Conqueror

fight. Where'd you get this sauroid-vomit? I piss it out on your bitch-mother's grave.'

This time he swallowed most of it, forcing himself not to gag. To his surprise, Suzette took the skin next and managed a healthy swallow. Some of the Skinners frowned at her presumption, and one or two shook medicine bags at her, but most of them laughed uproariously, Juluk included. A woman with baraka, spirit-power, was an even bigger joke than a non-Skinner with real balls. His necklace of finger-long sauroid fangs clattered against his bandoliers.

'Eh, even your woman got balls, sojer-man! Big stone-house chief, he tell me you make war on the long-hairs of the west. Good fighting where you make war.'

'Where's your friend Pha-air?' There had been two chiefs with this band on the last campaign.

'Oh, I kill him a season ago,' the Skinner chief said with a shrug. 'He give me this-good man with knife.' A grimy thumb traced a new scar, still shiny, across the chief's belly.

Raj raised his voice: 'Are you women ready to go fight, or are you only good for drinking and eating sauroids that die of disease?'

More hoots and trills of laughter; the Skinners looked and smelled like trolls but their voices had the high pitch of excited schoolgirls.

Juluk fired the huge rifle over his shoulder without bothering to move it. The brass-cored 15mm slug cracked by within a meter of Raj's head, but he was as safe as if the weapon had been in East Residence. The Skinner chief would slit his own throat in shame if he ever shot a man without intending to.

Men and dogs boiled out of the camp, and out of thickets roundabout. It was chaos, an instant change from sleepy lethargy to whooping, screeching tumult-but in less than five minutes the liquor and ammunition had been thrown on spare dogs, and the warriors were mounted and ready to move.

Center had taught him Paytoiz, but Raj had always been able to get on with the Skinner mercenaries.

'Are they really worth the trouble?' Suzette asked, as her escort fell in around her for the short journey back to the base camp.

'My sweet, you've only seen them twice, and in camp,' Raj said. 'As soldiers, they're a disaster-they devastate any place you station them, and you might as well try to discipline sauroids, and when they're drunk, which is usually. . But if you could see them fight-' He shook his head. 'Yes, they're worth the trouble.'

* * *

'Why's the road so far inland?' Bartin Foley asked.

'Pirates,' Gerrin Staenbridge replied. 'More profit in longshore raiding than attacking ships, if you've got a target that doesn't have signal heliographs, a fleet of steam rams and quick-reaction forces the way the Civil Government does.'

Company A of the 5th was lead unit on the ride north, next to the battalion banner and the HQ squad. They were staying in column, for speed's sake, with outriders flung out ahead and to either side; they could see them dodging into small woods and jumping fences occasionally, off at the edge of sight.

'Squadrone pirates?' Bartin went on.

'Probably not the last generation, but there are plenty of freelancers operating out of islands like Blanchfer and Sabatin, just south of here. . Ah, that should be our Hereditary Colonel Makman's place, coming up.'

The maps said this was a main military highway; in the Civil Government, even in Descott, they'd have called it a track and left it at that. Mostly it was beaten earth, possibly it had been graded with an ox-drawn scraper within the last couple of years, and somebody had scattered gravel on the low points at some time in the past. Snake-rail fences edged it on either side; inland of the belt of forest along the coast the country opened up into rolling fields. Small shaws of oak, hazelnut and some native tree with hexagonal-scaled bark and scarlet leaves topped an occasional hill. The wheatfields were long since reaped, but there were many fields of mais-kawn in Namerique and gruno in Spanjol-full of dry, rustling stocks chest-high to a rider.

A hogback ridge rose ahead and to the right, eastward of the road. The two officers raised their binoculars; the manor was a big foursquare building, whitewashed stone, with a squat tower rising from one corner flying the double lightning flash banner of the Brigade and a personal blazon of complicated interwoven loops, white on dark gray. The lower story was pierced only by narrow windows, but the upper had balconies and broad stretches of glazing. A number of long low structures stood nearby; stables undoubtedly, and the barracks.

'Almost homelike,' Gerrin said dryly.

Descott architecture had some of the same features and for the same reason, except that things had never been either peaceful or prosperous enough for long enough to widen the second-story windows.

Staenbridge threw up a hand, and the trumpet sounded. 'Battalion-'

'Company-'

'Walk-march. . halt.'

'Let's hope Makman sees sense,' the commander of the 5th said.

'I hope so too,' Foley replied. He turned in the saddle: 'Flag of truce, Lieutenant, and follow me if you please.' He turned back to Staenbridge. 'Probably won't, though. Not the first one we call on.'

* * *

'You what?' the old man roared.

'Summon you to surrender in the name of the Civil Government of Holy Federation,' Foley said tightly.

His hand was on his pistol, but he was fully conscious of what a sniper could do. The white pennant snapped from his bannerman's pole. That had been cold comfort to poor Mekkle Thiddo last year, after he'd delivered Connor Auburn's head to his brother the Admiral. His mind tried to replay scenes of the Squadron blunderbusses belching smoke, the white flag falling. . and instead it insisted on showing him Raj Whitehall's face, as he rode down the row of thirty-one crosses, each bearing the twisting body of one of the men responsible for that violation of the laws of war.

That had probably been cold comfort to Thiddo too.

A bell was tolling in the tower of the estate; frightened faces peered out at him from the second-story window, and dogs were yowrping in the stables as men rushed to saddle them. Behind him the platoon's mounts shifted and growled softly, conscious of the aggression of intruding on another pack's territory but trained out of instinctive reluctance. The gravel of the driveway crunched under their paws; the smell of their massed breath was rank, overpowering the scents of woodsmoke and garden.

Hereditary Colonel Makman was tall, about a hundred and ninety centimeters, with little spare flesh on his heavy bones, and his red face contrasted violently with the white muttonchop whiskers that framed it. The unexpected visitors had evidently surprised him at lunch, and a napkin was tucked into the collar of his shirt.

He glared at Foley. 'Grisuh, you've got your nerve, coming on to my land with a story like this,' he snapped, in the tones of a man who hasn't been contradicted in a very long time.

Foley smiled and raised his hook. 'Messer, that term grisuh is impolite, not to mention inappropriate. The last man to use it to me was one of Curtis Auburn's house-troops, and he came to a bad end.' Sudden doubt washed over Makman's face.

'Seyor,' the platoon commander said. Sir.

Foley turned his head; a group of men was double-timing up the grassy slope to the right. In bits and pieces of hastily-donned uniform, but all carrying rifles and wearing their swords. They checked at the sight of the mounted men, then came on again at a more measured pace.

The young captain nodded. The lieutenant barked an order, and half the platoon turned their dogs with a touch of the foot. Another, and the animals crouched; the men stepped forward with their rifles at port

'Slope arms! Fix bayonets!' Smooth precision as butts thumped and hands slapped the hilts, not parade- ground stiffness but the natural flow of actions performed as part of a way of living, a trade practiced daily. The bayonets came out, bright and long as a man's forearm, and rattled as they clipped to the ring-and-bar fasteners. 'Shoulder arms-front rank, kneel-ready-present-pick your targets-prepare for volley fire. On the word of command!'

Hands slapped iron and the long Armory rifles jerked up to shoulders. Behind the kneeling riflemen the second file drew their sabers and sloped them back, resting on their shoulders. The dogs barred their teeth and growled like boulders churning in a flooded river, long strings of slaver running from their opened half-meter mouths.