, he thought coldly; the 7th Descott Rangers were understrength. Counters on a board, not young men from his homeplace. . And Kaltin wants to be here, he reminded himself, as they discussed the technicalities, signals and timing.

'All right' A nod. 'You'd better start getting them in place, then.' That would have to be done to the east, through the ravines. Gruder reined his dog around. 'And Kaltin?'

'Yes?'

'Revenge tastes better as dessert than appetizer. I need you afterwards.'

Trumpets were calling Parade, fall in down at the fortifications. Oh, Spirit, he thought. The speech.

* * *

'. . so think of what you're fighting for,' Raj continued; the words seemed to lose themselves over the sea of upturned faces. Their immediate superiors would repeat the gist of his address, adding the local flavor appropriate, but the men expected to hear the commander, if they could. They were bunched in a huge semicircle in front of the redoubt where he stood, units jammed in cheek-to-cheek to get as many as possible within hearing distance

'The Settler is coming north, and he's going to keep coming north until somebody stops him-right up to the East Residence, if he can.

'That's what he thinks,' he continued. 'And his army thinks so, too.' Raj paused; his foot was on an ammunition crate, and he leaned forward in a confidential gesture. 'I've seen his army-'

There was a murmur at that; for a moment his mind blanked, and he realized what the rumor mill had done with the story of the patrol. Well, well, there's one piece of stupidity that's worked out well. Unless they thought he was a glory hound who'd get them all killed, of course.

'— and it's a big one, a cursed big one. Pretty, too: a lot prettier than us. Smells better, at that.' Digging in dry clay for three days did not improve a soldier's turn-out; there was a sound like a stifled chuckle. 'They're so fine they think we're dirt beneath their feet; why, it's presumptuous of us to demand an invitation to the same battlefield as those well-dressed gentlemen!'

Very much the way nobly-born cavalry officers thought about common soldiers: no harm in redirecting some of the enlisted men's anger, particularly the infantry's.

'I'll tell you what they think; they're certain they can walk right over us tomorrow and be in Sandoral drinking and fucking by lunchtime. Are we going to show them different?'

The 5th started the cheers, but they spread rapidly; even the Skinners joined in, although Raj doubted they had understood much. Although most of them know enough Sponglish for drink and fuck; they probably think I'm promising them a party. He