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"He'll be all right in a couple of weeks, I think," she said, looking up and meeting Giernas's eyes.
"Thanks, Sue," he said. "And everything's going to be okay in a couple of days, if I have anything to do with it."
"Oh, now you sorry bastards are fucked!" Marine rifleman Otto Verger whispered in his birth-tongue. He gri
In harshly accented English: "It's me who's here the now, and I've got my rocket launcher!"
This little piece of Iberia was a bit like the east-country fens of Alba where he'd been born nineteen summers gone… except that here he had this fine piece of battlecraft in his hands, from the hands of the wizard-smith Leaton and his helpers. Verger loved the stubby weapon; his hands caressed it as he waited in the grounded rubber raft. A cammo-painted steel tube four inches around and four feet long, with flared padded ends, a shoulder stock and handgrips on the tube, a circular shield for the user's face on the left side and a simple optical sight. It was a lot heavier than a rifle, true. But with this you had the Fist of Tauntuto
I mean, the Fist of God the Father and Son and His Mother, he corrected himself, freeing a hand for a second to sketch a cross on his chest.
Otto Verger intended to make the Republic his home; his last leave at his father's steading had settled that in his mind, watching his kin sit on a clay floor around an open hearth, cracking fleas while the stock grunted and squealed and baaaa'ed and mooed from the other end of the longhouse. So he must make his peace with Jesus and His sky-clan.
It was always well to be in good with the particular Gods of the folk you dwelt among, even if they were so strange you couldn't understand a thing about them. They were strong; that was enough.
Their sergeant had crawled off to find the others; then he raised his head over the edge of the boat from where he lay on the reeds.
"Path's marked," he said softly. "Follow me."
Verger rolled out of the boat and wiggled forward, stopping for an instant to make sure that his loader was following them; Private Sheila Rueteklo was Fiernan, and they'd stop to look at the pretty flowers in the middle of a death-duel. A slap on his boot told him she was there, and he snake-crawled forward. Mud and cold water soaked into his already saturated uniform. There were secrets to moving through swamp. If you went flat on your belly, spread your weight, you could move across quaking ground that would suck you down to your waist if you tried to go on two feet.
The toboggans following with their gear used the same principle-the Eagle People…
That's we Eagle People, fool, he corrected himself.
… were marvelously clever about that, finding new ways to use old knowledge.
If you pushed reeds flat to make a mat beneath you it was even better. The sharp green smell of bruised vegetation rose up around him, mingling with the yeasty scent of the mud, the occasional earth-fart of marsh gas, and the odors of gun oil and metal. He sniffed with a hunter's caution. Yes. There was the smoke of many banked hearths from the shore of the river to westward. The smell could come from a town, or large village, or war camp… but almost certainly from the fort the briefings had described. For a while he'd been convinced they were lost on this endless river.
Dark as arm's length up a hog's ass, he thought cheerfully. But we got here. Hard Corps!
The rocket teams and their protecting riflemen moved in across the darkened swamp with patient stealth; every once in a while an officer or noncom would pause to look at a compass and correct their passage. At last the swamp proper gave way to mere mud, liquid beneath his body with firm ground close enough below for him to crouch and duckwalk, then come half-erect. An officer came down and led them forward along a string the scouts-those picked ones like Clarkson-had put in. A lot of fen-men in this unit… Verger walked silently, despite the wet ground beneath his boots and the stumps of trees. At last he came to a tangle of fallen trunks that would make a good position, and the rain lifted a little. Light, yes, there was faint yellow light from ahead. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them wide again. A row of squares, in a line three times the height of his head-gunport covers made from slabs of iron, with light leaking around them.
"Seventy-five yards," the officer whispered. "You start on the right gun position. Remember not to look at the flares."
She moved off into the night. Yes, Mother, Verger thought. He didn't mind having a woman as platoon commander… much, anymore. They tended to take better care of their units, less likely to get you killed to prove how long their dongs were.
He heard a series of soft grunts as Rueteklo unhitched the carrying frame from her webbing harness, and knew the feel of her hands as she lifted his free of his back. Together that was eight rockets; another eight came up from the rear, brought over the marsh on toboggans.
"Feed me," he said; it would be a while, but best to be ready. "Incendiary."
Metal touched the rear padding of the launcher, and the rocket slid home with a low clunk-click. The trigger on the first handgrip went taut as the tension came on the spring striker.
He could imagine the round sliding in, the egg-shaped head, the narrower body, the circle of fins at the rear with a solid rim the same diameter as the warhead. Unseen in the darkness his teeth showed. Incendiary warheads were fun.
Well, all of them were fun, but incendiaries most of all. The bursting charge scattered fire like the Christian Hell, and it burned inextinguishably, some wonderful art making it impossible to put out with water. He'd put one of those-maybe more-right through those ports.
"Up," Rueteklo said when her work was through.
"Ready," he replied, bringing his eye to the sight.
With that, he could see the clear pattern of light leaking out around the portlid of the gun emplacement; the careless bastards there didn't have any fitting to keep it light-tight. He shook his head in contempt. With a soft snort of equal scorn he remembered older men back home, saying that you had to obey like a dog to serve the Eagle People in war… Fools. Let them sit in their moldering dung-floored huts, wagging their gray beards and picking lice from each other's hair.
Hard Corps! he thought.
In the Corps you learned how to do things right. With the Empty Hand art alone he'd paid off many an old score, going back to his father's steading on leave-he was not a big man, though broad-shouldered and strong for his size. And as a Marine you could rely on the people beside you to do things the right way, the Corps way, not go off in a sulk, or rush away to grab a cow or grandstand and leave your arse swinging in the wind.
Oath-brothers like that gave you the strength of a God. More, they had the Midnight Mare and Golden Roan to lead them-keuthes enough to make victory sure. Just this evening before they all set off upriver he'd watched her doing some rite or other, laying a black thread and a white side by side on her sleeve and waiting until you couldn't tell one from the other. Powerful rites to put keuthes on your side, in the Corps.
Plus the Corps gave you weapons, finer than the miruthas used in the halls of Sky Father, and gold-fourteen dollars on the drumhead when you enlisted, the price of a good ox, and a dollar a day thereafter-and there was fine food like an endless feast in a chieftain's hall, healing magic like something from a tale of wizards for your hurts, the splendid uniform that all men feared, the promise of land after your hitch, the travel, the women to sport with…