Conqueror g-2 Read online

  Suzette reflected that he probably just did not connect the glorious Lady Anne Clerett with Supple Annie, the child-acrobat, actress and courtesan. He'd only been a client of hers once or twice, from what Suzette had heard-even then, Anne had been choosey when she could. But since then Rihvera had been an associate of Tzetzas, and everyone knew how much the Consort hated the Chancellor. To be sure, the men who owed Rihvera the money he needed so desperately-to pay for his artistic pretensions-were under Anne's patronage. Not much use pursuing the claims in ordinary court while she protected them.

  ". . and so you see, most glorious Lady, I petition only for simple justice," he concluded, mopping his face.

  "Illustrious Rihvera-" Anne began.

  A chorus broke in from behind the silk curtains. They were softer-voiced, but otherwise an eerie reproduction of the Audience Hall singers, castrati and young girls:

  "Thou art flatulent, Oh Illustrious Deyago

  Pot-bellied, too:

  Oh incessantly farting, pot-bellied one!"

  Silver hand-bells rang a sweet counterpoint. Anne sat up straighter and looked around.

  "Did you hear anything?" she murmured.

  Suzette cleared her throat "Not a thing, glorious Lady. There's an unpleasant smell, though."

  "Send for incense," the Consort said. Turning back to Rihvera, her expression serious. "Now, Illustrious-"

  "You have a toad's mouth, Oh Illustrious Deyago-

  Bug eyes, too:

  Oh toad-mouthed, bug-eyed one!"

  This time the silver bells were accompanied by several realistic croaking sounds.

  I wonder how long he can take it? Suzette thought, slowly waving her fan.

  His hands were trembling as he began again.

  "Are you well, my dear?" Suzette asked anxiously, when the petitioners and attendants were gone.

  "It's nothing," Anne Clerett said briskly. "A bit of a grippe."

  The Governor's lady looked a little thinner than usual, and worn now that the amusement had died away from her face. She was a tall woman, who wore her own long dark-red hair wound with pearls in defiance of Court fashion and protocol. For the rest she wore the tiara and jewelled bodice, flounced silk split skirt, leggings and slippers as if she had been born to them. Instead of working her way up from acrobat and child-whore down by the Camidrome and the Circus. .

  Suzette took off her own blond wig and let the spring breeze through the tall doors riffle her sweat-dampened black hair. It carried scents of greenery and flowers from the courtyard and the Palace gardens, with an undertaste of smoke from the city beyond.

  "Thank you," she said to Anne. There was no need to specify, between them.

  Anne Clerett shrugged. "It's nothing," she said. "I advise Barholm for his own good-and putting Raj in charge is the best move." She hesitated: "I realize my husband can be. . difficult, at times."

  He can be hysterical, Suzette thought coldly as she smiled and patted Anne's hand. In a raving funk back during the Victory Riots, when the city factions tried to throw out the Cleretts, Anne had told him to run if he wanted to, that she'd stay and burn the Palace around her rather than go back to the docks. That had put some backbone into him, that and Raj taking command of the Guards and putting down the riots with volley-fire and grapeshot and bayonet charges to clear the barricades.

  He can also be a paranoid menace. Barholm was the finest administrator to sit the Chair in generations, and a demon for work-but he suspected everyone except Anne. Nor had he ever been much of a fighting man, and his jealousy of Raj was poisoning what was left of his good sense on the subject. A Governor was theoretically quasi-divine, with power of life and death over his subjects. In practice he held that power until he used it too often on too many influential subjects, enough to frighten the rest into killing him despite the dangerous uncertainty that always followed a coup. Barholm hadn't come anywhere near that.

  Yet.

  "Besides," Anne went on, "I stand by my friends."

  Which was true. When Anne was merely the tart old Governor Vernier Clerett's nephew had unaccountably married, the other Messas of the Palace had barely noticed her. Except in the way they might have scraped something nasty off their shoes. Suzette had had better sense than those more conventional gentlewomen. Or perhaps just less snobbery, she thought. Her family was as ancient as any in the City; they had been nobles when the Cleretts and Whitehalls were minor bandit chiefs in the Descott hills. They had also been quite thoroughly poor by the time she came of age, years before she met Raj. The last few farms had been mortgaged to buy the gowns and jewels she needed to appear at Court.

