Free Hope Renewed by David Drake, S.M. Stirling Page B

a new issue of splatguns.” There were exclamations of delight; the rapid-fire multibarreled guns were the first new weapon the Civil Government had adopted in a hundred twenty years. Raj had had them run up in the Kolobassian armories on his own authority—to Center’s designs.
    “Four per battalion. Remember they’re infantry weapons, not guns; push them forward, and we’ll give the Colonials some of the grief their repeaters and pom-poms do to us. If that’s all, then, we’ll get under way.”
    The Companions slapped fists in a pyramid of arms. “Hell or plunder, dog-brothers.”
    Gerrin Staenbridge watched the tall figure of the General ride away. “As I remember it, wasn’t Lady Anne Clerett the one who dropped a word about Osterville in our Sovereign Mighty Lord’s ear? I wonder who talked to her ?”
    They all looked in Suzette’s direction. Staenbridge grinned. “Behind every great man . . .” he quoted.
    “You know, Messers,” he went on, drawing on his gauntlets, “I was with Messer Raj back when he took command of the 5th in the El Djem business, south of Komar. Only five years . . . and that one man has changed the world—and changed himself.”
    “Haven’t we all,” Kaltin Gruder said, touching the long scars on his face. The Colonist shrapnel that had carved those furrows had killed his younger brother, on Raj Whitehall’s first independent campaign. “Haven’t we all.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    “Damned hot,” Tejan M’Brust said, using an end of his neckerchief to wipe his face.
    “No shit,” Ludwig Bellamy replied.
    He reined aside to the verge of the road, his dog stepping wearily over the ditch and hanging its head, panting, under the shade of a plane tree.
    The troopers’ dogs were panting too, a massed sound like hundreds of wheezing bellows as they rode by in column of fours. A knee-high fog of dust rose from the crushed rock surface of the road; he sneezed and hawked and spat to one side. The Descotter followed suit and offered him a canteen, water with vinegar. It cut the gummy saliva and dust nicely. Bellamy drank and watched the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers go by, the dogs at a fast ambling walk. Both units were under strength—they’d paid a substantial butcher’s bill in the Western Territories and hadn’t had time to recruit back to full roster yet—but they shaped well, to his critical eye. A few were even talking or joking as they rode, though most slumped a little, reins in one hand and eyes fixed on the rump of the dog ahead. The unit dressing was crisp, though.
    “They’re shaping better than the Brigaderos,” M’Brust said, echoing his thought. “I don’t think there’s a regular cavalry unit better, my oath I don’t. Not even the 5th Descott.”
    Ludwig nodded, grinning tiredly. His people, the Squadron, were accounted wilder than the Brigade; they’d come down from the Base Area later, and the Southern Territories they’d conquered had been a backwater. But these battalions had been longer under Messer Raj’s discipline and were first-rate material to begin with, once they had childish notions about charging with cold steel knocked out of them.
    For a moment the skin between his shoulders crawled, as he remembered the Squadron host advancing into volley-fire and massed artillery. The chanting, the waving banners, the sun bright on a hundred thousand swords . . . and Raj Whitehall waiting, his men a thin blue line looking as fragile and ordered as a snowflake by comparison. Waiting, then raising his sword and chopping it downward. . . .
    He shook it off, removed his helmet and let the air dry his sweat-damp hair. To their left the land rose in rocky hills, dry and shimmering with heat in the summer sun. To the right were gentle slopes, citrus orchards, and then open grain-fields with peons bending over their sickles as they reaped. The dusty yellow of the wheat was like flashes of gold through the glossy green leaves of the fruit trees. More to the