S. M. Stirling & David Drake - Warlord

Warlord

S.M. Stirling

and David Drake

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3587-7

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, February 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stirling, S.M.

Warlord / by S.M. Stirling & David Drake.

p. cm.

"The General series was originally published as five separate novels: The Forge,

The Hammer, The Anvil, The Steel, and The Sword. Warlord contains half of

the Raj Whitehall saga, which will be concluded in the second omnibus

volume, Conqueror."

ISBN 0-7434-3587-7

1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Space warfare—Fiction. 3. Generals—

Fiction. I. Drake, David. II. Title.

PS3569.T543 W37 2003

813'.54—dc21 2002034190

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

The General series:

Warlord, with S.M. Stirling (omnibus)

Conqueror, with S.M. Stirling (forthcoming)

The Forge, with S.M. Stirling

The Chosen, with S.M. Stirling

The Reformer, with S.M. Stirling

The Tyrant, with Eric Flint

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

Hammer's Slammers

The Tank Lords

Caught in the Crossfire

The Butcher's Bill

The Sharp End

Paying the Piper

RCN series

With the Lightnings

Lt. Leary, Commanding

Independent Novels and Collections

Seas of Venus

Foreign Legions (edited by David Drake)

Ranks of Bronze

Cross the Stars

The Dragon Lord

Birds of Prey

Northworld Trilogy

Redliners

Starliner

All the Way to the Gallows

Grimmer Than Hell

The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Lest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Armageddon

(edited with Billie Sue Mosiman)

Killer

(with Karl Edward Wagner)

The Belisarius series (with Eric Flint):

An Oblique Approach

In the Heart of Darkness

Destiny's Shield

Fortune's Stroke

The Tide of Victory

I

The Forge

Chapter One

The rat screamed.

Raj Whitehall spun on one heel, the beam of his carbide lamp stabbing out scarcely faster than the

pistol in his right hand.

"Shit," he muttered, as the light fell on the corner of the underground chamber. The rodent was dead

now, dangling from the jaws of a cat-sized spersauroid, a slinky thing with a huge head and slender body

carried high on four spidery legs. It blinked at them with eyelids that closed to a vertical slit, and then was

gone with a rustle of scales against rubble. Raj grimaced. One of the few pleasant things about living in

East Residence was that Terran life had mostly replaced the local. But not in the catacombs, it seemed.

Thom Poplanich laughed. "Careful, Raj," he said. "Those bullets will bounce, you know."

Raj grinned back a trifle sheepishly as he holstered the weapon. A genuine five-shot revolver, it was

as much a badge of nobleman's rank as was the saber he carried slung over one shoulder. Both were as

familiar as his clothes: Whitehall had been born in Descott County, hard country two weeks' journey

north of the capital, where men went armed from puberty. The platinum stars and hunting scenes inlaid in

the steel of the revolver were a badge as well, of membership in the Governor's Guard.

"Spirit of Man of the Stars," Raj said, and touched the silver wafer etched in holy circuits that hung

around his neck. "This place makes my skin crawl." Everyone knew the catacombs under New

Residence were ancient and huge . . . but those were just words until you saw it. This complex could

house the whole population of the capital, with room to spare—and New Residence was the largest city

on Earth.

"Not a spot for a picnic," Poplanich agreed.

The abandoned elevator shaft he had found below his apartments ended in this floor of rubble; from

the hollow sounds and the way it shifted, there must have been levels below. Rust-streaks marked the

lines of ancient machinery. Now there was only the cool gray surface of fused stone, and one half-open

door . . . no, wait.

"Look at this," Poplanich said. He walked quickly over the broken rock and flicked his lantern's

beam downward, moving with a studied grace. "That hasn't been here since the Fall."

It was a tallow candle stub, resting in a congealed puddle of its own grease. There was a smokemark

above it, but dust lay thick over all.

"But it's been there long enough," Raj commented, trying the door. It was frozen in its half-open

position, but there was just room for his barrel chest. "Hand me the paintstick, will you, Thom?"

They would need to be very careful not to lose their way, down here in the catacombs. He touched

his wafer again. Everything around them was a product of men who had lived before the Fall, when the

Spirit of Man of the Stars had infused their souls. You could see it in the way the rock was carved,

seamless and even, in the strange bits and pieces of shattered machinery, the very materials unfamiliar.

