"The town and the civilians?" Clerett asked.
Raj looked around; Pozadas had yielded on terms and then violated them.
"We'll loot it bare of everything useful, and burn it down when we leave tomorrow. Shoot all the adult males, turn the women over to the troops, then march them and the children back to the column for sale."
Clerett nodded. "Altogether a small but tidy victory, sir," he said.
"Is it, Major?" Raj asked somberly. "We lost what. . twenty men today?"
The Governor's nephew raised his brows. "We killed hundreds," he said. "And we hold the field."
"Major, the Brigade can replace hundreds more easily than I can replace twenty veteran cavalry troopers. If all the barbarians stood in a line for my men to cut their throats, they could slash until their arms fell off with weariness and there would still be Brigaderos. Yes, we hold the field-until we leave. With less than twenty thousand men, I'd be hard-pressed to garrison a single district, much less the Western Territories as a whole. We can only conquer if men obey us without a detachment pointing guns every moment."
Raj tapped his knuckles thoughtfully on the pommel of his saddle. "It isn't enough to defeat them in battle. I have to shatter them-break their will to resist, make them give up. They won't surrender to a few battalions of cavalry. So we have to find something they can surrender to."
He gathered his reins. "I'm heading back to the main column. Follow as quickly as possible."
* * *
Abdullah al'-Aziz spread the carpet with a flourish.
"Finest Al Kebir work, my lady," he said, in Spanjol with a careful leavening of Arabic accent-it was his native tongue, but he could speak half a dozen with faultless purity. He was a slight olive-skinned man, like millions around the Midworld Sea, or further east in the Colonial dominions. Dress and more subtle clues both marked him as a well-to-do Muslim trader of Al Kebir, and he could change the motions of hands and face and body as easily as the long tunic, baggy pantaloons and turban.
This morning room of the General's palace was warm with hangings and the log fire in one hearth, but the everlasting dank chill of a Carson Barracks winter still lingered in the mind, if nowhere else. Abdullah was dispelling a little of it with his goods. Bright carpets of thousand-knot silk and gold thread, velvets and torofib, spices and chocolate and lapis lazuli. Since the Zanj Wars, when Tewfik of Al Kebir broke the monopoly of the southern city-states, a few daring Colonial traders had made the year-long voyage around the Southern Continent to the Brigade-held ports of Tembarton and Rohka. If you survived the sea monsters and storms and the savages it could be very profitable. The Civil Government lay athwart the overland routes from the Colony, and its tariffs quintupled prices.
Marie Manfrond straightened in her chair. "This is beautiful work," she said, running a hand down a length of torofib embroidered with peacocks and prancing Afghan wolfhounds carrying men in turbans to the hunt.
"All of you," she went on, "leave me. Except you, Katrini."
Several of the court matrons sniffed resentfully as they swept out; attendance on the General's Lady was a hereditary right of the spouses of certain high officers of state. Marie's cold gray gaze hurried them past the door. Men in Guard uniforms stood outside, ceremonial guards and real jailers. Abdullah looked aside at Katrini. She went to stand beside the door, in a position to give them a few seconds if someone burst through.
"Katrini's been with me since we were girls," Marie said. "I trust her with my life."
Abdullah shrugged. "Inshallah. You know, then, from whom I come?"
His long silk coat and jewel-clasped turban were perfectly authentic, made in Al Kebir as their appearance suggested.
"Raj Whitehall," Marie said flatly. "The Colonial traders don't come to Tembarton this time of year; the winds are wrong."
"Ah, my lady is observant," Abdullah said. Marie nodded; not one Brigade noble in a thousand would have known that.
"But I do not come from General Whitehall. . not directly. Rather from his wife, Lady Suzette. If Messer Raj's sword is the Companions who fight for him, she is his dagger, just as deadly."
"What difference does it make?" Marie asked. "Why shouldn't I turn you over to my husband's men immediately?"
Abdullah smiled at the implied threat, that he would be turned over later if not now. The subtlety was pleasing. He owed Suzette Whitehall his freedom and life and that of his family, but he served her most of all because it gave him full scope for his talents. He could retire on his savings if he wished, but life would be as savorless as meat without salt.
"Forgive me if I presume, my lady, but my lady Suzette has told me that your interests and those of General Ingreid are not. . how shall I say. . not always exactly the same."
"That's no secret even in Carson Barracks," Marie said. Not a month after the wedding, with a fading black eye imperfectly disguised with cosmetics. "But Ingreid Manfrond is General, and my people are at war. Do you think I would betray the 591st Provisional Brigade and its heritage for my own spite?"
"Ah, no, by no means," Abdullah said soothingly, spreading his hands with a charming gesture.
"Lady Suzette is moved by sisterly compassion-and the conviction that General Ingreid will do the Brigade all the harm a traitor could, through his incompetence. Also the Spirit of Man-I would say the Hand of God-is stretched over her lord. He is invincible. Lady Suzette's concern is that you yourself might suffer needlessly from Ingreid's anger."
"And I can believe as much or as little of that as I choose," Marie said.
Silence weighed the warm air of the room for a moment; outside fog and soft raindrops clung to the walls and covered the swamps.
"Is it true," the young woman went on in a neutral voice, "that she rides by his side?"
Abdullah bowed again, a hand pressed to his breast. "She rides with his military household," he said. "And sits in all his councils. At El Djem her carbine brought down a Colonial whose sword was raised above Messer Raj's head."
Marie rested an elbow on the carved arm of her chair and her chin on her fist. "What help can she be to me?"
"Has not General Ingreid said, in public for all to hear, that as soon as you are delivered of an heir he has no use for you?"
The words had been rather more blunt than that. Marie nodded. Once Ingreid had an heir of her undoubted Amalson blood, he would not need their marriage to make his eligibility for the Seat incontestable. She had been throwing up regularly for a week, now.
Abdullah opened a small rosewood case. "Here are ayzed and beyam," he said, smiling with hooded eyes. "The one for the problem I see my lady has now. The other in case she comes to see that General Ingreid is no shield for the Brigade, but rather a millstone dragging it down to doom."
He explained the uses of the Zanj drugs. Katrini gasped by the door; Marie signed her to silence and nodded thoughtfully.
"Ingreid hasn't the brains of a sauroid," she said thoughtfully. "Go on."
"My lady has partisans of her own," Abdullah said. "Those loyal to her family. Your mother is well-remembered, your father more so."
"Few real vassals. The Seat controls my family estates, so I can't reward followers. Fighting men have to follow a lord who can give gold and gear and land with both hands. And I'm held here without easy access to anyone but Ingreid's clients and sworn men."
Abdullah spread his hands. "Funds may be advanced," he said. "Also messages carried. Not for any treasonous purpose, but is it not your right? By Brigade law does not a brazaz lady of your rank have a right to her own household, her own retainers?"