The brand on me and mine,
I'll pay you back in the leaping flame
And loss of the butchered kine.
"Corporal!" she called. The Descotter gunmen came over at the trot, weapons poised.
"M'lady," Saynchez said, bracing to attention.
"This man is to be put under arrest. . there's a vacant room with an iron door in the cellars here, isn't there?"
"Yis, m'lady."
For every sheep I spared before-
In charity set free-
If I may reach my hold once more
I'll reive an honest three.
"Take him there. Let nobody see his face. He's to have food, water and bedding, but nobody, and I mean nobody, is to enter his cell or have conversation with him until I or General Whitehall authorize it. You will see that he's guarded by men who know how to keep their mouths shut. Do you understand?"
"Yis, m'lady." Corporal Saynchez quivered with eagerness, like a war-dog just before the charge is sounded "T'barb 'ull vanish offn t'earth."
For every time I raised the lowe
That scarred the dusty plain,
By sword and cord, by torch and tow
I'll light the land with twain!
"Abdullah," she called, when the soldiers had gone. Not quite at a run, and their hobnails grinding on the pavement.
"Saaidya."
"Messer Whitehall should be back in-" she looked out the window; Miniluna was three-quarters, and a hand's breadth above the horizon "-five hours. Please set a table for three in the lower alcove in time for him. Serve us yourself, please." That room had a stair to the cellars. "And take this to Messer Reggiri."
She pulled a ring from her finger; it was in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail, ruby-studded. "Tell him," she went on, after a pause for thought, "that I will give him a better gift than this, and a sweeter. But not here, in Wager Bay; and that I trust his discretion absolutely."
The dog runs better if you dangle the bone, she thought coolly. Her mind felt sharp as crystal, completely alive. The puzzle in her brain was not solved, but the pieces were there, and she could feel her consciousness turning and considering them. She had no genius for war; that was Raj's domain, and no human living could match him. At plot and counterplot and the ways of devious treachery, she was his third arm. She would give him what he needed to know, and he would wring victory out of it.
Spur hard your dog to Abazai,
Young lord of face so fair-
Lie close, lie close as Borderers lie,
Fat herds below Bonair!
"And Cabot?" she said, in answer to an unasked question. "I don't know. There's a great many things I don't know."
The one I'll shoot at the twilight-tide,
At dawn I'll drive the other;
The serf shall mourn for hoof and hide
The March-lord for his brother.
"But I do know what my Raj can do, if he has the tools he needs to work with. What he needs. And I'll bring him what he needs, whether he knows it or not."
'Tis war, red war, I'll give you then,
War till my sinews fail;
For the wrong you have done to a chief of men,
And a thief of the Bani Kahil.
And if I fall to your hand afresh
I give you leave for the sin,
That you cram my throat with the foul pigs flesh
And hang me in the skin!
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Not as enthusiastic as they were in Port Murchison," Raj said.
The capital of the Southern Territories had greeted his army with flowers and free wine; the men still talked about it with wistful exaggeration. Here the streets were mostly empty, save for a few knots of men standing on streetcorners watching the Civil Government's army roll by. The ironshod wheels of guns on the cobbles and the thunder-belling of nervous dogs rattled oddly through the unpeopled streets, a night-time sound on a bright summer's morning. Hobnailed boots slammed in earthquake unison as the infantry marched; he was keeping most of his cavalry bivouacked outside, in villages and manors in the rich coastal countryside. Less chance of disease breaking out, and better for the dogs.
"They're not as sure we're going to win as they were in Port Murchison," Kaltin Gruder pointed out.
They all snapped off a salute as the banner of the 24th Valencia Foot went by, and the standard dipped in response. The Companion considered them with a professional eye.
"Their marching's certainly sharp," he said dryly; cavalry in general and Descotters in particular didn't spend much time on it.
Raj shrugged. "It helps convince them they're soldiers," he said.
The foot-soldiers were mostly conscripted peons from the central provinces, several cuts below the average cavalry recruit socially. You just have to know how to treat them, he thought. Tell a man he's worthless often enough, and he'd act like it. For initiative and quick response, the infantry were never going to match a mounted unit like the 5th or Kaltin's 7th Descott Rangers. But they could be solid enough, if you handled them properly.
His eyes went back to the fort. "Well, the good citizens certainly got some evidence for doubting our chances," he pointed out.
The main north gate of Wager Bay gave them a good view downslope and to the east, where Fort Wager sat atop its headland. Every ten minutes or so a cannon would boom out, and a few seconds later a heavy roundshot would crash through a roof in the town below. Mostly they were falling in the tenement-and-workshop district of the town, narrow streets flanked by four-storey limestone apartment blocks, soap works, olive-oil plants and sulfur-refineries. Columns of black smoke marked where fires had started.
"Kaltin, see to getting those out, would you? There's a working aqueduct here, so it shouldn't be so difficult. Coordinate with the infantry commanders if you need more manpower."
The Companion nodded. "At least we know that they're not short of powder," he went on.
"That and a good deal else," Raj said absently.
He trained his binoculars on the harbor, studying the narrow shelf below the bluff and the fort. There were piers at the cliff-face nearest the harbor, but the ground rose steeply, no access except by covered staircases in the rock. Impossible to force; the defenses were built with that in mind. The main guns of the fort couldn't bear on the beach, but anyone trying to climb the cliff would face streams of burning olive oil out of force-pumps, at the very least. Further on, the cliffs bent sharply to the east; even steeper there, and waves frothed in complicated patterns on rock and reef further out.
following changes since last data update, Center said.
I hate it when you suddenly drop into Church jargon, Raj grumbled. He counted himself a pious man, but he'd never understood why the priests had to call commonplace facts "data." It wasn't as if they were speaking of something from the Canonical Handbooks, for the Spirit's sake. Center had the same unfortunate habit at times. One had to make allowances for an angel, of course. .
thank you. The water vanished from his sight, leaving the pattern of underlying rocks clear; then schematics snowed the flow of currents.
"Hand me that map, would you?" he asked A clipboard braced against his saddlebow, and he sketched without looking down. "There."