"I am familiar with the concept," Libert said.
He looked at the Chosen officer; the foreigner was discreetly dressed in the uniform of a Union Legion officer, without rank tabs but with a tiny gold-on-black sunburst pin on the collar of his tunic.
"Yes, my general," Heinrich said.
"However, this will probably be a long war-and it is perhaps better that way," Libert said. The Chosen in the room reacted with a uniform calm that hid identical surprise. The Unionaise commander smiled thinly.
"This is a political as well as a military struggle. A swift victory would leave us with all the elements that brought on the crisis intact. A steady, methodical advance means that we do not simply defeat but annihilate all the un-Unionist elements. And it gives us time and opportunity to thoroughly cleanse the zones behind our lines, in wartime conditions."
"As you say, sir," Heinrich said. "That presupposes, however, that we succeed in getting out of this damned valley to begin with."
"I have confidence in the plan you and my staff have worked out," Libert said, turning back to the map.
Heinrich ducked his head and left the tent. "Damned odd way of looking at it," he said to Gerta.
"Sensible, actually," Gerta said, smiling and shaking her head, "when you look at it from his point of view. We could stand being a little more methodical ourselves; this whole operation here has the flavor of an improvisation, to me."
They stopped for a moment to watch Protege workmen and Chosen engineers assembling armored cars from crated parts sent up by rail.
"It's an opportunity," Heinrich said after a while.
"Its a temptation," Gerta said. "We've had less than a decade to consolidate our hold on the Empire-"
"Nine years, six months, two days, counting from the attack on Corona," Heinrich said with a smile of fond reminiscence.
"Quibbler." She punched him lightly on his shoulder. "We should wait for a generation at least before taking on Santander. And this is probably going to mean war with the Republic eventually, if our little friend"-she jerked her head back at the tent-"wins."
"They're getting stronger, too," Heinrich pointed out. "You know the production problems we're having with labor from the New Territories."
"Yes, but we've got the staying power. We don't have an underlying need to believe the world is a warm, fuzzy-pink playground where everyone's nice down deep except for a few villains who'll be defeated at the end of the story. We can get the animals working well enough, given enough time-and the Santies will go to sleep and let down their guard if we don't make obvious threats."
"We're not threatening them, strictly speaking."
"Land forces on their border? Even a Santy can't convince himself that's not a threat. We're waking a sleeping giant, and stiffening his backbone."
Heinrich shrugged. "But if we beat the Santies, everything else is mopping up. Anyway, it's a matter for the Council, nein?"
"Jawohl. Orders are orders. Let's get this battle done."
Heinrich smiled more broadly. "Actually, you've got a different job."
"Oh?"
"Libert's pretty taken with this academy thing. He'd probably spend six months avenging the place and the gallant cadets if it fell, which would be an even worse diversion of effort than marching to relieve it. So we'd better make sure it doesn't fall. . "
"Shays."
* * *
"And how are you, sir?" the train steward asked. "Not so great," John mumbled. "Drink, please-water, something like that."
"Sir."
The steward bowed silently as he left the compartment. The revolution hadn't reached this part of the Union yet, evidently. Or perhaps it was just that this was a Santander-owned railway, and close to the border, and John was evidently rich enough to command a whole first-class compartment for himself, and another for half a dozen tough-looking armed men.
The view out the window was much like the eastern provinces of the Republic outside the cities. An upland basin surrounded by mountains with snow gleaming at their tops, the peaks to the west turning crimson with sunset. Grass, tawny with summer, speckled with walking cactus and an occasional clubroot, smelling warm and dusty but fresher than the lowlands to the east. Herds of red-coated cattle and shaggy buffalo and sheep, with herdsmen mounted and armed guarding them. Occasionally a ranch house, with its outbuildings and whitewashed adobe walls; more rarely a stretch of orchards and cultivated fields around a stream channeled for irrigation, very rarely a village or mine with its cottages and church spire.
It looked intensely peaceful. A hawk stooped at a rabbit flushed by the chufchufchuf of the locomotive, and the carriage swayed with the clacking passage of the rails. John wiped sweat from his forehead and touched the arm in its sling with gingerly fingers, wincing a little. Better, definitely better-he'd thought he was going to lose it, for a while-but still bad. Thank God the doctor had believed what he said about debriding wounds, but then, a massive bribe never hurt.
Home soon, he thought.
The door to the compartment opened again: the steward, immaculate in white jacket and gloves, with a tray of iced lemonade. Behind him were the worried faces of Smith and Barrjen.
"You all right, sir?"
"I would be if people stopped bothering me!" John snapped, then waved a hand. "Sorry. I'm recovering, but I need rest. Thank you for asking."
The two men withdrew with mumbled apologies as the steward unlatched the folding table between the seats and put the tray on it. John took a glass of the lemonade and drank thirstily, then put the cold tumbler to his forehead.
"Shall I put down the bunk, sir?"
John shook his head. "In a little while. Come back in an hour."
"Will you be using the dining car, sir?"
His stomach heaved slightly at the thought. "No. A bowl of broth and a little dry toast in here, if you would." He slipped across a Santander banknote. "In a while."
The steward smiled. "Glad to be of assistance, Your Excellency."
John closed his eyes. When he opened them again with a jerk it was full night outside, with only an occasional lantern-light to compete with the frosted arch of stars and the moons. The collar of his shirt and jacket were soaked with sweat, but he felt much better. . and very thirsty. He drank more of the lemonade, and pushed the bell for the steward to bring his soup.
I must be reaching second childhood, and I'm not even thirty-five, he thought. Making all this fuss over a superficial wound and a little fever.
Nothing little about a wound turning nasty, Raj said in his mind. I've seen too much of that.
There was a brief flash of hands holding a man down to blood-stained boards. He thrashed and screamed as the bone-saw grated through his thigh, and there was a tub full of severed limbs at the end of the makeshift operating table. Unlike Center's scenarios, Raj's memories carried smell as well; the sickly-sweet oily rot of gas gangrene, this time.
You even had Center worried for a while.
calculations indicate a 23 % reduction in the probability of a favorable outcome if John hosten is removed from the equation at this point, Center said. such analysis does not constitute "worry."
How's Jeff doing? he asked.
observe:
— and he was looking through his foster-brothers eyes.
Evidently Jeffrey was out making a hands-on inspection, riding a horse along behind the Loyalist lines. Scattered clumps might be a better way to put it than "lines" John thought.
Oh, hi, Jeffrey replied. How's it going?
He pulled up the horse behind a large bonfire. Militiamen and some women were lying around it; a few hardy souls were asleep, others toasting bits of pungent sausage on sticks over the fire, eating stale bread, drinking from clay bottles of wine and water, or just engaging in the universal Unionaise sport of argument. The rifle pits they'd dug were a little further south, and their weapons were scattered about. Perhaps three-quarters were armed, with everything from modern Union-made copies of Santander magazine rifles to black-powder muzzle loaders like something from the Civil War three generations back. One anarchist chieftain had a bandanna around his head, two bandoliers of ammunition across the heavy gut that strained his horizontally striped shirt, three knives, a rifle, and two pistols in his sash.