There might even be . . .

"If we come across any computers, we'll have to tell the priests," he said.

Thom laughed. "They don't need genuine relics any more," he said with easy cynicism. "Haven't you

heard what the last synod ruled about the Miraculous Multiplication?"

Raj flushed; they were both just turned twenty-five, but there were times when Thom Poplanich

made him feel very much the raw youth, a rustic squire in from the provinces. Even in tweed and leather

hunting clothes, the other man had a slim self-assured elegance that spoke of ten generations of urban

aristocracy. Raj touched his amulet again. It was comforting to know that this was the genuine article,

recovered two centuries ago and blessed by Saint Wu herself. Even if the Church had ruled that belief

made the relic holy, rather than the reverse.

He forced himself into the door and pushed with knees and hands, back braced against the wall. For

a long moment nothing moved, until he took a deep breath and threw the strength of shoulders and back

into it, timing the contraction to the exhalation of his breath the way the family armsman had taught. A

seam parted along the side of his tight uniform jacket, and the thick slab slid open with a protesting

screech of tearing metal. Raj dropped to the floor in a crouch, panting slightly.

"Showoff," Thom said as he sidled past. There was surprise and slight envy in his tone; his friend

grinned.

"A strong back comes in useful for other things than pulling a plow," he said, raising his own lantern.

"Let's keep turning to the right."

* * *

Raj genuflected again, touching brows and heart to the ancient, dust-shrouded computer terminal.

"Look, there's not much point in going on," he said. This was the fifth level down from their

starting-point. Emptiness, offices and storage space, eerily uncorroded metal and the smell of damp

stone. And enough computer equipment to stock every church in the Civil Government and the barbarian

lands as well.

Poplanich ran a hand over the swivel chair before the terminal. Dust puffed up behind his hand,

silver-yellow in the light of the lantern.

"Feel this," he said, fascinated. "It looks like leather, but new leather. This area's been abandoned

since the Fall, it should have rotted away to shreds." He swung the chair back and forth. "A greased axle

won't turn that smoothly, and this doesn't even squeak."

Raj shrugged. "They had powers before the Fall. The Spirit withdrew them when they proved

unworthy."

Thom nodded absently; that was from the Creed. "I still think this was a naval installation," he said,

picking up a plastic sign from one desk. It was made of two strips joined at one long edge; one side was

blank, and the other bore black letters in the Old Namerique tongue. Wez cainna bie fyr'd: slavs godda

bie sold. His lips moved silently, construing it first into modern Namerique, and then into his native

Sponglish. He frowned absently. Well, of course, he thought.

"I don't know," Raj replied, heading cautiously out into the corridor again. "The Book of the

Fall—hey, there's a stairwell leading down here, hand me the paintstick again—says the military joined

the Rebellion." They had both sat through enough droning sermons on that.

Thom's teeth flashed in a grin. "Just as my own interpretation—and please keep this from the Invigiles

Against Heresy, will you?—I'd say that the Brigade and the Squadron and the others were pretty

low-echelon units, out in the wilds when the Fall came. They didn't cause the breakup of the Holy

Federation, they just seized power where they could when we were cut off from the Stars."

Raj felt a slight discomfort; that was not outside the canons of interpretation, but it was dangerously

free-thinking. "Come on," he said. "Two more levels, then we go back."

* * *

"That's a light," Thom said in a hiss as they turned the corner. His foot brushed aside a crumbling

human femur; they had seen enough skeletons on this level to grow blasé. A brittle pile of brown-gray

bone, hardly marked by the teeth of the rats, bits of rope and stiff leather and rusted metal scattered

about it.

Raj squinted, then turned off his lamp. His friend followed suit, and they waited for their eyes to

adjust. He could feel the darkness fading in around him, and with it the enormous weight of the

catacombs. His mouth felt dry. That is a light, he thought. A soft white light that was unlike anything he

had ever seen; not like sunlight, stars, fire, or even the harsh actinic arclights that you sometimes saw in

the Governor's Palace or the mansions of the very rich. This was the light of the Ancients; the light of the

Spirit of Man of the Stars.

