Conqueror

his weapon and bent far over to snatch it off the ground. BAM and his body smashed back over the cantle of his saddle; a couple of dozen infantrymens' eyes must have been caught by the movement.

Thank the Spirit for a stiff breeze to carry off the powder-smoke, otherwise he'd be firing blind into a fogbank by now.

BAM. The metal of the chamber was hot against the callus on his thumb as he pushed home another round. The kick was worse, the rifle hit you harder when the barrel began to foul. Dogs snarling, a sound like all the fear in the world, fangs as long as daggers coming closer to his face. Lancepoints very close. .

BAM. BAM. BAM.

* * *

'Back and wait for it!' the company commander barked.

Spirit damn it, where are Jorg and Ludwig? Raj thought.

Up the street, the Brigaderos paused as they saw the improvised barricade of overturned wagons and tables. They were a mixed group, dismounted lancers and dragoons. . Then an officer shouted and they came pounding down the pavement with their rifle-muskets leveled. Probably planning to reserve fire until the last minute. Not a good decision, but there weren't any in their situation.

Nor in his, now that the enemy were over the walls.

'Pick your targets, make it count,' the captain said. Rifles bristled over the barricade. 'Now!'

The volley slammed out, the noise echoing back from the shuttered buildings on either side. At less than a hundred meters, with the Brigaderos crammed into a street only wide enough for two wagons to pass, nearly every bullet hit home. Men fell, punched off their feet by the heavy bullets. The survivors paused to return fire, hiding the chaos at the head of their column with a mantle of powder-smoke. Into it fired the splatguns in the buildings on either side of the barricade, taking the whole length of the street back to the cleared circuit inside the walls in a murderous X of enfilade fire. The braaaap sounded again and again.

Damned if I like those things, Raj thought as the smoke lifted a little. The head of the roadway was covered in bodies, many still moving. The splatguns were certainly effective, but they made the whole business too mechanical for his taste.

you need not worry. Center's voice held a cold irony. if you fail here, men will hunt each other with chipped flint before the next upward cycle begins.

Did I say I wouldn't use them? he thought.

'That's that for the moment,' he went on aloud. 'They'll be back soon.'

He ducked into the commandeered house they were using as forward HQ. His spurs rang on the oak boards as he climbed the stairs to the second story.

'Still not spreadin' out, ser,' the Master Sergeant there said, pointing without lowering his binoculars.

Raj levelled his own glasses through the window. The Brigaderos were over the wall in three places, and the numbers were enough to make his belly clench. The defenders in the towers were still holding out, keeping up their fire on the enemy-held sections of the wall. Despite that more and more of the barbarians were coming over, and they'd dropped knotted ropes and ladders down to the earth ramp backing the wall. The only good news was that they didn't seem to know what to do once they got down. Most of them were milling around, returning fire at the towers. A thousand or so were pushing directly in at the houses where the 5th had taken refuge, standing and exchanging fire with the riflemen hidden in door and window and garden wall.

They were probably a mix-and-mash from dozens of units, he decided, and no senior officers had made it over the defenses yet. Plenty of aggression-you'd expect that from men who'd kept on coming through the killing zone and the moat and the wall-but nobody directing them.

That changed as he watched. A new banner went up on the wall, and he could hear the roar from the Brigaderos. A running wardog, red on black, over a silver W. Teodore Welf's blazon.

What they should be doing is enlarging their breach and taking the gate from the rear, he thought. Once they had a gate, the city was doomed. Welf's clever. On the other hand, he's also young. .

'Get my personal banner,' he snapped over his shoulder. He reached around to take the staff, then blinked as he saw it was Suzette handing it to him.

'I put the bannerman on the firing line,' she said.

The carbine slung from her shoulder clacked on the polished wood of the staff. Raj swallowed and nodded, before he braced the pole out the forward window of the parlor and shook the heavy silk free. It slithered and hissed, snapping in the wind and chiming-a flying sauroid picked out in gold scales on the scarlet silk, with a silver Starburst behind it all.

The stiff breeze swung it back and forth, then streamed it out sideways. Raj ducked down and pulled Suzette with him as bullets pocked the limestone ashlars around the window.

'I don't think the Whitehalls are all that popular around here,' he said.

'Provincials,' Suzette replied, rounding out her vowels with a crisp East Residence tone. 'What can one expect?'

'I'm a monkey from the wilds myself,' Raj answered her grin, pushing away the knowledge of what the heavy bone-smasher bullets from the enemy rifle-muskets could do to a human body. Hers, for example.

Instead he duckwalked below the line of the windows to one in the corner and looked out. The amorphous mob of the Brigade vanguard was turning into something like a formation. Welf's banner was down among them now, and he and his sworn men-probably a cross between a warband and a real staff-were pushing the remnants and individual survivors of the storming party and the 5th's greeting into line and behind what cover there was, even if only the heaped bodies scattered in clumps across the broad C-shaped arc of the cleared zone they held. As soon as that was done they started forward. . right towards his HQ.

Perils of a reputation, he thought dryly. Teodore had a personal mad on with him; also he was probably apprehensive about leaving Raj in his rear.

'Runner,' he said sharply. 'Compliments to Captain Heronimo, and shift all splatguns to the front immediately.' Suzette handed him a glass and sank down beside him, back to the wall; he drank the water thirstily.

'Young Teodore is a clever lad,' he said absently. The fire directed at the houses was thickening up, growing more regular. 'But he's making a mistake. He should leave a blocking force and peel back more of the wall, go for the gates.'

Suzette touched him lightly on the knee. 'Can we stop them?'

'Not for long,' he said. 'Not for very long at all.'

* * *

'Your Mightiness,' the courier said, as he spat the reins out of his teeth.

One hand held a pistol, the other a folded dispatch. His dog stood with trembling legs, head down and washcloth-sized tongue lolling as it panted.

'Report,' Ingreid Manfrond said. Howyrd Carstens took the paper.

'Lord of Men,' the dispatch rider said, 'High Brigadier Asmoto reports we couldn't break their square-it's advancing, slowly. More infantry coming up from the river, marching in square, about as many again but strung out in half a dozen clumps. The High Brigadier requests more troops.'

'No!' Manfrond roared. 'Tell him to stop them. They're only foot soldiers, by the Spirit. Go!'

The man blinked at him out of a dirt-splashed face and hauled his dog's head around, thumping his spurred heels into its ribs. The beast gave a long whine and shambled into a trot.

Another rider galloped up and reined in, his mount sinking down on its haunches to break. 'Lord of Men,' he said. 'From Hereditary Colonel Fleker, at the eastern gate. Sally.'

'How many?' Manfrond barked.

'Still coming out, Your Mightiness. Thousands, mounted troops only-and guns, lots of guns. They punched right through us.'

The Brigade's ruler sank back in the saddle, grunting as if belly-punched. Beside him Howyrd Carstens unlimbered his telescope and peered to the southeast. They were on a rise a kilometer north of the point where the assault had carried the defenses; the action over to the west was mostly hidden except for the rising palls of powder-smoke, but they could see the northeast corner of the city walls.

'I told you the wall was too fucking easy,' he rasped. 'Here they come, guns and