Conqueror

'Twenty-seven; four hundred twenty-two wagons of all sizes. Mostly these standard models,' he concluded, waving a hand at the ones in the road.

'That means they shouldn't have recovered more than twenty or thirty tons of supplies altogether,' he said. Softly: 'Most excellent.'

The messengers went out; on either side the 5th's troopers fanned out, sending their dogs back and unlimbering their entrenching tools for hasty heaped-earth sangars to their front. A few minutes later Ludwig Bellamy and Kaltin Gruder trotted up the roadway with their banners fluttering in the hot wind, the dust clouds of their commands behind them.

'Mi heneral,' Bellamy said, his beard-stubble golden against the brown tan of his face. 'Dispatches from Colonel Menyez.'

Raj took them and broke the seal; the wax was as soft as butter. 'Ah. The Colonials are breaking camp outside Sandoral. I think friend Ali has just realized how badly his testicles are caught in the mangler.'

The commanders grinned like a group of carnosauroids contemplating a dying sheep.

'This is their vanguard, then,' Raj said, looking north. 'All right. We'll punch them back, then move southward-they'll be substantially slower, but I don't want to take any chances with Tewfik. Messenger: to Colonel Menyez. I want enough barges to take us off held in constant readiness. We can always duck back across the river if they lunge.'

'We'll have to keep a very close eye on them,' Staenbridge said thoughtfully.

Raj tapped his chin with one thumb. 'Constant patrols,' he agreed. 'I don't think they'll want to wear down their dogs with skirmishing, hungry as they are.'

The carnivore grins widened. Gruder began to laugh; after a moment, the others joined in.

Center drew a graph across Raj's vision, of consumption balanced against maximum possible reserves. At the back of his consciousness there was a trace of feeling, a satisfaction colder and more complete than a human mind could feel.

* * *

'Hold your fire!' Raj snapped.

He blinked into the setting sun; four days in the saddle had left his eyes red-rimmed and sore, the Drangosh Valley was hell for dust. He wiped his sleeve across his face and brought up his binoculars. Around him on the hillock the platoon of the 5th lowered their rifles, and the crew of the splatgun looked up from their weapon. Horace stood under the shade of the carob tree and panted, washcloth-sized tongue hanging down, and drooping ears almost covering his eyes.

'Easy target, ser,' the gunner said, hopefully.

Raj raised his binoculars. The main Colonial army was several kilometers away; this encampment was notably more ragged than the last. Hardly an encampment at all, with no baggage train; the animals had all been eaten, to judge from the cracked bones left in their campfires. Most of their cavalry were walking and leading their dogs behind them. Some were carrying the saddles as well.

It was the patrol riding towards his men on the hilltop that interested him now. There were two banners at its head, hanging limp in the hot still air. He waited patiently; a gust of breeze flapped them out. One was pure white; the other, black with a Seal of Solomon in red.

'Tewfik,' Raj whispered. The sweat down his spine turned clammy.

'Ensign,' he said. 'We're staying for a moment; they're coming under a truce flag. Get something white and wave it on a stick. Water the dogs, but keep a careful look-out. And have someone set out a blanket, with a piece of hard-tack and some salt.'

They were out of extreme field gun range of the Colonial camp, but you never knew.

'Sir,' the Ensign said, relaying the orders.

A detail trotted downslope to the well in the courtyard of a burned-out steading. A trooper unstrapped the rolled blanket from behind his saddle, spread it on the scraggly twistgrass beneath the carob tree, and set out a canteen, two cups and a piece of Colonial flat biscuit with a small twist of gray salt on it.

The men were looking at Raj curiously. 'What does it mean, sir?' the young officer asked.

'I think,' Raj said slowly, 'it means the war is over. Escort our guest to me.'

* * *

Raj saw Tewfik's eye widen in surprise as he recognized the Civil Government commander. The Colonial was much as Raj remembered him from the parley just before the first battle of Sandoral five years ago, perhaps a little grayer. Looking a little gaunt from five days on quarter-rations, but still stocky and strong. Like a scarred bull in a pasture, confronting a younger rival and twitching his horns. Raj knew that Tewfik would be seeing far greater changes in him.

'Salaam aleikoum,' the Arab said, bowing slightly.

'Aleikoum es-salaam,' Raj replied in accentless Arabic. Center had given him that, and practice made it come smoothly. 'And upon you, peace, Tewfik ibn'Jamal.'

'Shall it be peace, then?'

'If the Spirit wills. Come, let us talk.'

Raj gestured, and the troopers retreated down the slope, out of immediate earshot and with their backs to the supreme commanders. The two men walked into the shade of the carob. Tewfik's eye caught the bread and salt; also the fact that they hadn't yet been offered to him. There was wary respect on his face as he turned to face his enemy and let the saddlebags he carried over one shoulder drop to the ground.

Carefully, carefully, Raj told himself. Take no chances with this man.

indeed, Center said. A brief vision flashed before Raj's eyes: the same meeting, but with the relative positions reversed. if my physical centrum had been located in al kebir, rather than east residence. .

I'd be the one trying to salvage something from the wreck, Raj acknowledged.

'I will not waste words,' Tewfik said abruptly, into the growing silence. 'You have won this campaign. Without even fighting a major battle. My compliments, young kaphar; it is a feat for the manuals and the historians to chew over.'

'More than the campaign,' Raj said quietly. 'The war. And I would betray my ruler and my State, if I did not use this advantage to ensure the Colony is no longer a threat to the Civil Government. We have fought you every generation for nearly a thousand years; it's irrelevant who was at fault in any given war. It must cease.'

Tewfik nodded, his face still cat-calm. 'Yet it is said that Heneralissimo Whitehall fights also for the cause of civilization on Bellevue,' he said. 'We of the House of Islam brought man to this world. We built its first cities. We preserved much of what learning survived the Fall, and we are the other half of civilized life on this world. Would you see our cities burn and the books with them, while the howling peoples camp in the ruins?'

Raj inclined his head. 'You admit that the Colony is ruined if your army is destroyed?'

'That is as God wills; but too many of our high nobles are with us, our best commanders and the leadership needed to maintain the unity of our state. And our best troops; we left nothing but garrison forces on the frontiers. If they do not return, there will be civil war-fourscore separate civil wars; instead of one Settler, we will have a hundred malik al'taifas, petty kings ruling factions. They will not be able to maintain the irrigation canals, nor guard the frontiers against the Skinners and the Zanj.'

'Or us,' Raj pointed out.

Tewfik shook his head. 'Conquering a hundred splinter realms would be impossible. You would have to garrison them heavily and there would be constant revolt; our people will not tolerate direct rule by unbelievers, not without such punishment as would destroy what you tried to govern.'

'What do you propose?'

The Arab nobleman took a deep breath. 'I cannot rule,' he said, touching his eye. 'And Ali. . he is my brother, but he is a disaster for all Muslims. One way or another, sooner or later, he would have ruined the Colony. Already he has killed many of our best men-and anyone else who was there at the wrong time.

'What I propose is this: half our army to be disarmed and sent to East Residence. I suggest that you use them to garrison the Southern and Western Territories; there they will be hostages against the Colony's good behavior. I will take the other half back with me to Al Kebir, and there rule as Vice-Governor in Barholm Clerett's name. My daughter Chaba will go to East Residence and wed Governor Barholm.'