Conqueror

chorus:

* * *

'We're marchin' on relief over burnin' desert sands

Six hundred fightin' Descotters, t' Colonel, an' t'band

Ho! Git awa', ye bullock-man-ye've heard t'bugle blowed

The Fightin' Fifth is comin', down the Drangosh Road-'

'We're luckier than they are,' Suzette said, lifting her head and looking off into the gathering night. 'We're together, at least. . Their women have to sit and wonder. And every time someone rides up to the farmhouse door it might be a messenger with a bundled rifle and saber that's all they'll see of a lost husband, or a son.'

'It's not much of a married life I've given you,' Raj said.

Suzette smiled at him. 'I wouldn't exchange it for any other,' she replied. 'I don't think you're one of those who're allowed to have a normal life, anyway.'

'Not yet, at least,' Raj said. Never, went unspoken between them.

It wasn't as if Barholm would give Raj an honored retirement, even, as a reward for victory.

i have found it unwise to use the term never, Center said.

Suzette's fingers strummed the gittar again. Raj pulled the greatcoat around his shoulders and let his head fall back. Just a moment, he thought. A moment's rest.

'Git yer arses out offen t'floor,' the sergeant barked. 'We'll be there anytimes.'

Corporal Robbi M'Telgez blinked awake.

'Jist when I waz gittin' t'hang a sleepin' on these things,' he said mournfully, picking straw out of his hair and yawning in the hot close darkness of the boxcar, thick with the smell of sweat.

The train was slowing, swaying more from side to side. All around was the flat irrigated plain of the Upper Drangosh. M'Telgez put his eye to the slats in the boxcar; it was good-looking country, dry but fit to sprout shoelaces where there was water. The wheat and barley were in, the fields being plowed for a summer crop of corn or millet; cotton and sugarcane and indigo were all well up, and there were orchards in plenty as well, mostly dates and citrus.

Good land fer the gentry, hell on farmers, he thought idly. Rich land meant poor men to work it; they'd all be peons around here. Hotter n' blazes, too.

They passed through a belt of country places, retreats for rich cityfolk built in an open, airy style that looked indecent somehow compared with the foursquare solidity of the houses he was accustomed to-but then, Descott was a long way north of this, and highland country too. He didn't suppose it got cold here even in winter. Then there were shanties on both sides of the rail line, crude booths of straw and reeds. He swore softly when he saw who was in them, besides refugee peasants from the countryside. Among them were men in Civil Government uniforms, only infantry, but still. . they looked hungry.

'Ain't they supposed to pay 'em when they calls 'em in from t'farms?' he said.

The troop sergeant laughed sourly. 'Wuz ye born yesstiday, M'Telgez?'

Trooper Smeet put his eye to a crack. 'Good's a place t' croak as any,' he said mournfully. 'We'll a' git kilt, ye know. I hadda dream-'

The rest of the platoon threw bits of hardtack and cold bacon-rind and anything else handy.

'Ye keep sayin' thayt long 'nuff, it'll happen, yer bastid,' M'Telgez said disgustedly.

Smeet grinned; he was missing his two front teeth, and his face was a brown wrinkled map of twenty years' service. 'Ye knows a way 't live ferever, loik?'

Just inside the city walls the train screeched to a stop; he braced himself against the planking and shaded his eyes as the doors were thrown open.

'Come on,' the sergeant yelled again.

The boxcars emptied rapidly, the men stretching, the dogs barking with hysterical relief. It was just as hot outside, with the dry baking heat that he remembered from the first campaign down here five years ago, but at least you could breathe in the open. M'Telgez unsnapped the lead-chain of his mount and spent a moment soothing her.

'Sooo, quiet now, Pochita, ye bitch,' he said. A tongue the size of a washcloth and rough as industrial abrasive lapped at his face. 'Quiet-down, girl.'

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Messer Raj and the company commander and the captain in charge of the Scouts-M'lewis and his Forty Thieves were along, best to double-strap your pouch-talking earnestly. He worked faster, sliding his rifle into the scabbard at the right front of his saddle, tightening the girth and breast- straps, checking the neck-bandolier and the fastening on the saber hanging from the other side. He slid the blade free a handspan and tested the edge, then checked the loads on the revolver he had tucked into one boot-top.

Messer Raj would have a job of work for them to do, and no mistake. He'd been in the 5th Descott for five years now, and that was one thing you could rely on.

* * *

'Nice to be loved,' Bartin Foley said.

'Not when they get in the way,' Raj replied.

They rode at the head of the column, slowly. Cheering civilians packed the sidewalks, hysteria in their voices. Rose petals and rice showered down on the troops, as if they were a party of groomsmen bringing a bride home from her father's house. Individuals darted out to offer bottles of wine to the soldiers or, even more dangerous, food to the dogs. What do they think's going to happen when they stick a roast in a war-dog's face? Raj thought, turning in the saddle to see one of the crowd reeling back and clutching a gashed-open forearm. The crowd-stink was as palpable as the blurring waves of heat that radiated back from the whitewashed adobe of the buildings and soaked the uniform coat beneath his armpits.

The noise was spooking all the dogs, a solid roar between the whitewashed, blank-walled, flat-roofed houses.

'Trumpeter!' Raj snarled. 'Sound Draw.'

The sharp notes cut through the white-noise background of the crowd, as they were designed to cut through the clamor of battle. Two hundred hands slapped down on the saber hilts slung to the offside of their saddles; two hundred blades came free in a single slithering rasp, then flashed as they were brought back to rest over the shoulder. The dogs knew the calls as well as the men, and they snarled in unison, a chilling bass rumble. Long wet fangs glistened, each backed by half a ton of carnivore. War-dogs were bred for aggressiveness and trained to kill, and the bristling snake-headed posture of these indicated they were perfectly ready to do just that.

The crowd screamed and surged away; there would be deaths in the trampling. . but not nearly as many as there would be if Ali sacked the city, which was what was going to happen if they kept getting in his way. Overhead, doors slammed shut as the wrought-iron balconies emptied. Raj heeled Horace into a trot; the bugler signaled again, and the whole column rocked into motion behind him. The iron wheels of the splatgun battery clattered behind them.

'Well, that'll make us less popular, mi heneral,' Bartin said.

'Popularity be damned,' Raj replied, feeling some of the tension drain out of his shoulders.

They broke into the Plaza Real, the square that formed the center of all Civil Government cities. The usual buildings fronted it: the Star Temple with its gilded dome, the arcaded Government House, the townhouses of wealthy landowners and merchants. . and the cavalry barracks, conveniently to hand in case of trouble. Highly unusual were the tents and shanties that had gone up all over the square, crowding right up to the ornamental fountain and gardens in its center; the sour smoke of their cooking fires lingered, and the stink of an overloaded sewer system.

'Refugees,' Raj said grimly. 'Must be fifty or sixty thousand of them inside the walls.'

'Sandoral has fifty thousand people in normal times,' Suzette said. 'With that many more. .'

Raj nodded. 'We'll definitely have to do something about that.'

They drew rein before the barracks, a series of two-story buildings connected by walls and iron-grille gates, enclosing a central parade ground. They smelled even worse than the rest of the city, not just the inevitable aroma of dogshit that was inescapable where cavalry were stationed, but the fetid stink of overcrowding and neglect. They looked neglected-gates awry, stucco flaking in damp patches from the walls. But with the