Conqueror

vegetation and shattered rock. He made a chittering noise with tongue and teeth-much like the cry of any of the smaller sauroids-and twenty soldiers of the Scout Troop rose and moved forward with him, flitting from trunk to trunk. They halted at his gesture, among broken rocks and wire-like native scrub. Every one of them was a relative or neighbor of his, back in Bufford Parish. Every one of them a bandit, sheep-lifter and dogstealer by hereditary vocation. Following those trades demanded high skill and steady nerves in not-very-lawful Descott County, where every vakaro and yeoman-tenant carried a rifle and knew how to use it.

He had no doubt of their abilities. Nor of their obedience. Antin M'lewis had risen from trooper to officer and the Messer class by hitching his star to that of Messer Raj. . after nearly being flogged for theft at their first meeting. The Scouts-unofficially known as the Forty Thieves-had a superstitious reverence for a man that lucky. They also had a well-founded respect for his garotte and skinning knife.

Visibility was limited; rain, and ground-mist. He could see the railway track disappearing downward toward the river, switching back and forth to the southwest. On the tracks and the road beside them marched mounted men, in columns of fours. Heading toward him, which meant toward Old Residence.

'Message to Messer Raj,' he said over his shoulder. 'Two. . make that four hunnert men 'n column approachin'. Will withdraw an' keep 'em unner observation.'

* * *

'Couldn't tell who theuns wuz, Messer Raj,' the messenger said. 'Jist they'z marchin' in column, ser.'

observe, Center said.

* * *

The fort on the north side of the railway bridge was a simple earthwork square with a timber palisade. White water foamed just west of it, where the stone pilings of the bridge supported the heavy timberwork arches. Mist filled the surface of the water, turning and writhing with the current beneath. A column of Brigaderos cavalry had ridden onto the southern approaches; more stretched back into the rain, a huge steel-glistening gray column vanishing out of sight. The ironshod wheels of guns thundered on the railway crossties, light brass muzzle-loading fieldpieces.

The Stalwarts within the fort were boiling to the walls; asleep or drunk or huddled in their huts against the chill for far too long. They'd probably had scouts out on the south side of the river, and the scouts had equally probably simply decamped when the Brigade host thundered down on them.

A rocket soared up from the fort. The smoke-trail vanished into the low cloud; the pop of the explosion could be heard, but the colored light was invisible even from directly below. As if that had been a signal, hundreds of figures boiled down over the wall and to the skiffs and rowboats tied to a pier below the bridge. They wore the striped tunics of Stalwart warriors under their sheepskin jackets. Equally national were the light one-handed axes they pulled out to chop at the painters tying the light boats to the shore. Chopping at each other as well, as panicked hordes fought for places in the boats. Some of the craft floated downstream empty as would-be passengers hacked and stabbed on the dock, others upside down with men clinging to them, still others crowded nearly to sinking. Arcs of spray rose into the air as those hacked down with oars on the heads of men trying to cling to the gunwales.

Still more Stalwarts tore up the track toward Raj's vantage-point, their eyes and mouths round O's of effort. They scattered into the woods on either side of the track. There were barrels of gunpowder braced under the bridge, with trains of waxed matchcord linking them. Nobody so much as looked at them.

The viewpoint switched to the fort itself. An older man climbed down the wall facing the bridge and began to trudge toward the Brigaderos. His graying hair was shaved behind up to a line drawn between his ears; he had long drooping mustaches, a net of bronze rings sewn to the front of his tunic and cut-down shotguns in holsters along each thigh. Raj recognized him. Clo Reicht, chieftain of the Stalwart mercenaries serving with the Expeditionary force.

'Marcy, varsh!' he called, as he came up to the leading enemy, a lancer officer in richly-inlaid armor. Mercy, brother-warriors, in Namerique.

Points dropped, jabbing close past the snarling muzzles of the war-dogs. Reicht smiled broadly, his little blue eyes twinkling with friendliness and sincerity. His hands were high and open.

'I know lots about Raj-man,' he said. 'He tells Clo Reicht all about his plans. Worth a lot. Take me to your leader.'

* * *

Shit, Raj thought, pounding a fist into the pommel of his saddle.

He'd taken one more gamble with his inadequate forces. This time it hadn't paid off.

Raj blinked back to the outer world, to the weight of wet wool across his shoulders and the smell of wet dog. Ehwardo and M'lewis were staring at him, waiting wide-eyed for the solution. The Governor shouldn't send us to make bricks without straw, that's the solution, he thought. With enough men. .

'The Stalwarts bugged out,' he said crisply.

He looked from side to side. There were laneways on either side of the low embankment of the railway, and cleared land a little way up the slopes of the hills. The ground grew more rugged ahead, but nowhere impassible; behind him it opened out into the rolling plain around the city itself.

'The Brigaderos vanguard is over the bridge and coming straight at us. Courier to the city, please.' A rider took off rearward in a spatter of mud and gravel.

'Retreat?' Ehwardo asked. M'lewis was nodding in unconscious agreement.

Raj shook his head. 'Too far,' he said. 'If we run for it we'll lose cohesion and they can pursue without deploying, at top speed, and chop us up. Therefore-'

'— we attack, mi heneral,' Ehwardo said. He took off his helmet for a second, and the thinning hair on his pate stuck wetly to the scalp as he scratched it. 'If we can push them back on the bridge. .'

Raj nodded. He could turn it into a killing zone, men crammed together with no chance to use their weapons or deploy.

'Two companies forward, deployed by platoon columns for movement,' he said. Tight formation, but he'd need all the firepower possible. 'Three in reserve, guns in the middle.'

He stood in the saddle and shouted in Paytoiz: 'Juluk! You worthless clown, are you drunk or just afraid?'

The Skinner chief slid his hound down the hillside out of the forest and pulled up beside Raj. 'Long-hairs come,' he said succinctly. 'You run away, sojer-man?'

'We fight,' he said. 'You keep your men to the sides and forward.'

The nomad mercenary gave a huge grin and a nod and galloped off, screeching orders of his own. Around Raj, Poplanich's Own split its dense formation into a looser advance by four columns of platoon strength, spaced across the open way. A brief snarl of trumpets, and the men drew the rifles out of the scabbards to rest the butts on their thighs. Dogs bristled and growled in the sudden tension, and the pace picked up to a fast walk. What breeze there was was in their faces, so there shouldn't be any warning to the enemy from that.

Good scouting meant the five-minute difference between being surprised and doing the surprising.

'Walk-march, trot.'

They pushed forward, a massed thudding of paws and the rumble of the guns. Over a lip in the ground, and a clear view down through the hills to the white-gray mist along the river, with the bridge rising out of it like magic. The railroad right-of-way between was black with men and dogs, dully gleaming with lanceheads and banners. The double-lightning flash of the Brigade was already flying over the little fort as the host streamed by, together with a personal blazon-a running wardog, red on black, with a huge silver W. The house of Welf; intelligence said Teodore Welf led the enemy vanguard. The Brigadero column was thick, men bunched stirrup to stirrup across all the open space. Young Teodore was risking everything to get forces forward quickly, up out of the hills and onto the plain.

Precisely the right thing to do; unfortunately for the enemy, even a justified risk was still risky.

The trumpet sounded. The platoon columns halted and the dogs crouched. Men stepped free and double- timed forward, spreading out like the wings of a stooping hawk. Before the enemy a few hundred meters ahead had time to do more than begin to recoil and mill, the order rang out:

'Company-'