"Live equipment," he whispered, genuflecting again. Blasphemy. Fallen Man's eyes are blind to the

Light of the Spirit. I am not worthy. With an effort of will he relaxed the rock-tense muscles of his

neck and shoulders.

"Thom, we shouldn't be here. This is something for a Patriarchal Council, or the Governor." There

was a slight tremor in his hands as he drew his pistol, swinging the cylinder out and checking the load.

The unnatural gleam shone off the polished brass of the cartridges. He was conscious of the uselessness

of the gesture; what good would a revolver be against the powers of the unFallen? Of course, it was no

more useless than anything else he might do . . .

"Priests . . ." Thom visibly reconsidered. "Priests aren't notably more virtuous than you or I, Raj," he

said reasonably. His eyes stayed fixed on the unwinking glimmer, shining slightly with an expression of

primal hunger. "Of course, if you're . . . uncertain . . . you can wait here while I check. I wouldn't think

less of you for it."

Raj flushed. I'm too old to be pushed into something stupid by a dare, he thought angrily, even as

he felt his mouth open.

"I'll use the pry bar," he said. "Get it out, would you?"

Thom rummaged in his rucksack, while Raj advanced to examine the door. The feeling in his stomach

reminded him of waiting behind the barricade during the street fighting last fall, when the sound of the

rioters had come booming around the corner, thunder of feet and massed chanting of voices: Conquer!

Conquer! Just like then; he had seen the eyes of the rankers flick toward him, as they stood at parade

rest. He had strolled up to the chest-high barrier of carts and furniture and paving stones as if he were

walking out the front gate of his father's manor, going to inspect the dogs. Sergeant major, first

company to the breastwork; prepare for volley fire, if you please. His voice hadn't been the shaky

squeak he'd expected, either.

You could get through anything, once you'd decided you had to. Look at it as a job to be done, and

then do it, because somebody had to and it cursed well wasn't going to happen if you waited for the next

man. Not to mention that his role in putting down the riots had gotten him a Captaincy and the still more

important position of Guard to the Vice-Governor.

Closer, and the light was a narrow strip along one side of the door rather than a wedge; he pressed

an eye to the crack, but it was reflecting around a tongue-and-groove socket that was almost closed. The

air blew from inside to him, dry and metallic and tasting of . . . old bones? he thought.

"Maybe I can get it open," he said experimentally, trying for a grip with his hands. The crack was too

narrow, but his friend slapped the octagonal steel of the pry bar into his hand as he reached around

behind for it. The metal was as thick as he could comfortably grip and about a meter long; one end

flattened out into a wedge, and the other into a hook. The wedge slipped in easily enough, a hand's

width, and he braced one foot against the jamb of the door.

"Wait a second," Thom murmured. He pointed to a rectangular plaque beside the blank gray

rectangle of the portal. "I've seen an old manuscript that describes doors like these, Annaman's Records

of the Settlement. The inscription said 'touche thi squaire, und recessed it shall by.' "

"But will it work now?" Raj said, a little sharply. A Descott squire had better things to do with his

youth than pour over ancient manuscripts and parse verbs in Old Namerique, to be sure. But it was still a

little irritating, when some city noble trotted out a classical quotation. At least Thom's usually have

something to do with reality, he thought.

For answer, Thom pointed at the light that picked out the highlights of their faces, and then slapped

his hand on the control. There was a chink sound deep inside the wall, and the door shifted slightly. So

slightly that he would not have been conscious of it, except for the tremor of metal against his palms.

"Well, let me try muscle if scholarship won't budge it," Raj continued, forcing cheerfulness into his

tone. "And hsssssssaaaa!"

There was a moment of quivering tension, and then the door began to move; in a squealing jerk for

the first centimeter or so, then more rapidly. Halfway open it stuck again with a soundless authority that

told him something solid had fallen across the trackway. Raj leaned head and shoulders through, squinting

and blinking against a fall of dust and the dim light.

"I can see where the light's coming from," he said.

Thom crowded up beside him, craning for a look. Beyond the door was a corridor five meters

across, running right into darkness; on their left was a square of brighter light, another door. And the floor

was two meters down from where they stood, the sagging remains of a metal stairway offering more

hindrance than help.

"If you lay and held onto my wrists, I could drop to the bottom, Thom said.

"And how in the Outer Dark would you get back up?" Raj said dryly. "Here, let me have your belt."

The smaller man handed over the narrow dress belt of his jacket; it was rogosauroid hide traded

down from the Skinner country north of Pierson's Sea, and strong enough to hold four times their

combined weight; Raj's was much the same, except that it was broader and less elaborately tooled. He

looked thoughtfully at the door, tapping the heel of his palm experimentally on the edge. It seemed to

have stuck fast. On the other hand . . . The pry bar was just a little shorter than the width the door had

opened; he laid it in the opening and stamped on it until it seated firmly, the wedge-end driven under the

bottom between runway and door.

"This'll hold the belts," he said, buckling one to the other. "I'd better go first."

Raj took the leather in one hand and his pistol in the other, bracing his boots on the wall and

rappelling down in three bounds. Dust spurted up under his feet and bone crunched, spurting more dust.

He swore and spat, unpleasantly conscious of how long it had been since he had a drink. Then he swore

again, softly, as Thom dropped down beside him and the nature of the floor he was standing on became

plain.

"Bones," he whispered. Thom unshuttered his lantern and swung the beam around, brighter than the

white glow from the doorway and better for picking out detail.

"Lots of bones," his friend agreed, sounding more subdued than usual.

Not quite enough that you could not find clear space for your feet, but nearly, and the crumbled dust

between them spoke of others still older.

"And look," Thom continued. "What the hell's that?" That was a rust-crusted weapon; Raj picked it

up, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.

"It's a koorg-rifle," he said. "The Civil Government Armory stopped issuing them two hundred years

ago."

Raj might not have been to the schools of rhetoric, but there was nothing wrong with his grasp of

military history. "Double-barreled muzzle loader with octagonal barrels."

His friend's light picked out other items of equipment; off by the other wall there was what looked

like one of the ceremonial weapons the mannequins of the Audience Hall Guard carried. Raj looked

closer: it was not, it was a real laser, the ancient Holy Federation weapon. The metal men in the Hall of

Audience carried non-functional replicas, but this was the real thing. The soldier's eyes narrowed as he

followed the line of the muzzle; there was a deep pit to the upper right of the door, melted into the

stonework, with a long dribbling icicle of lava below it. Nothing on the metal of door or frame, although

the melt would have crossed it.

"Thom," Raj said briskly. "This has gone too far; this is seriously strange. We should fall back and

report. Now."

Reluctantly, the other man nodded. And—

CRANG. The door above their heads slammed shut so quickly that the huge musical note of the pry

bar breaking was almost lost in the thunder-slam of its closing. A fragment of the steel bar cannoned

across the corridor and ricocheted back, falling at Raj's feet. He bent to touch it, and stopped when his

skin felt a glow from the torsion-heat of breakage. Thom was standing and examining the linked belts; the

buckle that had fastened them to the bar was missing, and the tough reptile hide cut as neatly as if it had

been sliced with a razor. Raj felt a giant hand seize his chest, squeezing, tasted bile at the back of his

throat.

"Well," he said, and heard it come out as a croak. "Well, it is still active."

Thom nodded jerkily. "Notice something about the skeletons?" he said.

Raj looked around. "Pretty dead."

"Yes, and no marks on the bones. Looks like they fell in place, and nothing disturbed them."

Raj Whitehall nodded. The surviving skeletons were eerily complete, like an anatomy model; no

toothmarks, nothing disturbed by scavengers.

"I don't think there's much point in going that way," he answered, waving to the darkness on their

right. The beam of his lamp showed nothing but the walls of the corridor, fading to a geometric point with

distance. "That heads due east, near as I can tell." Out from under the city and towards the hills. "If

there's anything beyond that . . . light . . . we might find another shaft leading up."

Thom nodded, wiping a sleeve across his mouth. "Maybe. I wish we'd brought some water."

Raj grinned. "I wish you hadn't said that," he said. "I really do."

* * *

"Mirrors," Thom said. For the first time in Raj's memory, there was real awe in his friend's voice.

"I've never seen mirrors like this.

"I've never seen a light like that, either," Raj said.

