Troops ringed the berths where a dozen transports were docked; gulls chased hissing dactosauroids through the tarry maze of rigging, the sound lost in a surf-roar of voices. The mob was anxious enough to crowd the leveled bayonets. Raj could see the men jab them forward now and then, the long blades coming back red-tipped and the edge of the crowd stumbling away in an eddy; mounted officers with drawn sabers sat their dogs behind the line of guardsmen. Other figures were coming down the gangplanks of the transports, figures in the tattered remains of Civil Government uniforms. They shuffled down the creaking planks in groups, groups of eleven; ten men with their hands each in the belt of the one before them, and pus-wet bandages across the ruins of their eyes. The leading man in each group had one good eye, but no hands. . . .
" . . . and never will I forget my father's words, when he told me how his only living brother came back, a blinded eunuch. Your Supremacy," the old man went on, holding out his hands almost pleadingly; they were calloused from the grip of reins and saber. "Mighty Sovereign Lord, only because my father had not yet entered Holy Church did our line survive at all. I have served the Chair in war all my life, and my sons and my sons' sons. Spare them, Your Supremacy!"
There was a moment of ringing silence. Chancellor Tzetzas coughed discreetly into a handkerchief.
"Most moving, most moving." He was a tall slender man in his mid sixties, with the fine olive skin and delicate features of old City nobility. "Your Supremacy's will is mine, of course; still, this is a rashly adventurous course of action we contemplate. The campaign in the east concluded so successfully last year"—Tzetzas bowed easily in Raj's direction—"did no more than pay its own costs."
Raj felt his lips tighten, then forced an easy smile and a nod of polite acknowledgment.
Because I didn't let you get your hands on all the loot, Tzetzas,
he thought coldly. Some of it had gone on victory-bonuses, a good deal to pensions for troops crippled from their wounds, soldiers the Chancellor had thrown off their land grants as soon as they were registered as unfit for duty.
"Our mighty sovereign lord, Governor Barholm, has embarked on numerous projects to glorify the Spirit of Man of the Stars"—the new Temple, paid for out of an increase in the salt tax—"and to better the lives of the people"—railway extensions, new harbors and dams and steam mills—"and in conclusion, I am forced to confess myself at a loss as to where the funds for this expedition might be found."
"
Take it out of what you steal, Tzetzas.
" The call was a sotto voce whisper from one of the more junior officers up in the higher tiers of seats. Laughter rumbled from all the military men present, although the Chancellor's robed bureaucrats sat in appalled silence. Tzetzas's head turned, and the movement reminded Raj of a carnosauroid he had seen in the Governor's menagerie, one moment death-still, the next snapping an insect out of the air. Then the Chancellor relaxed, smiling thinly as Barholm joined in the bellow of mirth.
I
would not like to be the man who said that,
Raj thought. There was an old joke about a fangmouth biting Tzetzas; rumor had it that the poison reptile died in convulsions.
observe
Center said.
—and a young officer jerked erect in bed; Raj recognized the room, or rather its pattern. Company commander's quarters in an East Residence barracks, although the sleeping woman was decidedly non-regulation. The officer's face was fluid with sleep; he reached out to touch the holstered pistol hanging from the headboard by unconscious reflex.
"Heysos? That you?" he mumbled.
"
Nao
" a voice said, as the door swung open and a masked man in dark clothing stepped through. The naked soldier had just enough time to clear the heavy dragoon pistol from its holster before the shotgun blast caught him in the face, flinging his body back and much of his head across the wall behind him.
The woman screamed twice; the assassin stepped to within a meter of her before he fired the other barrel.
Tzetzas spread his hands. "And in any case . . . military affairs are outside my area of expertise; I would not care to speculate on the chances of success. The dangers to the eastern frontier, however, are, one would think, obvious. We lost several provinces to the Colony when the
last
expedition was destroyed."
Thump.
All eyes swung back to Barholm, as he brought the stylized keyboard down on the arm of the Chair. The diamond and padparascha sapphire symbols on its surface glittered, matching the autocrat's robes.
"Thanks to Brigadier Whitehall here," Barholm bit out, "the Colony is without a Settler. Ali and Akbar are still settling who's to be master—"
observe
Center said.
