Conqueror

Priest as much autonomy; the Chair believed in keeping the ecclesiastical authorities under firm control.

'— and of the Governor's Council-'

The civilian magnates. The Council had been important half a millennium ago, when the Governors ruled from Old Residence. There was still a Council in East Residence, although membership was an empty title. Evidently the locals had kept up the forms as a sort of municipal government.

'— are here to offer you the keys of Old Residence.' Literally: a page was coming forward, with a huge iron key on a velvet cushion.

'My profound thanks, Your Holiness,' Raj said.

Quite sincerely; the last thing he wanted to do was try to take a place ten times the size of Lion City by storm. He turned an eye on the assembled magnates.

'I'm pleasantly surprised at the presence of you gentlemen,' he went on. 'Especially since I'd heard the barbarian General had extorted hostages and oaths from you.'

Paratier smiled. 'Oaths sworn under duress are void; doubly so, since they were sworn to a heretic. These excellent sirs were absolved of the oaths by Our order.'

Raj nodded. And I know exactly how much your word's worth, he thought. Aloud: 'However, the heretic garrison?'

Paratier looked around. He seemed a little surprised that Raj was speaking openly before his officers; a bit more surprised that Suzette was at his side.

'Ah-' he coughed into a handkerchief. 'Ah, they have been persuaded. .'

Lion City, Raj thought, did some good after all.

* * *

'Sir, please get on the train!'

Hereditary High Colonel Lou Derison shook his head. 'The General appointed me commandant of Old Residence. Here I stay.'

'Lou,' the other man said, stepping closer. 'We lost Strezman and four thousand men in Lion City. We can't afford another loss of trained regulars like that. There are only five thousand men in the garrison; that isn't enough to hold down a hostile city and defend the walls. But in the field, it may be the difference between victory and defeat. Once we've beaten the grisuh in battle, Old Residence will open its gates to us again-it's a whore of a city, and spreads its legs for the strongest.'

Behind the junior officer a locomotive whistle let out a screech, startling Derison's dog into a protesting whine behind him. The little engine wheezed, its upright boiler showing red spots around the base, where the thrall shoveled coal into the brick arch of the furnace. Ten cars were hitched by simple chain links to the engine, much like ox-wagons with flanged wheels and board sides marked 8 dogs/40 men. These were all crowded with soldiers, the last of the Old Residence garrison. Most had left during the day and the night before. The tracks ran westward though tumbledown warehouses and then through the equally decrepit city wall. The driver yelled something incoherent back toward the clump of officers.

Derison shook his head again. 'No, no-you do what you must, Torens, and I'll do what I must. Goodbye, and the Spirit of Man of This Earth go with you.'

Major Torens blinked, gripped the hand held out to him and then turned to jump aboard the last and already moving car. The wheels of the locomotive spun on the wood-and-iron rails, and the whole train moved off into the misty rain with a creaking, clanging din that faded gradually into echoes and the last mournful wail of the whistle.

Derison sighed and put on his helmet, adjusting the cheek-guards with care. His armor was burnished and there was a red silk sash beneath his swordbelt, but the weapons and plate had seen hard service in their day.

'Come, gentlemen,' he said. 'We ride to the west gate.'

A dozen men accompanied him, his sons and a few personal retainers. One spoke:

'Is that wise, sir? The natives are out of order.'

Derison straddled his crouching dog, and it rose with a huff of effort. 'A man lives as long as he lives, and not a day more. We'll greet this Raj Whitehall like fighting men, under an open sky, not hiding in a building like women.'

* * *

Massed trumpets played in the entrance to Old Residence. Horace skittered sideways a few steps, and threw up his long muzzle in annoyance. Army dogs expected trumpets to say something, and these were just being sounded for the noise. The walls were tall but thin, and some of the crenellations had fallen long ago. There were two towers on either side of the gate, but no proper blockhouse or thickening of the wall. There had been kilometers of ruins first, before they came to the defenses. Some pre-Fall work; most of what the unFallen built with decayed rapidly, but the rest did not decay at all. Rather more of ordinary stone and brick, heavily mined for building material. Those would date from the third or fourth post-Fall centuries, when the Civil Government had been ruled from here and included the whole Midworld basin.

The wall itself had come later, a century or two-when the population of the city had shrunk and the situation had gotten worse. Old Residence fell to the Brigade about two generations after that.

There was no portcullis, just thick timber and iron doors. The roadway opened out into a plaza beyond, thick with a crowd whose noise rolled over the head of the Civil Government column like heavy surf. This was still a big city. The street led south towards the White River, but hills blocked its way, covered with buildings. The giant marble-and-gilt pile of the Priest's Palace off to his left; not just the residence, but home for the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. Further to the right the rooftop domes of the Old Governor's Palace showed, with only a little gold leaf still on the concrete, and the cathedron and Governor's Council likewise-they were all on hilltops, and the filled-in area between them would be the main plaza of the city. The rest was a sea of roofs and a spiderweb of roads, and the familiar coalsmoke-sweat-sewage-dog scent of a big city. There were even cast-iron lamp-stands by the side of the main road for gaslights, looking as if they'd been copied from the three-globe model used in East Residence. Which they probably had been.

Delegations lined the street on either side; from the Church, from the great houses of the magnates, from the merchant guilds and religious cofraternities. Holy water, incense and dried flower-petals streamed out toward the color-party around Raj; with music clashing horribly, and organized shouts of Conquer! Conquer! That was a Governor's salute and highly untactful, because Barholm would have kittens when he heard about it-as he assuredly would, and soon.

Also waiting were a group of Brigaderos nobles, looking slightly battered and extremely angry. Raj and his bannerman and guards swung out of the procession and cantered over to the square of white-uniformed Priest's Guards who ringed them. The soldiers had shaven skulls themselves, which meant they were ordained priests.

'Who are these men?' Raj barked to their officer, pitching his voice slightly higher to carry through the crowd-roar.

'The heretic garrison commander. Thought he'd left with the rest, but they were heading this way. We have them in custody-'

'Where are their swords?' Raj asked.

'Well, we couldn't let prisoners go armed, could we?' the man said.

'Give them back,' Raj said.

He turned his head to look at the white-uniformed officer when the man started to object. The weapons came quickly, the usual single-edged, basket-hiked broadswords of the barbarians. The Brigaderos seemed to grow a few inches as they retrieved them and sheathed the blades. Most of them looked as if they'd rather use them on the priest-soldiers around them.

'High Colonel Derison?' Raj asked, moving Horace forward a few paces.

'General Whitehall?' the man asked in turn.

Raj nodded curtly. The Brigadero drew his sword again and offered it hilt-first across his left forearm; the younger man by his side did likewise. Raj took the elder's sword, and Gerrin Staenbridge the younger; they flourished them over their heads and returned the blades. By Brigade custom that put the owners under honorable parole. He hoped they wouldn't make an issue of their empty pistol-holsters, because he didn't have any intention of returning those.

'My congratulations on a wise decision,' he said.