"David Drake - General 04 - The Steel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

impatience to be off at a gallop in the crisp fall air. Raj stroked his neck with one gauntleted hand.
The commanders were gathered on a knoll, and it gave a wide view over the broad river valley
below. The hoarse male chorus of the cavalry troopers sounded up from the fields. The Expeditionary
Force snaked westward through low rolling hills. Wagons and guns on the road, infantry in battalion
columns to either side, and five battalions of cavalry off to the flanks. There was very little dust; it had
rained yesterday, just enough to lay the ground. The infantry were making good time, rifles over their right
shoulders and blanket-rolls looped over the left. In the middle of the convoy the camp-followers spread
in a magpie turmoil, one element of chaos in the practiced regularity of the column, but they were keeping
up too. It was mild but crisp, perfect weather for outdoor work; the leaves of the oaks and maples that
carpeted the higher hills had turned to gold and scarlet hues much like the native vegetation.
The soldiers looked like veterans, now. Even the ones who hadn't fought with him before this
campaign; even the former Squadrones, military captives taken into the Civil Government's forces after
the conquest of the Southern Territories last year. Their uniforms were dirty and torn, the blue of the
tailcoat jackets and the dark maroon of their baggy pants both the color of the soil, but the weapons
were clean and the men ready to fight . . . which was all that really mattered.
"Looks like more rain tonight," Ehwardo Poplanich said, shading his eyes and looking north.
"Doesn't it ever not rain in this bloody country?"
The Companions were veterans now too, his inner circle of commanders. Like a weapon whose
hilt is worn with use, shaped to fit the hand that reaches for it in the dark. Ehwardo was much more than
a Governor's grandson these days.
"Only in high summer," Jorg Menyez replied. "Rather reminds me of home — there are parts of
Kelden County much like this, and the Diva River country up on the northwestern frontier."
He sneezed; the infantry specialist was allergic to dogs, which was why he used a riding steer,
and why he'd originally chosen the despised foot-soldiers for his military career, despite high rank and
immense wealth. Now he believed in them with a convert's zeal, and they caught his faith and believed in
themselves.
"Good-looking farms," Gerrin Staenbridge said, biting into an apple. "My oath, but I wouldn't
mind getting my hands on some of this countryside."
And Gerrin's come a long way too. He'd commanded the 5th Descott before Raj made them
his own. Back then garrison-duty boredom had left him with nothing to occupy his time but fiddling the
battalion accounts and his hobbies, the saber and the opera and good-looking youths.
There were a good many orchards hereabouts; apple and plum and cherry, and vineyards trained
high on stakes or to the branches of low mulberry trees. Wheat and corn had been cut and carted, the
wheat in thatched ricks in the farmyards, the corn in long rectangular bins still on the cob; dark-brown
earth rippled in furrows behind ox-drawn ploughs as the fields were made ready for winter grains. Few
laborers fled, even when the army passed close-by; word had spread that the eastern invaders ravaged
only where resisted . . . and the earth must be worked, or all would starve next year. Pastures were
greener than most of the easterners were used to, grass up to the hocks of the grazing cattle.
Half-timbered cottages stood here and there, usually nestled in a grove, with an occasional straggling
crossroads village, or a peon settlement next to a blocky stone-built manor house.
Many of the manors were empty; the remaining landlords were mostly civilian, and eager to come
in and swear allegiance to the Civil Government. Here and there a mansion stood burnt and empty.
Ill-considered resistance, or peasant vengeance on fleeing masters. Some of the peons abandoned their
plows to come and gape as the great ordered mass of the Civil Government's army passed, with the
Starburst fluttering at its head. It had been more than five hundred years since that holy flag flew in these
lands. Raj reflected ironically that the natives probably thought the 7th Descott Rangers' marching-song
was a hymn; there was much touching of amulets and kneeling.


We fuck the whores right through their drawers