—and dark men in doghair robes waited behind an alabaster planter filled with rose bushes, the blossoms plate-sized disks of crimson and yellow. A figure in long robe and cloth-of-gold turban came striding along the pathway beyond, where fountains tinkled among delicate tilework; behind him walked guards, black giants naked to the waist with long curved blades resting unsheathed on their shoulders. The planter overturned and those behind it leapt forward, curved daggers raised, shrieking. Their screams of rage turned to fear as swords hissed and rifles from the snipers on the rooftop opposite spat puffs of white . . .
—and stocky grizzled Tewfik stood in the open flap of a field-commander's tent, dressed as ever in the plain scarlet burnoose and spired helmet of the Colonial Regulars, with the Seal of Solomon on his black leather eyepatch. His left hand was clenched on the hilt of his scimitar until the knuckles showed white, but there was unshakable calm in his voice, and in the face that watched the soldiers drilling. Behind him a man in civilian robe and ha'aik waited by the map table, looking uneasily at the officers who stood around him with their arms crossed. From his expression, he was fully conscious that they would be delighted by an order to take him out—and shoot him as soon as he cleared the rug.
"My regrets to my noble brother the emir Ali," Tewfik ground out, "and my message to him is as my previous message—please, we both know it was read by other than its intended recipient—to my noble brother the emir Akbar; the peace of Allah upon them both. No troops can be spared for . . . missions in the capital. Not now, or until the council of the ulemma has chosen another Settler to lead the faithful."
The civilian hesitated, then bowed. "Peace be upon you, sa'yid," he murmured, and slipped past to his waiting borzhoi.
"And upon you, peace, you viper," Tewfik muttered, when the messenger had gone. Then he wheeled, cutting off the officers with a glare and a chopping motion of his hand. "And there
will
be peace. Either of my brothers will rule well enough—but for me to reach for power would mean civil war; you know the Law." The Commander of the Faithful must be perfect in body. "It will be as God wills; and all things are accomplished according to the will of God."
"Inshallah," the officers murmured.
"—and Tewfik's disqualified, praise the
Spirit
for that." Raj nodded in unconscious agreement; Tewfik was far and away the most able of old Jamal's legitimate sons, but he was missing an eye, lost in the Zanj Wars a decade ago, and by Colonial law that disqualified him.
"Indeed, Your Supremacy," Tzetzas said; his voice had a softly reasonable tone that made you want to agree immediately, for fear of seeming shrill or irrational. "For a year or so the Colony will be weakened. But the conquest of the Southern Territories would take
decades.
"
"We certainly can't afford to
strip
the eastern territories," Fiydel Klostermann said; he was Master of Soldiers these days, an administrative command and as close to a Chief of Staff as the Civil Government had. "Which we'd need to do. The Squadron can field a hundred thousand men; granted they're equipped with blunderbusses, and they've no artillery to speak of, that's still two hundred battalions of fighting men." The Civil Government kept a quarter of a million men under arms, but most of those were immobile garrison infantry.
Admiral Tiburcyo Gharderini spoke up; he was a nervous looking little man with gray-shot black hair, in the black-and-gold uniform of the Civil Government's navy. Naval officers often came from the City itself, and from merchant families, unlike the Army, which was dominated by the landed gentry. You could see his consciousness of his own social insignificance as he glanced around at the others.
"Well . . . we
do
have the steam rams and gunboats," he said. "We've managed to keep the Squadron corsairs at a distance, this last generation."
"Mostly," a cavalry commander said dryly. Gharderini flushed darkly.
"But that's a different matter from attacking Port Murchison," the sailor went on doggedly; that was the capital of the Territories. "We don't have enough fleet units to spare to guard a convoy that size, we don't have coaling stations close enough, and we're just too undermanned and underfunded. Begging Your Excellency's pardon," he finished rapidly, with a bob in the direction of the Chancellor.
Barholm was tapping the keyboard-scepter on the arm of the Chair with ominous patience.
