"Colonel Menyez!" he snapped, swinging down to the ground. He checked a half-pace as he saw the others' eyes on him, on the blood and dust smeared across his face and the bullet-rip in his sleeve, the lead-splashed helmet.
"Sir," Menyez said. "Sir, the flanking force?"
Raj made a chopping gesture of dismissal. "Dead. Slaughtered to a man." Somebody offered him a canteen, and he rinsed his mouth and spat. The news was spreading in whispers out from the circle of officers, and cheering broke out from the infantry units for a moment.
"I'm waiting, Messer," Raj went on, dangerously quiet.
Menyez met his eyes squarely, hands folded behind his back. "Disputes arose, sir, over the best course to take, with you out of communication. Major Dalhouse felt that as senior officer he should lead the column assigned to Major Thiddo; Major Buthelezi concurred. Several officers were of the opinion that the force should be kept intact to go to your rescue; Messa Whitehall also forcefully expressed that view. Sir."
Raj stood silent for a moment. Suzette went white around the mouth under his stare.
"My lady Whitehall," he said softly. "Please stand aside for the moment; this is not your place." He made a signal behind him with one hand; the twenty Scout troopers dismounted and formed up behind him. Two swift steps brought him in front of Dalhouse, and he took the waxed mustaches in thumb and forefinger of each hand. The move was swift and utterly unexpected; Dalhouse rose on tiptoe as Raj jerked his hands up toward his face. That left their noses almost touching.
"You refused an order to advance in the face of the enemy, Dalhouse," Raj said. His voice was metallic. "For which the penalty is death."
He released the smaller man. "And I'll have you shot here and now if you question an order again."
Dalhouse took a step back, his hand not quite touching his saber. He cast a quick glance from side to side. Mekkle Thiddo was smiling with relief, no surprise in Raj Whitehall's crony. . but so was Hadolfo Zahpata of the 18th Komar, who was a professional's professional. And Hingenio Buthelezi was keeping his face to the front and carefully neutral. Dalhouse looked beyond Raj for a moment, and met the eyes of a hulking Scout trooper. The trooper started to smile.
He swallowed and made a stiff salute. "As you command, General."
"Exactly," Raj said. He turned ninety degrees on one heel. "Colonel Menyez, all of you, I am not pleased. This is supposed to be a civilized army, under discipline, not a barbarian warband."
He gave a brief nod, dismissing the matter for the moment. "Now. Major Poplanich, you'll accompany me with Poplanich's Own. Colonel Menyez, I want the highest possible state of alert on the part of the infantry. Majors Thiddo and Zahpata, you have your instructions; move your columns out. In the event of your being driven in on the base, you'll be under Colonel Menyez's orders until I return. And, gentlemen, I expect effective coordination." He looked around, found the white robes of a priest. "Reverend Father, the three-minute battle prayer, if you please."
"Spirit of Man, Spirit of the Stars, make us strong for battle in Thy name-"
* * *
PAMM. PAMM. PAMM.
The sound was muffled in the distance as the battalion column of Poplanich's Own jogged forward. A rattle of shots echoed it, like very loud and slightly blurred rifle shots stuttering one after the other. A faint tinge of sulfur drifted down the wind; so did flocks of winged creatures, skipping from tree to tree and falling again to disappear in the wheat stubble on the rolling fields-skin-winged dactosauroids mostly, and the toothy-mouthed feathered types that were almost birds but could only glide, and behind them true birds of Earth descent.
"What's that, my lord?" Ludwig Bellamy asked nervously, nodding forward at the noise. He was riding to Raj's left, near where Suzette sat her palfrey with the butt of her carbine on one hip. The Squadron turncoat had his sword, but no firearm.
"Cannon," Raj said absently, frowning over the map in his hand. They were nearly to where Staenbridge had planned to set up. Whatever had happened, it was not the slow retreat they anticipated. "Field guns and volley fire." There was a burbling chorus of dull pops behind the crisp sound of the Armory rifles; that was Squadron smoothbores, but there was no need to point it out.
Ehwardo Poplanich lowered his binoculars. "I'd say rifle fire from about four, five companies," he said. "Not in any great hurry, either."
A whistle sounded from ahead, and a Scout came pounding back along the rutted, potholed gravel road. Sunlight flicked across him in bars between the roadside trees as he pulled up.
"Barbs, dead, ser," he said, raising a gloved hand to his helmet-brim. "Looks like some action."
The road rose slightly to an almost imperceptible ridge, marked in the fields to either side by a low fieldstone wall. Metal glinted amid the stubble along the near side of it, thin brass cartridge cases for the Civil Government breechloaders. The column topped the rise, and Raj flung up his hand. Behind him the trumpet sang, walk-march-walk, and then halt. Ahead lay a windrow of bodies, men and dogs lying in layers on the road and spilling off to either side. He counted about a score of men and as many dogs; it always looked like more, when they lay like this. Every man and beast bore multiple wounds, with exit-holes the size of fists where the hollow-point 11mm rounds had punched out. Enough blood had followed to make mud of the dusty surface of the road; the musky stink of it was already growing under the warm sun, and flies swarmed. Dozens more corpses scattered the fields to either side, and the road for a half-thousand meters back.
"Walked right into it," Poplanich said absently.
"That they-" Raj began; he was interrupted by Bellamy, who had spurred closer to the main clump of bodies with a handkerchief held to his face.
"Gawdammit!" the young noble swore in Namerique. "Eh bi gawdammit!" He wheeled his mount, pointing at a richly-dressed corpse. The dead man's face was undamaged, a jowly pug countenance with brown muttonchop whiskers. Ludwig stuttered, then forced himself back into Sponglish:
"That's Conner-Conner Auburn, the Admiral's brother, the Grand Captain of Port Murchison. He's dead."
Ehwardo's mouth shaped a silent whistle. "Very," he said.
Raj rapped his knuckles on the pommel of the saddle; Suzette met his eyes with a quirk of raised eyebrow.
"We may find that convenient," he said, and turned to the Scout trooper. "Arnez-take the head and bag it."
* * *
"They ran," Ludwig Bellamy said, with something halfway between anger and shame in his voice. "They all ran."
He looked depressed. The Squadron bodies littering the road merely looked dead, as if they had been caught and time-frozen in a dozen different postures. Most were lying facedown here, where the pursuit had caught them as they galloped their dogs back down toward Port Murchison much faster than they had marched south. Few of the bodies were of dogs; it had been saber-work here, and the barbarian bodies lay tumbled with great black sprays of blood where the blades had left them. Cuts across the neck were most common; half-severed limbs, and multiple slash-wounds to the shoulders and arms where they had tried to turn in the saddle and defend themselves.
"Not all of them," Raj said, rising in his stirrups.
They passed through a stretch of fig trees, and on the other side there was a windrow of bodies a hundred meters or so out into the open ground-several hundred of them, some deployed out into the fields. Dactosauroids and gulls were busy crawling over the bodies and squabbling for dainties, and packs of little knee-high carnosauroids burrowing their fanged heads into the soft parts of the bodies. There were plenty of dogs here, caught by case-shot and shrapnel by the tattered look of them.