Conqueror

hands of the late unlamented Major Dalhousie. The problem was that the Civil Government didn't have permanent field armies or a structure above the battalion level-large concentrated field forces were too tempting to ambitious generals. By now, all these men had been on campaign with him long enough to work smoothly together, and he'd disposed of the purblind idiots, one way or another.

'The rest of you will be following in double column up these roads,' he said, tracing the route northwest with two strokes of his finger. 'They're never more than a kilometer apart, so you'll be close enough for mutual support. If Colonel Staenbridge runs into a major block-force, you'll flank and go round-taking a lick at them from the rear in passing. Boot their arse, don't pee on them; we cannot afford to get tangled up in a meeting engagement.'

'My oath no,' Staenbridge said mildly, still studying the map. 'Not with Tewfik and sixteen thousand wogs after our buttocks.'

'Exactly.'

'What's the source of our intelligence on these pathways through the badlands?' Zahpata asked.

Raj had drawn those in himself. 'Personal sources, Major. You may rely on them.' Center can do more with my eyes than I can, he added silently.

'Major Gruder, I have a special tasking for your command. Otherwise, the order of march will be as follows-'

When the other officers dispersed to their units, Raj lead Kaltin Gruder out into the mouth of the notch.

'Kaltin, I want you to execute a battalion ambush on Tewfik's lead elements here,' he said.

Gruder squinted up at the eroded clay hills, comparing them with his memory of the same scene by daylight. 'Good ground,' he said. 'And we've given them a couple of bloody noses-he'll be more cautious this time.'

'Probably. Time is exactly what I want you to gain; but not at the price of your battalion. Understood?'

Gruder nodded. Raj went on: 'Tewfik knows he has two ways to win this campaign. The quick way is to catch us and smash us up before we get back to Sandoral. He's got numerical superiority, but it'd still be expensive. On the other hand, a quick victory is always preferable; the sooner you win, the less time the other side has to come up with something tricky. The slow way is to chase us back into Sandoral and starve us out. So he'll probably be willing to take a swipe at you to save time, but it won't be a reckless one.'

Raj reached a space of flat sand, coarse outwash detritus from the bluffs above. He smoothed it further with his boot and drew his sword to sketch in it.

'This is your position. More or less of a very broad V, with the open end facing south. Have your men dig rifle pits at the foot of these hills; I'll detail the City of Delrio to help before they pull out. Scatter the dirt, and it'll be difficult for them to estimate your numbers before they get close. I suggest you place them by companies like this.' He traced lines. 'With your dogs reasonably close to hand, here and along here. I'll also have the Delrio leave you their splatguns-that'll give you eight total. Put them down here-here-here-here, in pairs.'

His sword marked spots along the face of the V. Gruder frowned.

'Down on the flat?'

'They're not artillery, Kaltin-those are bullets they're shooting, not shells.'

Gruder nodded thoughtfully; a bullet was dangerous all along its trajectory if it was fired at a formation with any depth. Fired from above, it either hit the target it was aimed at or plunked harmlessly into the dirt; fired on the level, it went much farther.

'That'll give you crossfire from both infantry and splatguns, like this.' The tip of Raj's saber traced X marks across the sand.

'Now,' he went on, moving the sword to left and right on either side of the notch, 'this terrain is pretty well impassable to formed bodies of troops. Certainly to artillery. Put observers here and here. Tewfik may try to work dismounted troopers around your flanks in those areas. If he does, block them with your reserve company-it ought to be easy, in that ground.

'Over here, about twenty klicks, is the only other path suitable for artillery and large formations of troops. That's where he'll go when he decides he can't just rush you out. Put a relay of men between here and there; when his flanking force gets there, pull out.'

He raised his head and met the other man's eyes, his own flat and hard. 'I give you no discretion concerning that. When his men reach there, you bug out. Understood?'

'Si, mi heneral,' Gruder said. He grinned. 'I have learned something over the past five years.'

'I certainly hope so, because I can't spare you or your battalion,' Raj said.

'Hmmm. Artillery here?' Kaltin's saber pointed to the apex of the V.

'Yes, and start the guns out first. Also, walk all that ground tonight, and have your company commanders do it too. Ranging marks, all the bells and whistles.'

'Si.' Kaltin studied the improvised sand-table. 'I'll have them come and look at this, too. You have a good memory for terrain, mi heneral.'

Which was true, and even more so with Center's assistance. 'Waya con Ispirito del Homme,' Raj said. They gripped forearms. 'Get me an extra half-day.'

'The Spirit with you also, General. Consider it done.'

* * *

Tewfik ibn'Jamal, Amir of the Host of Peace, lowered his binoculars and cursed. Arabic was the finest of all languages for that, as for all else-as would be expected for the language God chose to dictate His word in-but the rolling, guttural obscenities did not relieve his feelings.

'And may the fleas of a thousand mangy feral dogs infest the scrotum of the kaphar general Whitehall,' he concluded.

Ahead was a broad slope five thousand meters across at its mouth, narrowing down to barely a hundred where the roadway snaked into the badlands. The hills behind and to either side were not high, but they were steep as the sides of houses, crumbly adobe scored and riven by the rare cloudbursts of the Drangosh Valley winter. The roadway was graded dirt-a secondary road. The main highway-Allah torment in the flames of Eblis the souls of the engineers who laid it out-ran parallel to the Ghor Canal, through the populated districts farther east and towards Ain el-Hilwa. That town of fools and dotards.

Taking that would mean two days' delay, more than enough time for the invaders to scuttle back to the walls of Sandoral-and take any hope of concluding this accursed war quickly with them.

Another tabor of dismounted troopers trotted up into the V, angling for the enemy's foremost position on that side-if they could dislodge the outer rim, they could unravel it up the foot of the hills. A steady braaaap. . braaaap sounded, and men fell. Figures in crimson djellabas dropped into the hot white dust of the valley floor, to lie still or twitching and moaning. He could see puffs of dust where the bullets struck, smoke pouring from the positions of the new rapid-fire weapons, a steady crackle and bang from the rifle-pits where the infidel troopers kept up a continuous hail of well-aimed fire. A pom-pom galloped up to support the soldiers.

The rapid-fire weapons from both sides of the V shifted to it. The dogs of its team went down in a tangle, and the gun's long slender barrel slewed around in futility. He watched a survivor drag a wounded comrade into its shelter. Bullets fell on it like a rain of hail to ricochet off in sparks and whining fragments.

In the gun-line directly before him crews heaved at the trails of 70mm field guns and pom-poms. More smoke billowed out as they fired, a ripple of red tongues of fire from left to right. Dirt fountained skyward along the enemy lines, and a spare team was galloped out to retrieve the pom-pom and the wounded.

'Can you not suppress those Shaitan-inspired weapons?' he asked.

His artillery chief shrugged unwillingly. 'Insh'allah,' he said. 'Amir, whatever they are, they do not recoil as artillery pieces do-so they can be deeply dug in. All we see is the muzzle and the top of an iron shield. To make good practice we must draw close-and you saw the result of that. Also they have a battery of field guns above, with a two-hundred-meter advantage in height. If I push our gun line forward, they will come under artillery fire from the heights as they try to deploy, as well as from small arms.'

'Move guns to the left, concentrate on the outer arm of the enemy defenses.'

'As the Amir commands,' the gunner said.

Tewfik turned back to the map table. Sweat dripped from the points of his beard onto the thick paper,