A younger officer sprang up. Raj recognized him: Anhelino Dalhouse, commander of the 17th Valley Cuirassiers. Exceedingly wealthy and well-born and without much combat experience, unless you counted putting down the odd peon uprising.
"We sit here quibbling like a lot of old women!" he burst out, the points of his mustache quivering. "What are we, fighting men or duennas at a coming-out ball for our maiden sisters? The Squadron heretics sit on our lands, collecting our revenues and persecuting our people and our church. What more needs to be said?"
The Supreme Reverend Syssup-Hierarch rose, fingering the circuit amulet on his chest. "More than persecuting!" he said angrily. "Your Supremacy, you are guardian of the Church's flock in every land—the Squadron beasts stable their riding dogs in our churches, or worse, convert them to their heretical worship of the Spirit of Man of This Earth"—most of the audience grasped their amulets and murmured a prayer—"and they rob and plunder and enslave our communicants who refuse to follow their beastly superstition. Their Admiral forbids the appointment of Syssups to guide the dioceses of the Territories; Syssups-Missionary I have appointed have been burned alive, priests mutilated, Renunciate Sisters gang-raped. The Spirit of Man of the Stars demands we act! Endfile."
"Endfile," the others murmured piously, touching their amulets.
At least there's one sincere voice,
Raj thought
Barholm nodded, pleased.
Klostermann cleared his throat and spoke: "All respect and reverence to Holy Church and Its Supreme Reverend Syssup-Hierarch, but we've been receiving reports of atrocities for the century or more the Squadron has held the Territories. Why does the Spirit of Man of the Stars demand we act
now
,
rather than later when the conditions favor us? Will it serve Holy Church for us to lose another fifty thousand men, and perhaps the borderlands we fought the Colony last year to keep?"
Silence fell again, broken only by the scritch of secretaries writing up the records of the meeting and the slow tick-tock of the brass clock set into one wall of the chapel.
"Brigadier Whitehall," Barholm said at last, softly. "We require your opinion in this matter."
Raj felt cold. This is the time, Center? The Civil Government really is strong enough now to retake the Southern Territories?
as i have shown you, raj whitehall, replied the voice in his mind, i cannot guarantee success, but . . . i did not choose you not to try.
The young general came slowly to his feet, looking down at the backs of his hands. They were scarred, with faint darker lines on the knuckles, trail-dirt, from long marches, that could never quite be scrubbed away. When he raised his eyes he felt a slight forward sway from the other seats; only desperate fear could have made so many openly disagree with the Governor, who was not a forgiving man. Most desperate of all the fear of being appointed to command the expedition; defeat probably meant proscription as a traitor, death or confiscation of estates for the commander's whole family.
"Your Supremacy," he said, and paused. "On your orders, I've made a study of this problem. I believe the reconquest of the Southern Territories
can
be accomplished." A collective sigh of indrawn breath.
"And it can be accomplished at acceptable cost and risk. No slight to the valiant dead, but the last expeditionary force was neither well organized nor well led. And the Squadron they faced was still the terror of the Midworld Sea, with a first-rate navy.
"They've let their fleet go downhill, and their army too, such as it is. They don't have a standing force, you know. That didn't matter when Admiral Ricks"—the legendary war-chief who had led the Squadron down from the north, and then created the fleet that pillaged the Midworld for generations—"called up his warriors for pirate raids every year, 'to make war on those with whom the Spirit of Man is angry' . . . but these days all most of them do is sit on their behinds and watch their peons work.
"Sending fifty thousand men would be an unacceptable risk and far too expensive. With thirty thousand I can be fairly confident of success."
He watched the faces change; Tzetzas relaxing, Barholm tightening into a frown.
you will not be given thirty thousand,
Center said.
probability 89%
±
6%.
Raj sighed inwardly; Center took some of the fun out of bargaining, with its ability to tell you exactly what an opponent would settle for beforehand.
"Fifteen thousand
could
do it: five thousand cavalry as a strike force, ten thousand infantry for garrisons and as a base of maneuver, and thirty guns. I'd estimate no more than a year of real fighting if it's properly handled, and plunder alone will pay the expenses of the campaign, not to mention the revenues afterwards. With less than fifteen thousand, I would regretfully decline to assume any position."