Conqueror

Kaltin Gruder, the commander of the 7th Descott Rangers, shrugged his heavy shoulders. Pale scars stood out against the olive tan of his face.

'No problemo, mi heneral,' he said. 'Thrashing the wogboys has its attractions; the looting's good and I like the smell of harem girls.'

Raj clenched his teeth for a moment. There were times when the task of restoring civilization on Bellevue was like pushing a boulder up a greased slope. Gruder was a professional; he wasn't supposed to be thinking like a MilGov barbarian noble or an enlisted man. . then he caught the grin and answered it.

I talk to Center too much, he thought. Angels have no sense of humor, it seems.

The cool irony that touched the back of his mind was wordless, but it communicated none the less.

'Colonel Dinnalsyn, you'll space the guns out between the battalions. One last thing: we've a new issue of splatguns.' There were exclamations of delight; the rapid-fire multibarreled guns were the first new weapon the Civil Government had adopted in a hundred twenty years. Raj had had them run up in the Kolobassian armories on his own authority-to Center's designs.

'Four per battalion. Remember they're infantry weapons, not guns; push them forward, and we'll give the Colonials some of the grief their repeaters and pom-poms do to us. If that's all, then, we'll get under way.'

The Companions slapped fists in a pyramid of arms. 'Hell or plunder, dog-brothers.'

Gerrin Staenbridge watched the tall figure of the General ride away. 'As I remember it, wasn't Lady Anne Clerett the one who dropped a word about Osterville in our Sovereign Mighty Lord's ear? I wonder who talked to her?'

They all looked in Suzette's direction. Staenbridge grinned. 'Behind every great man. .' he quoted.

'You know, Messers,' he went on, drawing on his gauntlets, 'I was with Messer Raj back when he took command of the 5th in the El Djem business, south of Komar. Only five years. . and that one man has changed the world-and changed himself.'

'Haven't we all,' Kaltin Gruder said, touching the long scars on his face. The Colonist shrapnel that had carved those furrows had killed his younger brother, on Raj Whitehall's first independent campaign. 'Haven't we all.'

CHAPTER FIVE

'Damned hot,' Tejan M'Brust said, using an end of his neckerchief to wipe his face.

'No shit,' Ludwig Bellamy replied.

He reined aside to the verge of the road, his dog stepping wearily over the ditch and hanging its head, panting, under the shade of a plane tree.

The troopers' dogs were panting too, a massed sound like hundreds of wheezing bellows as they rode by in column of fours. A knee-high fog of dust rose from the crushed rock surface of the road; he sneezed and hawked and spat to one side. The Descotter followed suit and offered him a canteen, water with vinegar. It cut the gummy saliva and dust nicely. Bellamy drank and watched the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers go by, the dogs at a fast ambling walk. Both units were under strength-they'd paid a substantial butcher's bill in the Western Territories and hadn't had time to recruit back to full roster yet-but they shaped well, to his critical eye. A few were even talking or joking as they rode, though most slumped a little, reins in one hand and eyes fixed on the rump of the dog ahead. The unit dressing was crisp, though.

'They're shaping better than the Brigaderos,' M'Brust said, echoing his thought. 'I don't think there's a regular cavalry unit better, my oath I don't. Not even the 5th Descott.'

Ludwig nodded, grinning tiredly. His people, the Squadron, were accounted wilder than the Brigade; they'd come down from the Base Area later, and the Southern Territories they'd conquered had been a backwater. But these battalions had been longer under Messer Raj's discipline and were first-rate material to begin with, once they had childish notions about charging with cold steel knocked out of them.

For a moment the skin between his shoulders crawled, as he remembered the Squadron host advancing into volley-fire and massed artillery. The chanting, the waving banners, the sun bright on a hundred thousand swords. . and Raj Whitehall waiting, his men a thin blue line looking as fragile and ordered as a snowflake by comparison. Waiting, then raising his sword and chopping it downward. .