  "You'll be accompanying Raj again?" Anne asked.

  "Always," Suzette replied.

  Anne nodded. "We both," she said, "have able husbands. But even the most able of men-"

  "— needs help," Suzette replied. The Governor's Lady raised a fingertip and servants appeared with cigarettes in holders of carved sauroid ivory.

  "I may need help with young Cabot," Suzette said. "He hasn't been much at Court?"

  "Mostly back in Descott," Anne said "Keeping the Barholm name warm on the ancestral estates."

  Which were meagre things in themselves. Descott was remote, a month's journey on dogback east and north of the capital, a poor upland County of volcanic plateaus and badlands. Mostly grazing country, with few products beyond wool, riding dogs and ornamental stone. Its other export was fighting men, proud poor backland squires and their followings of tough vakaros and yeoman-tenant ranchers, men born to the rifle and saddle, to the hunt and the blood feud. Utterly unlike the tax-broken peons of the central provinces. Only a fraction of the Civil Government's people lived there, but one in five of the elite mounted dragoons were Descotters. Most of the rest came from similar frontier areas, or were mercenaries from the barbaricum.

  It was no accident that Descotters had held the Chair so often of late, nor that the Cleretts were anxious to keep first-hand ties with the clannish County gentry.

  "Seriously, my dear," Anne went on, "you should look after young Clerett. He's. . well, he's been champing at the bridle of late. Twenty, and a head full of romantic yeast and old stories. Quite likely to get himself killed-which would be a disaster. Barholm, ah, is quite attached to him."

  The two women exchanged a look; both childless, both without illusion. It said a great deal for Anne that Barholm had not put her aside for not giving him an heir of his body, which was sufficient cause for divorce under Civil Government law.

  "I'll try to see he comes back, Anne," Suzette said. If possible, she added to herself with clinical detachment. Romantic, ambitious young noblemen were not difficult to control; she had found that out long before her marriage. They could also be trouble when serious business was in question, such as the welfare of one's husband.

  "I'm sure you can handle Cabot," Anne said. That sort of manipulation was skill they shared, in their somewhat different contexts.

  "Poplanich needn't come back," Anne went on.

  She smiled; Suzette looked away with a well-concealed shudder. A strayed ox might have noticed an expression like that on the last carnosauroid it ever saw.

  Anne clapped her hands. "Thom Poplanich, Des Poplanich-Ehwardo would make a beautiful matched set, don't you think?" And it would leave the Poplanich gens without an adult male of note. Thom's grandsire had been a well-loved Governor.

  "Des was a rebel," Suzette said carefully. "I've never known what happened to Thom. Ehwardo is a loyal officer."

  "Of course, of course," Anne said, chuckling and giving Suzette's hand a squeeze.

  Raj's wife chuckled herself. There's irony for you, she thought: I really don't know what happened to Thom.

  Raj simply refused to discuss it, and he had been different ever since he came back from the tunnels they'd gone exploring in; the ground under East Residence was honeycombed with them. Suzette might have advised quietly braining Thom Poplanich and leaving him in the catacombs, as a career move and personal
insurance-except that she knew that Raj would never have considered it. He had changed, but not like that.

  You are too good for this Fallen world, my angel, she thought toward the absent Raj. It is not made for so honorable a knight.

  Then Lady Clerett's mouth twisted; she covered it with her palms and coughed rackingly.

  "Anne!" Suzette cried, rising.

  "It's nothing," she said, biting her lip. "Go on; you'll have a lot to do. Just a cough, it'll pass off with the spring. I'll deal with it."

  There was blood on her fingers, hidden imperfectly by their fierce clench. Suzette made the minimal bow and withdrew.

  "At the narrow passage there is no brother, no friend," she quoted softly to herself. And no allies against some enemies.

  * * *

  "So, what do we get?" Colonel Grammeck Dinnalsyn said; the artillery specialist had seen to his beloved 75mm field-guns, and was ready to take an interest in the less technical side of the next Expeditionary Force.

  Raj and the other officers were riding side-by-side down the Main Street of the training base, in the peninsula foothills west of East Residence.

  "5th Descott Guards, 7th Descott Rangers, 1st Rogor Slashers, 18th Komar Borderers, 21st Novy Haifa Dragoons, and Poplanich's Own from the cavalry in the Southern Territories. And all the infantry and guns."

  "Jorg will be glad to get out of the Territories. Spirit knows I went and Entered my thanks when I got the movement orders for home. Not much happening there now, except that idiot they sent to replace you giving damn-fool orders."

  "I'm glad we're getting Jorg. Nobody else I know can handle infantry like Menyez."

  Most commanders didn't even try; infantry were used mainly for line-of-communication and garrison work in the Civil Government's army. Jorg had had his own 17th Kelden Foot and the 24th Valencia under his eye since Sandoral, nearly four years ago. Raj and he had done a fair bit with the other infantry battalions during the Southern Territories campaign, and Menyez had been working them hard in the year since.

  "Then for the rest of the cavalry, the 1st and 2nd Residence Battalions, the Maximilliano Dragoons, and the the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers from here." The artillery specialist raised an eyebrow at the last two units.

  "Yes, they're Squadrones-but coming along nicely. Full of fight, too-for some reason they don't seem to resent our beating the scramento out of them. Quite the contrary, if anything. Eager to learn from us."

  observe, Center said:

  * * *

  "Right, ye horrible buggers," the sergeant said. "Who's next?"

  He spun the rifle in his hands into a blurring circle; the bayonet was fixed, but with the sheath wired on to the blade. The three big men lying wheezing or moaning on the ground before the stocky Descotter had been holding similar weapons. The company behind them were standing at ease in double line with their rifles sloped. None of them looked very enthusiastic about serving as an object lesson. .

  "Ten-'hut!" the sergeant said. The men were stripped to their baggy maroon pants, web-belts and boots; he was wearing in addition the blue sash, sleeveless grey cotton shirt and the orange-black checked neckerchief of the 5th Descott. "Now, we'uns will learn how to use the fukkin' baynit, won't we?"

  "YES SERGEANT!" they screamed.

  "Right. Now, yer feints to the eyes loik this, then gits 'em in t'belly loik this. Baynit forrard! An' one an' two-"

  * * *

  "Eager to learn from you, sir, actually," the artilleryman said. He was a slim man of medium height, with cropped black hair and black eyes and pale skin, and a clipped East Residence accent.

  "It soothes their pride," he went on. "They call you an Avatar of the Spirit. And what man needs to be ashamed of yielding to the Spirit Incarnate? Not that I'd dispute you the title myself."

  Raj frowned, touching his amulet. Dinnalsyn's casual blasphemy was natural enough for a man born in the City, but Raj had been raised in the old style back home on Hillchapel. A soldier of the Civil Government was also a warrior of the Spirit.

  the ex-squadron personnel are undergoing transference, Center said, a common psychological phenomenon, and technically, you are an avatar.

  "Speak of the Starless," Dinnalsyn noted.

  He and Raj turned their dogs aside as a battalion came down the camp street toward them. First the standard-bearer, the long pole socketed to a ring in his right stirrup; the colors were furled in a tubular leather casing. Then the trumpeters and drummers, four of them. The battalion commander and his aides in a clump with the Senior Sergeant of the unit; then the six hundred and fifty men in column-of-fours, each man an exact three meters from the stirrups of his squadmates on either side, half a length from the dog before and behind. Triple gaps between companies, the company pennant, signaler and commander in each. An Armory rifle in a scabbard before each right knee, and a long slightly-curved saber strapped to the saddle on the other side.

  The men wore round bowl-helmets with neckguards of chainmail-covered leather, dark-blue swallowtail coats, baggy maroon pants tucked into knee boots. Their mounts were farmbreds, Alsatians and Ridgebacks for the most part, running to a thousand pounds weight and fifteen hands at the shoulder. Everything regulation and by the handbooks, all the more startling because the men wearing the Civil Government uniforms were not the usual sort. The predominant physical type near East Residence was short, slight, olive to light-brown of skin, with dark hair and eyes. There were regional variations; Descotters tended to be darker than the norm, square-faced and built with barrel-chested solidity, while men from Kelden County were taller and fairer. The troops riding toward Raj and his companion were something else again. Big men, most near Raj's own 190 centimeters, and bearded in contrast to local custom; fair-skinned despite their weathered tans, many with blond or light-brown hair.

