"On your feet!" she commanded, when the prince's chariot was dust down the path toward the walls of Ur Base.

"Now we start the training," she began.

A voice from the ranks interrupted her. "When do we get the weapons of fire?"

"You. Step forward." A young man did, an eager grin on his face. "The weapons are called rifles," Hollard said.

"When do we receive the rifles?" he asked.

"First lesson. Sergeant Kinney!"

The noncom trotted forward, a large sack of wet sand in her hands.

"Front and center… what's your name?"

"Addad-Dan, O Commander."

"The first lesson, Dan, is that you speak when you're spoken to!"

The boy flinched. Sergeant Kinney walked behind him, opened the pack laced to his webbing harness, and dropped the sack inside. Addad-Dan staggered and grunted as the weight slammed onto his shoulders and gut.

"Twenty-five circuits of the parade ground!" Kathryn barked. "At the run, recruit! See to it, Sergeant."

"Ma'am, yes ma'am!"

Kinney was grinning, and she had a rifle sling with a loop wound around her right hand. "All right, hero, let's go for a stroll." Whack of the flat leather across the legs. "Move it!"

Kathryn Hollard set her hands on her hips and looked out over the shocked faces. "Here, there is no rank," she said. "None of you has earned any rank. Here, you are not the sons of great men; here, all you maggots are equally worthless! Your highest hope is to become a soldier-then, maybe, you may think of becoming officers. There are three things a soldier must do: he must obey, he must value his mission before his comrades, and he must value his comrades before himself.

"There are three skills a soldier must command: he must be able to march, to shoot, and to dig. We'll start with marching." She pointed off across the fields to a low ruin mound, a shapeless hill of weathered mudbrick where a settlement had once been. It was just visible on the edge of sight.

"You see that? We're all going there. Form up!"

She sighed at the shambling chaos that resulted. This is going to take a lot of work.

She suspected that her brother-commander had given her this assignment as something between a joke and a punishment; if she liked the locals, she was going to get a bellyful of them.

Well, at least I'll get to see Kash fairly often. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Colonel Brother Godalmighty Kenneth Hollard.

"Beautiful work," Kenneth Hollard said.

He swung the Werder to his shoulder and sighted. A squeeze of the trigger and… crack. There was a slight tink sound as the spent shell hit the packed clay behind him. The target at the other end of the range flipped backward, then up with a white board pointer showing where his round had hit-a couple of inches left of the center of mass, or what would be the center of mass if that was a man and not a human-shaped cutout.

Hollard felt a slight glow of pride; that would have put a man out of the fight for good and all, and at six hundred yards, too.

"Let me try, Lord Kenn'et! Let me try!"

"Ah… well, no reason why not, Princess," Hollard said. He ran her through the firing drill, which was simple enough.

They really did come up with something that's simpler to use than the previous model, he thought. From his reading of military history, that was a small miracle in itself. Of course, with Commodore Alston in charge…

Raupasha brought the weapon up to her shoulder eagerly, but she took the time to aim, and squeezed carefully. She was wearing Marine khakis without insignia and a floppy-brimmed campaign hat with the right side pinned up; wisps of fine black hair had escaped from the thong that held her long mane in a ponytail. Hollard smiled at that, and at her frown of total concentration.

Crack.

The target flicked up; the bullet had gone squarely through the head. Hmmm. Not bad at all, at three hundred yards.

"No, no, no!" he said aloud. "Don't show off. Through the center of the body, always. Heads are too easy to miss."

She gave him an urchin grin. The noncom who brought her more ammunition was grinning too.

Hollard sighed and turned to the Guard commander who'd brought in the cargo and reinforcements; Victor Ortiz had the shield and four gold stripes on his cuffs and epaulettes that meant captain's rank in the Guard, equivalent to Hollard's Marine colonelcy. They moved a few paces away. The firing range was too far from the riverside wall of Ur Base to see the masts of the three-ship flotilla, but he knew the crews and the base's laborers were hard at work. Another battalion of Marine infantry, heavy weapons to match… and a lot of long flat crates with Werder rifles in their coats of grease for his command, surplus Westley-Richards from the Republic's militia for their allies. More crates as well, Werder ammunition, and machinery for the ammunition shop.

"Praise the Town Meeting, from whom all blessings flow," Hollard said, his voice a mock-pious drone for a second.

"Praise the Chief and the commodore, who kicketh the Meeting's lazy butt and getteth them to move," Ortiz said, and raised his brows in a question.

"Yes, Ms. Raupasha does speak some English now," Hollard replied.

"I see… I've been briefed, of course."

"Good. That was a fast passage you made."

Ortiz preened a little, which was pardonable. "Sixty-three days, two of those stranded on the goddam mudbanks in this miserable river. We did over four hundred miles a day three days in a row, down in the forties, running our casting down."

"What news from home?"

"Not much. The fall harvest was good; the Girenas expedition is still alive, wonder of wonders. King Isketerol made a fulsome apology and paid a heavy fine to get his people back after that incident in South Africa-less thirty who applied for asylum, and got it- but he was a lot less happy when we kept the ships. That's it so far, but God knows how long it will last. Oh, and on a personal note, I'm the father of twin boys."

"Congratulations!" Kenneth Hollard said, pumping his hand. There was a trace of wistfulness in his voice; he'd been thinking that it might be nice to have a family of his own. Not until this war is settled, I guess, he thought. "How long do you think it will last?"

"God alone knows, amigo. Until that hijo Isketerol thinks he has a chance of jumping us-I'm anxious to get my ships loaded and back home, I can tell you."

"Me too," Hollard said, looking through the letters Ortiz had hand-delivered-some for security's sake, and two fat ones from his brother.

He looked forward to reading those. It was… tranquil, that's the word… listening to him tell of the goings-on around the farm. Not that farm life was any bed of roses; he'd helped out on his brother's grant often enough to know that. His mind's eye saw him, writing in the big log kitchen with a cup of sassafras tea by his elbow, snow falling outside the window, Tanaswada nursing the baby… and homesickness stabbed him with a moment's bitter pain.

"Well, I don't envy you sailing back into winter," Hollard said. He walked a few steps back toward Raupasha. "Princess! If you're going to shoot that many rounds, wear the earplugs."

She pouted, then obeyed. "Sergeant, see that the weapon is returned to stores when the princess is finished with it." To Ortiz: "We've actually got the locals producing a halfway decent beer. Care for a glass, Victor?"

"Lead on!"

"Wait a minute!" Raupasha called.

The Islander officers turned back. "Watch," she said.

Raupasha had a round of rifle ammunition pushed through the buttonhole of the left breast pocket of her khaki jacket. She fired, then slipped the bullet out of the hole and into the breech of her Werder in a single quick grab and push.

"That… how do you say… slices up? The loading time."

"That's cuts down," Hollard said.