The first thing Roger noticed was a raging thirst. Hard on the heels of the thirst, though, was a headache that put it to shame.
He groaned and tried moving his fingers and toes. Something seemed to happen, so next he tried opening his eyes.
Well, he thought, cataloging his sensory impressions, it was hot and close, and there was a rock roof overhead. There was also a distinct stench of flar-ta droppings, and he swore, as he gagged on the dreadful smell, that he would never complain about grumbly oil again. He'd found so many, many smells that were worse.
Starting with burnt pork.
He turned his head to the side and groaned again. He didn't know what had happened to the Marine, but it been bad. Bad enough that he wasn't too sure, right offhand, whether it was a man or a woman.
"Plasma blast," a voice said from his other side. Roger turned his head, slowly and carefully, and looked up into the ugly face of Doc Dobrescu. "Only the bloom from it, actually. Not that that wasn't bad enough." The warrant officer gazed at his other patient for a moment, then back at Roger.
"Morning, Your Highness."
"My head," Roger croaked.
"Kinda hurts?" the medic asked cheerfully.
"Yeah."
The former Raider leaned forward and administered a stim shot to the prince's neck. In a moment, a wave of blessed relief flowed through him.
"Ooooh."
"Don't get used to it," the medic cautioned. "We've got lots of wounded. And on that subject, I need you to get your ass in gear, Your Highness. I've got other people to attend to."
Roger felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling him up, and looked back to discover that it belonged to Matsugae.
"Kostas?" he asked him blearily. He listened, but there was no crash of plasma cannon or crack of bead rifles. "What happened? Did we win?"
"Yes, Your Highness," the valet said, propping him up and handing him a cup of deliciously cool water. "Welcome back."
An image flashed suddenly across Roger's memory.
"Despreaux?" he said sharply.
"Sergeant Despreaux?" the valet asked with a puzzled expression. "She's fine. Why do you ask?"
Roger thought about explaining the memory of an upraised ax, but decided against it. He might also have to explain the strange, unsettled feeling that the image caused him.
"Never mind. What's the situation?"
"We won, as you surmised," the valet told him. "But things are complicated at the moment."
Roger looked around the fetid keep and blanched.
"How many?" he asked, gazing at the rows of wounded.
"Thirty-eight," Dobrescu replied, coming by checking monitors. "That aren't walking wounded. Twelve KIA... including Lieutenant Gulyas, I'm afraid."
"Oh, God." Roger's eyes returned to the burn patient next to him. So many of the wounded seemed to have terrible burns. "What happened?" he repeated.
"Plasma fire," Dobrescu said simply. "Things got... a little tight."
"We need to get them out of here," the prince said, waving a hand around in the stinking dimness. "This is no place to put a hospital."
"They're working on it, Your Highness," the medic told him. "We'll have them out of here by nightfall. In the meantime, it's the only roof we've got."
"Okay." Roger levered himself up with help from the valet. "Make sure of it."
The prince stumbled across the floor to the open doorway and stopped at the view that greeted him. The interior of the citadel was a scene from some demented vision of Hell.
The eastern bastion, Second Platoon's redoubt, was a blackened ruin. The curtain wall on that side was still covered in Mardukan dead, and the doors and spear slits were blasted, blackened, and broken.
The gatehouse was nothing but rubble, and half-fused, still-smoking rubble, at that. And the bailey was covered in Mardukan dead, piled five and six deep... where the piles weren't even deeper. Since the gate had been the only drain for the torrential Mardukan rains, the courtyard had started to fill with water. The line of natives who were working to clear the area already waded ankle deep in the noisome mess as they bent over the dead, and it was getting deeper.
Roger peered at the natives picking up bodies and bits of bodies in the gruesome, deepening soup.
"Are those who I think they are?"
"Kranolta," Kostas confirmed.
"They have weapons," Roger pointed out in a croak. He took another sip of water and shook his head. "What happened?" he asked for the third time.
"We won," the valet repeated. "Sort of. Forces from the other city-states showed up right at the end. They hit the Kranolta from the rear, and drove them back over the wall, where they finally took the eastern bastion. By then, Captain Pahner had evacuated it anyway, and it was the only cover they could find. Between the pressure of the new forces and having them pinned down, the Marines more or less wiped them out.
"But quite a few of them had withdrawn to their encampment before the city-state forces arrived. Only a handful of their original army, but enough that they could still have caused lots of problems, so Pahner arranged a cease-fire. The Kranolta that are left don't have any interest in facing Marines or the 'New Voitan' forces, but they'll fight if forced to. So the Captain and our new... allies agreed to let them keep their weapons and bury their dead."
"What a disaster," Roger whispered, looking over his shoulder back into the keep.
"It could have been worse, Sir."
"How?" Roger demanded bitterly.
"Well," the valet said as the rain began again, "we could have lost."
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
"If you hadn't come, we would have lost."
Roger took a sip of wine. The vintage was excellent, but then, all of the tent's appointments were excellent, from the finely tooled leather of its walls, to its hammered brass tables. The cushions on the floor were covered in a cloth the humans had never seen before, silky and utterly unlike the more common rough and wool-like material found in Q'Nkok. Obviously, T'Kal Vlan traveled in style.
"Perhaps so." The last ruler of T'an K'tass picked up a candied slice of kate fruit and nibbled it. "Yet even so, you would have destroyed the Kranolta. That's surely worth something even in the eyes of gods of the most distant land!"
Captain Pahner shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Your Highness, but it isn't. We come from an empire so vast that the Kranolta and all the valley of the Hurtan are an unnoticeable speck. I'm glad that you're glad, but the losses we took might mean the prince won't make it home." He grinned at the Mardukans. "And that would really disappoint his mother."
"Ah!" Roger exclaimed. "Not that! Not Mother angry! God forbid!"
"A formidable woman, eh?" T'Kal Vlan grunted a laugh.
"Rather," Roger told him with a shrug. "He has a point, though. I'm sure that if I died, Mother would visit me beyond the grave to chastise me for it."
"So, you see," Pahner continued, "I'm afraid I have to count this one as a straight loss."
"Not really, Captain," the prince said, swirling his wine gently. "We've cleared the way. One way or another, we had to get to the other side of this range of hills, and none of the choices were particularly good. There's no reason to second-guess this one. If we'd gone south, we would've been walking through a war, and we would undoubtedly have second-guessed ourselves then and said 'I bet those Kranolta pussies wouldn't have been this much trouble.'"
"Well, I for one thank you for clearing out most of those 'Kranolta pussies,' " T'Leen Targ said, with his own grunt of laughter. "Already, the ironworkers we brought with us are building the furnaces. We have gathered all the surviving masters of the art and their apprentices. Soon the lifeblood of Voitan will flow once more."