"It shall be done," the messenger said, wiggling backwards out of the king's presence. Cheated death again, he thought.
"Cheated death again." Julian sighed as the company broke through the final screen of trees into obviously civilized lands.
"Yeah," Despreaux said. "Damn, but I'm glad to be out of the jungle."
The passage over the hills from Voitan hadn't been terrible. In fact, they hadn't lost even one person to the jungle flora and fauna, although Kraft in Second Platoon had been badly mauled by a damnbeast.
The march from Voitan had also given them time to shake down into their new organization. The reduced company had separated into just two platoons, Second and Third, and they were getting used to all the empty files. Not happy about them, but adjusted.
All in all, they were probably in better shape both physically and in morale than at any time since leaving Q'Nkok, and the vista stretching out before them would help even more.
The region was obviously long and widely settled. Cultivated fields, interspersed with patches of woodland, spread for kilometers in every direction, and the river the old path had been following was flanked in the middle distance by two towns, one clearly larger than the other.
Captain Pahner waved for the column to hold up as it cleared the jungle completely. The bare track they'd been following for the last day had suddenly become a road. Not much of one these days, perhaps—weeds and even small trees thrust up through the roadbed's cracked, uneven flagstones—but it showed that this had once been an important route.
The company stopped by the ruins of a small building. The structure was set on a raised mound, one of many scattered across the floodplain, and its construction had been massive. It looked as if it had been a guardhouse or border station to receive the caravans from Voitan, and Pahner stepped up onto its two-meter-high mound to watch the caravan pull to a halt as the company deployed.
The Marines had been training hard with their new weapons, and it showed. Bead rifles and grenade launchers were still slung over their shoulders, but their primary weapons were clearly the short swords and spears they carried, and the small units spread out in a cigar perimeter, one swordsman to each spear carrier. Once Pahner had the shields designed, the formation would be quite different, but that was going to have to wait. The tower shield was another thing the Mardukans had apparently never discovered, so he would have to have them built somewhere.
And that somewhere would, hopefully, be here.
He made another gesture, and his "command team"—a grandiose term for a small group of battered Marines and civilians, but the only one he had—gathered about him. Sergeant Julian was filling in as Intel officer in the wake of Lieutenant Gulyas' death, but other than that, it was the same group he'd faced in Voitan.
"Okay," he said, gesturing to the two towns, "it looks pretty much the way the Voitan contingent said it would. This has to be the Hadur region." Heads nodded, and he wished—again—for an even half-way decent map. According to the Voitanese, the Hadur region took its name from the Hadur River, which had to be a truly major stream even for Marduk from the descriptions. He had no reason to doubt them, but he hated trying to fix his position without a reliable map. "If we're where we think we are," he went on with a crooked smile, "that larger town should be Marshad. And that," he pointed to the smaller town "must be Pasule."
Heads nodded again. Marshad had been the primary destination for caravans from over the hills before the fall of Voitan, which had made it a wealthy mercantile center. Pasule, on the other hand, was just a farming town, according to T'Leen Targ.
"I'd almost prefer to get our toes wet locally in Pasule before we tackle the big city," he went on, "but if we're going to get the shields and armor made, it will have to be in Marshad. On the other hand, we need resupply, too, and Pasule might be a better source for that."
As he spoke, he looked around the nearer fields, where peasants had stopped their work to gawk at the force coming out of the jungle. Most of the workers were breaking ground for another crop of barleyrice, but other laborers were harvesting the ubiquitous kate fruit. That was good. It meant that both the fruit and the previous barleyrice harvest would be fully available when it was time to buy.
"Yeah," Jasco agreed, with a grunting laugh that sounded almost Mardukan, as he, too, watched the workers, "these damn pack beasts go through some grain."
"Sergeant Major, I want you and Poertena to handle the resupply and procurement of the shields."
"Got it." The NCO made a note in her toot. They'd discussed the possibilities before, of course, but now that they were actually able to see the lay of the land, it seemed clear that Pasule would be a better, and probably cheaper, source for the food.
"We've seen that they can make laminated wood, plywood," said Roger, who'd been quietly listening. "We should have the shields made out of that."
"Plywood?" Jasco sounded incredulous, but, then, he hadn't been present to hear the prince discuss sword making with the Voitanese leaders. "You've got to be joking... Your Highness. I'd want something a little more solid than that!"
"No, he isn't joking." O'Casey shook her head. "The Roman shield was probably the most famous design ever to come out of Terran history, and it was made out of 'plywood.' The histories always call it 'laminated wood,' but that's what plywood is, and it's enormously tougher than an equivalent thickness of 'solid' wood."
"They have to have metal or leather rims to protect the edges," the prince continued, "but the bulk of the shield is plywood."
"Okay." Pahner nodded. "Kosutic, coordinate with Lieutenant MacClintock on the design of the shields." He looked around and shook his head. "I hope I don't have to remind anybody that we need to maintain as low a profile as possible. We can't afford another butt-kicking like Voitan. Hopefully, we'll be greeted as heroes for taking out the Kranolta and be able to pass on quickly. But if we get into a hassle, we have to think our way out of it. We're way too short on ammo to shoot our way out!"
Corporal Liszez trotted toward the command group with one of the locals. The Mardukan wore a haversack full of tools and appeared to be some sort of tinker.
"LT?" the corporal said as she approached Roger.
"Whatcha got, Liz?" the prince replied with a nod.
"This scummy's gabbling something, but the translator can't make anything of it."
"Oh, great," O'Casey sighed. "Dialect shift. Just what we needed."
"Get on it," Pahner said. "We have to be able to communicate with these people." The local was gesturing across the river at the distant city, obviously agitated about something. He either wanted the company to go there, or else he was warning them away. It could have been either, and Pahner nodded and gave him a closed-lip, Mardukan-style smile. "Yes, yes," he said "we're going to Marshad."
Either the smile or the words seemed to calm the local. He gestured, as if offering to lead them, but Pahner shook his head.
"We'll be along," he said soothingly. "Thank you. I'm sure we can find our own way."
He smiled again and started to wave the still-gabbling local politely away, then paused and looked at O'Casey.
"Do you want to talk with him?"
"Yes." She sounded a bit absent, obviously because she was concentrating on the translation—or lack thereof—from her toot. "I'm starting to pick up a few words. Let him walk with us to the town, and I'm pretty sure I can have most of the language by the time we arrive."