He shook it off, removed his helmet and let the air dry his sweat-damp hair. To their left the land rose in rocky hills, dry and shimmering with heat in the summer sun. To the right were gentle slopes, citrus orchards, and then open grain-fields with peons bending over their sickles as they reaped. The dusty yellow of the wheat was like flashes of gold through the glossy green leaves of the fruit trees. More to the point, between road and orchards passed a rock-lined irrigation channel, and a slow current of water. It was dry and intensely hot here in the southern foothills of the Oxheads-the land was sloping down toward the sand deserts of the borderlands-and the sight and sound of the water was intoxicating. He squinted at the sun, then remembered to take out his watch and click open the cover; in the Southern Territories, even wealthy nobles hadn't carried them. There was no point; nobody needed to know the time that precisely, and they were impossible to keep repaired, anyway.

Civilization. 'Benter,' he said to the younger brother who was his aide. 'Twenty minutes. Water the dogs.'

He turned and heeled his dog westwards down the line of march; behind him the cool brassy notes of the trumpet sounded, and the signalers of each company passed it back. When it reached the rear of the column the last unit halted first-you had to do it that way, or the whole mass would collide with each other, like a drunken centipede. His lips quirked at the memory of his father trying to halt a mass of Squadron warriors on the move, back when he was a boy. That had taken the better part of an hour, even with the paid, full- time fighters of the household guard.

The three Cruiser battalions of ex-Brigaderos were full strength. . except for their stragglers. Teodore Welf rode up, red in the face from the heat and from embarrassment.

'Major Bellamy,' he said, saluting.

'Major Welf,' Ludwig replied, glancing past him.

They spoke Sponglish, although the Squadron and Brigade dialects of Namerique were fairly close: regulations, and it was best to stay in the habit, since more than half the officers in their units were seconded Civil Government natives like M'Brust.

Men and dogs had collapsed in the road. Others were leading their animals from the wayside to the ditch, walking slowly with their legs straddled. A few had trotted over despite their saddle sores and lay with their heads and shoulders buried in the life-giving coolness. Ludwig frowned and jerked his head toward them.

Teodore cursed and drew his sword, spurring to the ditch. 'Up and out of there, you slugs!' he shouted. The flat of the weapon whacked down on shoulders. 'Purify it first, damn your arse! You can't fight with the runs!'

The soldiers stood, dripping. Officers rode up, as dust-caked as their men, and the troopers formed lines. Some led the dogs downstream; others scooped their canteens full and added the blessed purifying chlorine powder; it was a rite shared by the Spirit of Man of This Earth cult they followed and the Star Church of the Civil Government, but not all commanders were equally pious. Messer Raj insisted on the full canonical treatment-water for human drinking to be purified by powder or by ten minutes at a hard rolling boil, with no exceptions.

The Spirit favored him for it, too. It wasn't uncommon for armies in the field to lose five men to dysentery for every one killed in combat. That didn't happen to troops under Raj's command.

Welf trotted back. 'Sorry, Ludwig,' he said. 'The Western Territories aren't this hot.'

Ludwig nodded. The Western Territories were damned cold and rainy, to his way of thinking-his own ancestors had plowed through them on their way to the southern side of the Midworld Sea, and he was glad of it. Of course, even the Western Territories were warm and dry compared to the Base Area, which explained why the Brigade had stopped there; they'd been the first of the Military Governments to pull up stakes and move south.

'And your fine gentlemen aren't used to sweating this hard,' he replied, smiling to take the sting out of it.

'True enough,' Welf said. He flexed the arm that had been broken by a Civil Government bullet outside Old Residence, nearly two years ago. 'I'd never have dared drive them this hard, back. . well, back then.'

Ludwig nodded. Even the troopers had been nobles of a sort back home, with a few hundred hectares and peons to do the work. Of course, that had its compensations: plenty of leisure to practice and hunt. So they were