Conqueror

'Once there was a mighty king, who ruled broad lands. His minister read the king's plans for the coming year, and went to his lord.

''Lord,' the minister said, 'I see you spend millions on soldiers and forts and weapons, and not one senthavo to lighten the sufferings of the poor.'

''Yes,' said the king. 'When the revolution comes, I will be ready.''

A color-party of the 17th Kelden Foot was forcing its way through the press toward him; Ehwardo sighed with relief. He smiled down at the councilors, and tapped a finger alongside his nose.

'A wise man, my great-uncle,' he said, grinning. 'Vayaadi, a vo, Sehnors.'

* * *

The narrow forest lane was rutted even by Military Government standards, but the ground on either side was mostly open, beneath huge smooth-barked beech trees ten times taller than a man. Green gloom flickered with the breeze sighing through the canopy, but it was quiet and very still on the leaf-mould of the floor. The two companies of the 5th were spread out on either side of the road in platoon columns, moving at a brisk lope; the Skinners trickled along in clumps and clots around them, ambling or galloping. Three field-gun carriages followed the soldiers, with only half the usual six-dog teams; despite that they bounced along at a fair pace. The moving men started up a fair amount of game; sounders of half-wild pigs, mono-horns, a honking gabble of some sort of bipedal greenish things that stopped rooting for beech-nuts and fled with orange crests flaring from their long sheep-like heads and flat bills agape.

Luckily, there were no medium-to-large carnosauroids around; those were mostly too stupid to be afraid, although there was nothing wrong with their reflexes, bloodlust or ferocious grip on life even when mangled. Killing one would be noisy.

Sentinels with the shoulder-flashes of the 7th Descott stepped out from behind trees.

'What've you got for me, Lieutenant?' Raj asked their officer, pulling up Horace in a rustle of leaves.

'Seyor,' the man said, casting an eye at the Skinners who kept right on moving as if the sentry-line did not exist. 'Major Gruder's got a pig-farmer for you.'

* * *

'Took a while to get someone who could understand him, General,' Kaltin Gruder said. 'I think he's giving us pretty detailed directions to those holdouts.'

The peasant-swineherd by profession-had an iron thrall-collar around his neck and a lump of scar tissue where his left ear should have been. His long knife and iron-shod crook were the tools of a trade that took him into the woods often, and his ragged smock and pants and bare calloused feet wouldn't have been out of place in most villages in the Civil Government.

Raj listened closely to the gap-toothed gabble. The language problem was a little worse than he'd anticipated. Spanjol and Sponglish were very different in their written forms and grammar, but the most basic terms, the eight hundred or so words that comprised everyday speech, were quite similar: blood in Sponglish was singre and in Spanjol sangre, for instance, quite unlike the Namerique blud or Skinner zonk.

The trouble was that neither the local peasants nor most of his soldiers spoke the standard versions of their respective national languages. When a Descotter trooper tried to talk to a Crown Peninsula sharecropper, misunderstanding was one of the better alternatives. Starless Dark, some of his Descotters had trouble in East Residence!

'Yes, that's what he's saying,' Raj said after a moment. There was an icy feeling behind his eyes, more mental than physical, and the mouthings became coherent speech. 'They're about. . ten klicks that way. There's a valley. . no, it sounds like a collapsed sinkhole. 'Many' of them-at least two thousand guns, I'd say. Possibly twice that; I doubt he can count past ten even barefoot.'

Kaltin ran a hand through his dark bowl-cut hair. 'Lucky thing I didn't go in with only the 7th,' he said. 'I thought I'd been running into an awful lot of empty manors.' He looked up sharply. 'If he's telling the truth, of course.'

probability of 92 % ±3, Center said.

'He is,' Raj replied flatly. 'Let's see exactly where.' That was an exercise in frustration, even when they brought in others from the circle of charcoal-burners and swineherds. They were eager to help, but none of them had even heard of maps; they could describe every creek and rock in their home territories-but only to a man who already knew the area that was their whole world.

'All right' he said at last. 'It's about three hours on foot from here; call it ten kilometers. There's a low range of hills; in the middle of it's a big oval area, sounds like fifteen to thirty hectares, of lumpy ground with a rim all around it and a stream running through-it's limestone country, as I said. The axis is east-west. Natural fortress. Only one real way out, about two thousand meters across, on the eastern side of the oval. Evidently some native bandits-or rebels, depending on your point of view-used it until this man's father's time, then the Brigaderos finally hunted them down and hung them.'

As he spoke, Raj sketched, tracing over the projection Center laid on the pad; training in perspective drawing was a part of the standard Civil Government military education, and he had set himself to it with unfashionable zeal as a young man.

Kaltin whistled through his teeth as he looked at the details. 'Now that's going to be something like hard work, if we want to do it quick,' he said. 'Plenty of cover, lots of water, getting over the edge just won't do much good, not with all those hummocks. And if they're determined-well.'

Which they would be, having refused the call to surrender. The problem with making examples was that it worked both ways; having looked at the alternatives, these Brigaderos had evidently decided that at seventh and last they'd rather die.

In which case they were going to get their wish.

'Then we'd better move quickly, before they have a chance to get set up,' he said, with a slight cold smile. 'We certainly can't afford to take a week winkling them out, or bringing up a larger force. The garrison in Lion City might sally if we did-four thousand trained men, and far too mobile for my taste if we let them loose.'

Kaltin raised an eyebrow. 'You think there's enough of us?' Slightly over six hundred in the 7th Descott, two companies of the 5th, and the Skinners. 'For storming a strong defensive position, that is.'

'Oh, I think so. Provided we're fast enough that they don't realize what's happening.'

'Can we get the guns in there?'

'We can try; it's open beech forest for the most part, nearly to the sinkhole area. I'm certainly bringing those. Take a look; the ship missed us in Port Wager and pulled in here a few days ago.'

Raj nodded toward three weapons on field-gun carriages, standing beside the rutted laneway. Kaltin looked them over, puzzled. At first glance they were much like the standard 75mm gun. At second, they were something very different.

'Rifle-barrels clamped together?' he said.

'Thirty-five of them, double-length,' Raj said. 'Demonstrate, Corporal.'

The soldier threw a lever at the rear of the weapon, and a block swung back horizontally, like the platen of a letterpress. Another man lifted out a thin iron plate about the size of a book-cover with a loop on the top. The plate was drilled with thirty-five holes, and an equal number of standard 11mm Armory cartridges stood in them.

'Dry run, please,' Raj said.

The crew inserted an empty plate; the gunner pushed the lever sharply forward and the mechanism locked with a dunk sound. He crouched to look through the rifle-type sights, spun the elevation and traverse screws, and turned a crank on the side of the breech through one complete revolution. A brisk brttt of clicks sounded. Then he threw the lever back again; the crew repeated the process another four times in less than thirty seconds.

'Three hundred and twenty-five rounds a minute, with practice,' Raj said. 'I know it works-that is, it'll shoot. Whether it's as useful as appearances suggest, the Spirit only knows and experience will show. I'm certainly not counting on it this time, not during the field-test, but it can't hurt.'

Kaltin whistled again. 'Turning engineer, Messer Raj?' he said. That would be beneath the dignity of a landed Messer and cavalry officer, but Raj's eccentricities were legend anyway. 'No, a friend suggested it.'

provided schematic drawings suitable to current technological levels, Center corrected pedantically. after correcting certain design faults in the original.