The Reformer

The northern dock of Preble was busy enough, although most of it seemed to be ships loading for departure- Adrian could see an entire household, from a portly robed merchant to veiled wives and a dozen children to skinny porters under huge bundles wrapped in rugs. They were scuttling up the gangplank of a freighter, and they were far from the only ones he could see. There was a smell of smoke in the air, as well.

'Things got a little out of hand,' Esmond said. 'There aren't many Confed civilians left in town, either. We're letting some of the non-Prebleans leave.'

Enry spread his hands. 'The Confeds are not-were not-popular here,' he said.

Adrian nodded. They never were; the first thing that happened in a country taken under Confed 'protection' was a tribute levy, and then officials to collect it. The Confed Council didn't like hiring bureaucrats much: too many opportunities for political patronage with implications at home. They put tribute and tax collection up for competitive bidding; that might not have been so bad, if it weren't for the fact that the successful bidders had no fixed fee. The winning syndicate made its profit by collecting whatever it could above the amount it had paid for the contract, with the Confed army to see that nobody objected. Then Confed merchants swarmed in, to buy up goods and property at knock-down prices as the locals frantically tried to raise cash, and Confed bankers to loan at fifty percent interest, compounded, to those who couldn't raise the cash. If anyone defaulted on the loan, they'd sell every stick and rag he had, and march him off to the auction block, and he'd find himself hoeing beans on some Confed Councillor's estate outside Vanbert.

The nod was general; everyone knew how the system worked. 'Funny,' Adrian said. 'The Confed peasants go into the army, because they can't compete with the big slave-worked estates. . then they go out and get the Councillors the money and slaves they need to set up the estates in the first palace.'

'Nice work if you can get it,' Donnuld Grayn said. 'Meantime the civvies ran down and killed maybe a thousand of 'em last night, once word got around we'd taken out the garrison.' He smiled, a nasty expression. 'Sort of commits 'em, don't it? What's that Confed saying?'

' 'I am a Confed citizen; let kings tremble,' ' Adrian said. 'They're not going to be happy at a massacre.'

Enry Sharbonow shrugged. 'I put my arse above the stake when I enlisted in Prince Tenny's cause,' he said. 'Now everyone else in town is in the same boat.'

'Where's Prince Tenny?' Adrian asked.

Enry coughed discreetly; it seemed to be his favorite expression. 'He is occupied with setting up the Royal household,' he said. 'In his mercy, he has decided to take into his hareem the now-protectorless females of the Confed commandant and his officers, or some of them.'

Adrian winced slightly. One of the drawbacks of this business, Raj said at the back of his mind, is that you usually end up working for some son of a bitch. Politics attracts them.

'Well, we've got business to attend to,' Adrian said. 'I suppose I should start setting up the artillery?'

'Too right,' Esmond said. 'I don't think the Confeds are going to wait long to try a counterattack-some refugees will have made it out, over the wall and swimming if no other way.'

'Sir!' One of the Strikers came up, panting. 'Lord Esmond, Confed troops are putting out in small craft from the shore-barges, some ladders.'

Enry made a small, appalled sound. Esmond nodded. 'Numbers?'

'Fifteen hundred, sir.'

The blond Emerald slapped Enry on the back. 'Not to worry. That's the local commander, trying it on in case this is just some sort of pirate raid. Your militia ought to be able to see them off; there's seven or eight thousand of them.'

'If they turn out,' Enry said, taking a deep breath.

* * *

'Wait for it,' Adrian said.

'Sor,' Simun whispered back, 'why don't we have the arquebuses up here? They're such lovely targets!'

technological surprise, Center whispered. you may define this as-

'Because we don't want them to know about the arquebuses until we really need them,' Adrian said.

'They'll have heard.'

'That's not the same thing as seeing something for yourself.'

The landward edge of Preble had a narrow strip of sand studded with crags and boulders below the city wall, which was big ashlar blocks, enclosing a concrete and rubble core. It was crowded with men now, crouching down below the crenellations or behind the tarpaulin-covered torsion catapults. They were keeping surprisingly quiet, for civilians; nervously fingering bows, spears and slings, but not talking much. Esmond's Strikers probably had something to do with that; they'd kicked and clubbed a few noisy ones into unconsciousness to begin with.

Adrian turned his eyes from the mass of robed figures, from gleams of starlight and moonlight on eyes, teeth, the edge of a blade, out to the sea. The Confed flotilla was led by two light war galleys, each towing a string of barges; for the rest there were fishing boats, small coastal traders, a merchantman or two. They were crowded with men as well, probably the local coastal garrison; this area had been taken away from the Islanders by Marcomann only a decade or so ago, and it still resented Confed rule.

He turned to his brother. 'Wasn't there a military colony around here?'

Esmond nodded. 'Paid-off Marcomann veterans,' he said. 'Allied Rights settlement. I wouldn't be surprised if the governor had mobilized them.'

Adrian nodded in turn; that was what a military colony was for, after all. They'd be ready enough, too; a successful revolt would let locals who'd had their land confiscated to make farms for the ex-soldiers get their own back, literally and metaphorically.

The ships were close enough to hear the rhythmic grunting of the oarsmen under the creak of rigging and wood. Adrian peered into the darkness, and suddenly it took on a flat silvery-green light.

'They've got ladders on those galleys,' he said. 'And on the barges-ladders with iron hooks on the ends. And what look like modified catapults. I'd say they're rigged to throw grapnels with rope ladders attached.'

Esmond grunted. 'Standard operating procedure,' he said. 'Looks like the local commander really is going to chance the walls being lightly held.' He cocked a sardonic eye at the militiamen. 'Enry has earned his corn-I hope King Casull is paying him generously. He's had agents out all day, pointing out to the locals exactly what'll happen to them if the Confeds retake a city where six or seven hundred Confed citizens were massacred.'

'Forward, sons of the Emerald! You fight for your homes and families, for the ashes of your fathers and the temples of your gods!'

The poet had said that about the League Wars, when the Emerald cities had turned back the Kings of the Isles. It was just as true here. In the open field, all the determination in the world wouldn't have stopped the Confed's armor and discipline; but fighting behind a wall, all the militiamen really needed to do was not run away.

'Ready,' Esmond said. 'Ready. .'

The barges were coming forward, awkwardly, the oarsmen too cramped to pull efficiently. The square raftlike craft dipped at the bows, as armored men crowded forward with the ladders.

'Now!' He stood, waving a torch-three times, back and forth.

Brass trumpets rang along the wall. The men of Preble-sailors, craftsmen, shopkeepers-stood and shot. Arrows hissed out towards the Confed troops in a dark blurring rush, hard to see in the faint light, but appallingly thick. Flights of javelins followed, not very well thrown but very numerous, and sling-bullets, rocks, cobblestones. The Confed troops roared anger and surprise, with a chorus of screams from wounded men under it. Shields snapped up in tortoise formation, overlapping. At this distance some arrows drove right through the thick leather and plywood; rocks broke arms beneath them, crushed helmets. The catapults on the wall and its towers fired their four-foot arrows, pinning men together three in a row. A rock hurler sent a fifty-pound lump of granite skimming over the quarterdeck of one of the galleys, taking off the head of the captain as neatly as an axe and crushing the steersman against the tiller.

'Damn, they're still coming,' Esmond said.

Men picked up the ladders of the fallen and ran them forward; others set the points of assegais against