"Then why
are
you sad?" Aynett said. The wagon creaked off, and they followed: they would all be working together in the aid station, you picked up a practical knowledge of wounds and their treatment if you followed the drum. The 5th took care of its own, but expected more in return than an ability to lie on your back.
"I happy there," Fatima said softly. "Nobody beat me, scorn me, tell me I stupid useless imp of Shaitan; house my own." Her head came up. "Pray Alia—Spirit of Stars our men return safe and victorious."
"And back two!" Jorg Menyez said, looking through the lens of the surveyor's level. The open valley where the Civil Government troops would make their stand glistened bone-white and black and orange beneath the moons.
The team of soldiers down the line of string pounded in another stake. Menyez straightened, putting his hands to his back; it was cool as the desert nights always were, and the stars had a hard brilliance. Only a winter night had that sort of clarity up in Kelden County; summer nights were softly luminous, smelling of clover and dew-damped ground. That was a rich land, rolling hills and orchards and thick oakwoods, not like this country south of the Oxheads; here the bones of the earth showed through, and the only fertility was what men had made. The desert waited, with sand to fill their canals and scorching winds, waiting for their labor and vigilance to stop.
"And we put half our efforts into killing each other," he murmured.
"Jorg?" Raj said, looking up from his mapboard. Officers clustered around it, making quick notes on their own pads, occasionally jogging off to fix a view in their minds.
"I was thinking we should have a permanent engineering corps, the way the Colonists do," he answered, a little ashamed of the unsoldierly thoughts.
"Hmmm, there are arguments both ways," the commander answered. "More flexible, our way, giving everyone the basics. Although I'm lucky you made such a study of it; too many of my cavalry commanders might as well be Squadron or Brigade nobles, not interested in anything unless they can drink it, hunt it, ride it, or fuck it. Right, here's the schematic and perspective."
The valley ran from the northwest to the southeast, out of tumbled choppy loess hills, and into the scree and badlands that ran down to the river. Water flowed here only two months of the year, but it left a broad streak of sand winding down the middle of the depression; there was a one-in-ten slope behind toward the higher ground of the city, and a long smooth rise southwest to the low ridge a kilometer away.
"From above, like this." Raj's finger traced a broad V with its point toward the enemy; the arms were of slightly unequal length. "Two-point-eight clicks on the left, two-point-two on the right; that's the easier approach and I want it defiladed from the center. Right here—" his finger tapped the point of the V "—is where the command post will be, the redoubt, and where the 5th will stand. Also half the artillery, the heavy pieces from the city. Space the rest of the stuff from the walls, and all the 75's and field-howitzers, in 4-gun batteries down the wings at equal intervals,
except—
"
he tapped the extreme right, the western anchor of the line "—I want this to have six of the howitzers, sighted in on the ravines off our flank, just in case they get cute. Also, I'm putting the bordermen in there." Two hundred had shown up a week ago.
"Damned," he added "if I know why, but since I led the 5th to its notable corncobbing at El Djem, those mad bastards from the Komar hills seem to like me.
"Now, apart from the 5th, I want the cavalry battalions in a second line about fifty, sixty meters back from the first—just far enough to have a clear field of fire over the front line. Cover for the dogs just behind
them
.
And behind all that, pile the spoil and then dig in a road, nothing elaborate, right across the arms of the V. Communications trenches between all positions."
"That's an awful lot of digging, Whitehall," Menyez said.
"You've got fifteen thousand soldiers and thirty thousand civilians on their way," Raj replied. They all turned and looked upslope behind them, to the lights and ant-murmur of the road out from Sandoral. Torches lit the ridgeline, and a load of squared timbers was dumped to avalanche down towards them.
"Furthermore," Raj continued, "I want a staggered line of holes, about two hundred meters up the opposite slope—" he pointed "—thirty of them. Slanting upslope in the direction of our gallant wog adversaries, just enough to hold a hundred-liter urn, you know, the type they use for oil and wine around here?"
"You don't want much, do you?" Menyez laughed.
"I want victory," Raj said flatly.
The older man looked away. "Tell me," he said suddenly. "What would you do if
you
were Jamal, or Tewfik?"
