Clumps of townsfolk, all men in long robes, examined the fresh-caught slaves from the Civil Government. One wore a robe of dazzling white linen edged with silver, and a cord-bound ha'ik headdress. He was bargaining more seriously with a uniformed officer in charge of the prisoners; at last they slapped palms in a bargain-sealing gesture.
"By Allah," the civilian said, smoothing his gray-streaked beard with one hand, "I would have bought more if they were in better condition. Not worth my while to pay for transport if all they're fit for is the mines or the sugar plantations."
They were speaking Arabic, but somehow Raj understood far better than his nodding acquaintance with that language would allow.
"Look at that moon-faced beauty!" the slaver continued. He pointed with a long ebony staff at a plump girl who sat staring before her, ignoring the hardtack in her hand and the woman beside her who urged her to eat. "I could have gotten, two, three hundred for her in Al-Kebir, except for those infected bites all over her breasts. And she's mad besides; now, no more than fifty for a sailor's brothel."
The officer shrugged, glanced up at the cloudless sky and pulled a fold of his helmet's cloth neck-guard across his face. "By the Prophet, you can't keep troops too much in line when the loot's so scanty," he said, clapping his hands and pointing out one slave, then another. The guards untied them and hustled them forward; the slave trader's assistants formed them into a new coffle with bonds of woven coconut-fiber rope. All were males, prepubescent.
"But look at these," the soldier continued. "All healthy, sound of mind and limb; you'll get good prices for these, even if the fashion is for black harem guards."
"
Kaphars
have a certain value as well," the trader nodded. "But we lose half when we geld them; sometimes more, and then where is my profit?"
There was a crash behind them. Both men wheeled to look; the ropes had slipped unloading a heavy gun from one of the barges, a muzzle-loading siege gun with a barrel shaped like a soda bottle, built up with extra bands around the breech. It hung for a moment, teetering, then crashed onto the dock as the crew pulled frantically at ropes. There was a hollow thudding shudder through the brick arches beneath their feet. The soldier strode off, waving his riding-crop in the air and screaming imprecations.
"Peace be with you!" he shouted over one shoulder to the merchant, before returning to cursing the dockworkers.
"And upon you, peace!" the slave trader called back, patting one of the boys on the head. The child smiled up at him uncertainly. "But not too
much
peace," he continued happily.
Confident, Raj thought grimly. It's been a long time since the Civil Government won a major battle with the Colony.
Forty-three years two months seventeen days,
Center prompted helpfully.
Thank you
,
Raj replied.
Thank you very much
.
He looked up; they were nearly at the stables, the familiar rank odors of boiling mash and dog shit muted by the cool stone smell.
"We'll just have to make sure the record doesn't run to forty-four," he said aloud.
"Get that thing off the road, get it the
fuck
off the road, do it
now
,
er I blow yor fuckin'
head
off!"
Raj Whitehall heard the high-pitched scream of the 2nd's Battalion Master Sergeant and sighed. It had taken fifteen minutes for the huge procession formed by the two battalions to lurch to a halt, another fifteen to become frustrated enough to go forward and see for himself, and ten more to ride and edge his way forward to within hearing distance of the front.
Half a day
,
he thought.
We can't get half a
day
out of East Residence and this sort of thing happens
.
He looked up at the reddish-orange disk of the sun; the glance at the position of Miniluna was a reflex from his youth, when the only watch on the estate was an heirloom his grandfather had brought back from the Army. Only one of the moons was up right now.
And three hours just getting out of the gates.
Raj pressed his heels to Horace's sides. The wardog swerved out of the slow-moving column, ignoring the occasional sniff or yelp from the other mounts. And teams; half of the 2nd were in light overland carriages, big enough to carry four.
Only a quarter of the 5th Descott's officers in coaches
,
he thought sardonically.
Hooray, we're hardy sons of bitches, we Descotters. Spirit of Man of the Stars, give me strength!
that is not my function.
"Literalist," he muttered. Even a pious man could not talk with an angel daily and not become familiar.
no. ironist.
