Mother, he thought. This was worse than a battle; then you could do something.
* * *
Horace knew he was being ridden toward another boat ride. He turned nose-to-tail and circled. Raj cursed, but he didn't bother yanking on the reins; you could pull until the levers gouged a hole right through his cheeks, and Horace wouldn't pay much attention. Instead he let the knotted reins fall on the pommel and leaned forward, thumping the hound's neck with the flat of his hand.
"Come on, you son of a bitch," he said firmly. "We've got places to go and things to do. Stop this nonsense."
Horace lowered his ears and head and turned, breaking into a shambling trot. Raj's banner snapped in the night air; the Colonial shells went by overhead with their mechanical wails, a continuous diminuendo punctuated by the crash of the bursting charges. He pressed with his heels as a barricade of brick and burning rubble closed the way. Horace took it in a single long leap, then checked a pace to let the others come through. Heat slapped at him as they passed over the flame; a dog yelped suddenly as it stepped on a hot ember.
Raj grinned into the darkness. Well, we certainly got their attention, he thought.
all colonial guns are firing at maximum speed, Center noted. even with ample ammunition reserves, this will degrade performance and shorten the life of the barrels.
Raj nodded. Wasteful. The hotter a gun got, the worse the wear on the lands of the rifling. After a while it had to be sent back to the foundry to have a new sleeve fitted into the barrel and rifled, and it was never quite as good after that. The third time it had to be scrapped.
* * *
"Want to do the honors, mi heneral?" Jorg Menyez said.
He waved to the lines of slowmatch that snaked away among the warehouses and boatyards of Sandoral's docks. The raw smell of kerosene and gunpowder was thick in the air.
"Dinnalsyn assures me that it will all go off at about the same time."
Raj looked around with grim satisfaction. When the warehouses and shipyards went up, it would also take all the remaining timber in Sandoral suitable for boats or rafts or bridging materials. Ali might get the city, but he was damned if there'd be anything immediately useful in it when he did. No food, no building materials.
"I wouldn't dream of denying you the pleasure, Jorg," Raj said.
Menyez ceremoniously puffed on his cigarillo and applied the end to the slowmatch. It lit with a sullen hiss and trail of blue smoke.
"And now we bid farewell to beauteous Sandoraclass="underline" land of exotic giant cockroaches, intolerable sticky heat-rash, and picturesque, hairy wogs with razor-sharp gelding knives," the infantryman mock-quoted. East Residence had enough of a middle class to support a tourist trade, mostly steamboat excursions to the Bay Islands. Guidebooks were common, too. "Hadios, mi heneral."
It probably did the men good to see their commanders relaxed and confident. It does me good. Jorg's usually a worrier. Morale's probably as high as it should be. Possibly higher than it should be. . Now who's worrying?
"Hadios, Jorg. See you downriver."
He turned Horace. Raft after raft was heading downstream, casting off behind its towing-barge. Sweeps tossed up small chuckling ripples of green water, a faint sheen under the crescent of Miniluna. As each loosed its ties to the anchor cables, another cluster of dogs and guns would trundle out across the linked rafts to the outermost. War-dogs whined as chain staples fastened their bridles to pins in the decking; the wheels of guns and limbers were lashed down, and another raft and barge combination was under way. Beyond the rafts boats speckled the water, sloops and ferries, and score after score of the pontoon barges.
Messengers trotted up, reported, left. Damn. Amazing. Only one traffic jam. And that caused by rubble blocking a street and the battalion assigned to it swerving into another's route. Paws and feet and wheels filled the night with a low rumble of purposeful noise, none of it as loud as the whistle and crash of two hundred Colonial guns bombarding the city. More starshells lightened the sky to the west, Colonial this time, put up so their artillery had better visibility.
* * *
"Shall I order a cease-fire?"
"No, Hussein," Tewfik replied, also in a whisper.
The central roof of the bunker had caved in, but the beams had not given way completely. They sagged to the floor, their jagged breaks splintered, like bone-white teeth. Dry dirt poured down still, pooling and spreading; soldiers dug bodies out of the pile, some wounded and some dead, and carried them up the stairs. Ripped down and stamped in a pile, the tapestries still smoldered from the burning kerosene that falling lamps had sprayed across them-sprayed across men, as well.
Although not, unfortunately, across my brother, Tewfik thought. It would be a disaster if Ali died just now. It might be salvation if he were struck down by an incapacitating injury; the longer, the better. There is no God but God, and all things are accomplished according to the will of God. But sometimes it was difficult to understand His tactics. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of burning carpets. More waste. The cost of them was enough to pay a brigade of cavalry for a year, and now they would be replaced. Transport would be commandeered to replace them, while the guns ate a month's reserve of ammunition.
"Amir, we will lose guns soon if we keep up this rate of fire," the officer warned. "The barrels are so hot we'll have cook-offs during reloading."
"Reduce the rate, but not so much that he" — he nodded to the other chamber of the bunker; Ali's sputtering curses could still be heard there, and occasionally a woman's scream- "will notice. Better to shoot the lands out of the barrels than have more executions."
The officer stroked his beard and leaned close. "Amir, it is time to consider if the House of Peace can stand, with this man at the head of it."
Tewfik stared into the other man's face for a moment; the brown eyes met his single one unflinching. Good. I have no cowards on my staff.
"He has no sons," he said quietly. "Nor do I."
"The Prophet Muhammed had no sons; but many rulers sprang from his daughters."
"And many wars sprang from the claims of his daughters' descendants and the orthodox caliphs, beginning with Kharballa," Tewfik pointed out. That had started a split that echoed down millennia, not even ending with the Last Jihad. "There are also too many nobles with enough of the Settler's blood to make a fair claim. Ali is no fool, he's killed the only ones with indisputable claims or great ability, or both. If we have civil war now, the kaphar and the Zanj and the northern savages will race each other to pick our bones. We must continue."