Hope Renewed by David Drake, S.M. Stirling Page A

troopers had been nobles of a sort back home, with a few hundred hectares and peons to do the work. Of course, that had its compensations: plenty of leisure to practice and hunt. So they were fine riders, and mostly good shots. The Brigade had armed its men with muzzle loaders, but rifled percussion muskets, not the flintlock smoothbores that had been the best his people could make or maintain.
    “How’s my fair cousin?” Teodore went on.
    “Marie? Still pregnant, according to the last letter,” Ludwig said. “Thank the Spirit. Otherwise she’d be trying to outdo Messa Whitehall and riding with us.”
    Teodore shuddered elaborately. He turned to watch a dog-cart creak up, loaded with sunstruck Cruisers, their dogs on leading-ropes behind. “Throw some water on those!” he ordered.
    Ludwig put his helmet back on. The leather-backed chainmail of the pentail thumped on his neck, and sweat from the sponge-and-cork lining ran into his hair and down his cheeks, greasy and stale.
    “I’m beginning to wish we’d taken the train,” he said.
    “Getting there’s half the fun,” Teodore replied, blinking red-rimmed blue eyes.

    A trainload of artillery began to pull out of the East Residence station, guns and men riding on flatcars, the draft dogs in boxcars farther back from the engine. As soon as it cleared the switchpoint, the remainder of the 5th Descott jogged forward, breaking into platoons as they swarmed into the last two trains.
    “Alo sinstra, waymanos!” By the left, forward march. Ten minutes, and the final platoon was loaded into its boxcar.
    Gerrin Staenbridge looked around. “The last?” he said.
    Muzzaf Kerpatik looked just as exhausted as he did. “The very last, mi colonel ,” he said.
    Staenbridge ran a hand over his chin, the sword-calluses rasping against the blueblack stubble. “Hard to believe.” Sleep. Razors. Food. He didn’t believe in those anymore, either.
    Some sort of Palace flunky-in-uniform was wading toward him over the tracks and the litter of the three-day emergency. They’d been operating in battle mode: throw anything that breaks or isn’t needed out of the way and think about cleaning up later. That included a fair bit of broken-down rolling stock, as well as dead dogs, dead draft oxen, about fifty tons of coal that had spilled in odd spots and wasn’t worth the time and effort of collecting, and spare gear. Central Rail stevedore-slaves, dockworkers, and press-ganged clerks lay about in various stages of collapse.
    But no soldiers. Every man, dog, gun, and round of ammunition was on its way east. Spirit of man, I could sleep for a week.
    If that flunky meant what he thought it did—another message from some hysterical fool in the Palace who wanted his hand held—he’d be talking for a week. The people up on the First Hill hadn’t grown any less terrified of Ali over the last couple of days, and they were still given to brainstorms, most of which started and ended with keeping more troops around to protect their own precious personal fundaments. If he’d wanted to listen to bleating, he would have stayed at home on the family estate and herded sheep.
    “See you in Sandoral,” he said to the little Komarite, and ran for the second train.
    It was moving as he clamped his saber hand on an iron bracket and swung up onto the rear platform. This car had been tacked on at the last minute; it was the type used to carry railroad company guards through bandit country, with bunks and a cookstove inside. He’d found it parked on a siding, and be damned if he wasn’t going to keep it all to himself; that way he’d stand some chance of getting a little sleep in the fifty hours or so it would take to get to Sandoral. There was some hardtack and dried sausage in his duffel—
    The smell of curry startled him as he opened the rear door of the guardcar; his stomach growled a reminder of how long it had been since he ate. Fatima cor Staenbridge—the cor meant freedwoman—glanced