"For the present."
"For the present," Tewfik agreed. Until Ali alive becomes more a menace to the House of Islam than Ali dead, went unspoken between them. "Now go, and have the gunners reduce their rate of fire by one-third. On my authority."
I control the Host of Peace, but I cannot rule, he knew bitterly. Not in his own name. If only there were a male heir, a regency might be possible-but there was not. The mullahs would not issue the Friday prayer for one-eyed Tewfik; men would not obey, not without a soldier standing behind them. He would shatter what he most wished to preserve, if he tried that.
"Insh'allah."
The acrid gloom of the bunker was stifling. Left hand on the hilt of his yataghan, he strode up the stairs, past the protective curves and the intermediate guardroom. The blue-white sputtering light of starshells made him slit his eyes at the dark motionless bulk of Sandoral's low-slung walls. They mocked him from behind the moat, tantalized him. Men and dogs labored to bring the ammunition forward to the siege guns from the bombproofs set behind the main line, along pathways sunk into the ground with protective berms on either side. The gunners toiled, stripped to the waist, their faces and torsos black with powder smoke. Many had balls of cotton wool stuffed in their ears, but they courted deafness as well as death with every shot. It did not stop the smooth choreographed sequence of laying, swabbing, loading, ramming, firing.
A heavy shell bit a section out of the firing parapet in a clap of orange flame and rumble of sound. Water spurted up where the stone fell into the moat, leaving a ragged gap in the concrete core. No fire replied from the city.
"Was that your plan, Whitehall, to weaken our artillery? Did you know how my brother would respond to your taunt?"
The stonk on the command bunker had been wickedly well-placed. Whitehall was well served, good officers, brave and well-trained troops, well equipped. Does he know us well enough to predict that my brother would waste ammunition and guns like this? He nodded. Certainly.
"Yet it cannot affect the outcome of the war," he mused.
Could it be cover for another raid? Unlikely. With a pontoon bridge for rapid withdrawal and a secure fortified base, Whitehall had still been unable to do more than divert him temporarily. Now the land across the river was unfit to support moving troops. What could the infidel accomplish with the smaller number of men they could smuggle across the river now?
That was the problem. He did not know.
"Lord Amir. The Settler requires your presence."
Tewfik ground his teeth. He has beaten enough women to feel brave again, he thought. Now he must play at commander. And waste my time!
With an enemy like Whitehall, time was one thing you never had a surplus of. From all reports, Barholm Clerett was almost as difficult a master to serve as Ali ibn'Jamal-but at least he was far away.
* * *
The little galley Raj was using as his HQ had been some rich merchant's toy before war came to Sandoral, or perhaps belonged to a landowner with estates on the riverbank who wanted to be able to commute to his townhouse in the district capital. For a moment Raj wondered where he was, that little provincial oligarch. On the road west, grumbling in his carriage with a nagging wife and the nurse fussing with the children and a train of baggage carts behind? Perhaps already in East Residence, imposing on some distant relative or dickering with a lodging-keeper not at all impressed by anything from beyond the walls of the city. Or caught on his country property by Colonial raiders, and now tumbled bones in a ditch.
We must be making ten klicks per hour, he thought.
a range of 9.7 to 10.1, averaging 9.9 overall, Center said.
Tonight and tomorrow to reach their destination, traveling with the current. The men in the barges and boats were sculling, but more to keep station and direction than for propulsion. There were enough in each vessel to change off at frequent intervals, too.
"Over to Major Bellamy," Raj said, pointing.
The galley came about sharply, bringing a protesting whine from Horace and Harbie on the foredeck. The crew were all ex-boatmen and used to the shattering labor at the oars; one side dug theirs in hard, the other feathered, and the man at the tiller pushed it over. The slender boat turned in almost its own length and stroked eastward. Beside a raft crowded with troops and dogs it halted; Raj leaned over the side, one hand on the rail.
"There's your destination, Major," he said, pointing southward, downstream. "Remember the timing's crucial."
Bellamy waved back wordlessly, his bowl-cut blond hair bright in the darkness. His rowers bent to their work, and several of the other barges followed. Raj's galley curved back toward the main body of the straggling armada, like a sheepdog with its flock.
More like a pack of carnosauroids, Raj thought, watching the dull glint of moonlight on the barrels of the field pieces on a raft.
Suzette came up beside him, a cigarette glowing in its holder of carved sauroid ivory. "The waiting's the hardest part," she said.
"No, just the longest," Raj said. "Having to send others out, that's hardest."
She put an arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Stake the dogs," Ludwig Bellamy said.
His second-in-command blinked at him. "It's more than a kilometer to the objective," he said in surprise.
"Ni, migo," Bellamy said in Namerique. "Walking that far won't kill us."
He shook his head as the man walked away to spread the order by whisper. Messer Raj had taught his Squadrone followers that fighting on foot was no disgrace, but they'd still rather ride ten kilometers than walk one.
He squinted at his map; an aide lit a match and held it over the paper. Messer Raj had penciled in the route with his own hands. Yes. That's the gully. There was a roadway of sorts along the river's edge, but it was entirely too visible from the other side, back around Sandoral. His scouts gathered around, holding the reins of their dogs.
"Lead the way," he said, tracing out the branchings of wash and ravine. "It's only a klick; but keep an eye out for wog pickets."
He looked up at the bulk of the unit; nearly everyone was ashore from the beached barges and rafts, although many were soaked to the waist. Water squelched in his own high boots. The last few came in sight, holding their rifles and bandoliers over their heads as they waded to the muddy riverbank.
"Fall them in," he said quietly.
The 1st Mounted Cruisers formed up in ranks four deep, and the rabble of militia gunners behind them. They'd have no part in the immediate action, but they were important if everything worked right.
"Migos, Messer Raj trusts us to do this job right without holding our hands. Let's show him he's right. Keep it quiet and move quickly."
"Right face. At the double, forward march."
They swung off into the night, rifles at the trail. Bellamy trotted up along the line to the head, where the battalion banner was. His aide was leading his dog, back at the rear; the men would march with a better will if they saw the commander on foot too. Some of them grinned and shook their rifles in the air as he passed.
They're pumped, Bellamy decided. This had all the earmarks of one of Messer Raj's sauroid-out-of-the-helmet tricks. They trusted their leader's luck. And they hated being cooped up inside walls, no matter how strong.
He looked ahead. You have to earn your luck. It was much darker here, where most of the sky was blocked out by the clay walls of the badlands on either side. They panted up steep slopes, scrambled down others, slogged through sand and deep dust that sucked at their boots, splashed through a few wet spots where water from the spring floods still lay. Men panted, sweated, cursed in low voices. The ground rose toward the hills where the road from the east met the river, where Tewfik had planted his fortlet.