The room was circular, floored and roofed with mirrors, and with a single seamless sheet of mirror

for the walls. The center of the circle was a pillar of light; white, glareless, heatless, odorless, shining on

the endless repeated figures of the two men. Raj felt himself stagger in place, lost and splintered in

fractions of himself. It was a moment before he noticed the last, the intolerable strangeness.

"Thom," he said urgently. "Why don't the mirrors reflect the light?" There it was before their eyes,

a column as physically real as their own hands, a light that was all that kept this place from being as dark

as a coffin. Yet in the mirrors there was no trace of it, only the two men and their equipment.

Thom blinked for an instant; then his eyes widened and he turned to run. Did run, one single step

before freezing in place as if turned to stone. Even his expression froze, and Raj could see that his pupils

shared the paralysis. The doorway that had been Thom's goal had . . . not closed, simply vanished; only

the direction of the living statue that had been his friend enabled Raj to tell it from any other part of the

smooth mirror curve. The light-pillar in the center of the room blazed higher.

Raj fired, with his second finger on the trigger and the index pointing along the barrel, the way the

armsman had taught him: at close range, you just pointed and pulled. The five shots rang out almost as

one, the orange muzzle flashes and smoke dazzling his eyes. Almost as loud was the bang-whinnnng of

the soft lead bullets ricocheting and spattering off the diamond hard surfaces of the room; they left no

mark at all. Something struck Raj in the foot with sledgehammer force, a bullet tearing off the heel of one

boot. A long tear appeared in the floppy tweed of Thom's breeches . . . Then nothing, nothing except an

acrid cloud of dirty-white powder smoke that made Raj cough reflexively.

Raj's muscles seized halfway through the motion of reloading. A voice spoke: not in his ears, but in

his mind. Spoke with an inhuman detachment that had a flavor of hard-edged crispness:

yes. yes, you will do very well.

Chapter Two

The floor had vanished, and the pillar of light. There was nothing beneath him, although he could feel

the pressure of weight under his feet. The off-white haze of powder smoke cleared rapidly, as if the air

was being circulated without a detectable breeze. Thom hung suspended also, still in the first motion of

flight, as if this was the Outer Dark where those who rejected the Spirit of Man fell frozen forever.

He heard his throat trying to whimper, and that brought him back to himself. He was a Whitehall of

Hillchapel, and a soldier, and a man grown. The worst this whatever-it-was could do was kill him, and a

paving stone in the riots could have done that. Or a scropied in his boot on a hunting trip, or a Colonist

bullet or a Brigade bayonet. His soul only the Spirit could damn or save.

yes. excellent.

"Who the Dark are you?" Raj said, trying for the tone his father had used on machinery-salesmen

back at Hillchapel. Hillchapel, sweet wild scent of the silverpine blowing down from the heights, the

sound of a blacksmith's hammer on iron—

I am Sector Command and Control Unit AZ12-b14-c000 Mk. XIV.

Awe struck the human; he tried to genuflect, found himself still immobile. "Are you . . . a computer?"

he asked incredulously.

yes. although not in the sense you use the term.

"What do you mean?"

i am not a supernatural being.

"What are you, then?"

i am a sentient artificial entity of photonic subsystems tasked with the politico-military

supervision of this sector for Federation Command.

That's what a supernatural being is, dammit. Raj frowned; that was straight out of the Creed, and

even the phrasing was the archaic dialect the priests used. First it says it isn't a supernatural being, then it

says it's working for the Holy Federation, he thought in bewilderment. An angel.

"What do you want of me?" he continued bluntly. Although the skeletons outside had given him a few

grisly notions along those lines.

observe. think.

Thom and the mirrored sphere vanished. This time Raj did cry out, but it was as much wonder as

fear; he was hanging suspended in air, flying as men had done before the Fall. It took a moment for him

to recognize precisely where; the bird's-eye-view was utterly unfamiliar, and the scene below was not

that which he knew. It was the shape of the land itself that finally shocked recognition out of him, known

from a hundred maps. The New Residence, the city of the Governors and the capital of the Civil

Government. The near-perfect circle of the bay, cut by a single three-kilometer channel; the buildings

were laid out on the Silver Antler hills, just in from the passage to the sea. Off south he could see the

delta of the Hemmar River, misty in the morning light . . .

S. M. Stirling & David Drake - Warlord

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