Conqueror

'Sir.'

Kaltin Gruder's voice. Raj rolled out of his blankets; Suzette was already reaching for her carbine. He fastened his weapons belt. His boots were already on; if the men had to sleep in them, so could he.

'Message from M'lewis just got in.'

A Scout was behind the battalion commander. 'Ser. Noise in t'wog town. I weren't more 'n ten meters off, an' heard it plain. North gates.'

The ones nearest Colonel Osterville's camp. Raj took the message and read it. 'Boots and saddles, please. Quietly. We'll deploy as arranged.'

'Line of march?'

'Scout troop has pickets along it. They'll signal with shuttered lanterns.'

Raj could hear the noise spreading; not very loud, no shouting, but a long-drawn out clatter as men rousted out of uneasy sleep and saw to their equipment. The Companions arrived, and the other battalion commanders. Shapes in the night, dimly lit by the embers of the fire, a feeling of controlled anxiety. He grinned into the dark. A night march. Difficult. An invitation to disaster, with any but very experienced troops. The handbooks were full of bungled night attacks, men firing on their comrades, whole battalions wandering off lost, irretrievable disaster.

'Barton,' he said. 'What's that toast again?'

' 'He fears his fate too much, and his deserts are small, who will not put it to the touch-to win or lose it all.' '

'Exactly. Messers, to your units. Waymanos!'

An orderly brought up Horace; he put a foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle. The headquarters party fell in around him, bannermen and buglers and gallopers. Men blinked and dogs yawned cavernously; the wet clomp-clomp sound of jaws snapping closed rippled through the dark streets. Iron-shod wheels rattled on dirt as the 75s and splatguns moved. He cantered down the east-west notional laneway of the camp, the wia erente, keeping to the side. Men and dogs were moving the same way, the lead element of the 5th, followed by the 1st and 2nd Cruisers. The other gates were all open as well, flanked by lantern-bearing pathfinders. Thousands of heavy paws thumped the earth, an endless rumbling sound.

Flat terrain, mostly. Nothing between him and Osterville's camp but four kilometers of fields, with the occasional orchard or shallow ditch. The objective was on the same side of the Ghor Canal, thank the Spirit, even Osterville wasn't stupid enough to put an obstacle that needed bridging between him and the only supports available. Keep in column, he decided. In column they could move down the laneways, at a fast walk. Once deployed into line their speed would drop by four-fifths.

The night was still quiet, almost chilly in the last moments of predawn; overhead the arch of stars was a frosted road leading to infinity. The command group rode silently, no need for talk unless something went very wrong. The palms that lined the roadway were black silhouettes against the sky. He looked over his shoulder to the west and caught the faintest rim of peach-pink there.

He reined Horace sideways into the fields, a hunching scramble through the ditch, then stood in the stirrups to look. Nothing but a few watchfires from Osterville's camp. The north gates of the city were hidden by the western wall. Flags rippled behind him, his personal banner and the Star. Over his shoulder he could see the other gates of the camp, now; the spiked-log barricades were pulled aside, and a steady stream of men and dogs and guns was pouring out. Not a single jam-up, not a voice raised. . damn, but these are good troops.

Three columns, each about half a kilometer apart, each a little over two thousand strong. And-

' 'The gates flew back, and the din of onset sounded,' ' Bartin murmured.

'More Old Namerique?' Raj said.

'From the Fall Codexes,' the young man replied.

When the Fall began, books had died with the machines that recorded them-the Church called it the Great Simplification. In the first generation the survivors wrote down as much as they could, most of it in Old Namerique, the official language of the Federation. Bits and pieces survived, even a thousand years later.

The gates of Ain el-Hilwa had certainly flown back with a vengeance.

'One hell of a din, too,' Raj said; even at more than three kilometers, it was louder than the noise his own men were making.

Then light winked from the parapet of the low-set city wall, and a deep whirring sound crossed the sky. A dull booming echoed, and under it the sharper sound of the exploding shells. The winking lights, scores of meters apart, rippled from east to west across the north face of the city. Heavy rifles, aimed at Osterville's camp. The shells seemed to be contact-fused rather than airburst, but it would still be an unpleasant way to wake up, and there were a lot of those guns.

The white dust of the road stretched out ahead of him. The dawn was just touching the western horizon behind him, but there was a sudden flare of white light stabbing north toward Osterville's position, arc-searchlights from the city wall. My, all the modern refinements, Raj thought. Intended to light up the Civil Government position for the attackers and blind any defenders looking toward the city.

Dun and off-white, men were running up the long gentle slope toward the smaller Civil Government camp. On foot, mostly, with gun teams among them, pulling the light five-shot pom-poms the Colonials favored for close support. They were shouting, too, high wailing shrieks. Raj unclipped his binoculars and brought them to his eyes, body adapting to the swing of his dog's trot with the unconscious skill of a lifetime.

Only half a kilometer from the walls. And they didn't dig in at all. Osterville had been very careless.

A stutter of gunfire broke out from Osterville's camp, building rapidly. Raj could imagine the chaos, men rushing half-dressed from their blanket rolls, grabbing up the rifles stacked by their campfires. Red light winked from the hilltop, muzzle flashes like fireflies in the dark; the sun was just edging over the horizon.

The Colonials were making some effort to deploy, spreading out in an irregular mass-more a thick skirmish order than a real firing line. The pom-poms wheeled about and opened up, firing uphill. The CRACK- CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK of the clip-loaded weapons sounded through the dawn, and their little one-kilo shells burst upslope in petals of fire. The return fire was building fast, panicked, with no ordered crash of volleys. Smoke began to shroud the hilltop, from the defensive fire and the incoming Colonial shells, and-

'Bugging out already,' he said. In the long-shadowed light of dawn he could see a trickle of mounted men heading north from Osterville's encampment. 'Ludwig, how many of the Colonials would you say?'

'Seven or eight thousand at least, mi heneral.'

Raj nodded thoughtfully. The whole garrison of Ain el-Hilwa, or near enough. Attacking Osterville's position was actually not a bad idea-he would have tried it, in their position-but sending everyone haring out of the gates like this? No more sense than a bull carnosauroid in breeding season, he decided.

'Captain Foley, the signal.'

Barton swung down out of the saddle and stuck the launching-stick of a small rocket in the dirt.

Fisssssth. The little rocket soared into the paling sky and burst with an undramatic pop. Red and blue sparks shot out in a perfect round puffball. Behind Raj trumpets sang in harsh antiphonal chorus. The long column dissolved as units spurred out left and right, like a huge fan snapping open. It was lighter now, light enough to tell a dark thread from a white, the traditional dividing line between night and day. Light enough for the men to move across the fields without much trouble, at least.

The other columns were following suit. Ten minutes, and there was a continuous two-deep line moving northeastwards with his banner at the center. Not parade-ground neat-the line twisted and curled a little around obstacles, with fifty meters or so of gap between each battalion. The guns pulled through, heading east and a little south, setting up by groups of batteries on prechosen hillocks. The Colonials were fully occupied, their front ranks within two hundred meters of Osterville's position and moving in fast. Close enough to use their carbines, and a huge snapping crackle went up from their front ranks; not only from their front ranks, either-they were losing men to friendly fire, if he was any judge.

'Sound Prepare for Dismounted Action,' he said.

The bugles sang again, taken up and relayed down the line. Men pulled the rifles from the scabbards before their right knees, resting the butts on their thighs.

'Are they bloody blind?' Staenbridge asked in amazement, looking at the Colonials.

'No, just very preoccupied, and extremely badly led,' Raj said.