The Chosen

He pressed himself flat again and raised his field glasses. There was no need to say more to the others; four weeks struggling south through the dying Empire had been education enough for all of them. The troops pouring over the hills on the other side of the road were ant-tiny, but there was no mistaking the smooth efficiency with which they shook themselves out from column into line. Half were mounted-on mules-the other half trotting on foot beside, holding on to a stirrup iron with one hand.

Chosen mobile-force unit, Raj said. You can move fast that way, about a third again as fast as marching infantry.

The Land troops were all dismounting now, mule-holders to the rear, riflemen deploying into extended line. There was a bright blinking ripple as they fixed bayonets. Others were lifting something from panniers on the backs of supply mules, bending over the shapes they lifted down.

machine guns, Center commented.

'Christ on a crutch,' Smith whispered. 'They're gonna-'

The refugees had finally noticed the Chosen troops. A spray of them began to run eastward off the road about the same time that the Land soldiers opened fire. The machine guns played on the ones running at first; the tiny figures jerked and tumbled and fell. The rest of the refugees milled in place, or threw themselves into the ditches. Two mounted men made it halfway to where John lay, one with a woman sitting on the saddlebow before him. The bullets kicked up dust all around them, sparking on rocks. The single man went down, and his horse rolled across him, kicking. The second horse crumpled more slowly. A group of soldiers loped out toward it, and the male rider stood and fired a pistol.

The long jet of black-powder smoke drifted away. Before it did the man staggered backward; three Land rifles had cracked, and John saw two strike. He dropped limply. The woman tried to run, holding something that slowed her, but the Protege troopers caught her before she went a dozen strides. She seemed to stumble, then fell forward with a limp finality. There was a small snap sound. One of the troopers slammed his bayonet through her back and wrenched it free with a twist; the body jerked and kicked its heels. Another kicked something out of her outstretched hand, picked it up, then flung it away with an irritable gesture. It landed close enough to the ridge for him to see what it was-a pocket derringer, a lady's toy in gilt steel and ivory.

John turned his head aside, shutting his ears to the screams from the road, and to the whispered curses of Smith and the Marines. That showed him Pia's face. It might have been carved from ivory, and for a moment he knew what she would look like as an old woman-with the face sunk in on the strong bones, one of those black-clad matriarchs he'd met so often at Imperial soirees, and as often thought would do better at running the Empire than their bemedalled spouses.

The Land soldiers kept enough of the refugees alive to help drag the bodies and wrecked vehicles off the roadway. Then they lined them up with the compulsive neatness of the Chosen and a final volley rang out. The column formed up on the gravel as the slow crack. . crack . . of an officer's automatic sounded, finishing the wounded. Then they moved off to the Santander party's left, heading north up the winding road through the dun-colored hills.

John waited, motioning the others down with an extended palm. Five minutes passed, then ten. The sun was hot; sweat dripped from his chin, stinging in a scrape, and dripped dark spots into the dust inches below his face with dull plop sounds. Then. .

'Right,' he muttered.

Two squads of Land soldiers rose from where they'd hidden among the tumbled dead and wagons, fell into line with their rifles over their shoulders and moved off after their comrades at the quickstep.

'Tricky,' Smith said. 'What'll we do now, sir?'

'We go down there,' John said, standing and extending a hand to help Pia up. 'Pick up supplies and head south along that road toward Salini just as fast as the horses can stand.'

Pia looked down towards the road and quickly away. Smith hesitated. 'Ah, sir. . if it's all the same. .'

'Do it,' John said. Smith shrugged and turned to call out to the others.

No harm in explaining, as long as it isn't a question of discipline, Raj prompted him.

John nodded; to Raj, but Smith caught the gesture and paused.

'We can move faster on the road,' John said. 'Also if we don't have to stop for food, including oats for the horses. That detachment was clearing the way for a regimental combat team. With our remounts, we can outrun them.'

Smith blinked in thought, then drew himself up. 'Yessir,' he said, with a small difficult smile. 'Just didn't like the idea of, well-'

Pia's hand tightened in John's. 'That was what happens to the weak,' she said unexpectedly. 'We're all going to have to become. . very strong, Mr. Smith. Very strong, indeed.'

The Santander party moved forward over the crest and down the slope towards the road, leading their horses over the rough uneven surface speckled with thorny bushes. The shod hoofs thumped on dirt, clattered against rocks with an occasional spark. None of the humans spoke. Then Johns head came up.

What's that noise? he thought.

A thin piping. Pia stopped. 'Quiet!' she said.

John put up his hand and the party halted. That made the sound clearer, but it had that odd property some noises did, of seeming to come from all directions.

the sound is-Center began.

Pia released John's hand and walked over to the body of the woman who'd shot herself rather than be captured by the Land soldiers. John opened his mouth to call her back, then shut it; Pia had probably-certainly-seen worse than this in the emergency hospital back in Ciano.

The Imperial girl rolled the woman's body back John could see her pale; the soft-nosed slug from the derringer had gone up under the dead woman's chin and exited through the bridge of her nose, taking most of the center of her face with it. Not instantly fatal, although it would have been a toss-up whether she bled out from that first or from the bayonet wound through the kidneys.

— an infant, Center concluded, as Pia picked up a cloth-wrapped bundle from where the woman's body had concealed it. She knelt and unbound the swaddlings. John came closer, close enough to see that it was a healthy, uninjured boychild of about three months-and reassured enough by the contact to let out an unmistakable wail. Also badly in need of a change; Pia ripped a square from the outer covering and improvised.

'There's a carrying cradle on the saddle of that horse, I think,' she said, without looking up. 'Why doesn't someone get it for me and save the time?'

Don't even try, kid, Raj said at the back of John's mind.

Nightmare images of himself trying to convince Pia that it was impossible to carry a suckling infant on a forced-march journey through the disintegrating Empire flitted through John's mind. He smiled wryly, even then.

Besides, he thought, looking down at the road, there's been enough death here.

'Sinders, do that,' he said aloud. 'Let's get moving. And if there's a live nanny goat down there, somebody truss it and put it over one of the spare horses.'

CHAPTER TEN

The throng filling the Salini waterfront had the voice of surf on a gravel beach: harsh, sometimes louder or softer, but never silent. A mindless, inhuman snarl.

The bridge of the protected cruiser McCormick City was crowded as well. Many of those present were civilians whose only business was to speak with Commodore Maurice Farr, Officer Commanding the First Scouting Squadron. The situation didn't please Farr. Captain Dundonald, the flagship's captain, was coldly livid, though openly he'd merely pointed out that the admiral's bridge and cabin in the aft superstructure would provide the commodore with more space.

Farr sympathized with his subordinate, but 'subordinate' was the key word here. He had no intention of removing himself to relative isolation while trying to untangle a mare's nest like the evacuation of Santander