Raj looked upslope to the rock-built villages, and imagined fighting his way into the foothills. Long guns and hairy hawk-faces behind every rock, screaming rushes out of the side gulleys, ambush, rockslide, guerrillas. . and these people were fanatics, they didn't just hate the Muslim enemy. Apart from Muzzaf he had heard scarcely a person south of the Oxheads who didn't invoke the Star Spirit every second sentence, and every hamlet had a church, usually large, no matter how squalid a flyblown slum the town was.
Raj's hand chopped forward once more, and the 5th rocked into the steady wolf-lope again. The riders who had been guarding the women spurred alongside for a moment, shouting and waving their weapons in the air:
"Aur! Aur! Despert Staahl!" Awake the Iron, the local warcry.
"Star Spirit of Man with you, brothers! Kill many! Kill!"
"I'm surprised the Colony finds it pays to raid," he said, as they peeled off back to their charges.
"Hmmm, you might be surprised what a Bedouin will do for a sheep, Messer," Muzzaf said. "Also, there are mines of precious metals and silver in the mountains. . and," he added with a smile that seemed less assumed than most of his expressions, "you have not yet seen the Vale of Komar."
"Tomorrow," Raj said, glancing up at the moons. There's something odd about this Muzzaf, he thought. He gave an impression of always being about to sell you a rug, and that was normal enough, yes. But there was also. . as if he can't decide whether to be glad to see us or to run for the hills, Raj mused.
* * *
"Oh, Raj," Suzette whispered. "It's. . beautiful."
They were sitting their dogs on the crest of the ridge, while the long creaking stream of baggage flowed down the slanting cutbacks of the road into the valley. It was. . green, Raj decided. Spirit of Man of the Stars, I hadn't realized how much you could miss green. In form much like any other foothill outwash cone, but bigger. Canals threaded it, and where they passed there was life. Plots of dark-green sugar cane, waving in ripples like the sea; grain stubble already showing verdant with the next crop; orchards of bushy glossy oranges and lemons. . And in the center of the valley, rising on a hill, the city: glowing with a white that blazed in the noonday sun, like a heap of cubes of pure sugar, like a set of blocks carved out of snow, the White City of Komar.
"Well," he said to Suzette, "let's go down." I really shouldn't be snatching time like this, he reminded himself. Then, savagely: At least she's not in the carriage with bloody Stanson. That was a little unfair, the 2nd had been in the saddle and doing some field drill these past four or five days. .
* * *
". . and here," Muzzaf droned on, "you see the canal extension: wonderful are the works of the Spirit! The new concrete dam, another ten thousand hectares under cultivation, financed by the city and our most benevolent and well-loved Vice-Governor, may the Spirit. ."
Raj tuned him out for a moment. The civil administration seemed to be moderately efficient, here: not much traffic to be pushed aside, at least. The road was arrow straight, up to East Residence standards. The long-settled part of the Vale was to their right, small holdings intricately cultivated. Tall date palms, with fruit trees beneath; beneath that were grain or vegetables, cotton or sugar or grass, with even the goats tethered and hand-fed. The farmers' dwellings were white cubes, sometimes surrounded by flowers; he could see that almost every one had a craft/workshop of some sort attached, men and women weaving cloth or baskets, tanning leather, embroidering, hammering at brass-ware or tinware, turning pots. Everyone waved, and many ran out to cheer. Dainties were handed up; split pomegranates, huge golden-skinned sweet oranges, joints of sugar cane and clay cups of fruit juices.
A girl ran along at his stirrup for a moment, holding up her laden hands. Raj bent to take the grass plate she offered, and the strong brown fingers threw a flower wreath around his neck.
"Dammit," he muttered, watching the grins on the faces of his command group. The plate held fresh dates; dried dates were a one-a-year luxury for gentlefolk back home, expensive even in New Residence. "Dates," he muttered. "We've been eating the bloody things for two weeks, and I get dates." Gerrin Staenbridge was peeling an orange, feeding segments to a laughing Foley. M'lewis had a banana, bit into it and made a grimace; da Cruz showed him how to peel it, looking as near to smiling as Raj had ever seen him.
The left side of the road was less festive; the new lands had been laid out in large fields of sugar cane and cotton and indigo, slave-worked. Mounted guards watched field gangs, many in chain hobbles, Colonists by the look of them. He peered closer: one or two were actually black, with the wooly hair and flattened features he had heard of. Zanj, or even Azanians, from southwest of the Colonial Gulf. They don't look glad to see us at all, Raj thought sardonically.
Muzzaf spoke, responding to his last words. "Yes, Messer; if you have eaten dates in the North, you have eaten our dates. . See, many of the sugar-mills are run by steam; marvelous is Progress and the works of the Spirit of Man of the Stars. This year, our first steam-powered cotton mill! And there-" he pointed to the northeast of the city, visible now through the thick vegetation "-our railroad!"
Raj looked up with genuine interest, dropping his mental calculation of billeting ratios. Railroads were important, the only means of moving bulk goods cheaply overland, although the need for that was limited. Most people were peasants, after all, and lived from what they grew or made; cities fed from their immediate hinterlands. But a railroad could be very convenient from a military point of view, it was a pity they were so few.
"North from tahe city to the mines," Muzzaf was saying. "Our Vice-Governor, the Exalted Barholm Clerett, upon whom the Spirit of Man shall surely shed Its light, loaned us half the cost. No less than sixty kilometers, finished this year!"
He nodded, impressed; that made it the third-longest in the Civil Government, and the only one south of the Oxheads. Muzzaf bowed low in the saddle.
"It has been an honor to assist you, noble Messer," he said. "But. ."
They turned the corner into the cleared space any city kept before its walls, here used for low-growing crops, tomatoes and beans and garden truck. Komar's defenses were formidable, even if you could see the buildings on their hill behind-a twenty-meter ditch, and steep turf earthworks before the stone curtain-wall. A hexagonal shape overall, quite modern, with outlying bastions, not one of those high flimsy affairs that rifled guns could batter down in an afternoon. All familiar, there were layout plans and perspective drawings of the fortifications of every city in the Civil Government stored in East Residence, and Raj had gone over them thoroughly. The main gates were open between their fortress-bastions, and a procession was filing out. Litters with the County Legate, officers in dress uniforms, choirs of children in white tunics. A Grand Hierarch ArchSysup of the Church, with acolytes in goldcloth jumpsuits swinging incense censors, bearing a circular computer-core set in gold and silver and lapis lazuli. .
"Shit," Raj muttered.
* * *
"URRA! URRA!"
The line of men and dogs moved with glacial slowness through the narrow twisting streets. Sprays of flowers flew toward the troopers from the crowds that blackened the rooftops and crowded up against the walls, leaned from wrought iron balconies and windows. . And pushed in where they bloody don't belong, Raj thought savagely; they were handing bottles up to the soldiers, as well, and not fruit juice this time, either. Crowd noise was deafening, though not quite loud enough to drown out the sound of an NCO screaming: