"It goes okay," Pahner said. "We took casualties at C'Rtena, which I didn't expect. No one got hurt bad, though, and other than that, we got off clean. But we have fires at C'Rtena and Kesselotte, and the troops need somebody to come put out the flames. And your guards are looting. My people can't get them under control."
"They will," Grak said with a resigned handclap. "How do you stop soldiers from looting?"
Well, you can, for example, kill them until the survivors figure out it's not permitted, Pahner thought with a mental snarl.
"I don't suppose you can," he said aloud, calmly. That shrug-your-shoulders, what-the-hell attitude was the sort of thing he had to ensure didn't happen with Roger, he told himself. There was a fine line between ruthless and evil... and another between sloppy and barbaric. At the back of his mind, though, the song called. "I suppose that's what makes the boys get up and shoot."
"I'll send servants to put the fires out," the king said. "And soldiers whose job it will be to make sure they do so," he said pointedly to Grak. "And to prevent them from looting. Is that clear?"
"I'll go myself." Grak hoisted his broad-headed spear and grunted in laughter. "Maybe I can pick up a few pretties myself."
After the general left, Pahner found himself alone with the king. Roger had gone to wash, and the various guards had been dismissed. The situation was irregular, but the captain ignored that as he followed the movement and condition of the company on his pad.
The monarch, for his part, watched the human officer. So somber and serious. So precise.
"You see no difference between us and the barbarians of Cord's tribe, do you?" he asked, wondering what answer he would hear.
Pahner looked up at the king, then tapped a command, sending half the reserve to reinforce First Platoon while he considered the remark.
"Well, Sir, I wouldn't say that. Overall, I think it's better to support civilization. Barbarism's just barbarism. At its best, it's pretty awful. At its worst, it's truly awful. Eventually, civilizations have the ability to pull themselves up to a condition which is better for everyone."
"Would you have assisted me if you didn't need supplies for your journey?" the monarch asked, fingering the decorations on his horns and flicking off a bit of dried blood.
"No, Your Majesty," Pahner shook his head, "we wouldn't have. We have a mission: get Roger to the port. If this operation hadn't advanced that, we wouldn't have done it."
"So," the monarch observed with a grunt of laughter. "Your support for civilization isn't so deep as all that."
"Your Majesty," Pahner said, pulling at a stick of gum and carefully unwrapping it. "I have a mission to complete. I will continue trying to perform that mission, whatever it takes. And so will my Marines. That mission has damned little to do with our individual survival and everything to do with maintaining a degree of continuity in our political environment." Pahner popped in the gum and smiled grimly. "Your Majesty, that is civilization."
Roger watched the Mardukan mahout securing his armor on the giant pack beast. The creature looked very much like the one which had been chasing Cord, but the native insisted they were different. Roger thought Cord was probably right. The Cape buffalo looked very much like the docile water buffalo, and there was no more dangerous beast on Earth. Of course, these looked like giant horned toads, not buffalo. Capetoad. He wondered if he could get the translation system to start substituting the term.
He also wondered, not without some trepidation, if he could master the local mahouts' skills himself. He'd always had a way with animals, and he'd been in the saddle of his first pony almost literally before he could talk and his first polo pony before he was ten, so it seemed possible. Despite that, he found the elephant-sized flar-ta daunting, and he didn't even want to consider how the rest of the company felt about them.
Still, they'd best get over it and learn. They'd been far luckier than they deserved when Portena and Julian turned up with D'Len Pah in tow, and Roger knew it even if the Marines as a whole seemed unaware of their good fortune. Of course, for all their survival training, they were much less accustomed to using animal transport in inhospitable regions than Roger was thanks to his taste for safaris, but the prince had been shocked by Pahner's apparent blithe assumption that they could simply buy their own animals and handle the beasts themselves.
Fortunately, D'Len Pah had made the company a better offer. Flar-ta were scarce in Q'Nkok, and even with the king's strong support, the prices being demanded had been astronomical. Just buying the necessary pack beasts would have come close to bankrupting the humans, despite the hefty slice of Xyia Kan's fines and confiscations which had come their way. They certainly wouldn't have had enough left for the other supplies they needed.
But D'Len Pah had turned up in the nick of time. He and his clan were something like a cross between Old Earth's gypsies and professional caravaneers—semi-nomadic freight carriers who owned and managed their own string of flar-ta. Roger had been astounded when he arrived at the citadel with Julian and Portena to offer his clan's services to the humans, since no one else in Q'Nkok had wanted to go anywhere near the lunatics who thought they could actually get through to Voitan. But D'Len Pah had gone by the Houses the Marines had taken down to make a personal examination of the wreckage, and he'd also talked to survivors who'd seen the humans' weapons in action. Clearly, he calculated that if anyone could get through and reopen the long-closed (and highly profitable) trading routes through Voitan, Bravo Company was that anyone.
Roger had come to suspect that there were other factors at work, as well. For one thing, he was pretty certain Xiya Kan had strongly "suggested" to D'Len Pah that it would be in his best interests to make the offer. For another, the chief mahout clearly hoped to pick up some of the offworlders' marvelous devices and knowledge for himself. And, finally, the scummy had insisted on receiving two-thirds of his payment up front, before leaving Q'Nkok... and extracted a promise that he would not be required to hand it back over if—or when—the humans actually encountered the Kranolta and realized they had no choice but to turn back or die.
For all that, though, D'Len Pah and his clansmen looked like tough customers in their own right. They were well armed, by Mardukan standards, and clearly accustomed to looking after themselves. No doubt they had to be, since their entire families, including women and children, traveled with them. They were likely to prove a worthwhile addition to the humans' forces in a great many ways... and whatever else, they would at least keep Pahner from losing a dozen or so of his Marines finding out that driving a flar-ta was just a bit more complicated than handling an air lorry!
Roger grinned at the thought and looked around as the company made its final preparations to leave. It was early, barely past dawn, and the heat wasn't really on the day yet. It would be soon—turning the humidity up into the customary steam bath—but for now, it seemed relatively cool.
Everyone was checking his personal gear, making sure that it was just right. A strap out of place would make for a sore day, so it made sense to check ahead of time. Weapons were being serviced, and ports sealed against the conditions. They were down another plasma rifle, and the Old Man had indicated that they might have to put them all away in sealable bags. Roger intended to have a few choice words with whoever had approved the weapons for deployment; they'd only been on the planet for a couple of weeks, and the complicated weapons were failing left and right.