Conqueror

'Correct, colonel.'

'Immediately?'

'As soon as possible.'

'I believe I'll be able to proceed tonight,' Cabot said cheerfully. 'If you'll excuse me, sir? I have some goodbyes.'

Raj ground out the cigarette savagely as the Governor's nephew left the room.

'Was that altogether wise?' Gerrin murmured.

'Perhaps not,' Raj ground out. 'But it's the only bloody thing I could think of.' He looked around. 'Now let's get on with the planning, shall we?'

* * *

'Glad to see you again, Ludwig,' Raj said.

Ludwig Bellamy grinned. The expression was not as boyish as it had been four months ago. His face had thinned down, not starved but drawn closer to the strong bones.

'Glad to be back, mi heneral,' he said.

They turned their dogs and rode inward from the gate where the last of the 2nd Cruisers was entering; it was pitch-black, overcast and with no moon. Dim light came from the lanterns on the gate towers above, and from shuttered lanterns in the hands of some of the officers. The heavy portals boomed shut behind them, and the locking bars shot home in their brackets with an iron clanking.

'Captain M'lewis did excellent work getting us past the enemy pickets,' Ludwig went on.

'Warn't hardly nao problem,' M'lewis said. 'Them barbs ain't stirrin' by noight.'

'We could smell them,' Ludwig said. 'Although what they've got left to crap, I don't know.'

Raj rode in silence for a few moments. An occasional sliver of light gleamed from a second-story window, as some householder cracked a shutter to check what was going by outside. The dogs' paws beat on the pavement, a scud-thump sound, in time with the creak of harness among his escort. Bellamy's men had theirs stuffed with rags to muffle noise. A mount sneezed and shook its head with a jingle of bridle irons.

'The railroad's wrecked, then?' he said at last.

'They're repairing segments with plain wood rails,' Ludwig said; pride showed in his voice. 'And hauling trains with oxen. The whole area's up in arms, peasant revolt and famine, with three or four regiments beating the bush for insurectos. We swung north, and they're trying to run wagon trains from the Padan River down to the camps here. Also we saw troops heading north, toward the frontier; the peasants gave us rumors about Guard and Stalwart raiding, and pirates along the coast.'

Raj nodded. 'Scavengers around a dying bull,' he said. 'Commodore Lopeyz has sunk three corsairs in the last month, found them hanging about just over the horizon.' One hand indicated the delta of the White River to their left. 'What with one thing and another, I think the enemy will be forced to make a move soon.'

'How's the supply situation, sir?'

'Not bad, but getting worse. We've enough to keep the men and dogs on full rations for now, although the civilians are being shorted. No famine, though.'

Apart from the odd body found dead in a doorway in the morning, but that happened in any city, under siege or not.

'What'll they do?'

'I'm not sure. . but they'll do something. Soon.'

* * *

'No!' Ingreid Manfrond said, sweeping the map aside.

His eyes were bloodshot as he glared at the other Brigade commanders.

'Lord of Men-' Teodore Welf began.

'Shut up, you puppy!' Ingreid roared. 'You lost me twenty thousand men with your last bright idea.'

Teodore stepped back from the table, clicked heels-his armor clanked too-and gave a stiff bow before leaving. Ingreid stared after him; it was a breach of protocol to leave the General's presence before permission was granted. Most of the other officers looked elaborately elsewhere; a few looked calculating, wondering if the triumvirate was breaking up. The weak spring sunlight came through the tentflap with a gust of air, ruffling the maps on the table. The sour smell of the camp was worse, men with runny guts and dogs too.

'Your Mightiness,' Howyrd Carstens said, 'he was right this time. We've got to deal with this new army.' His thick calloused thumb swept over to the Crown, then up the peninsula from Lion City.

'They're over the Waladavir,' he said. 'Our arse is hanging in the breeze like a bumboy's, and if he heads southwest and cuts us off from the Padan valley we're fucked-how many men are dismounted already because we can't bait their dogs?'

'You think I should send Welf off, with his mother's milk still wet on his lips?' Ingreid said. 'Give him fifteen regiments?'

His voice was no longer a roar, but still hoarse with anger. He snapped his fingers, and a servant came forward with wine. It was too early in the day. . but he needed it. The raw chill of this damned winter had gotten into his bones.

I'm not sixty yet, he thought. I can out-ride and out-fight any of them. But the price kept going up every year.

Carstens shook his head. 'Whoever you want,' he said. 'Send me, or go yourself. Take twenty thousand men, the ones with the best dogs and the fewest troopers down sick. That'll still leave us with seventy thousand fit for service here, more than enough to blockade the city. Stamp on this little Civvie column-there can't be more than four regiments' worth. Then come back here.'

Ingreid shook his head. 'I'm not splitting our forces,' he said. 'I'm through underestimating Whitehall, Spirit of Man of This Earth curse him. What we'll do is-'

He began giving his orders, pointing with a stubby finger now and then.

Carstens hawked and spat on the ground when he was finished. 'Might work,' he said. 'Anyway, you're the General.'

Ingreid was conscious of their eyes on him. A proper General led the warriors of the Brigade to victory. So far he'd lost two-score regiments in battle, and half as many again to sickness. It wasn't a distinguished record. . and his grip on the Seat was still new and uncertain.

'I am the General,' he said. 'And I'll have Whitehall's skull for a drinking cup before the first wheat's reaped this year.'

CHAPTER TWELVE

'He's up to something,' Raj said. The setting sun glittered red on the lancepoints of a regiment of Brigaderos cuirassiers moving at the edge of sight. 'Something fairly substantial.'

Once more they were gathered on one of the north gate towers; Suzette looking a little pale from the lingering aftermath of influenza and some woman's problem she wouldn't tell him about, curled up under a mound of furs.

'Movin' troops,' M'lewis added, nodding. Parties of his Scouts were out every night, collecting information and the ear-bounty. 'Looks loik back 'n forth, though.'

Gerrin and Ludwig Bellamy bent over the map table. 'Well,' the older man said thoughtfully, 'Ingreid's done bloody silly things before. Hmmm. . moved about ten thousand men from the south bank of the river to the north, and none of them have been moved back.'

'Ingreid's trying hard to be clever,' Raj said absently, tapping his jaw with a thumb. 'He's going to do something-no way of hiding that-but he doesn't want us to know where.'

'All-out assault?' Ludwig Bellamy said.

'Possibly. That would cost him, but we can't be strong enough all along scores of kilometers of wall. With his numbers, he could feint quite heavily and then hit us with the rest of it somewhere else.'

A crackle of tension went through the officers, like dogs sniffing the spring air and bristling. Raj looked out again at the enemy camps; blocks of men and banners were moving, tiny with the distance.