Conqueror

Raj nodded and took a package of cigarettes out of his jacket, handing two to the other men.

'Right,' he began, and spoke over his shoulder. 'Signaller, two red rockets.' Turning his attention back to the other men:

'In about five minutes,' he said, waving the tip of his saber at the town, 'the barbs are going to realize that with us sitting here they can't even defend the town against the Life Guards-we can suppress their rooftop snipers too effectively from here.

'So they'll try rushing us. There's only two ways they can come; in the back, and in the front the same way we did. We don't have enough guns to stop them, not and keep the snipers down too. And once they're close to the walls, we won't be able to rise and fire down from up here without exposing ourselves.'

They nodded. Raj took one of the lamps and turned the wick high, lighting it with his cigarette. The flame was pale and wavering in the bright morning sunlight, but it burned steadily.

'They'll have to bunch under the walls-by the doors, for example.' Raj tossed the lamp up and down. 'I really don't think they'll like it when we chuck these over on them.'

The two officers and the noncom smiled at each other. 'What about the front?' the sergeant asked. 'There's this-' he stamped a heel on the balcony's deck '-over the portico.'

'That,' Raj went on, 'is where you'll take the keg.' He nodded at the clay barrel of coal-oil on the cart, with a dozen lamps clinking against it. 'And hang it like a pihnyata from one of the brackets.'

'Roit ye are, ser,' the sergeant said, grinning like a shark. 'Roit where she'll shower 'em wit coal-juice as they come chargin' up t' steps, loik.'

He took the heavy container and heaved it onto his shoulder with a lift-and-jerk. 'Ye, Belgez, foller me.'

* * *

'A hundred thousand men?' Ingreid asked.

Teodore Welf nodded encouragingly. 'That's counting all the regular garrisons we've been able to withdraw, Your Mightiness, and the levies of the first class-all organized, and all between eighteen and forty.'

Ingreid's lips moved and he looked at his fingers. 'How many is that in regiments?'

Howyrd Carstens looked around the council chamber. It was fairly large, but plain; whitewashed walls, and tall narrow windows. The three of them were alone except for servants and civilian accountants-nonentities. Good. He liked Ingreid, and respected him, but there was no denying that large numbers were just not real to the older nobleman. For that matter, a hundred thousand men was a difficult number for him to grasp, and he was a modern-minded man who could both read and write and do arithmetic, including long division. He had enough scars, and enough duelling kills, that nobody would call it unmanly.

Teodore spoke first. 'Standard regiments?' A thousand to twelve hundred men each. 'A hundred, hundred and ten regiments. Not counting followers and so forth, of course.'

Ingreid grunted and knocked back the last of his kave, snapping his fingers for more.

'And the enemy?'

Carstens shrugged. 'Twenty thousand men-but more than half of those are infantry.'

The Military Governments didn't have foot infantry in their armies, and he wondered why the Civil Government bothered.

'Of mounted troops, real fighting men? Seven, perhaps eight regiments. They have a lot of field artillery, though-and from what I've heard, it's effective.'

Ingreid shook his head. 'Seven regiments against a hundred. Madness! What does Whitehall think he can accomplish?'

'I don't know, Your Mightiness,' Teodore Welf said. The older men looked up at the note in his voice. 'And that's what worries me.'

* * *

Burning men scrambled back from the portico of the town hall. A few of them had caught a full splash of the fuel, and they dropped and rolled in the wet dirt of the square. More leaped and howled and beat at the flames that singed their boots and trousers. The bullets that tore at them from the windows were much more deadly-but every man has his fear, and for many that fear is fire. The smell of scorched stone and burning wool and hair billowed up from the portico, up in front of the overhanging balcony in a billow of heat and smoke. From the ground floor the dogs howled and barked, loud enough to make the floor shiver slightly under his feet. The men along the balcony above shot and reloaded and shot, their attention drawn by the helpless targets.

'Watch the bloody roofs,' Raj snapped, hearing the command echoed by the non- coms.

The Brigaderos began to clump for another rush at the portico, as the flames died down a little. . although there was an ominous crackle below the balcony floor, from the roof-beams that ran from the arches to the building wall and supported it. Another shower of glass lanterns full of coal-oil set puddles of fire on the ground and broke the rush, sending them running back across the plaza to shelter in the other buildings.

Raj looked left and south. Cabot's Life Guards were advancing, with the battery of field guns firing over their heads. The gunners had the range, and the buildings edging the town there were coming apart under the hammer of their five-kilo shells.

'Messer Raj.' The platoon sergeant duckwalked up to Raj's position, keeping the heaped wooden furniture along the balustrade between him and any Brigadero rifleman's sights.

'We singed 'em good, ser,' the noncom said. His own eyebrows looked as if they'd taken combat damage as well. 'Only t' damned roof is burnin', loik. We'nz gonna have t'move soon.'

'The barbs will move before we roast, sergeant,' Raj said. I hope, he thought. He also hoped the warmth in the floor-tiles under his hand was an illusion.

The enemy should run. Pozadas had helped set up the ambush-something its citizens were going to regret-but the Brigaderos were countrymen. Caught between two fires, their instinct would be to head for open ground, out of the buildings that were protection but felt like traps.

He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket and brought the binoculars up. Yes. Groups of men pouring out of the houses, pouring out of the mills-most of those were burning now, from the shellfire. On foot and dogback they streamed north to the river, crowding the single narrow stone bridge or swimming their dogs across. The battery commander was alert; he raised his muzzles immediately. The ripping-sail sound of shells passed overhead. One landed beyond the bridge; the next fell short, pounding a hole in the roadway leading to it-and scattering men and dogs and parts of both up with the gout of whitish-gray dirt. The next one clipped the side of the bridge itself, and the whole battery opened up. Shells airburst over the river, dimpling circles into the water, like dishes pockmarked with the splash-marks of shrapnel.

'Out, everybody out,' Raj said.

The Life Guards were charging, cheering as they came. The mounted company rocked into a gallop ahead of them.

'Check every room,' he went on. Someone might be wounded in one of them, unable to move. 'Move it!'

The lieutenant came in from the back, hobbling on his ripped leg and grinning like a sicklefoot. 'Bugged out,' he said. 'All but the ones we burned or shot while they tried to open the back door with a treetrunk.'

'Good work,' Raj said.

He threw an arm around the young officer's waist to support his weight and they went down the stairs quickly; the lower story was already emptying out. The dogs wuffled and danced nervously as they crossed the hot tile of the portico. Puddles of flame still burned on the cracked flooring, and the thick beams of the ceiling above were covered in tongues of scarlet.

Guess I didn't imagine the floor was getting hot after all, Raj thought. The coal-oil had been an effective solution to the problem of Brigaderos storming the building. . but it might have presented some serious long-term problems.

Of course, you had to survive the short term for the long term to be very important.

Horace snuffed him over carefully in the plaza, then sneezed when he was satisfied Raj hadn't been injured. The mounted company of the Life Guards streamed through, already drawing their rifles. Two guns followed them, limbered up and at the trot. Raj looked south: the dismounted companies were fanning out to surround the town and close in from three sides.

Cabot Clerett pulled up before the general, swinging his saber up to salute. Raj returned the gesture fist-to-