The column seemed to go on forever, filling most of the eight-meter width of the road. This close to the capital the surface was of poured concrete, over a bed of stabilized earth and gravel; the shoulders were three meters wide, of crushed rock, and right now occupied by scores of indignant travelers. Most were peasants, with handcarts or single-ox two wheel wagons of fresh produce; a substantial minority were pilgrims, afoot and dressed in burlap robes, with staffs in their hand carved with mystic circuit diagrams and topped with the Star. The peasants waited with stolid patience, the pilgrims the same, or with a serenity that Raj found slightly disquieting. A few of those pushed
off
the road were wealthy enough to have carriages or riding dogs of their own.
One merchant on a high-bred borzoi tried to edge along beside the stalled, irritated troopers. The two soldiers nearest merely turned their heads in blank disinterest. Their mounts turned their heads as well, twisting them down and half-sideways in a snakelike gesture. Their ruffs stood up, but the dripping bare teeth were only incidentally and functionally a threat display. The borzoi's muzzle was encased in a steel basket as law required for civilian animals, while the wardogs wore only light halters that deliberately left their jaws unencumbered. Not that that made much difference, since each of the massive beasts was half again the borzoi's weight and a killer by breeding and training besides.
It backed away, crouching and whining and urinating in a thin stream on the dusty rock of the road verge. The dogs waited, visibly hoping it would come within reach. They ignored Raj and Horace; most wardogs recognized a sort of vague pack-sentiment to anything smelling of the Army, although putting a scratch unit together always led to weeks of trouble as they settled the pecking order. And to even worse trouble when that pecking order did not correspond with the human ranking of their riders.
Raj had expected Stanson to be at the head of the column; the other Guard had insisted that the 2nd have precedence on the road, after all. Instead there was still only the advance piquette of the Gendarmerie, and the Master Sergeant he had heard cursing half a kilometer back. The color-party were sitting their dogs uncomfortably; the standard-bearer was slumping a little, letting the long pole with the bronze Star and the citation ribbons of the five companies making up the 2nd Gendarmerie slant out from the cup in his right stirrup. The dogs were looking hackles-up at the thing in the roadway before them.
It
was
impressive; a steam traction engine, like a locomotive with a brace of wheels on a pivot at the funnel end of a long riveted iron boiler, and two huge spoked iron driving wheels at the rear; there was a tasseled canopy over the driver's seat, and behind it four huge six-wheeler wagons. They were loaded with hand-thick sheets of nairstone, fossilized quasi-coral cut from the occasional reefs of harder stone that rose from the alluvial floor of the Hemmar Valley. Rare and quite precious, used to pick out ornamental details on important buildings; the surface was basically a lustrous silver, streaked with swirling patterns of reddish ochre and blue.
There were a half-dozen armed guards with the train, even this close to the East Residence; they sat their dogs in a clump, surprisingly truculent, several with rifles across their knees. There was a stoker perched sullenly beside the driver's bench of the traction engine, a dark stocky huge-muscled man with a steel collar around his neck. And the driver himself, as broad as his slave assistant and much taller, in stained overalls, his woolen hat respectfully in his hands.
"Well, good sir, I
can't—
"
he broke off as Raj rode up, taking in the three-star insignia of a Captain on the brow of his helmet. "Oh, thank the Spirit! Good my lord—"
"Sor—" the 2nd Gendarmerie NCO began.
"Quiet." Silence fell, even the crowds on the shoulders of the road ceasing their chattering. "Sergeant, could you tell me what the darklord is going
on
,
here?"
"Ahh, well, sor." The NCO was elderly for this line of work, fifty if he was a day and bald as an egg. The narrow mustache on his upper lip still had streaks of yellow in it as well as gray, and his eyes were blue; Raj put that together with the accent and decided he was probably from Chongwe Island County, over on the western border. Skin tanned to the consistency of old leather, and a voice to match. "We've gots a bit of a transport problem, like. The other civvie stuff, it's moved aside, but this bastard here won't." The sergeant brightened, and dropped a hand to his saber. "Kill hem, sor?"
The guards stirred, and the dogs of the two parties exchanged tail-down snarls. The civilian opened his mouth to protest, looked up at the sergeant and suddenly realized there was real hope behind the request. He wrung the cap between his hands again, then burst out:
"Noble lord! Star Spirit and Holy Federation witness, I
can't
run this off the road, not
here
,
m'lord. This thing weighs twenty
tonnes
,
m'lord, not counting the cargo, the ground won't hold it, not unless I was an Avatar of the Spirit 'n could walk on water."
"Well, that's your problem," Raj said flatly, looking around.
They were headed south on a road that ran south-southeast, two kilometers from the river, with the Coast Range mountains floating on the western horizon, snowpeaks merging with low cloud. The ground rose up-valley, so the ramparts of the East Residence wall were still visible to the north, earthworks and ramparts and outlying forts larger than most cities, all a dim line on the horizon. The fields to either side were tabletop flat, long-reclaimed marshland; the road itself was raised two meters above ground level on an embankment. They had left the rice paddies of the delta behind, but the turned earth showed black and spongy between rows of young maize, and irrigation canals laced the landscape until it disappeared in the haze along the horizon. The wheat was just starting to head out, streaks of gold among the green, orchards in full leaf; sharecropper shacks were scattered across the fields, occasionally clumping into a hamlet with the spire and Star of a chapel at its center. Now and then a manor, although most landowners hereabouts would live in the city for all but a few months of the year.
"Right, sergeant, get a squad up here. We'll push—" "My lord, I'm under contract to the Church!" Raj touched his amulet.
Oh
.
Now that he looked, the guards had Star emblems pinned to their shoulders, and they were the real electrum the Church issued to its secular servants, not brass. The 2nd's Master Sergeant sighed in vexation and let his sword slip back into the scabbard, the handspan of bright metal dropping into the lapwing-oil greased leather and wood with a slight
shhhhp
sound. This
did
put a different complexion on things. Sinful to offend the church, and stupid as well; the Governor was the Spirit's Viceregent on Earth, but . . . Raj cursed under his breath and unfastened his helmet; the mild damp breeze was a little chill on the sweat-dampened curls of his dark hair. It was from the south, smelling of turned earth and growing things, a wet fecund smell.
"It's for the New Temple, m'lord," the driver said eagerly. "The Vice-Governor hisself's in charge; a great work to the glory of the Spirit, it'll be!"
and to the glory of barholm.
The Spirit operates through human instruments
,
Raj thought tartly. It was widely known that the Vice-Governor had employed Abel Yunner, a heretic Earth-Spiritist from the Old Residence, as architect. "His soul may go to the Outer Dark, but his designs will honor the Spirit of Man of the Stars," Barholm had said.
exactly. human instruments such as yourself.
Raj felt himself flush with embarrassment, then wrenched his attention back to the practical problem at hand. The thought of himself as an Avatar, one in whom the Spirit in-dwelt, was profoundly disturbing . . . and seemed to be literally true.
"What's in that first wagon?" he said, pointing.
"Why, coal, your lordship."
Raj looked at the side of the road, the meter-deep ditch, the long slope down to the edge of the cornfield. Less than fifty meters beyond that to a row of poplars along a canal. "How much do those wagons with the nairstone weigh?"
"'bout two tonnes each, m'lord."
"Hmmm." He closed his eyes, estimating distances. There was a long length of cable coiled at the rear of the traction engine, first-quality woven-wire stuff.
"All
right
,"
he said. "Now, here's what we'll do. Sergeant, get . . ." he looked back down the column. "Oh, three twelve-ox teams from the baggage. Driver, uncouple the engine and pull the coal-wagon over there." He pointed to the right side of the road. "We'll tip it over—"
"M'lord!" Almost a bleat.
"—to form a ramp. Then we'll run that cable out to those poplars, rig that nice block-and-tackle I see you've got to one of them . . . better make that two, use a Y brace . . . and run the wagons one by one down the embankment."
"They'll bog, m'lord, right to the axles."
"Not if we use the cable to haul them out of the way. Then we run the traction engine down"—the driver's eyes bulged—"and all the Church's property is nice and safe, as soon as they want to come out here with equipment to dig it out."