"Stay at home under a jasmine vine, sipping kave while harem girls dropped peeled grapes in my mouth," Raj replied promptly. There was a chuckle from the group of officers about them. "If I had to attack now? About what they're doing; there really isn't an alternative, as long as we have Sandoral and a reasonably-sized army and they don't control the river, which they can't since we have superior riverboats. They've got better engineers, we've got better mechanics
. . .
I'm glad it's Jamal in charge, though."
"Why?" Gerrin asked, glancing up from a whispered consultation with Kaltin Gruder.
"Tewfik's a saber general; feint, feint, off with your head. Jamal . . . I've studied his campaigns in the east, and down against the Zanj. He uses the hammer-hammer method; walk up to someone and start whipping on them with your hammer. If it breaks, you send back to stores for a bigger hammer."
"Let's just hope he doesn't have one big enough."
"This time, at least," Raj said thoughtfully.
"What are you doing!"
A voice called out into the street from the window above. Antin M'lewis squinted up into a carbide lantern; the house was large, with only the one exterior window above the big brass-strapped door, the sound of tinkling water coming from within where fountains played in courtyards.
"This Messer Bougiv Assed's house?" he asked, conscious of the two squads at his back, and the light wagon that had once been an officer's coach.
"Yes, it is! And the Messer will not be amused at this intrusion."
"Fuck 'im," M'lewis said casually. "This is t'place, dog-brothers."
Troopers dismounted, one rattling the gate. " 'Tis locked, Warrant," he said.
"Ye, slavey," M'lewis called up to the window. "C'mon down an' open it."
"Out of the question!" indignation hardened above fear.
"Ar. Well, yer bastids heard the sumbitch," M'lewis continued.
"Right yer are, Warrant," the trooper said, holding the rifle muzzle a handspan from the lock. "'Ware bouncer."
The others led their dogs to the wall. The rifle blasted, with a chung!-
ping
of parting steel and a diminishing whine as pieces of soft lead and tempered metal bounced off stone. M'lewis dismounted and cradled his weapon in his arm, kicking the tall doors in as the broken lock rattled.
"Allays wanted to do that," he said, flashing a gold-toothed grin. "Kick in a Messer's door, that is."
"Tired a' pickin' t'locks?" one of the others asked. They formed up and tramped in his wake, gawking around at the carved-stone and fabric splendors.
"Hoo, Spirit!" M'lewis whistled. There were lords of ten thousand acres in Descott County who had nothing half so fine. Of course, back home the gentry counted wealth in livestock, dogs, fighting men, weapons and stout walls; all difficult to steal . . . from Descotters. "Nao, I don't pick locks. T'wives and daughters lets down ropes fer me; pow'rful tirin', befer I gits around to stealin'."
A stout middle-aged man in expensive nightclothes came stamping down the stairs; the guards following him with lanterns and pistols slowed to a stop as they saw the dozen helmeted soldiers staring about the foyer of the mansion.
"I am Messer Assed," he said in a tone of furious control. "Who do you think you are, soldier, breaking in here! Your officer will have you flogged,
flogged
."
"I doubts it," M'lewis said tranquilly. The broad friendliness of his smile did not alter, even as he flipped the rifle up and poked it into the aristocrat's stomach. "Allays wanted t'do this, too
. . .
Now, I thinks I's the man wit' t'gun, an' my officer
sent
me here. Fer one—" he looked down at the pad tucked into his belt. "El-ect-ri-cal gen-er-ator. Befer," he added genially, "we starts knockin' down yer outbuildin's fer the timber." A wink. "But don't'cher worry yer heart, Messer, I gots a government receipt, right here."
"Careful with that, yer arseface," da Cruz said.
The jar that was being manhandled off the wagon was taller than a man and nearly as wide as it was tall; even with six troopers on the stout handles the thick terracotta walls of the storage vessel made it an awkward burden. It had been full of olive oil until recently, and the smell was as disagreeable as the slipperiness.
"Ye got it?" he asked, looking down into the hole. It had been dug at a steep slant down into the silt, kept from collapsing with wicker basketwork propped on sticks. The man head-down in it was a gunner, you could tell that by the dark-blue trousers with the red piping up the seams, and by his arrogant contempt for anyone not initiated into the mysteries of his art.
