Conqueror

'The halall,' he said, sputtering laughter. The ritual throat-cutting that made meat clean for Muslims to eat. 'Is it not fitting, for these beasts?'

Raj noted a mullah's lips tightening at the blasphemy. Nobody spoke.

The good humor on Ali's face turned gelid as he gripped Heldeyz's face in his hand and turned it to the heaps of severed heads.

'Do you see, infidel?' he screamed. 'Do you see?'

A portly man in a green turban shoved his way through the crowd. A string of prisoners followed him, mostly girls in their early teens, with a few younger boys. He prostrated himself.

'Oh guardian of the sacred ka'ba, you wished-' he began in a falsetto voice.

Ali released the Civil Government courier. 'Yes, yes,' he said impatiently. His hand flicked to a girl and a boy. 'Those two, and don't bother me again before the evening meal.' He jerked his head at his guards. 'Come. Bring the pig-eating kaphar.'

Wagons took up most of the roadway, oxen lowing under the load. Inside, in the cleared space within the walls that Civil Government law commanded, were huge heaps of spoils; officers were directing the troopers as they piled it in neatly classified heaps. Cloth, metalware, tools, coin, precious vessels from the Star churches and temples. . Beyond, only a few buildings still stood. As Heldeyz watched, a merchant's townhouse collapsed inward about the burning rafters, the thick adobe walls crumbling like mud. A ground-shaking thump, and the great dome of the Star temple followed; Raj recognized the sound of blasting charges.

'See, unbeliever,' Ali went on. 'The pig and son of pigs Barholm-it was not enough that he cheated me of the blood-price of my father's death, he expected me-me-Ali ibn'Jamal, to sit among the women and do nothing while he conquered all the world. Conquered all the world, then turned on me! Turned on the Faithful! No, kaphar, Ali ibn'Jamal, Guardian of Sinar, Settler of the House of Islam, is not such a fool as that.

'Tell Barholm I am coming for him.' Ali's mouth was jerking, and his voice rose to a shrill scream. 'Tell him I have something for him!'

Colonial soldiers were setting a sharpened stake in the ground. They dragged out the Arch-Sysup Hierarch of the Diocese of Gurnyca. He was a portly man, flabby in middle age, stripped to his silk underdrawers. The black giants holding his arms scarcely lost a step when he collapsed at the sight of the waiting impaling stake. .

* * *

Silence fell around the table. At last, General Klosterman cleared his throat.

'Well, I don't think there's much doubt as to Ali's intentions,' he said.

Barholm nodded abstractedly. 'General Klosterman, how long would it take to mobilize all available field forces and meet the Colonists in strength?'

Klosterman paled. Master of Soldiers was an administrative post, but it did give the elderly officeholder a good grasp of the state of the Civil Government's defenses.

'Lord, Ali has fifty thousand of his first-line troops with him. If we summoned all available cavalry, we couldn't field half that in time to meet him south of Sandoral, or even south of the Oxhead Mountains. . and forgive me, Sovereign Mighty Lord, but the troops we could summon would not be in good heart.'

observe, said Center.

* * *

This time Center's projections started with a map. Raj recognized it, a terrain rendering of the Civil Government's eastern provinces. The Oxhead Mountains ran east-west, then hooked up northward; north of it was the sparsely settled central plateau, and to the south and east was the upper valley of the Drangosh and its tributary. That was densely settled in part, where irrigation was possible; elsewhere arid grazing country, with scattered villages around springs in the foothills.

Colored blocks moved, arrows showing their lines of advance. He nodded to himself; so and so many days to muster, supplies, roadways, the few railroad lines. Twenty thousand men maximum, perhaps thirty thousand if you counted the ordinary infantry garrisons called up from their land grants. And. .

Men in blue and maroon uniforms fled, beating at their dogs with the flats of their sabers or with riding whips. A ragged square stood on a hill, with the Star banner at its center. Black puffballs of smoke burst over the tattered ranks, shellbursts, and Colonial field guns hammered giant shotgun blasts of canister in at point-blank range. Men splashed away from the shot in wedges. A line of mounted dragoons drew their scimitars in unison, flashing in the bright southern sun. Five battalions, Raj estimated with an expert eye. Twenty-five hundred men. Trumpets shrilled, and the scimitars rested on the riders' shoulders. Walk-march. Trot. The blades came down. Gallop. Charge. A single long volley blew gaps in their line, and they were over the thin Civil Government square. The Star banner went down. .

* * *

'Lord,' Klosterman went on, 'with humility, my advice is that we throw as many men into Sandoral and the eastern cities as we can. Ali cannot take them quickly.'

Tzetzas spoke for the first time. 'But he could bypass them,' he said.

Raj nodded silently, conscious of eyes glancing at him sidelong.

observe, said Center.

* * *

From horizon to horizon, the land burned; ripe wheat flared like tinder under the summer sun, sending clouds of red-shot black into the sky. Denser columns marked the sites of villages and manor-houses. In an orchard, peasants worked under Colonial guns, ringbarking the trees and piling burning bundles of straw against their roots.

A flicker, and he was outside a city: Melaga, from the look of the olive-covered hills around it. Raw red earth marked the siegeworks about it, a circumvallation with a high wall topped by a palisade. Zigzag works wormed inward from there, each ending in a redoubt protected by earth-filled wicker baskets. Swarms of men hauled cannon forward and dug at the earth. Guns boomed from the city walls, and men died in the siegeworks, but more took their places. Howitzers lobbed their shells into the sky, the fuses drawing trails of smoke and fire until they burst within the walls. .

* * *

'No, that would be far too uncertain,' Tzetzas went on. 'Instead, well, the treasury is unusually full. We could offer Ali twice, three times the previous tribute.'

Barholm snorted. 'After we shorted him on the last agreement? I can just see him quietly going back to Al Kebir, demobilizing his army and waiting for the gold to arrive.'

'Sovereign Mighty Lord,' Heldeyz said, 'he's not here for gold. He's here for blood. He's. . he's not going to be bought off. You have to see him-'

ali would agree to the increased tribute, but remain on civil government soil, probability 97 %, ±2. observe, said Center.

* * *

'Filth!' Ali screamed. He strode through the pavilions, kicking over platters filled with whole roast lambs, rice pillaus, fruits, and ices. 'You call this a feast of welcome! Filth!'

The syndics of the town shrank backward, looking around with the instinctive gesture of men in a trap with no exit.

'That pig Barholm, that two-dinar Descotter hill chief who calls himself a conqueror, it isn't enough he makes me wait for my tribute, but he insults me too.'

Ali stopped, smiled, relaxed. The expression was far more frightening than the bloodthirsty madness of a minute before.

'Well then, we'll have to show the kaphar what it means to insult the Commander of the Faithful, won't we?' he went on.

He eyed the assembled syndics with much the same expression that a farmwife would have, standing in the yard and fingering her knife as she selected a stewing pullet.

observe:

A younger Ali knelt behind a girl. Gardens bloomed around them, thick with flowers and softly murmurous with bees; the stars shone above, the only light on the rippling water of the fountain save for a few discreet