"Seventy-five yards," the officer whispered. "You start on the right gun position. Remember not to look at the flares."
She moved off into the night. Yes, Mother, Verger thought. He didn't mind having a woman as platoon commander… much, anymore. They tended to take better care of their units, less likely to get you killed to prove how long their dongs were.
He heard a series of soft grunts as Rueteklo unhitched the carrying frame from her webbing harness, and knew the feel of her hands as she lifted his free of his back. Together that was eight rockets; another eight came up from the rear, brought over the marsh on toboggans.
"Feed me," he said; it would be a while, but best to be ready. "Incendiary."
Metal touched the rear padding of the launcher, and the rocket slid home with a low clunk-click. The trigger on the first handgrip went taut as the tension came on the spring striker.
He could imagine the round sliding in, the egg-shaped head, the narrower body, the circle of fins at the rear with a solid rim the same diameter as the warhead. Unseen in the darkness his teeth showed. Incendiary warheads were fun.
Well, all of them were fun, but incendiaries most of all. The bursting charge scattered fire like the Christian Hell, and it burned inextinguishably, some wonderful art making it impossible to put out with water. He'd put one of those-maybe more-right through those ports.
"Up," Rueteklo said when her work was through.
"Ready," he replied, bringing his eye to the sight.
With that, he could see the clear pattern of light leaking out around the portlid of the gun emplacement; the careless bastards there didn't have any fitting to keep it light-tight. He shook his head in contempt. With a soft snort of equal scorn he remembered older men back home, saying that you had to obey like a dog to serve the Eagle People in war… Fools. Let them sit in their moldering dung-floored huts, wagging their gray beards and picking lice from each other's hair.
Hard Corps! he thought.
In the Corps you learned how to do things right. With the Empty Hand art alone he'd paid off many an old score, going back to his father's steading on leave-he was not a big man, though broad-shouldered and strong for his size. And as a Marine you could rely on the people beside you to do things the right way, the Corps way, not go off in a sulk, or rush away to grab a cow or grandstand and leave your arse swinging in the wind.
Oath-brothers like that gave you the strength of a God. More, they had the Midnight Mare and Golden Roan to lead them-keuthes enough to make victory sure. Just this evening before they all set off upriver he'd watched her doing some rite or other, laying a black thread and a white side by side on her sleeve and waiting until you couldn't tell one from the other. Powerful rites to put keuthes on your side, in the Corps.
Plus the Corps gave you weapons, finer than the miruthas used in the halls of Sky Father, and gold-fourteen dollars on the drumhead when you enlisted, the price of a good ox, and a dollar a day thereafter-and there was fine food like an endless feast in a chieftain's hall, healing magic like something from a tale of wizards for your hurts, the splendid uniform that all men feared, the promise of land after your hitch, the travel, the women to sport with…
He grinned at the memory of night before last, stealing away behind a pile of ammunition boxes with a frisky sailor-wench off one of the Guard frigates-sleep well lost. At home in the Alban lands of Sky Father's children, if you didn't have bride-wealth to offer… well, a girl's brothers might kick your bollocks off if you so much as caught her by the braids and asked for a kiss. And what young man his age had bridewealth, with the price of a wife going up all the time and no cattle raids to make a poor young warrior rich?
No wife for one born like him to a common wirtowonnax, that he knew, not for many years. No slave women any more either for a youth to ease himself with, or captives taken on raids, not like the days before the Battle of the Downs that his uncles spoke of.
The old men got all the girls now-unless the girls ran off themselves. A young man who stayed home had nothing to look forward to except another day walking behind the arse-end of a plow ox. Watching the turnips grow and banging sheep, while the great wild world swept by on the Islanders' tall white ships.
Yes, it's good to be in the Corps, he thought, working himself into the damp earth and keeping his eyes on the target with lynx patience, ignoring the cold rain that trickled down his helmet and fell into his sopping clothes. Good for his warrior years, and then one day he would have hall and land and herds of his own. Unless he died in battle first, of course, but all men were born doomed to meet their fate at the hour appointed. A sluggard sleeping in the straw and a hero on a bloody field reaping foemen, each died just as dead, and nobody remembered the sluggard's name after he was burned on his pyre.
Occasionally he stretched muscle against muscle in silent contest, to keep limber despite the damp chill, supple for when the moment of action arrived. Rueteklo settled in beside him and to one side, a little to the rear but out of the backblast, her rifle across one of the carrying racks.
"Got a rat-bar, Sheila?" he whispered.
She handed him one and he tore off the wrapper with his teeth. He was more cautious about biting into the field ration. The slab of rock-hard biscuit inside was laced with nuggets of nut and dried fruit; it challenged his teeth, then softened as he chewed bits. Not bad. He'd heard the Islander-born moan about dog biscuit and even rat-bars, as if you could have fresh loaves and roast pig every day.
Some folk would complain if they were beheaded with a golden ax!
Thunder rumbled faintly to the south and east. Raupasha blinked and brushed snow from her knitted hood-what the Eagle People called a ski mask-and looked in that direction. High rocky hills that were almost mountains blocked her view, bare trees and fir heavy with snow and naked rock. The sound boomed on, original and echo mingling in confusion. More snow flicked into her eyes, or fell from the rear flare of her helmet down her neck.
"It has begun," she said quietly.
"Well enough," Tekhip-tilla said, from the next chariot. "Another month of campaigning and we'd all have frozen solid, so the war would be delayed until spring when we thawed."
Raupasha nodded ruefully; the old noble liked to grumble, but this was true. She was wearing a coat of wolfskin that the Seg Kalui of Babylon had given her, over a good tunic of the fine soft goat hair of this region, and tight drawers of the same under trousers cut down from a pair that a Ringapi chief would never need again, and Nantucketer boots. She was still cold; she and her men came from a land where snow was a rarity, and never lay long on the ground.
The land ahead barely qualified as a valley-it was lower than the rough hills to the south, and much lower than the frowning heights northward. No road ran through it, or stream, only paths made by sheep and goats. Their herdsmen had left a few square rock shelters and pens, but those were abandoned. The whole landscape looked forsaken even by the Gods, dark rocks standing up out of sparse pasture already turning white. The snow flickered down out of the north, piling up against the exposed rocks, melting a little around the stamping feet of the horses and for a little while around the steaming piles of their dung.
Raupasha tapped Iridmi on the shoulder through his double cloak, and he drew the chariot out in front of the others. She pulled up the ski mask; her followers must see her face.