"Mmm-
hmm
,"
the artilleryman said, "that's got her." He raised a voice muffled by the dirt. "Murchyzen, get off your useless butt and send the wire down."
There was an arm-deep trench running downhill from the pit; at the head of it a piece of wooden pipe showed, running up from the base of the hole below. Another gunner had been squatting, smoking his pipe and watching the civilians and cavalry troopers working with the enjoyment any soldier felt when someone else was pulling the detail. Now he rose and carefully lifted a length of cable; it was braided copper, the outside coated with a sap gum that was shiny and flexible, although a bit tacky in this heat. The end for a meter back had been stripped of insulation and unbraided into a fan of bright metallic strands, each one wrapped around a half-dozen big percussion caps, the type used to fire muzzle loading artillery. The gunner shook it slightly, making a clinking sound something like a sistrum.
"Ya dicking around again, Murchyzen?" the man in the pit asked with dangerous patience.
Da Cruz looked at the detonators with loathing; he had worked as a quarryman in his youth. Until his father was blown into assorted gobbets by a misfired charge; they had found his boots with the feet and sections of calf still in them. But the commander had asked him to see that the fougasses were done properly, and by the
Spirit
they would be.
"Here it comes," the gunner said, wrapping a cloth around the detonators and feeding the cable down the wooden pipe; for all his casual familiarity, he did it with a craftsman's deft gentleness. The Master Sergeant craned his head to watch the gunner in the fougasse pit working. Once the cloth-wrapped tip of the cable showed through the man spread the wires out across the canvas below him like the roots of a tree, pinning them in place with pieces of bent twig. Finished, he grunted satisfaction and called over his shoulder:
"Now the powder." Ten one-kilo cotton sacks, coarsegrained propellant charges. Whistling tunelessly, the gunner ripped each with a diagonal slash of his knife-bayonet, then turned them over and tapped them gently into place with the pommel. When he had finished he stroked the lumpy surface and wriggled out backward, squatting on his hams and blinking in the bright sunlight.
"Yer needs that many detonators?" da Cruz said, handing him a canteen.
The artillery sergeant was a wiry man, about forty; from Chongwe Island, by the accent and the blond hair that stood out against a skin tanned almost as dark as a Descotter's. He rinsed his mouth out and spat, then poured half the contents over his head, to join the sweat-runnels through the dirt on his bare chest.
"Na," he said. "Two or three ought to do her. But I figure, what they hell, we
got
'em, why not use them?"
Blue eyes met black, and da Cruz nodded in complete agreement. One thing you learned in this business was that it rarely paid to get too subtle, and it
never
hurt to kick a little harder than you needed to, just in case.
"Let's slip it," da Cruz said, once the gunner sergeant had had a chance to catch his breath; even if you hated explosives, it was always a pleasure to watch a good professional at work. The civilians attached to the detail were unloading the barrels and smaller jugs that would be poured into the large one to make the load of the flame-fougasse; liquid bitumen, tar, naphtha, sulphur, and the thick green vile-smelling oil rendered down from the greasy flesh of the avocat fish.
"One of my fav'rite occupations, slipping it in," the sergeant said. The troopers were manhandling the huge jar over to the hole. "Ah, friends?" They looked up. "You know, there's an earth lip around the powder, so even if you dropped that it shouldn't hit hard enough to set off the detonators, but all the same I'd appreciate it if you put her down, you know, a might soft."
"Amazing!"
Raj looked up from the lip of the bunker; a man was picking his way towards them across the tumbled earth of the trench line. A tall man, as tall as Raj, dressed in expensive cotton-drill khaki and a wrapped headdress; fifty, with sun and wind stamped into his flesh and salt-and-pepper beard. A pistol was strapped high up on his right hip, and Suzette had her arm tucked through the crook of his left.
She
was wearing elaborate Court riding-dress, complete with a wig of blond braids.
"Messer Falhasker," Raj said in a neutral tone. Although it was dubious whether he deserved the title; self-made wealth rather than inherited, and mostly in trade at that. "Good day, Messer. My thanks for your assistance." Which had been valuable; the merchant had organized his riverboat crews to help with the construction, donated every scrap of sailcloth in his warehouses for sandbags and even had them sewn up by the hundreds of women textile workers who spun and wove the fine cotton he traded up from the Drangosh Delta.