  The massed thudding of paws and the occasional whine or growl was the only sound until a sharp order rang out:

  "2nd Mounted Cruisers-eyes right. General salute!"

  A long rippling snap followed, each man's head turning sharply and fist coming to breast as they passed Raj. Raj returned the gesture. It was still something of a shock to see the barbarian faces in Army uniform. Even more shocking to remember the Squadron host as it tumbled toward the line of Civil Government troops; individual champions running out ahead to roar defiance, shapeless clots around the standards of the nobles, dust and movement and a vast, shambling chaos. .

  The ones who couldn't learn mostly died, he thought.

  The battalion commander fell out and reined in beside them as the column passed in a pounding of pads on gravel and a jingle of harness.

  "Bwenya dai, seyhor!" Ludwig Bellamy said.

  He's changed too, Raj thought, offering his hand after the salute. Karl Bellamy had surrendered early to the Expeditionary Force, to preserve his estates and because he hated the Auburns who'd usurped rule of the Squadron. His eldest son had gone considerably further; the chin was bare, and his yellow hair was cut bowl-fashion in the manner of Descotter officers. His Sponglish had always been good in a classical East Residence way-tutors in childhood-but now it had caught just a hint of County rasp, the way a man of the Messer class from Descott would speak. Much like Raj's own, in fact. The lower part of the Squadron noble's face was still untanned, making him look a little younger than his twenty-three years.

  "Movement orders?" he said eagerly. "I'm taking them out-" he tossed his head in the direction of his troops "-on a field problem, but we could-"

  "No es so hurai," Raj said, fighting back a grin: not so fast. He had been a young, eager battalion commander himself, once. "But yes, we're moving. Stern Isle, first. You'll get a chance to show your men can remember their lessons in action."

  "They will," Bellamy said flatly. Some of the animation died out of his face. "They remember-they know courage alone isn't enough."

  They should, Raj thought.

  Their families had been settled by military tenure on State lands as well, which meant their h
omes were here too.

  "And they're eager to prove themselves."

  Raj nodded; they would be. Back in the Southern Territories, they'd been members of the ruling classes, the descendants of conquerors. Proud men, anxious to earn back their pride as warriors.

  I just hope they remember they're soldiers, now, Raj thought. Putting a Squadrone noble in command had been something of a risk; he'd transferred a Companion named Tejan M'Brust from the 5th Descott to command the 1st Cruisers. So far the gamble with the 2nd seemed to be paying off.

  Aloud: "Speaking of education, Ludwig, I've got a little job for you, to occupy the munificent spare time a battalion commander enjoys. We'll be having a young man by the name of Cabot along."

  The fair brows rose in silent enquiry.

  "Cabot Clerett. I'd like-"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The longboat's keel grounded on the beach, grating through the coarse sand. Sailors leaped overside into water waist-deep, heaving their shoulders against the planks of its hull. Raj vaulted to the sand, ignoring the water that seethed around his ankles, and swept his wife up in his arms to carry her beyond the high-tide mark. Miniluna and Maxiluna were both up, leaving a ghostly gloaming almost bright enough to read by even as the sun slipped below the horizon.

  Offshore on a sea colored dark purple with sunset the fleet raised spars and sails tinted crimson by the dying light. Three-masted merchantmen for the most part, with a squadron of six paddle-wheel steam warships patrolling offshore like low-slung wolves. Not that there was much to fear; unlike the Squadron, who had been notable pirates, the Brigade didn't have much of a navy. Some of the smaller transports had been beached to unload their cargo; the rest were offloading into skiffs and rowboats. Except for the dogs. The half-ton animals were simply being pushed off the sides, usually with a muzzle on and fifteen or twenty men doing the pushing. Mournful howls rang across the water; once they were in, the intelligent beasts followed their masters' boats to shore. A few who'd been on the expedition against the Squadron jumped in on their own.