Raj stood thinking as the soldiers searched the rooms on either side of the corridor, swift but cautious. No more shots. . except from outside, where the steady crackle was building up again. His eyes fell on an unlit lamp. It was one of a series in brackets along the wall. Much like one back home; a globular glass reservoir below for the coal-oil, and a coiled flat-woven wick of cotton inside adjusted by a small brass screw, with a blown-glass chimney above.
"Sergeant," Raj called, stepping over a dead Brigadero.
The blood pooled around the enemy fallen stained his bootsoles, so that he left tacky footprints on the parquet of the hallway. Light fell in from rose-shaped windows at either end of the hallway.
"Get those lamps, all of them," he said.
"Ser?" The noncom gaped.
"All of them, and there should be more in a storage cupboard somewhere near. Distribute them to the windows. Quickly!" The trooper dashed off; the order made no sense, but he'd see it was obeyed, quickly and efficiently.
"Lieutenant," Raj went on. The young man looked up from tying off a rough bandage around his calf.
"Mi heneral?"
"A squad to each of the main windows, if you please. Send someone for extra ammunition from the saddlebags."
"Sir."
"And check how many men able to shoot there are below. Send some troopers to help them barricade the doors and windows."
"Ci, mi heneral."
He led his own small group of messengers and bannerman through the room opposite the staircase. It looked to be some sort of meeting chamber, with a long table and chairs, and crossed banners on the wall. One was the crimson-and-black double thunderbolt of the Brigade, the other a local blazon.
"Get the table," he said. "Follow me out."
The balcony outside ran the length of the front of the building, wrought-iron work on a stone base. The signallers came out grunting under the weight of the heavy oak table, and dropped it with a crash on its side and up against the railings. They dropped behind it with grateful speed, as riflemen in windows and rooftops across from them opened fire. Luckily, nothing overlooked the town hall except the tower of the church, and it was too open to make a good marksman's stand. Other squads were bringing out furniture of their own, some from the Brigaderos' own barricade at the head of the stairs.
"Keep them busy, lads," Raj said.
A steady crackle of aimed shots broke out; along the balcony, from the windows at either end of the hallway behind, and from the smaller windows on the rear side of the town hall. Raj took out his binoculars. A cold smile bent his lips; the enemy seemed to be coming out into the streets and milling around in surprise, mostly-even a few townspeople joining them.
Amateurs, he thought.
Tough ones, good individual fighters, but whoever was commanding them didn't have the organization to switch plans quickly when the first one went sour. That was the problem with a good plan-and it had been a cunningly conceived ambush-it tended to hypnotize you. If you didn't have anything ready for its miscarriage, you lost time. And time was the most precious thing of all.
South of the town the Life Guards were deploying, just out of rifle range. Dogs to the rear, extended double line, one company in the saddle for quick reaction; right out of the manuals. Also the guns. Four of them, and the first was getting ready to-
POUMPF. The shell went overhead with a whirring moan and crashed into one of the mills. Black smoke and bits of tile and roofing-timber flew up. More smoke followed; there must have been something like tallow or lanolin stored there.
"Sir." It was the lieutenant and his platoon-sergeant.
The latter carried a dozen of the coal-oil lamps and led men carrying more, with still others piled high on a janitors wheeled wooden cart.
"Sir," the young officer went on, "there's ten men downstairs fit to fight, if they don't have to move much. We've barred the back entrance; it's strong, and they won't get through without a ram. The front's another story, we've done what we can, but. ."
Raj nodded and took a package of cigarettes out of his jacket, handing two to the other men.
"Right," he began, and spoke over his shoulder. "Signaller, two red rockets." Turning his attention back to the other men:
"In about five minutes," he said, waving the tip of his saber at the town, "the barbs are going to realize that with us sitting here they can't even defend the town against the Life Guards-we can suppress their rooftop snipers too effectively from here.
"So they'll try rushing us. There's only two ways they can come; in the back, and in the front the same way we did. We don't have enough guns to stop them, not and keep the snipers down too. And once they're close to the walls, we won't be able to rise and fire down from up here without exposing ourselves."
They nodded. Raj took one of the lamps and turned the wick high, lighting it with his cigarette. The flame was pale and wavering in the bright morning sunlight, but it burned steadily.
"They'll have to bunch under the walls-by the doors, for example." Raj tossed the lamp up and down. "I really don't think they'll like it when we chuck these over on them."
The two officers and the noncom smiled at each other. "What about the front?" the sergeant asked. "There's this-" he stamped a heel on the balcony's deck "-over the portico."
"That," Raj went on, "is where you'll take the keg." He nodded at the clay barrel of coal-oil on the cart, with a dozen lamps clinking against it. "And hang it like a pihnyata from one of the brackets."
"Roit ye are, ser," the sergeant said, grinning like a shark. "Roit where she'll shower 'em wit coal-juice as they come chargin' up t' steps, loik."
He took the heavy container and heaved it onto his shoulder with a lift-and-jerk. "Ye, Belgez, foller me."
* * *
"A hundred thousand men?" Ingreid asked.
Teodore Welf nodded encouragingly. "That's counting all the regular garrisons we've been able to withdraw, Your Mightiness, and the levies of the first class-all organized, and all between eighteen and forty."
Ingreid's lips moved and he looked at his fingers. "How many is that in regiments?"
Howyrd Carstens looked around the council chamber. It was fairly large, but plain; whitewashed walls, and tall narrow windows. The three of them were alone except for servants and civilian accountants-nonentities. Good. He liked Ingreid, and respected him, but there was no denying that large numbers were just not real to the older nobleman. For that matter, a hundred thousand men was a difficult number for him to grasp, and he was a modern-minded man who could both read and write and do arithmetic, including long division. He had enough scars, and enough duelling kills, that nobody would call it unmanly.
Teodore spoke first. "Standard regiments?" A thousand to twelve hundred men each. "A hundred, hundred and ten regiments. Not counting followers and so forth, of course."
Ingreid grunted and knocked back the last of his kave, snapping his fingers for more.
"And the enemy?"
Carstens shrugged. "Twenty thousand men-but more than half of those are infantry."
The Military Governments didn't have foot infantry in their armies, and he wondered why the Civil Government bothered.
"Of mounted troops, real fighting men? Seven, perhaps eight regiments. They have a lot of field artillery, though-and from what I've heard, it's effective."
Ingreid shook his head. "Seven regiments against a hundred. Madness! What does Whitehall think he can accomplish?"