Hope Renewed (22 page)

CHAPTER TEN

It was dark, with the sun down and only Miniluna in the sky. The earth gave back the day’s heat, radiating from the bare clay of the badlands in the Drangosh bend; the darkness turned the ochers and umbers of the canyons to a uniform gray. Pterosauroids cheeped and mewed overhead, swooping after night-flying insects; Raj caught a gleam from the huge round eye of one, a vagrant trace of starlight. Earth-descended bats passed more silently. Off in the tangle of gullies and sinkholes something roared on a rising note, ending in a pierced-boiler screech; there was a rattle along the lines of dogs as the big animals raised their heads and cocked ears toward it. Some carnosauroid; they were hard to eliminate, in any area without a dense population, and the Civil Government force was into the belt of uncultivated land that extended from just west of Ain el-Hilwa along the river north to the border.

Raj sat, wrapping his officer’s cloak around his shoulders and looking up at the stars that stretched in a thick frosted band across the sky. The Stars where man had once dwelt, before the Fall—and would again, if Center’s plan succeeded.

The unFallen had the powers of gods, Raj thought. Yet from what Center tells me, they were still men—not sinless, as the Church teaches. They had their wars and their intrigues, as we do; their tragedies and defeats, as we do.

true,
the voice in his mind said.
my analysis is that such are inherent in the nature of your species.

Raj leaned back against the clay and lit a cheroot. What’s the point, then? he asked. If all I’m doing is letting people make mistakes on a bigger scale and a broader canvas?

Center was silent for half a minute.
this is a difficult question, and one at the limits of my powers of analysis. i was not constructed so as to be capable of philosophical doubt.

Another pause.
in your terms: the fall represented a limitation of human choice due to suboptimal decisions. the greater capacities of a unified and technologically advanced civilization free humans from the determinism of nature. both their triumphs and their failures become matters of choice.

Ours aren’t?

only to a very limited degree. the vast majority of humans on bellevue are peasants, because you lack the productive capacity to organize yourselves otherwise. this precludes forms of government and social organization less authoritarian, because the civilized regions depend too heavily on coercion to produce the surplus on which cities and a literate leisure class depend. if the fall continues, even agriculture-based societies will collapse and maximum entropy will be reached at a hunter-gatherer level. the survival of human life on this planet will then be in doubt.

As if to illustrate the point, the carnosauroid’s retching scream sounded again through the night.

a new civilization may eventually emerge; but it will lack any continuity with the ancestral culture. and fifteen thousand years of savagery means hundreds of generations of human lives without the opportunity to exercise their capacities.

Raj nodded. Peasants were old at forty, and every day in their lives was pretty much the same, except when something went badly wrong. The Church said it was punishment for men’s sins—which seemed to be literally true in Center’s terms as well—but there was no reason for the punishment to go on forever.

He shivered slightly, despite the warmth of the earth at his back. The fate of the human race for the next fifteen millennia rests on me, then. And our chances of pulling it off are no better than even.

correct.

He stood and flicked the stub out into the darkness, a solitary ember that arced away and was lost in the night. He turned. Behind him the command group was gathering about the pool of light cast by a kerosene lantern, the undershadow putting the bones of their faces into hard relief. They were unfolding maps, munching on hardtack and pieces of jerked meat; their smiles and eyes looked as feral as so many war-dogs in the yellow light.

“Well, sooner started, sooner finished,” Raj said. He strode into the light. “Right, gentlemen. Tewfik’s main force is rather smaller than I’d expected—about sixteen thousand men, according to Captain M’lewis’s report.”

“Countin’ banners, sir. Couldna’ git closer. Them wogs is screened tighter ‘n a cherry inna raghead’s hareem.”

Everyone nodded. Colonial units were less standardized in number than their Civil Government equivalents. One reason for that was a deliberate attempt to make it harder for observers to get a quick, accurate tally of a Colonial army’s numbers by counting the unit standards.

“We’ll take sixteen thousand as a ballpark figure—which worries me, Messers. We’re here” —he put his finger on a spot west of Ain el-Hilwa— “and we have to cut the bend of the Drangosh to get back to our bridgehead opposite Sandoral. I hope you all realize that after leaving Ali’s main army—”

He moved his finger to the west bank, and north almost to Sandoral, then south again to the Colonial pontoon bridge.

“—he could have dropped forces off to cross the river and take up blocking positions
north
of us.”

By their expressions, the thought was an unpleasant surprise to a few of the battalion commanders—although not to his Companions.

“That depends on Tewfik’s estimate of our numbers and intentions. We’ll let the men rest another hour, then start out at Maxiluna rise.” With both moons in the sky, there would be more than enough light for riding. “We’ll make use of every hour of darkness we can; it’ll be cooler, too.

“Colonel Staenbridge,” he went on, “you take the three companies of the 5th and lead the way. Spread out but move fast. Captain M’lewis, you’ll be the scout screen for the scout screen. Gerrin, if you run into anything you think you can handle, punch through. If not, go around if
that’s
possible, screening our retreat. Major Zahpata, you and your 18th Komar will follow in column of march right behind. Exercise normal caution, but rely on Colonel Staenbridge for your intelligence. Gerrin, if you run into anything you
can’t
handle, Major Zahpata is to move up immediately and support the 5th at your direction. Understood?”

Both men nodded.
At least I don’t have to wonder who’ll take orders from whom,
Raj thought thankfully. That sort of thing had nearly gotten him killed in the Southern Territories campaign, at the hands of the late unlamented Major Dalhousie. The problem was that the Civil Government didn’t have permanent field armies or a structure above the battalion level—large concentrated field forces were too tempting to ambitious generals. By now, all these men had been on campaign with him long enough to work smoothly together, and he’d disposed of the purblind idiots, one way or another.

“The rest of you will be following in double column up these roads,” he said, tracing the route northwest with two strokes of his finger. “They’re never more than a kilometer apart, so you’ll be close enough for mutual support. If Colonel Staenbridge runs into a major block-force, you’ll flank and go round—taking a lick at them from the rear in passing. Boot their arse, don’t pee on them; we
cannot
afford to get tangled up in a meeting engagement.”

“My oath no,” Staenbridge said mildly, still studying the map. “Not with Tewfik and sixteen thousand wogs after our buttocks.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s the source of our intelligence on these pathways through the badlands?” Zahpata asked.

Raj had drawn those in himself. “Personal sources, Major. You may rely on them.”
Center can do more with my eyes than I can,
he added silently.

“Major Gruder, I have a special tasking for your command. Otherwise, the order of march will be as follows—”

When the other officers dispersed to their units, Raj lead Kaltin Gruder out into the mouth of the notch.

“Kaltin, I want you to execute a battalion ambush on Tewfik’s lead elements here,” he said.

Gruder squinted up at the eroded clay hills, comparing them with his memory of the same scene by daylight. “Good ground,” he said. “And we’ve given them a couple of bloody noses—he’ll be more cautious this time.”

“Probably. Time is exactly what I want you to gain; but
not
at the price of your battalion. Understood?”

Gruder nodded. Raj went on: “Tewfik knows he has two ways to win this campaign. The quick way is to catch us and smash us up before we get back to Sandoral. He’s got numerical superiority, but it’d still be expensive. On the other hand, a quick victory is always preferable; the sooner you win, the less time the other side has to come up with something tricky. The slow way is to chase us back into Sandoral and starve us out. So he’ll probably be willing to take a swipe at you to save time, but it won’t be a reckless one.”

Raj reached a space of flat sand, coarse outwash detritus from the bluffs above. He smoothed it further with his boot and drew his sword to sketch in it.

“This is your position. More or less of a very broad V, with the open end facing south. Have your men dig rifle pits at the foot of these hills; I’ll detail the City of Delrio to help before they pull out. Scatter the dirt, and it’ll be difficult for them to estimate your numbers before they get close. I suggest you place them by companies like this.” He traced lines. “With your dogs reasonably close to hand, here and along here. I’ll also have the Delrio leave you their splatguns—that’ll give you eight total. Put them down here—here—here—here, in pairs.”

His sword marked spots along the face of the V. Gruder frowned.

“Down on the flat?”

“They’re not artillery, Kaltin—those are bullets they’re shooting, not shells.”

Gruder nodded thoughtfully; a bullet was dangerous all along its trajectory if it was fired at a formation with any depth. Fired from above, it either hit the target it was aimed at or plunked harmlessly into the dirt; fired on the level, it went much farther.

“That’ll give you crossfire from both infantry and splatguns, like this.” The tip of Raj’s saber traced X marks across the sand.

“Now,” he went on, moving the sword to left and right on either side of the notch, “this terrain is pretty well impassable to formed bodies of troops. Certainly to artillery. Put observers
here
and
here
. Tewfik may try to work dismounted troopers around your flanks in those areas. If he does, block them with your reserve company—it ought to be easy, in that ground.

“Over here, about twenty klicks, is the only other path suitable for artillery and large formations of troops. That’s where he’ll go when he decides he can’t just rush you out. Put a relay of men between here and there; when his flanking force gets there, pull out.”

He raised his head and met the other man’s eyes, his own flat and hard. “I give you
no discretion
concerning that. When his men reach there, you bug out. Understood?”

“
Si, mi heneral,
” Gruder said. He grinned. “I have learned something over the past five years.”

“I certainly hope so, because I can’t spare you
or
your battalion,” Raj said.

“Hmmm. Artillery here?” Kaltin’s saber pointed to the apex of the V.

“Yes, and start the guns out first. Also, walk all that ground tonight, and have your company commanders do it too. Ranging marks, all the bells and whistles.”

“Si.”
Kaltin studied the improvised sand-table. “I’ll have them come and look at this, too. You have a good memory for terrain,
mi heneral.
”

Which was true, and even more so with Center’s assistance.
“Waya con Ispirito del Homme,”
Raj said. They gripped forearms. “Get me an extra half-day.”

“The Spirit with you also, General. Consider it done.”

Tewfik ibn’Jamal,
Amir
of the Host of Peace, lowered his binoculars and cursed. Arabic was the finest of all languages for that, as for all else—as would be expected for the language God chose to dictate His word in—but the rolling, guttural obscenities did not relieve his feelings.

“And may the fleas of a thousand mangy feral dogs infest the scrotum of the
kaphar
general Whitehall,” he concluded.

Ahead was a broad slope five thousand meters across at its mouth, narrowing down to barely a hundred where the roadway snaked into the badlands. The hills behind and to either side were not high, but they were steep as the sides of houses, crumbly adobe scored and riven by the rare cloudbursts of the Drangosh Valley winter. The roadway was graded dirt—a secondary road. The main highway—Allah torment in the flames of Eblis the souls of the engineers who laid it out—ran parallel to the Ghor Canal, through the populated districts farther east and towards Ain el-Hilwa.
That town of fools and dotards
.

Taking that would mean two days’ delay, more than enough time for the invaders to scuttle back to the walls of Sandoral—and take any hope of concluding this accursed war quickly with them.

Another
tabor
of dismounted troopers trotted up into the V, angling for the enemy’s foremost position on that side—if they could dislodge the outer rim, they could unravel it up the foot of the hills. A steady
braaaap . . . braaaap
sounded, and men fell. Figures in crimson djellabas dropped into the hot white dust of the valley floor, to lie still or twitching and moaning. He could see puffs of dust where the bullets struck, smoke pouring from the positions of the new rapid-fire weapons, a steady crackle and bang from the rifle-pits where the infidel troopers kept up a continuous hail of well-aimed fire. A pom-pom galloped up to support the soldiers.