The problem was that there were other heliograph relays farther down the river-Colonial ones.
"Come on, mi heneral," Menyez said under his breath.
He looked back over his shoulder at Sandoral. The city was eerily quiet, hardly even a thread of smoke marking the hushed stillness of the morning. Not even a cock crowing; all the chickens had gone into the stewpots several days ago.
And nearly the whole garrison out here working on the bridge, he added to himself. Pretty soon that thought was going to occur to somebody else.
* * *
Ali ibn'Jamal lowered his telescope. "My so-brilliant brother has let them escape," he said bitterly. "Allah requite him for it. And their bridge of boats is nearly finished to receive the ravagers of the House of Peace."
Everyone else in the clump of nobles and commanders maintained a tight silence. A cool morning wind ruffled robes and beards and the peacock and egret plumes in turbans and helmets, but many of them were sweating nonetheless.
Cowards, Ali thought, and raised the telescope again. The kaphar were working like men possessed on their bridge, getting the surface laid before Whitehall appeared. Tewfik was going to let him ride back into Sandoral like a conquering hero!
"Commander of the Faithful."
It was one of the cavalry generals, a protege of Tewfik's. Who cannot be Settler. But who could rule from behind the Peacock Throne, with a puppet Settler. It had happened before.
The man knelt and touched his forehead to the floor. "The deserters have told us the kaphar are on half-rations-they have been for a week. With another eight thousand men and eight thousand dogs within the walls, they will eat their stores bare in a few days. Then the city must fall."
Eight thousand. Tewfik hadn't killed more than a few hundred of them, after they spent more than a week ravaging his lands. His lands! I do not want them to surrender. I want them to die.
Of course, they could die after they surrendered. . but if he allowed them terms, it would be unwise to break them. Not with Tewfik and his officers so close around him-not when they absurdly, blasphemously valued a word given to an unbeliever.
He raised the telescope again. It was incredible how quickly the infidels had gotten their bridge put back together. Cannon were firing from the walls of the earth fort around him, but doing no damage-the range was so great that only sheer luck or divine intervention would land a shell where it could accomplish anything.
They must have their whole garrison working on that, Ali thought. He could see them clearly now that the sun had risen.
Ali smiled suddenly. Those watching his face flinched and looked away, then forced themselves to turn their heads back; it was not safe to be unaware of the ruler's moods.
Ah, Tewfik my brother, you did not think of that. All his life he had been in Tewfik's shadow in matters of war; blundering and hacking his way through the complex problems of the battlefield in confusion, while Tewfik cut to victory with a lambent clarity. But this time, he was the one to see.
"You," he said to the kneeling officer. "Ubaydalla Said. I order an assault on the walls-an immediate assault. Rise, take command of the forward troops, and execute my commands."
"I hear and obey, Settler of Islam," the officer said. He paused thoughtfully. "That is an excellent suggestion. But the preparations-"
It was the expression on his face that moved the Settler; the surprise, that Ali could have come up with a workable plan. He plucked the ceremonial whip out of the man's belt and lashed him across the face with it. An upflung hand saved Said's eyes from the nine pieces of jagged steel on the ends of the thongs, but blood dripped heavily into his beard and from his gashed mouth.
"Are you a coward as well as a fool, pig? Are you deaf? I said immediately! If you have time to prepare, so will the enemy! And you are to lead the attack, personally."
"As God wills," the officer said quietly. He bowed again, blood dripping on the priceless carpets, and wheeled away sharply, calling for his subordinates.
* * *
A whistle blast jarred Corporal Minatelli out of exhausted sleep. It was much like waking up after a payday in Old Residence. For a moment he lay blinking in puzzlement. It must be Star Day, why were they calling him to work at the quarry already?
The whistle went on and on, sharp repeated calls. A trumpet joined in, sounding: Stand to, Stand to over and over again. Then he knew exactly where he was: on the parapet of the wall at Sandoral, with hot white sunlight slashing through the firing slits. He erupted up out of his blanket roll and grabbed his rifle and webbing in either hand, running to his duty station. His muscles ached from a night of hard labor, and the two hours of sleep seemed to have dumped a skullful of hot sand behind his eyes. He was hungry too, mortally hungry with the aching need of a man who had been using twice as many calories as he took in. None of it mattered.
He buckled his belt and leaned back slightly from the wall to make sure that everyone in the squad was at their posts-seven men to hold a section of wall that had been undermanned with forty. Seven men and the six militiamen left of the dozen that usually operated the big gun to his left. Probably the rest of the walls were just as empty. Spirit!
"Oh, scramento," he said as he knuckled the crust out of his eyes and looked out the slit.
From left to right across his field of vision the Colonial earthworks were belching jets of smoke with lances of red fire at their hearts; the siege guns were cutting loose. Underneath their deep booms he could hear the sharper sounds of the field guns in the forward bastions, and the rapid pom. . pom. . pom of the quick-firers. Much of the ground between the Colonial outworks and the city moat and wall was still covered by bloating bodies, and the ripe oily stink was thick-the wog commanders had refused the usual truce to remove the dead. That didn't seem to be slowing down the men who boiled out of the forward ends of the assault trenches any.
In the days since the first attempt at an escalade, the Colonials had braved constant sniping to rig overhead covers for the last few hundred meters of the trenches-platforms of palm logs and sandbags that wouldn't stop a heavy shell but did quite well against rifle bullets and case shot. Now the last ten meters or so of that were jerked down, and the soldiers in crimson came out like red warrior ants. They didn't seem to be as well organized this time, but there were an awful lot of them.
"Ready for it," Minatelli called, clearing his eyes with the thumb of one hand. The fabric of the fortifications quivered underneath him as the heavy solid shot rammed into the granite facing of the concrete-and-rubble wall. Dust quivered up from every crack and crevice. He took an instant to gulp water from a dipper, stale and welcome as a mother's love.
The wogs were running forward with their long ladders, built to cross the moat and not break even at an acute angle to the ground. The walls of Sandoral were not very high; they could not be, and be thick enough to resist modern rifled cannon. Others carried grapnel-throwing mortars.
"Now!" he shouted, and fired. Shots were crackling out all along the walls, and the deeper roar of cannon.
Booom. The fortress gun fired. A swath of the enemy went down, but the scratch crew were cursing with the shrillness of panic as they struggled to reload and relay the huge piece; there just weren't enough of them. Minatelli fired again and again, as fast as he could work the lever-worry about overheating and extraction jams later. Wogs fell, to lie among the bloated, swollen remnants of the previous attack, but they kept coming. Grapnels thumped out of the mortars and blurred up to the ramparts, trailing snakes of cable with knotted hand- and footholds. A shadow fell across his eyes as a ladder toppled toward the wall, slanting out to the ground beyond the moat. He dropped his rifle on the stone ledge for a moment and reached into a bin, pulling out a hand bomb and snagging the ring on top on a hook set into the wall. A quick jerk freed the ring, and the bomb began to hiss as the friction primer within burned.