Conqueror

held the clasp of his turban winking in the stray beams of light that came through ventilation slits in the ceiling of the pavilion high above.

The nobles and officers sitting on cushions around the carpet looked at Tewfik as well, mostly with the same expression they might have used if a man kicked a carnosauroid in the snout.

'Dog will not eat dog,' Tewfik went on. 'This has been proven many times, as any fool of a soldier would know. Rather,' he corrected himself, 'most dogs will not. Nine in ten. So we will lose all our cavalry at once, and cannot preserve a portion of our mobility by sacrificing the rest.'

Ali's face went a mottled color. It had been a very long time since anyone had dared to call him a fool to his face, even by implication. Even his brother.

'Go!' he said, pointing with a trembling hand. 'You are dismissed from the durbar. Return when you learn manners!'

Tewfik rose and bowed deeply, hand going to brow and lips and chest; the other clenched on the plain, brass-wired hilt of his scimitar.

His officers fell in about him. That brought another round of silent glances around the council carpet. It was also unheard-of for men to leave the Settler's presence without word. And Ali looked suddenly thoughtful, conscious of the gaps. The nobles remained, and the heads of the religious orders. .

In the harsh sun outside, Tewfik halted, beyond earshot of the mamluks who stood like ebony statues around the Settler's tent.

'How long?' he said, to an elderly officer with a green-dyed beard.

'There is no reserve. None. The camp is on quarter-rations, but we have fifty thousand men, as many dogs, and twenty thousand camp followers here. There was no food to be had in Sandoral, none at all. I have set men to fashioning nets, and we may gain a little fish by trolling the river; but the kaphar hold the fort you planted on the eastern bank opposite the city, and the guns there command much of the water surface. There will be hunger by sundown, starvation by tomorrow's night. Our dogs will be too weak to carry men in three days, and dying in six. By then the men will be dying as well.'

Tewfik's hand withdrew the scimitar a handspan, then rammed it home again. 'If we lose this army, our people will perish,' he said. 'And we cannot maintain discipline, even, if we cannot feed the troops.'

He looked around. 'Ibrahim, put the camp on one-quarter rations-and the camp followers are to receive nothing. Confiscate all private supplies of food. Hussein, mount ten thousand men and be ready to ride within the hour.'

* * *

'Glad to be out of the ruins,' Staenbridge said, looking back at the walls of Gurnyca.

Raj nodded. The faint stink of the piles of heads still clung to the inside of his nose, an oily thing like overripe bananas. Almost as bad had been the rats and the scavenging sauroids, rabbit-sized scuttling things all spidery limbs and teeth. One had gone past him with a desiccated arm in its mouth, still wearing the lace-cuffed sleeve of a lady's day-dress.

'That sort of thing has to stop,' he said quietly.

'I don't think the wogs will be invading us again in the near future,' the other man said with a predatory smile.

Raj shook his head. 'I mean it's got to stop. We did pretty much the same to the country around Ain el-Hilwa. Look at this!'

He gestured at the territory around them. A few weeks before it had been among the richest land in the Civil Government. Now the fields lay waste, empty except for the ragged scraps of sheep and cattle that the scavengers had left. Burnt stumps marked the remains of orchards, tall date palms and spreading citrus lying amid drifting ash. The adobe of the roofless peasant huts was already crumbling; the fired brick and stone of the burnt-out manors would last only a little longer. Weirs and sluice-gates and the windmills that watered the higher land were blackened wreckage as well. The long column of Civil Government troops rode through silence, amid a hot wind laden with sand. The sand would reclaim everything to the river's edge, in time.

'There are enough barbarians to fight, without wrecking civilization,' Raj said. 'That's why Ali has to be stopped. Barholm wants to unite the planet, even if it's only so he can rule it himself. Ali's a sicklefoot and he destroys for the love of it.'

Staenbridge glanced around instinctively, with the gesture anyone in East Residence-or in the officer corps- learned to use when a too frank opinion of the Governor was voiced. Raj nodded silently. Staenbridge had a family to protect.

Raj's lips tightened. Suzette should be in no danger even if Barholm killed her husband; her family was old and well-connected. A child, though. .

* * *

'Well, this will simplify our logistics,' Bartin Foley said happily.

The wagons stood abandoned but not empty in the middle of the road, their trek-chains lying limp like dead snakes. From the sign, the teams had been driven on ahead with the dogs of the escort, but no attempt had been made to damage the cargoes.

'Which is fortunate,' he murmured, taking off his helmet.

It was surprising; even now he had to remind himself not to scratch his head with his left. . well, left hook. He juggled the bowl-shaped steel headpiece and ran a hand through sweat-damp black curls. His scalp felt cooler for an instant, then hot again as the noon sun struck it. He heeled his dog and rode slowly down the line of wagons. Half the loads were ammunition, loads for heavy siege guns. Very fortunate that the teamsters had been struck by blind panic. The other half was wheat biscuit and bundles of dried advocati.

'Ser.'

A plume of dust was coming up the road from the south; the banner of the 5th and Messer Raj's personal flag at its head. He kneed his mount over to the side of the road, smiling to himself. Suzette wasn't along this time, and he suspected why. He knew the signs. Fatima had borne her first in Sandoral, during the winter Raj spent preparing to meet Jamal's invasion. The whole process was rather disturbing, like a good many things female, but the end product was delightful.

It was also pleasant not to be facing destruction at the hands of an army that outnumbered them seven to one.

The command group pulled up, the battalion fanning out into the fields on either side. 'Drag it all down to the river?' Gerrin said.

Foley shook his head. 'It's about half ammunition. If we push everything together and set a fuse. .'

Troopers came in by squads and pulled out bales of advocati to bait their dogs, filling their own haversacks with Colonial hard tack and strips of dried mutton. It was a little past noon and intensely hot, the land and sky turned white in the blaze of the sun.

'Ser.' A much smaller plume of dust this time, approaching from the north.

The officers corked their canteens and waited with a stolid patience that ignored the discomfort. Their dogs twitched ears and tails against the omnipresent Drangosh Valley flies. Antin M'lewis pulled up at the head of ten of his Scouts.

'Ser,' he said, with a casual wave that approximated a salute. ' 'Bout a thousand wogs comin', all cavalry, six guns. Five klicks off an' closin' fast.'

Raj nodded, wiping sweat and dust from his face with his neckerchief. 'We'll give them a reception,' he said. To a messenger: 'My compliments to Majors Bellamy and Gruder, and would they close up quickly, please.' He looked around at the terrain. 'This should do; Gerrin, set up along this crestline.'

'Guns to the left?' Staenbridge asked, pointing to the snags of a citrus orchard that ran down the gentle slope east of the road.

'By all means.'

'I presume we don't intend to stay here long.'

'No,' Raj said. 'The last thing we want is a general engagement; we'll just show them they have to stay bunched up and slow them down.'

He turned to Foley. 'Barton, how many wagon trains does this make?'

'Altogether? Including the ones wrecked when we were coming downstream?' At Raj's nod he continued: