城防十六计

dztlb · 2023-11-15 11:08:42 · 个人记录

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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by One Reluctant Lemming Company
Ltd.
Excerpt from
The Two of Swords: Volume One copyright ©
2015 by K. J. Parker
Excerpt from
The Wolf copyright © 2018 by Leo Carew
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Translator’s Note
By K. J. Parker
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of
The Two of Swords: Volume One
A Preview of
The Wolf
Orbit Newsletter
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For Constantia and the Stalkers, with thanks
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Orhan son of Siyyah Doctus Felix Praeclarissimus, his
history of the Great Siege, written down so that the deeds
and sufferings of great men may never be forgotten.
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1
I was in Classis on business. I needed sixty miles of second-
grade four-inch hemp rope—I build pontoon bridges—and
all the military rope in the empire goes through Classis.
What you’re supposed to do is put in a requisition to
Divisional Supply, who send it on to Central Supply, who
send it on to the Treasurer General, who approves it and
sends it back to Divisional Supply, who send it on to Central
Supply, who forward it to Classis, where the quartermaster
says, sorry, we have no rope. Or you can hire a clever
forger in Herennis to cut you an exact copy of the treasury
seal, which you use to stamp your requisition, which you
then take personally to the office of the deputy
quartermaster in Classis, where there’s a senior clerk
who’d have done time in the slate quarries if you hadn’t
pulled certain documents out of the file a few years back.
Of course, you burned the documents as soon as you took
them, but he doesn’t know that. And that’s how you get
sixty miles of rope in this man’s army.
I took the overland route from Traiecta to Cirte, across
one of my bridges (a rush job I did fifteen years ago, only
meant to last a month, still there and still the only way
across the Lusen unless you go twenty-six miles out of your
way to Pons Jovianis) then down through the pass onto the
coastal plain. Fabulous view as you come through the pass,
that huge flat green patchwork with the blue of the Bay
beyond, and Classis as a geometrically perfect star, three
arms on land, three jabbing out into the sea. Analyse the
design and it becomes clear that it’s purely practical and
utilitarian, straight out of the field operations manual.
Furthermore, as soon as you drop down onto the plain you
can’t see the shape, unless you happen to be God. The
three seaward arms are tapered jetties, while their
landward counterparts are defensive bastions, intended to
cover the three main gates with enfilading fire on two
sides. Even further more, when Classis was built ninety
years ago, there was a dirty great forest in the way (felled
for charcoal during the Social War, all stumps, marsh and
bramble-fuzz now), so you wouldn’t have been able to see it
from the pass, and that strikingly beautiful statement of
Imperial power must therefore be mere chance and
serendipity. By the time I reached the way station at
Milestone 2776 I couldn’t see Classis at all, though of
course it was dead easy to find. Just follow the arrow-
straight military road on its six-foot embankment, and, next
thing you know, you’re there.
Please note I didn’t come in on the military mail. As
Colonel-in-Chief of the Engineers, I’m entitled; but, as a
milkface (not supposed to call us that, everybody does,
doesn’t bother me, I like milk) it’s accepted that I don’t,
because of the distress I might cause to Imperials finding
themselves banged up in a coach with me for sixteen hours
a day. Not that they’d say anything, of course. The Robur
pride themselves on their good manners, and, besides,
calling a milkface a milkface is Conduct Prejudicial and can
get you court-martialled. For the record, nobody’s ever
faced charges on that score, which proves (doesn’t it) that
Imperials aren’t biased or bigoted in any way. On the other
hand, several dozen auxiliary officers have been tried and
cashiered for calling an Imperial a blueskin, so you can see
just how wicked and deserving of contempt my lot truly
are.
No, I made the whole four-day trip on a civilian carrier’s
cart. The military mail, running non-stop and changing
horses at way stations every twenty miles, takes five days
and a bit, but my cart was carrying fish; marvellous
incentive to get a move on.
The cart rumbled up to the middle gate and I hopped off
and hobbled up to the sentry, who scowled at me, then saw
the scrambled egg on my collar. For a split second I
thought he was going to arrest me for impersonating an
officer (wouldn’t be the first time). I walked past him, then
jumped sideways to avoid being run down by a cart the size
of a cathedral. That’s Classis.
My pal the clerk’s office was in Block 374, Row 42,
Street 7. They’ve heard of sequential numbering in Supply
but clearly aren’t convinced that it’d work, so Block 374 is
wedged in between Blocks 217 and 434. Street 7 leads
from Street 4 into Street 32. But it must be all right,
because I can find my way about there, and I’m just a
bridge builder, nobody.
He wasn’t there. Sitting at his desk was a six-foot-six
Robur in a milk-white monk’s habit. He was bald as an egg,
and he looked at me as though I was something the dog
had brought in. I mentioned my pal’s name. He smiled.
“Reassigned,” he said.
Oh. “He never mentioned it.”
“It wasn’t the sort of reassignment you’d want to talk
about.” He looked me up and down; I half expected him to
roll back my upper lip so he could inspect my teeth. “Can I
help you?”
I gave him the big smile. “I need rope.”
“Sorry.” He looked so happy. “No rope.”
“I have a sealed requisition.”
He held out his hand. I showed him my piece of paper.
I’m pretty sure he spotted the seal was a fake.
“Unfortunately, we have no rope at present,” he said. “As
soon as we get some—”
I nodded. I didn’t go to staff college so I know squat
about strategy and tactics, but I know when I’ve lost and
it’s time to withdraw in good order. “Thank you,” I said.
“Sorry to have bothered you.”
“No bother.” His smile said he hadn’t finished with me
yet. “You can leave that with me.”
I was still holding the phony requisition with the highly
illegal seal. “Thanks,” I said, “but shouldn’t I resubmit it
through channels? I wouldn’t want you thinking I was
trying to jump the queue.”
“Oh, I think we can bend the rules once in a while.” He
held out his hand again. Damn, I thought. And then the
enemy saved me.
(Which is the story of my life, curiously enough. I’ve had an
amazing number of lucky breaks in my life, far more than
my fair share, which is why, when I got the citizenship, I
chose Felix as my proper name. Good fortune has smiled on
me at practically every crucial turning point in my
remarkable career. But the crazy thing is, the agency of my
good fortune has always—invariably—been the enemy.
Thus: when I was seven years old, the Hus attacked our
village, slaughtered my parents, dragged me away by the
hair and sold me to a Sherden; who taught me the
carpenter’s trade—thereby trebling my value—and sold me
on to a shipyard. Three years after that, when I was
nineteen, the Imperial army mounted a punitive expedition
against the Sherden pirates; guess who was among the
prisoners carted back to the empire. The Imperial navy is
always desperately short of skilled shipwrights. They let me
join up, which meant citizenship, and I was a foreman at
age twenty-two. Then the Echmen invaded, captured the
city where I was stationed; I was one of the survivors and
transferred to the Engineers, of whom I now have the
honour to be Colonel-in-Chief. I consider my point made.
My meteoric rise, from illiterate barbarian serf to
commander of an Imperial regiment, is due to the Hus, the
Sherden, the Echmen and, last but not least, the Robur,
who are proud of the fact that over the last hundred years
they’ve slaughtered in excess of a million of my people. One
of those here-today-gone-tomorrow freak cults you get in
the City says that the way to virtue is loving your enemies. I
have no problem with that. My enemies have always come
through for me, and I owe them everything. My friends, on
the other hand, have caused me nothing but aggravation
and pain. Just as well I’ve had so very few of them.)
I noticed I no longer had his full attention. He was peering
through his little window. After a moment, I shuffled closer
and looked over his shoulder.
“Is that smoke?” I said.
He wasn’t looking at me. “Yes.”
Fire, in a place like Classis, is bad news. Curious how
people react. He seemed frozen stiff. I felt jumpy as a cat. I
elbowed myself a better view, as the long shed that had
been leaking smoke from two windows suddenly went up in
flames like a torch.
“What do you keep in there?” I asked.
“Rope,” he said. “Three thousand miles of it.”
I left him gawping and ran. Milspec rope is heavily
tarred, and all the sheds at Classis are thatched. Time to be
somewhere else.
I dashed out into the yard. There were people running in
every direction. Some of them didn’t look like soldiers, or
clerks. One of them raced toward me, then stopped.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know—?”
He stabbed me. I hadn’t seen the sword in his hand. I
thought; what the devil are you playing at? He pulled the
sword out and swung it at my head. I may not be the most
perceptive man you’ll ever meet, but I can read between
the lines; he didn’t like me. I sidestepped, tripped his heels
and kicked his face in. That’s not in the drill manuals, but
you pick up a sort of alternative education when you’re
brought up by slavers—
Sequence of thoughts; I guess the tripping and kicking
thing reminded me of the Sherden who taught it to me (by
example), and that made me think of pirates, and then I
understood. I trod on his ear for luck till something cracked
—not that I hold grudges—and looked round for somewhere
to hide.
Really bad things happening all around you take time to
sink in. Sherden pirates running amok in Classis? Couldn’t
be happening. So I found a shady doorway, held perfectly
still and used my eyes. Yes, in fact, it was happening, and to
judge from the small slice of the action I could see, they
were having things very much their own way. The Imperial
army didn’t seem to be troubling them at all; they were
preoccupied with fighting the fire in the rope shed, and the
Sherden cut them down and shot them as they dashed
about with buckets and ladders and long hooks, and nobody
seemed to realise what was going on except me, and I don’t
count. Pretty soon there were no Imperials left in the yard,
and the Sherden were backing up carts to the big sheds
and pitching stuff in. Never any shortage of carts at Classis.
They were hard workers, I’ll give them that. Try and get a
gang of dockers or warehousemen to load two hundred
size-four carts in forty minutes. I guess that’s the difference
between hired men and self-employed.
I imagine the fire was an accident, because it rather
spoiled things for the Sherden. It spread from one shed to a
load of others before they had a chance to loot them, then
burned up the main stable block and coach-houses, where
most of the carts would have been, before the wind
changed direction and sent it roaring through the barracks
and the secondary admin blocks. That meant it was coming
straight at me. By now, there were no soldiers or clerks to
be seen, only the bad guys, and I’d stick out like a sore
thumb in my regulation cloak and tunic. So I took off the
cloak, noticed a big red stain down my front—oh yes, I’d
been stabbed, worry about that later—pulled off the dead
pirate’s smock and dragged it over my head. Then I
pranced away across the yard, looking like I had a job to
do.
I got about thirty yards and fell over. I was mildly
surprised, then realised: not just a flesh wound. I felt
ridiculously weak and terribly sleepy. Then someone was
standing over me, a Sherden, with a spear in his hand. Hell,
I thought, and then: not that it matters.
“Are you all right?” he said.
Me and good fortune. How lucky I was to have been born
a milkface. “I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”
He grinned. “Bullshit,” he said, and hauled me to my
feet. I saw him notice my boots—issue beetlecrushers, you
can’t buy them in stores. Then I saw he was wearing them,
too. Pirates. Dead men’s shoes. “Come on,” he said. “Lean
on me, you’ll be fine.”
He put my arm round his neck, then grabbed me round
the waist and walked me across to the nearest cart. The
driver helped him haul me up, and they laid me down
gently on a huge stack of rolled-up lamellar breastplates.
My rescuer took off his smock, rolled it up and put it under
my head. “Get him back to the ship, they’ll see to him
there,” he said, and that was the last I saw of him.
Simple as that. The way the looters were going about
their business, quickly and efficiently, it was pretty obvious
that there were no Imperial personnel left for them to
worry about—apart from me, lovingly whisked away from
danger by my enemies. The cart rumbled through the camp
to the middle jetty. There were a dozen ships tied up on
either side. The driver wasn’t looking, so I was able to
scramble off the cart and bury myself in a big coil of rope,
where I stayed until the last ship set sail.
Some time later, a navy cutter showed up. Just in time, I
remembered to struggle out of the Sherden smock that had
saved my life. It’d have been the death of me if I’d been
caught wearing it by our lot.
Which is the reason—one of the reasons—why I’ve decided
to write this history. Under normal circumstances I
wouldn’t have bothered, wouldn’t have presumed—who am
I, to take upon myself the recording of the deeds and
sufferings of great men, and so on. But I was there; not just
all through the siege, but right at the very beginning. As I
may already have mentioned, I’ve had far more good luck
in my life than I could possibly have deserved, and when—
time after time after time—some unseen hand scoops you
up from under the wheels, so to speak, and puts you safely
down on the roadside, you have to start wondering, why?
And the only capacity in which I figure I’m fit to serve is
that of witness. After all, anyone can testify in an Imperial
court of law; even children, women, slaves, milkfaces,
though of course it’s up to the judge to decide what weight
to give to the evidence of the likes of me. So; if luck figures
I’m good enough to command the Engineers, maybe she
reckons I can be a historian, too. Think of that. Immortality.
A turf-cutter’s son from north of the Bull’s Neck living for
ever on the spine of a book. Wouldn’t that be something.
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2
I wasn’t the only survivor. A deputy quartermaster’s clerk
lived just long enough to verify most of what I reported,
and a couple of fishermen saw the Sherden sailing out of
North Sound and dropping anchor at the quays. They
tacked up the channel against the wind to the naval base at
Colophon, where nobody believed them until they saw the
column of smoke.
The cutter took me back to Colophon, where a navy
sawbones patched me up, even though he wasn’t supposed
to—guess why—before sending me on a supply sloop to
Malata, where there’s a resident-aliens hospital licensed to
treat people with chronic skin conditions, like mine. After a
couple of days I was sick to death of doctors, so I
discharged myself and requisitioned a lift on a charcoal
cart back to the City. Soon as I got there, I was in all sorts
of trouble. Commissioners of Enquiry had trekked all the
way out to Malata to take my statement, and I hadn’t been
there. Can’t you people do anything right?
Soon as Intelligence were through shouting at me, I
tottered down the hill to see Faustinus, the City Prefect.
Faustinus is—I won’t say a friend, because I don’t want to
make problems for him. He has rather more time for me
than most Robur, and we’ve worked together on patching
up the aqueducts. Faustinus wasn’t there, called away,
important meeting of the Council. I left him a note, come
and see me, and dragged myself back up the hill to
Municipal Works, which is sort of my home when I’m in the
City.
As a special favour, obtained for me by the personal
intercession of Prefect Faustinus, I had a space of my own
at Municipal Works. Once upon a time it was a charcoal
shed; before that, I think the watchman kept his dog there.
And before that, it was part of the Painted Cloister of the
Fire temple that Temren the Great built to give thanks for
his defeat of the Robur under Marcian III; it’s an old city,
and wherever you dig, you find things. Anyway, the Clerk of
the Works let me leave some stuff there, and letters and so
forth pile up in an old box by the door, and I’d made myself
a bed out of three packing crates (a carpenter, remember?).
I didn’t bother looking at the letters. I crawled onto the
bed, smothered myself in horse blankets, and fell asleep.
Some fool woke me up. He was enormous, and head to
foot in gilded scale armour, like an enormous fish standing
on its tail. He wasn’t alone. “What?” I yawned.
“Colonel Orhan.”
Well, I knew that. “What?”
“General Priscus’s compliments, sir, and you’re wanted
in Council.”
That, of course, was a bare-faced lie. General Priscus
didn’t want me anywhere in his jurisdiction, as he’d made
quite clear when I was up for my promotion (but Priscus
wasn’t in charge back then, praise be). Most particularly he
didn’t want me on his Council, but sadly for him, he had no
choice in the matter. “When?”
“Now, sir.”
I groaned. I was still wearing the bloodstained tunic with
the hole in it, over the Malata medic’s off-white bandages.
“I need to get washed and changed,” I said. “Give me ten
minutes, will you?”
“No, sir.”
Among the things I have room for at Municipal Works is
a spare grey cloak and regulation red felt pillbox hat. I put
them on—it was a hot day, I knew I’d roast in the thick wool
cloak, but it was that or go into Council in bloody rags—and
shuffled to my feet. The golden-fish men fell in precisely
around me. No need for that, but I imagine it was just force
of habit.
The War Office is four doors down from the Golden
Spire, on the left. It’s a small, low door in a bleak brick
wall, and once you’re through that you’re in the most
amazing knot garden, all lavender and box and
bewilderingly lovely flowers, and then you’re looking at the
double bronze doors, with two of the toughest soldiers in
the army scowling at you, and then you’re inside, shading
your eyes from the glare off all that white marble. I can see
why people get offended when I go in there. I don’t half
lower the tone.
Still, it’s a grand view from the top. Straight down Hill
Street, all you see is roofs—red tiles, grey slates, thatch. No
green or blue, just the work of men’s hands, as far as the
eye can see. Nowhere else on earth you can do that. Every
time I look at that view, regardless of context, I realise just
how lucky I am.
From the window in the Council chamber, however, you
can see the sea. General Priscus was sitting with his back
to it, while I had the prime lookout position. Over his
shoulder, I could see the arms of the harbour, and, beyond
that, flat dark blue. Plenty of sails, but none of them the red
and white stripes of the Sherden. Not yet, at any rate. If I’d
offered to swap places with the general, he’d have thought
I was trying to be funny, so I kept my mouth shut.
In terse, concise military language, General Priscus
proceeded to tell us everything we already knew; a surprise
attack by seaborne aggressors, no survivors, considerable
damage to buildings and stores, enquiries continuing to
ascertain the identity of the attackers—
“Excuse me,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Prefect Faustinus
wince. As well he might. He’s told me, over and over again,
don’t make trouble. He’s quite right and has my best
interests at heart. He keeps asking me, why do you do it?
Answer: I have no idea. I know it’s going to end badly, and
God knows I don’t enjoy it. My knees go weak, I get this
twisting pain in my stomach and my chest tightens up so I
can barely breathe. I hear my own voice speaking and I
think: not now, you fool, not again. But by then it’s too late.
Everybody was looking at me. Priscus scowled. “What?”
“I know who they were,” I said.
I’d done it again. “You do.”
“Yes. They’re called the Sherden.”
When Priscus got angry, he lowered his voice until he
practically purred. “Is there any reason why you didn’t see
fit to mention this earlier?”
“Nobody asked me.”
Faustinus had his eyes tight shut. “Well,” said the
general, “perhaps you’d be good enough to enlighten us
now.”
When I’m nervous, I talk a lot. And I’m rude to people.
This is ridiculous. Other times—when I’m angry,
particularly when people are trying to provoke me, I can
control my temper like a charioteer in the Hippodrome
manages his horses. But panic makes me cocky; go figure.
“Of course,” I said. “The Sherden are a loose confederation,
mostly exiles and refugees from other nations, based
around the estuary of the Schelm in south-eastern Permia.
We tend to call them pirates but mostly they trade; we do a
lot of business with them, direct or through intermediaries.
They have fast, light ships, low tonnage but sturdy.
Typically they only go thieving when times are hard, and
then they pick off small, easy targets where they can be
sure of a good, quick return—monasteries, absentee
landlords’ villas, occasionally an army payroll or a wagon
train of silver ore from the mines. Given the choice, though,
they’d rather receive stolen goods than do the actual
robbing; they know we could stamp them flat in two
minutes if we wanted to. But we never have, because, like I
said, we do a lot of business with them. Basically, they’re no
bother to anyone.”
Admiral Zonaras leaned forward and glared up the table
at me. “How many ships?”
“No idea,” I said, “it’s not my area of expertise, all I
know about these people is from—well, our paths have
crossed, let’s say. Naval Intelligence is bound to know. Ask
them.”
Zonaras never cared for me at the best of times. “I’m
asking you. Your best guess.”
I shrugged. “At any one time, total number around three
fifty, four hundred ships. But you’re talking about dozens of
small independent companies with no overall control.
There’s no King of the Sherden or anything like that.”
Priscus looked past me down the table. “Do we have any
figures for the number of ships at Classis?”
Nobody said anything. A marvellous, once-in-a-lifetime
chance for me to keep my mouth shut. “About seventy,” I
said.
“Hold on.” Sostratus, the Lord Chamberlain. If we’d
been discussing a civilian issue, he’d have been in the chair
instead of Priscus. “How do you know all this?”
I did my shrug. “I was there.”
“You what?”
Nobody knew. For crying out loud. “I was there,” I
repeated. “I was at Classis on business, I saw the whole
thing.” Muttering up and down the table. I pressed on. “My
estimate of seventy is based on a direct view of their ships
tied up at the docks. There were a dozen ships each side of
each of the three jetties. Six twelves are seventy-two. I
don’t think there could have been more than that when I
looked, because there didn’t seem to be room, all the
berths were full. They could have had more ships standing
by to come in as others finished loading, I don’t know. I
couldn’t see that far from where I was.”
Symmachus the Imperial agent said, “Why weren’t we
told there was an eye witness?”
That didn’t improve the general’s temper. “The witness
hasn’t seen fit to mention it until now, apparently. Still,
better late than never. You’d better tell us all about it.”
I was about to point out that I’d made a full deposition in
the naval hospital at Colophon. I think Faustinus can read
my mind sometimes. I saw him shake his head, vigorously,
like a cow being buzzed by flies. He had a point. So I told
them the whole tale, from seeing the smoke to being picked
up by the cutter. I stopped. Long silence.
“It all seems fairly straightforward to me,” said Admiral
Zonaras. “I can have the Fifth Fleet at sea in four days.
They’ll make sure these Sherden never bother us again.”
A general nodding, like the wind swaying a maple hedge.
I could feel the blood pounding at the back of my head.
Don’t say it, I begged myself. “Excuse me,” I said.
After the Council broke up, I tried to sneak away down
Hillgate, but Faustinus was too quick for me. He headed me
off by the Callicrates fountain. “Are you out of your tiny
mind?” he said.
“But it’s true,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Of course it’s true,” he said,
“that’s not the point. The point is, you’ve pissed off
everyone who matters a damn.”
Shrug. “They never liked me anyway.”
“Orhan.” Nobody calls me that. “You’re a clever man and
you use your brain, which makes you unique in this man’s
town, but you’ve got to do something about your attitude.”
“Attitude? Me?”
Why was I annoying the only man in the City who could
stand the sight of me? Sorry, don’t know. “Orhan, you’ve
got to do something about it, before you get yourself in
serious trouble. You know your problem? You’re so full of
resentment it oozes out of you, like a cow that hasn’t been
milked. You put people’s backs up, and then they’d rather
die than do what you tell them, even though it’s the right
and sensible thing. You know what? If the empire comes
crashing down, it could easily be all your fault.”
And that was me told. I nodded. “I know,” I said. “I fuck
up good advice by giving it.” That made him grin, in spite
of himself. “What I ought to do is get someone else,
someone who’s not a total liability, to say things for me.
Then people would listen.”
His face went sort of wooden. “I don’t know about that,”
he said. “If only you could learn not to be so bloody rude.”
I sighed. “You look like you could use a drink.”
Faustinus always looks that way. This time, though, he
shook his head. “Too busy,” he said, meaning too busy to
risk being seen in public with me for at least a week.
“Think about it, for crying out loud. Please. There’s too
much at stake to risk screwing things up just because of
your unfortunate personality.”
Fair comment, and I did actually think seriously about it,
all the way down Hill Street. The trouble was, I’d been
right. All I’d done was point out that the Fifth Fleet
wouldn’t be going anywhere, not for quite some time.
Admiral Zonaras had said that that was news to him; I
pointed out that, since all the rope and all the barrel staves
—that was what was in the shed next to the rope store, I
learned that in the navy hospital, before they threw me out
—for the entire navy had gone up in smoke—
Hang on, you’re saying, so maybe I should explain. They
called it need-to-use stockholding, and they reckoned it
saved the navy a fortune each year. The idea being, we had
six fleets of three hundred and twenty ships each back
then, and a ship on its own is not much use; you need
masts, sails, oars, ropes, all manner of stores, of which the
most important are barrels, for holding fresh water.
Without water barrels, a ship can’t go out of sight of land,
because of the need to tank up once a day, twice in hot
weather. Now, if every single ship in the Fleet had to have
its own separate set of gear—you’re probably better at
sums than me, you work it out—that’s a lot of very
expensive equipment, and since most of the time only two
of the fleets, three in emergencies, are at sea at any given
time; and since the navy yards had been to enormous
trouble to make sure that everything was interchangeable,
ship to ship—it was quite a coup on the part of the
government official who thought of it. One fleet—the Home
Division, which is on permanent duty guarding the straits—
was fully equipped at all times. The other five shared two
complete sets of gear, which for convenience and ease of
speedy deployment were kept in store at Classis, ready to
be issued at a moment’s notice when someone needed to
use them.
Obviously Zonaras knew all that, at some level. But it’s
perfectly possible to know something and not think about
it. Or maybe the admiral was well aware that he couldn’t
launch a single ship, now that all his ropes and all his
barrel staves were just so much grey ash, but he didn’t
want the rest of the Council in on the secret. In any event,
he called me a damned liar and a bloody fool and various
other things, all of them perfectly true but hardly relevant.
General Priscus asked him straight out: can you send a
fleet to Permia or can’t you? So Zonaras did the only thing
he could, in the circumstances. He jumped up, gave me a
scowl that made my teeth hurt and stalked out of the room
without a word.
And that was that, as far as the Council was concerned.
From my point of view, probably just as well. I’d already
made a world of trouble for myself. If the Council hadn’t
broken up in confusion at that point, I might easily have
gone on to raise various other issues that had occurred to
me about the Classis thing, which might well have cost me
my neck.
So there I was, in the City, at a loose end. Properly
speaking, since my business in town had finished, I should
have gone back to Corps headquarters and got on with my
paperwork. Somehow, though, I felt that would be a bad
idea. It’s inconceivable that the general, or the admiral or
the Chamberlain or one of the divisional chiefs, or one of
their many, many staff, would arrange for a serving officer
of the empire to be murdered as he rode home alone along
the lonely roads across the moors. But even in an empire as
well ordered as ours, there are bandits, discharged
soldiers, runaway slaves, disaffected serfs, religious zealots
and ordinary loons, all manner of bad people who’d cut
your throat for the nails in your boots, and from time to
time officers who’d made nuisances of themselves had
fallen foul of them, and other hazards of long-distance
travel. Give it a day or so, I told myself, then hitch a lift
with a merchant caravan or a bunch of pilgrims. I have
strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise
man once said, the difference between luck and a
wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it.
OceanofPDF.com
3
Of course, there’s no shortage of thieves, crazy people and
unfortunate accidents in the City too, but in town you can
take steps to reduce the risk they pose. For instance, if you
want to stay clear of the displeasure of the properly
constituted authorities, who better to help you out than
those people who do that sort of thing all the time, for a
living?
I’m choosy about the company I keep, so I tend to stay
clear of murderers, muggers, housebreakers and the
extortion gangs. That still leaves me plenty of people to be
friends with. The con men are all right, but they’re smarter
than me and always on the lookout for business
opportunities, so I generally drift towards the forgers,
clippers and issuers of false coin. You meet a better class of
person.
So I went to the Old Flower Market. If you’ve never been
to the City, take note; you can’t buy flowers in the Old
Flower Market. Like so many City neighbourhoods, it
defines itself in terms of what was done there a long time
ago but isn’t any more. For the avoidance of doubt, flowers
are about the only thing you can’t buy there. Life and
death, yes, no problem. A simple bunch of roses, no. The
Old Flower Market is built on the ruins of a whole district
that collapsed and fell into a sinkhole a hundred and fifty
odd years ago—turned out it had been built directly over an
underground river, which runs down though the middle of
the hill on which Hill Street is built and eventually out into
the Bay.
I headed straight for the Two Dogs, sat in the corner
furthest from the fire and asked for a bowl of tea and a
plate of honeycakes. Nobody orders tea in the Two Dogs.
A minute or so later, she came out and sat down
opposite. “You’ve got a nerve,” she said.
“You know about this morning’s Council. I’m impressed.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” She flared her
nostrils: warning sign. “People have been in here looking
for you.”
Her name is Aichma, and I knew her father, years ago,
when he was captain of the Greens. He and I served
together, before he quit the service and took to the Ring.
Like me, he did well in his chosen profession, from tyro to
Theme boss in six years. I miss him. When she was fourteen
I told her that on his deathbed he made me promise to look
after her. I was lying, of course.
Keep away from my
daughter or I’ll rip your head off was nearer the mark. And
of course he didn’t have a deathbed. He bled out into the
sand, with seventy thousand people cheering. That must be
a strange way to go.
“If they weren’t government types, I’m not bothered,” I
said. “What were they like?”
She shrugged. “Two northerners and a milkface. I told
them I hadn’t seen you. Which was true.”
I relaxed. The milkface was a business colleague. It goes
like this. The government sends me the payroll for my men
in gold. I pay my men in silver, six tornece a man every
month, a hundred and sixty tornece to the gold stamenon.
There’s no official, legal way to change gold into silver,
because of the perpetual shortage of silver coin, which
comes about because of the Mint. It’s nobody’s fault. If you
want to be the master of the Mint, you buy the job from the
Chancellor for a great deal of money, which you’ve got to
recoup somehow. But that’s all right, because your pay is a
tenth of a per cent of all the coins struck in the Mint. Now,
since it’s exactly as much time and work to strike a gold
coin as a silver or a bronze one, the Mint strikes lots and
lots of gold, silver when it absolutely has to and bronze
never; the army regiments take care of the small change,
striking their own crude, ghastly coinage on flattened
offcuts of copper pipe. So, when I need silver to pay my
men, I trade the government gold for somewhat less than
official silver, which I get from honest tradesmen like the
milkface and the two northerners. Which is how come I
know so many people in the Old Flower Market. You can
also begin to see how come I’ve been a success in this
man’s army. The people who make it possible for me to do
my job would run a mile from a blue-blood Imperial straight
out of the Academy.
She was looking at me. “Something bad,” she said.
I nodded. “Something bloody awful.”
She sighed. Her time is not without value, but when I
need to talk, she makes time and listens. She nodded to the
tapster, who pulled a sad face and went away to fill a kettle.
“Politics?”
“Sort of politics.”
“I’m not interested in all that. I work for a living.”
“You’re smart,” I said.
She has this sort of wan smile. “This is one of your
figure-it-out-from-first principles games, isn’t it? Where you
make me say what you’re thinking.”
“Yes, but you’re good at it. Because you’re smart.”
Vanity is her one weakness. She knows she’s pretty,
because men tell her, over and over again, and it brings her
nothing but aggravation. But I’m the only one who tells her
she’s clever. “Go on,” she said.
“You heard about Classis.”
She nodded. “Something about pirates stealing a load of
stores.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Now, you’re the one with the
brains, you tell me. Why would that bother me so much?”
When she thinks about something, she has this ritual.
She lowers her head, as if in prayer. She stares down at her
hands. Don’t bother talking to her while she’s doing all this,
she won’t hear a word. You know when she’s on the scent
because she scowls. When she reckons she’s got there, she
sits up straight and looks right at you. “Well?” I said.
“What exactly did they take?”
Good girl, I thought. “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “All I
know is what I overheard in the navy hospital, and I wasn’t
there long. But by the sound of it, mostly basic military
supplies.”
“Meaning?”
“Boots,” I said. “Blankets. Three hundred barrels of
scales, for making armour. Two thousand yards of tent
fabric. Cartloads of palisade stakes. Seven thousand helmet
liners. That sort of thing.”
She nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. “I’m a
businessman. I spend a lot of money on ships and crews,
knowing that I’m going to catch it hot from the navy once
they’ve found me, which they’re bound to do sooner or
later. What do I get for my money? Let’s see. Palisade
stakes are firewood, which—”
“Grows on trees?”
“Don’t interrupt. Tent fabric might do for clothes, but
you’d get pennies on the tornece. Helmet liners—” She
shrugged. “No use at all. Nobody’s going to want to buy all
that stuff. Not at a price that’ll give you a profit.”
“Except?”
She nodded briskly. “An army, a government. But
governments don’t steal their supplies from other
governments, it’s too risky. Also it’s cheaper to make the
stuff yourself, and you’ve got continuity of supply.”
She knows a lot of long words. Gets them from me, I
flatter myself. “So?”
“Hang on, I’m still thinking. Pirates steal a load of
unlikely stuff, really hard to shift and no real value, and the
risk is really horrible. So—” She dipped her head, as if
some invisible helper had just fed her the answer. “Stealing
to order.”
“Stealing to order. But not a government, we already
decided that.”
She rubbed her thumb against her palm. Her father did
that when he was angry, or confused. “Not a government.
Maybe someone who isn’t a government right now but—”
“Wants to be one.” I snapped my fingers and pointed at
her. “Your father always said you were sharp.”
That got me a scowl. “Hang on, though,” she said. “Still
doesn’t make sense. Just suppose there really is someone
who wants to set up an army, from scratch. I don’t know,
someone founding a colony up in the Armpit, or down south
somewhere, or a free company. You can buy all that stuff at
the surplus auctions. Cheap.”
I smiled at her. “Yes,” I said, “you can. Or you could buy
a thousand skilled men and set up a factory. But they
didn’t. So?”
She went back into thinking mode, and while she was in
conference the tea arrived. I poured a bowl and put it aside
to cool down.
“Money,” she said. “Actual cash money. Whoever he is,
he hasn’t got any.”
“But the Sherden—the pirates,” I said, a bit too late. Her
eyes flicker just a little when she learns something she
doesn’t already know.
“It must be a long-term partnership,” she said slowly.
“No money now, working on spec, and a really big payout
some time later. Which doesn’t sound like the Sherden,”
she added. “Too organised, if you see what I mean. The
long term for a Sherden is tomorrow afternoon.”
“I thought so too. So?”
Frown. “So it must be a really good deal, for them to be
interested. A really big payout, at some point.”
She’s like her father in many ways. Brave, loyal, kind-
hearted, sharp as a knife and slippery as an eel. But he had
charm. “Out of interest,” I said, “the first thing they did,
before they set to thieving, was set fire to the ropes and the
barrel staves.”
“Chandler’s stores. For which there’d be a ready
market.”
“Or they could have used them themselves. But no, up in
smoke; and
before they started looting, it’s as though
they’d been told, first things first.”
“To make sure the Fleet couldn’t follow them.”
“Only temporarily.”
“Someone told them to do that,” she said firmly. “First,
stop the Fleet, then take the stuff.” She looked at me. “Now
that’s interesting.”
“Keeps me interested all night, when I’d rather be
sleeping. Only temporary, but maybe temporary’s long
enough. If whoever it is plans to make his move very soon.”
“And he’s got all our stuff, and we haven’t got anything.”
I nodded. “Because of centralised supply. Two birds, one
stone. In the short term we’re paralysed, army and navy.
He’s ready, we’re not. But that begs the question. Who’she?”
“Not the Echmen, or the Auxenes, they’d never hire
pirates. And besides, why would they want a war with us?
They’ve got their hands full with their own savages.” She
shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “No idea.”
“You’re just stupid, you are.”
She gave me that look; you’re a clown, but I forgive you.
I sipped my tea. They make it just right at the Dogs—
remarkable, since they don’t use the stuff themselves and
I’m the only customer for it. Weak and refreshing at the top
of the pot, strong and soothing at the bottom. Great stuff.
The only good thing ever to come out of Echman; therefore
(it’s only just occurred to me) yet another blessing
conferred upon me by the enemy.
“What’s all this in aid of, anyway?” she asked me.
“You’re scared.”
“You bet,” I replied.
She gave me a scornful look. “Not your business,” she
said. “You’re just a glorified carpenter.”
“Hardly glorified.” She was watching one of the tapsters.
She can spot someone palming a coin at twenty paces.
“And, yes, it’s none of my concern.”
“Good.”
I grinned. “I’m concerned,” I said, “because the people
whose concern it is don’t seem concerned. If that makes
any—”
She sighed. “I like talking to you,” she said, “but
basically you’re a pest. My dad said, don’t let him get
started, he’ll make your head spin.”
“Bless him.”
She was giving me her full attention now. “Why do you
do it?” she said. “Why do you come in here and make me
think about a whole load of stuff that’s got nothing to do
with me? I don’t like it.”
“You do. It’s like playing chess to you.”
“Why do you do it? You knew all that, but you made me
figure it out.”
“Because your father isn’t here any more,” I said, “and
he was the cleverest man I ever met. But he’s gone, so I
have to make do with you.”
She smiled at me, not unkindly. “You know what,” she
said, “when he was sick one time, he made me promise him
something. Look after Orhan, he said, make sure he doesn’t
come to any harm. Weird thing to say. I was only twelve.”
“Did you promise?”
Nod. “Had my fingers crossed behind my back. So.” She
parked her elbows on the table. “What are you going to
do?”
“Me? Nothing. Not my place. We agreed on that.”
“Never stopped you in the past.”
“Nothing,” I repeated. “Not unless they want a bridge
built. In which case, I’ll be on it like a snake.”
She loves it really. I know her too well. She likes to use her
brain, just occasionally. Women aren’t allowed to be officers
in the Themes, but a lot of clever men in the Greens spent a
lot of time in the Dogs, chatting up the landlady, and, by a
strange coincidence, the Greens were on top for the first
time in a century—
It’s just occurred to me that maybe you don’t know very
much about the Themes. It’s possible, if you’re from out of
town. Maybe all you know is that there are two rival groups
of supporters in the Hippodrome, one lot with blue favours,
one lot with green, and they cheer for their side in the
swordfighting and the chariot races. Which is true. It
started that way, certainly. Then, about two hundred and
fifty years ago, the Blues took up a collection for the
fighters’ widows and orphans. Naturally, the Greens did the
same. A bit later, they extended the fund to look after the
dependants of Theme members; you pay a few trachy every
week into the pot, and if you fall on hard times you get a bit
of help till you’re on your feet again. Well, an idea that
good was bound to catch on; just as bound to go wrong.
Before long, the Theme treasuries controlled huge assets,
invested in shipping and manufacturing since commoners
can’t own land. Money brought power, which wasn’t always
used wisely or honestly. Then the Greens started organising
the labour at the docks, the Blues did the same in haulage
and the civil service, lower grades. Wasn’t long before the
government got scared and tried to interfere, which got us
the Victory riots—twenty thousand dead in the
Hippodrome, when the City Prefect sent in Hus auxiliaries.
Since then, the Themes have kept a low profile. What they
do, the funds and all the activities that go with them, is
strictly illegal, but since when did that stop anybody from
doing anything? Besides, if you get sick or break a leg in
this man’s town, it’s the Themes you turn to, or starve to
death. Her father was a trustee of the Greens fund, and
quite a big man in the movement; did a lot of bad things
and a lot of good ones, until he neglected to sidestep in the
Hippodrome and got skewered. I’d assumed he’d creamed
off enough to set his daughter up for life, but it turned out
he gambled it away as fast as he embezzled it. As far as she
knows, there was enough left to buy her the Dogs. Actually,
there wasn’t, and regimental funds had to come to the
rescue. Well, it was that or three thousand regulation
shovels, and we have plenty of shovels. I was always a Blue,
incidentally, until I met her father. So, you see, people can
change their minds, on even the most fundamental issues
of conscience.
OceanofPDF.com
4
The false coin people caught up with me the next day, and
we did good business. There’s an advantage in changing
your gold with the Old Flower Market crowd rather than
the Mint; they do deals. The government says it’s a
hundred and sixty tornece to the stamenon, but in the real
world their opinion doesn’t carry a lot of weight, and
government gold is ninety-seven pure, which gives me a lot
of leverage in negotiations. My friends were a bit on edge
that day, probably because the Classis thing was worrying
the shipping people, and gold does a lot to calm the nerves.
I closed with them at two hundred and sixteen of their
excellent, in many ways better than the real thing silver-ish
tornese to one of my official gold cartwheels, thereby
clearing a substantial profit for my regimental rainy-day
fund, which nobody knows about except me. That’s how
come I can outbid other units for supplies, pay my boys
when the treasury screws up, splash out on proper boots
with seams that don’t split whenever Supply’s on an
economy binge. That’s how you get ahead in this man’s
army when you’re not someone’s nephew and you have a
chronic skin condition, and, since it’s a game I’m rather
good at, I’m all for it.
Admiral Zonaras would rather have bitten off one of his
own ears than admit he’d listened to me, so it must have
been coincidence that the First Fleet was pulled off
guarding the straits and bundled off to the Schelm estuary.
When they got there, nobody was home. All the little fishing
villages were deserted, boats and nets gone, livestock pens
empty, not a dog barking. They set fire to a few wattle-and-
daub sheds, which I suppose is as good a way as any of
persuading the unenlightened savages of the superiority of
our culture and way of life, then came home. It was sheer
bad luck that they ran into a filthy storm off the Pillars,
which sank three ships and scattered the rest. It took a
week for the Fleet to regroup, another week to patch up
the damage, and then they hauled up the home straight
into the Bay. I spoke to a midshipman on one of the ships in
the lead squadron, and he told me they saw the smoke
rising as soon as they rounded Cape Suidas.
Note smoke rising; indicating still air, no wind. It was
really bad luck that they got well and truly becalmed just
inside the Cape; it happens, from time to time, and nobody
knows why. There was nothing they could do. The First
Fleet is mostly galleots and dromons, massive great things
with acres of sail, fast and beautifully nimble, but only
when the wind is blowing. The Sherden, by contrast, use
skinny little galleys, twenty oars a side, with one big
square-rigged sail, so when there’s no wind they can row.
Which is what they did, right past the Fleet, which was
powerless to stop or chase them. The man I spoke to said
he counted eighty-seven ships, all riding low in the water,
on their way back from looting and burning Salpynx.
What a bloody fool I am. It’s no consolation that Admiral
Zonaras didn’t see it coming either. Salpynx is—sorry, was
—a single-purpose facility. It’s where the big charcoal
barges from the Armpit put in to land their cargoes,
thousands of tons of the stuff every month to supply the
forges and foundries of the Arsenal. No wonder the smoke
was easy to see a long way off. Apparently the Sherden
took their time, loaded their little ships until there was
barely room to move, then set light to what was left and ran
for it. Luck was on their side. If it hadn’t been for the storm
and the calm, they’d have run into the Fleet off the Pillars
and that would’ve been that. I assume that whoever
planned the operation reckoned on Zonaras’s boys putting
a bit more effort into finding someone to kill up in the
estuary. Still, fortune favours the brave.
By this point I’d had enough of the City to last me a good
long time. I hired three big carts to lug my dodgy silver
back to regimental headquarters at Cacodemon—normally
I’d have sent it by fast ship, but somehow that didn’t seem
sensible. I was in a hurry to get out of town before Priscus
called another Council, so I hitched a ride with Eynar the
scrap metal king as far as Louso and hired a horse at the
Unicorn. I hate riding—it’s not the day after, it’s the day
after that—but something told me I needed to get back to
my own people and find something to do for a while,
preferably a long way away, where communications would
take some time.
I save up rainy-day jobs for just such occasions. About
nine months earlier, some Academy brat had sent for us to
build him a bridge up in the Teeth mountains, halfway to
the Armpit. I have better things to do than trudge up
mountain tracks, carrying my establishment with me like a
snail, so I wrote back saying I’d try and get around to it
when I had five minutes. Those five minutes had now
become available. The lads weren’t exactly overjoyed to be
leaving the refined delights of Cacodemon for an extended
trip to the middle of nowhere, but I had one of my sporadic
bouts of deafness, and off we went.
I won’t bore you with an account of our adventures
building a pontoon bridge across a river in spate between
two sides of a steep ravine in the mist and the driving rain,
just so that our Academy boy didn’t have to take a ten-mile
detour when he wanted to go skirt-chasing in the nearest
town. Actually, it was a lovely piece of engineering, though
I say it myself, and we did it with salvaged or scrounged
materials, so it didn’t cost Division a bent trachy, and the
casualty list was two broken arms and a few bumps and
bruises—that, with a seventy-foot drop into frothing white
water for the view that greeted us when we started work
each morning, isn’t bad going, trust me. But it was a waste
of time and energy, and I reckon the lads began to suspect
that something funny was going on. There were a lot of
conversations that went quiet when I walked up to the
campfire, and I had to fend off a lot of artful questions,
which isn’t something I’m used to doing. Just as well the
boys trusted me, or it could’ve been awkward.
News doesn’t get that far up the map; the only form of it
they have up there is coins, which tell the few of them who
can read when there’s a new emperor. The soldiers we
were building the bridge for hadn’t heard from Division for
three years; hadn’t been paid, either, so they spent most of
their time herding sheep and hoeing cabbages. The young
officer had scars on his left wrist, where he’d tried to open
his veins out of sheer boredom. Therefore, I didn’t get any
hard data about the goings-on at Salpynx until we finished
the bridge and withdrew, in a leisurely fashion, to Maudura,
where we stopped off to mend a leaky aqueduct. There I
ran into a man I knew slightly. He told me the lighthouse
keeper saw the pirate ships sneak out from under the
blanket of fog, trace their way through the truly
horrendous shoals and come down on Salpynx from the
north-west. They rounded up the longshoremen, had them
load the ships till they couldn’t carry any more, then
herded everyone into the main storage shed, nailed the
doors shut and set fire to the roof. Amazingly, a couple of
men made it out alive, and lived long enough to make
sworn depositions to the magistrates. No question that the
raiders were Sherden. All this was more or less what I’d
already heard, but news to me was that they’d stopped off
on their way out, loaded to the gunwales as they were, to
smash up the other lighthouse, the one on Stair Point.
Curious thing to do, unless you wanted to make sure that
the Second Fleet, due back any day now from a routine
cruise to the Friendly Sea ports, wouldn’t be able to clear
the shoals until the light got fixed and would therefore be
trapped for weeks, possibly months, on the wrong side of
the straits.
I tend to keep my thoughts to myself, which is why I
scowl a lot, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone to
think out loud at, and when I’m with the Corps it’s
generally Captain Bautzes who draws the short straw. I
have a lot of time for him, though I’d never dream of saying
so. As far as he’s concerned, I regard him as an inoffensive
halfwit who can be trained, with patience, to perform
simple tasks. He’s not, of course. Nicephorus Bautzes is an
off-relation of the incredibly ancient and illustrious Phocas
family. His sideshoot or tendril—you couldn’t in all honesty
call it a branch—of the family fell on hard times about
seventy years ago; they’ve still got a little village and a
falling-down old manor house in the Paralia, with
discoloured patches on the walls where the priceless icons
and tapestries used to hang before they got sold off, and a
library of fine old books which make your hands all sticky,
because of the mould, because of the damp. Nico makes
you realise what the Phocas must’ve been like five hundred
years ago, in their heyday, because he’s—well, if you’d
never met an Imperial but had read all the romances, Nico
is what you’d expect. He’s six feet nine, shoulders like an
ox, bald as an egg apart from a silly little beard (but no
moustache, naturally); he can lift the back wheels of a Type
Six supply cart off the ground, jump his own height from a
standstill, all that sort of stuff, makes me feel tired just
watching him. He’s read all the best books and understood
about a fifth of them, which isn’t bad going at all. He’s
hard-working, conscientious, respectful, orthodox, eager to
learn, beautiful manners, brave as a lion—everything I’m
not, in other words—and one of these days he might turn
out to be a competent engineer. He’d be a typical example
of his race and class, except that he seems to like me and
has problems with his vision (can’t always distinguish
between brown and pink)—I don’t know what to make of
him, really, but until I see evidence to the contrary I’m
forced to the conclusion that he’s all right.
Nico has this knack of knowing when something’s
bugging me. Naturally he’s too polite to say anything, but
he takes to standing around looking down at his feet. Since
he takes up a lot of space, it’s hard to ignore or work round
him, so we talk.
On this occasion, we’d just finished packing up all the
gear after fixing the busted aqueduct. It’s Nico’s job to
traipse round all the wagons, make sure everything’s tied
down safely and properly stowed, and then he reports to
me. Bugging out after a job is always a stressful business,
and while he’s doing the final checks I like to sneak off to
my tent, put my feet up, close my eyes and not think about
anything for at least an hour, on my own, no interruptions.
The one thing I really don’t like about my job is having
people all round me all the time, from the moment I wake
up until I close my eyes and fall asleep. It’s not natural. So,
on bugging-out days, Nico puts his head round the tent
flap, says All done, or just nods, and goes away. This time,
though, he came in and stood there like one of those
ornamental pillars in the desert; if he’d been wearing an
ascetic philosopher on top of his head instead of a hat, he’d
have looked just right. I sighed. “What?” I said.
He gave me his cow-eyed look. “Something’s the
matter,” he said. Statement of fact, not a question.
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh, things. Like the jobs we’ve just been doing. All this
low-priority stuff, bridges and aqueducts. We’ve had
generals howling at us for months to do work round the
City, and you drag us off to the middle of nowhere to build a
bridge for a damn subaltern.”
I rested my cheek on my fist and gazed at him. “Is that
right?”
He nodded. “How bad is it?” he said.
Nico is huge; when we’re together I look like his kid
brother or his pet monkey. Regardless, there are times
when I feel an overpowering urge to protect him, from all
the bad things that are perfectly capable of happening to
the innocent and well-meaning. But he’s a captain in the
Imperial army, therefore deemed to be tough enough to
cope with most things. “Not wonderful,” I said.
“You went to a Council meeting in town.”
I nodded. “General Priscus and the full dog show.”
“And then we do this job a long way away.”
“Possibly not far enough,” I said. “Tell me,” I went on,
“when you were at the Academy, did they teach you about
General Allectus?”
He nodded. “Seventh-century AUC. When the empire
was invaded by the Bel Semplan, Allectus commanded the
Third Army in Bessagene. He proclaimed himself emperor
and ran Bessagene as an independent state for twenty-six
years until the empire recovered and drove out the
Semplan, whereupon he surrendered, handed back control
of his province and was executed for treason. Why?”
“Interesting man,” I said. “One theory is, Allectus
figured that the empire had had it, and he took over
Bessagene so that a little bit of Robur civilisation would be
preserved somewhere, albeit in the arsehole of the
universe, while everywhere else all the lights slowly went
out. It’s not true, of course, but it would be nice to think it
was.”
He looked at me. “That bad.”
From where I was sitting I had a view out over the bleak,
wind-scoured moor towards the horrible pointy mountains.
I hated it because it reminded me of home. “We could stay
here,” I said. “You saw those men back at the fort, where
we built the bridge. They’re not soldiers any more, they’re
farmers. We could join them. There’s, what, three thousand
of us. We could buy or steal three thousand women, build a
bloody great big wall across the Odontis Pass. Farming
can’t be hard, or farmers couldn’t do it. And then we
wouldn’t have to get involved, and if something really bad
is just about to happen, then at least there’ll be one corner
of a foreign field that’ll be forever Robur. Which would be
nice,” I added, “I’m sure you’d agree. Well?”
He grabbed the spare camp stool and sat down. It
creaked under his weight. “That bad,” he repeated.
“If we go back,” I said, “there’s a good chance we’ll be
pulled back to the City to repair the walls. Once we’re
there, I don’t suppose we’ll get another chance to slip
away. If something bad is coming, we’ll be right there in
the bullseye.”
Typical of Nico not to ask me what the bad thing might
be. I believed in it, therefore it existed. “On balance,” he
said, after a moment’s solemn thought, “I’d rather be
Gennaeus than Allectus.”
I smiled. Gennaeus, of course, founded the Robur nation
after fleeing with one ship from the burning ruins of Moa;
he stayed on the wall until the very last moment, and even
then stopped to scoop up his elderly parents and the holy
icons. Myself, I read the myth slightly differently. I think
Gennaeus only got out alive because he saw that Moa was
doomed, and spent his evenings digging an escape tunnel,
the existence of which he neglected to share with anyone
outside his family and immediate friends. But that’s not the
version Nico heard at his grandmother’s knee. Duty and
hope. Oh dear.
“Would your answer be different,” I said, “if this place
wasn’t the arsehole of the universe?”
He grinned. “Possibly yes. But it is, isn’t it?”
I sighed. “Nobody wanted a bridge built in Baionia,” I
said. “Fair enough. Let’s go home and be brave.
Dismissed.”
He gave me a vague smile, picked up his helmet (very
bright and shiny, but he bought it second hand from the
Colias brothers), saluted and slung his hook. I suppose I’d
wanted his permission. I hadn’t for one moment expected
him to say yes. He is, after all, a friend, and remember
what I told you about my friends.
Here’s a case in point. My best friend when I was
growing up, Ogus. Marvellous boy Ogus was. He could run
the fastest, throw the furthest, he could shear a sheep all
on his own when he was six, and everybody liked him, but
he chose to hang about with me, small, scruffy, generally
held to be good for nothing much. But I’ve always had a
tendency towards the quiet life and the avoidance of
trouble. Not so Ogus. He loved to make a fuss. Also, he’s
what they call a born leader—learned a lot from him in that
regard. Even now when I don’t know how I’m going to get
people to do what I want, I ask myself, what would Ogus
do? Anyway, there was this exceptionally fine apple tree,
growing on its own in what I guess was once a garden,
though the house was long since rotted away. It was exactly
on the boundary between his dad’s place and their
neighbour’s, and that neighbour was a miserable bugger.
There had been many a falling-out over the fruit of that
tree. They even got the village council involved, to decide
whose tree it was; and the council, being a political body,
reached a decision that pleased nobody and made
everything worse; the tree should be cut down and burned,
to prevent further discord. So then Ogus’s dad and the
neighbour had a fresh falling-out over who was going to do
the felling, and come apple season there the tree still was.
Magnificent crop that year; actually the apples were sour
and only fit for cooking, but Ogus resolved to have the lot
and decide what to do with them later. He planned a neatly
coordinated commando operation, which of course involved
me. No, Ogus, I said, I’ve been in enough trouble lately and
I don’t want to come between your old man and that
bastard. Absolutely not. So, long story short, off we went
with his mother’s big wicker basket to rob the apple tree. I
was to be lookout while he climbed up and did the robbing.
We’d half filled the basket when the miserable old
neighbour showed up, with his three horribly savage dogs.
Ogus was down out of the tree and three fields away before
you could say
strategic withdrawal. I, of course, got my
sleeve caught up in a patch of evil briars, and by the time
I’d got it free the dogs had got me surrounded, softly
growling, with their hackles up; if I so much as blinked,
they’d have me. And then up came the neighbour, and he
had a curious look on his face. He whistled, and the dogs
fell back, clearly feeling that they should’ve been allowed
to finish the job and make the world a better place.
“You Orhan?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Everyone’s out looking for you, son. You want to get
back home, right now. Your sister’s had an accident.”
Have I mentioned my sister? Probably not, since she’s of
no importance to the story; she died when I was six, fell off
a wall and smashed her head when I was out scrumping
apples when I should have been keeping an eye on her.
Anyhow, Ogus’s dad’s miserable neighbour walked back
with me to our place; didn’t say anything until we were
almost at the door, then he looked me in the eye, said,
“Don’t blame yourself, son, these things happen”, and
walked away. I found out later his kid brother had fallen
through the ice, many years ago, when they were fishing
for eels, and he hadn’t been able to do anything. Friends
and enemies.
OceanofPDF.com
5
We returned to Cacodemon after seven weeks away. During
our absence, the situation had changed.
I underestimated Admiral Zonaras. I never thought he’d
manage to find the pirates. But he did. He scraped together
enough stores to launch three out of the five squadrons of
the Third Fleet and headed for the Pillars. Slight
amendment; he didn’t find the pirates, they found him.
They must’ve gathered every ship in the north; even so,
Zonaras outnumbered them two to one, and his galleots
should have smashed through them like a fist through a
biscuit. Instead, they turned and ran like hares, and
Zonaras sailed after them straight into the narrows
between the Pillars, where his ships were bunched up so
close you could’ve walked from one side of the Fleet to the
other—at which point, the pirates set fire to a dozen
worthless old hulks, loaded with cotton waste, lamp oil and
flour, and launched them directly at them. The wind was
behind them, so there was no way to stop them, and that
same wind spread the flames back through the Fleet faster
than a man could run. The flagship and three others
managed to pull out and get clear. The rest were burned
down to the waterline in just under half an hour. The
currents are nasty round the Pillars, not a good place to go
swimming. The pirates picked up a couple of hundred
survivors, but that was all.
Very bad. We still had plenty of ships, but no sails, no
ropes, anchors, nothing. The greatest sea power the world
has ever seen was now in the position where it couldn’t
launch anything bigger than a dinghy until the Stair Point
light was mended and the First Fleet could be brought back
from the wrong side of the straits. Talking of which: the
Sherden had been back to Stair Point, slaughtered the
repair crew and broken up the enormous wrought-iron
cradle that supports the light, making it possible to swivel
it and illuminate the safe passage through the straits. An
interesting development—barely enough charcoal left in
the City depots to build the monstrous fire needed to found
a new cradle; not enough skilled engineers to install it and
get it lined up and calibrated, on account of some fool of a
colonel-in-chief leading the entire Corps off into the
wilderness to build some fatuous bridge.
Yes, I did feel bad about that. Also, it didn’t feel right,
somehow. We set off as soon as we could, but since we
didn’t dare go by sea, we had a very long march ahead of
us, Stair Point being on the far side of the straits… I was
starting to feel the way I do when I play chess against
someone who actually knows the game. Genuine
intelligence was at work here, and that’s simply not
something you’re accustomed to facing when dealing with
—
Milkfaces. Quite.
So off we went to fix the lighthouse. Needless to say, we
never got there.
We were trailing up the long climb to Melias Beacon
when we saw a horseman charging down the slope towards
us. I could see him swaying about in the saddle; I thought
he must be drunk. He was wearing a navy pillbox felt hat,
but you can buy one in any bar. When he came close, I saw
that his right hand was clamped to his stomach.
He was navy all right, and he was clutching his guts to
keep them from falling out. He had that grey look. We tried
to help him off his horse, but he yelled, keep away, get
away from me. Calm down, I said to him, we can help you,
we’ve got doctors. He shook his head; no time, he said. So
we let him talk.
There had been a storm brewing, so the Fleet put in at
Ricasa and the captains sent the men ashore, since they’d
been at sea for weeks. Just after sun-up, our man was
woken up by loud yells and people running. He opened the
door of whatever grog-shop he’d passed out in, and looked
out at the harbour. It was driving rain and the sky was red.
The Fleet was burning. He had no idea who’d done it and
didn’t have a chance to find out; someone whose face he
didn’t see stabbed him and left him for dead. He passed
out, and when he came round there were dead bodies
everywhere. Somehow he scrambled to his feet and got
moving, and by some weird stroke of luck walked straight
into a horse, saddled and bridled, nibbling moss off the low
eaves of a house. The strain of getting on the horse made
bits of his insides pop out, but he thought, the hell with it,
and headed out of town as fast as he could get the horse to
go. He had no idea how long he’d been riding—And then he
died.
Brave man. Not sure I’d have bothered, in his shoes. We
were all stunned, as you can imagine. Nobody spoke for a
long time, then Nico started babbling about fire ships. I
told him to shut up and act like nothing had happened—the
boys were watching us, and one thing you don’t want is
men under your command hearing bad news from anyone
except you.
We buried the navy man under a pile of stones, and then
I sent a couple of my brighter young lieutenants ahead on
horses. Find out what you can, I told them, but whatever
you do, don’t be seen. Then I ordered full stop, fall out and
a kit inspection, to take everyone’s mind off anything
anyone might have heard.
The two boys came back in the middle of the night. They
looked scared stiff. They’d gone along the coast road as far
as—I forget where, exactly, but they had a good view down
into the valley and there was a hell of a lot of smoke
coming up from the direction of Ricasa. They were trying to
decide the best way to get down there when they saw a
party of horsemen break the skyline about seventy yards
away. So they got off the road double quick, leading their
horses through the gorse and bracken, picked the road up
about half a mile down and rode like lunatics back to the
column. They didn’t get much of a look at the horsemen,
they said, but they both agreed on two points. They were
milkfaces, and they were wearing armour.
The Corps of Engineers is part of the Imperial army, but
we don’t kid ourselves, we aren’t soldiers, not in the
fighting-people sense. We carry weapons, which we mostly
use for prying open crates and frightening civilians, but it’s
widely accepted in the Corps that we aren’t paid enough to
stand around and let men of violence try and hurt us. We
packed up and hit the road so fast you’d have blinked and
missed us, back the way we came.
When Engineers do it, it isn’t running away; it’s
withdrawing in good order, or simply relocating. We
relocated like hares, down the long straight and back up to
the lip of the Spendone escarpment, at which point I had
one of my bright ideas.
“Tell you what,” I said to Nico, who’d just come back
from hurrying up the rearguard, “let’s take a short cut
through the woods. We can knock fifteen miles off.”
He gave me that look. “That’s illegal.”
Well, of course it was. The Spendone forest was the
emperor’s private hunting reserve. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s
break the law. Better still, we can lure the enemy in after
us, and then arrest them for trespassing.”
He doesn’t like it when I make fun of him. “You’re the
one who’ll get in trouble,” he said. “Besides, tactically
speaking—”
I sighed. Spendone forest, for crying out loud. It’s
practically the suburbs. “We go through the woods,” I told
him. “Pass it along.”
He nodded stiffly. “In that case, permission to form the
men into defended column and send out scouts.”
I ask you. Still, I imagine you tend to think like that when
your head’s two yards off the ground. “No,” I said. He
clicked his tongue at me and got on with it.
There is no Spendone forest now, so you have no way of
knowing if I’m telling the truth; but it was a lovely place, if
you like nature and stuff. It covered a gently sloping valley
down to the river; spindly old twisted holm oaks with a
canopy so dense it cut out the top light, so apart from
occasional clumps of thick holly where a tree had blown
down (good cover for wild boar), no underbrush, you could
move about fairly freely. The road followed the river,
naturally. It was paved with roadstone, like the military
highways, wide enough for two carriages to pass, and
tolerably flat all the way, and where it crossed the Spen—
which is pretty wide and deep at that point—there was a
proper pile-and-plank bridge, which one of my
predecessors built, and a very nice job he made of it. We
sauntered down one of His Majesty’s huntsmen’s neatly
trimmed rides and picked up the road easily enough. Nice
and cool under the shade, with the dappled sunlight
slanting down between the crooked branches—“Someone’s
been along here recently,” Nico said.
“His Majesty persecuting the deer,” I said.
“A lot of people.”
“You ever seen one of those hunting parties? Auges had
fewer cavalry when he conquered Bessagene.”
I mention that because I’m an honest witness, especially
for the prosecution. I was still thinking, Nico, what a clown,
he fusses about every damn thing, when we came round a
corner and saw dead bodies.
I talked to Nico about it afterwards and he admits he had
the same thought as me; bandits, because the bodies had
all been stripped naked, every last manufactured object
removed. We knew they were Imperials because of the skin
colour. Nico’s first thought was; oh God, the emperor—
ambushed out hunting by thieves or a free company. Mine
was merchants, a caravan taking an unauthorised short cut
and paying an exorbitantly high toll.
“We’ll have to report this when we get back,” Nico said.
“We ought to bury them, only maybe we shouldn’t move
anything, they’ll want to send investigators—”
A third possibility had occurred to me. I put my hand on
his shoulder. “Keep your voice down,” I said, “there’s a
good lad.”
“You think there’s a chance we can catch whoever did
this?”
I looked at him. “I bloody well hope not,” I said.
His eyes opened very wide; then he nodded, and headed
back to pass along the word; dead quiet, keep together. I
was thinking, maybe it would be sensible to get off the
stupid road. But we had big carts and pack animals, and all
that heavy equipment. And maybe it really was bandits,
after all.
I liked that theory and I was sad when it died. Which
happened when we came into the long, straight bit of road
that leads to the bridge, which wasn’t there any more. That
was where they’d sprung their main attack, hiding up in
the dense holly brakes on either side of the road and taking
the column in both flanks and rear. Most of the killing was
done there; first a couple of point-blank volleys of arrows,
then javelins, then closing with spears and axes. At least
some of the men at the front of the column had tried to
swim the river; we found their bodies still in full armour,
caught up in reed beds and branches fallen across the river.
The rest may have made a fight of it, I don’t know; if they
did, it made not the slightest difference. All the bodies were
stripped bare. We didn’t count them, it would’ve taken all
day, so it’s just my best estimate: between six and seven
thousand. We didn’t find a single milkface among the piles
of dead, so they must have retrieved them and buried them
somewhere else. I don’t suppose it took them long.
Fighting soldiers get used to that sort of thing. I’m not a
fighting soldier, I build bridges. So I sneaked off when
Nico’s attention was elsewhere, looking for somewhere I
could throw up in modest seclusion. I saw a thicket of holly
clustered round a stand of tall ash trees and made a beeline
for it. And came face to face with General Priscus and most
of his senior staff.
Face to face literally. They’d flayed the faces off the bone
and nailed them to the ash trunks at head height, like
squirrel skins put up to dry.
I’m not a brave man. But Nico is, and when he came
running to see what I was screaming and yelling about, it
hit him like a hammer, I could tell; his knees folded up and
he sat down on his aristocratic arse, thump. Which made
me feel a bit better, some time later.
At the time, though, I was so terrified I couldn’t even
puke. Felt like there wasn’t a single bone in my body. I
grabbed Nico’s arm, pulled him to his feet and dragged him
out of there, back onto the road. “Not a word,” I hissed in
his ear, “to anyone.” He nodded, he couldn’t speak. First
time I’d ever seen him go all to pieces. Couldn’t find it in
my heart to blame him.
I got the column moving, somehow. Double defensive,
scouts, word perfect by the book. But we weren’t going
anywhere in a hurry, of course, because the bridge was
broken down. Could’ve fixed it, needless to say, that’s what
we do, but it simply didn’t occur to me. Then some junior
lieutenant who’d somehow managed to keep his brain
working pointed out a track where a large number of men
had gone off in a hurry.
My mind had frozen, but I made it get going again. I had
the lads unload everything we could carry off the carts and
turn the pack mules loose; tens of thousands of stamena’s
worth of good military equipment dumped in what we now
had to consider enemy territory, but to be honest I couldn’t
give a damn. Then we headed off down the beaten track,
hoping and praying that the men who’d made that track
were our lot, and still alive.
One out of two isn’t so bad. The track led uphill for
maybe a mile, then down into a little dip, and there the
remainder of the army, about six thousand men, made their
last stand. They can’t have done much of a job of it. Once
again, the dip was fringed all round with thick holly, out of
which came arrows, then javelins, then the final rush.
They’d have been surrounded on all sides, and it would
have been over very quickly. I knew straight away that it
must’ve been the last stand, because once it was over, the
enemy found time to celebrate, let off steam. They cut off
the dead men’s heads, hands and dicks, heaped them up in
three tall, neat stacks. About a dozen poor souls—
prisoners, I assume—they’d nailed up on trees and used for
a spear-throwing contest. They’d stripped the dead bodies
clean, as before, and a few they’d flayed, and they’d stuck
up the head of a milk-white horse on a pike. Whatever
lights your candle, I suppose. I have to admit, they’d
earned the right.
Among his many talents, Nico can do arithmetic.
“Thirteen thousand,” he said. “What’s the strength of the
City garrison?”
I didn’t reply, because he knew the answer as well as I
did. Somehow, the bastards had managed to lure General
Priscus and the entire home army into this abattoir. Which
meant there was nobody in town minding the store.
OceanofPDF.com
6
Nobody said much on the way to the City, which suited me
fine. I needed to think.
Not only had they disposed of the entire Imperial army
in the home province, they’d also acquired thirteen
thousand suits of regulation lamellar armour—the finest in
the world, goes without saying—ditto helmets, shields;
something in the order of a quarter of a million arrows, all
precision-made and meticulously quality controlled; twenty-
six thousand high-class boots; thirteen thousand all-wool
tunics, ditto cloaks, ditto trousers, knapsacks, round felt
hats, cotton scarves to stop the shoulder straps of the
cuirass chafing the neck; cooking pots, portable tripods for
hanging cooking pots off, tools for cooks, carpenters,
cobblers, surgeons, farriers, armourers, smiths—nothing
but the best for our brave lads in the Imperial service, and,
though that can be a bit theoretical out on the frontiers,
back in the home provinces they really mean it. Pampered
isn’t too strong a word. I don’t suppose the new owners of
all that kit had ever seen so many
things all together in one
place in their entire lives, and none of it junk. All real
quality stuff you’d be proud to own.
What’s this, thinking about material objects at a time
like this? Shame on me; well, yes. But those material
objects would have a direct bearing on what happened
next. Not just a horde of victorious savages. A horde of
savages with the best arms and equipment money could
buy. And if they weren’t headed straight for Town, they
needed their heads examined. Town; where we were going.
Think about that.
We thought about it. “There’s no guarantee,” said one of
my captains, who I’d never had much time for, “that the
City’s still standing. If they could do that to the Guards—”
“That’s stupid,” interrupted Menas; he’s in charge of
supply. “They’d never get past the wall. People have been
trying for a thousand years. You’d need a siege train,
sappers—”
“Which they may well have,” the captain snapped back.
“Don’t you get it? We can’t assume anything about these
people. For all we know—”
“I think Menas is right,” Nico said quietly. “The wall
stopped the Echmen seventy years ago, and they had all
the artillery in the world. Nothing’s been invented that
could put a dent in the wall.”
“Fine,” said a lieutenant, career specialist; he’d been
badly rattled by what he’d seen. “So there they are, sitting
down all round the wall, making sure nobody gets in or out.
And then we show up. How long do you think we’d last?”
I cleared my throat. I usually keep quiet until my mind’s
made up, let them all talk themselves out. “We have to go
back,” I said.
The captain was furious with me. “With respect—”
I held up my hand. “You may well be right,” I said. “It
could easily be too late. There would be no reason for the
gates to be shut. If they sent an advance party dressed like
civilians, they could walk straight in, right past the
sentries. And you could be right, too,” I added, looking at
the lieutenant. “If they’re sat down in front of the walls,
there’s no way we could get past them and into the City.
Nevertheless, we’ve got to go. There’s nobody else.”
“What about the Fleet? The crews, the marines. At least
some of them must’ve got away.”
I shook my head. “They’ve got no reason to think
anything’s wrong, beyond their own disaster. I wouldn’t be
in any hurry to get back to the City if I was in their shoes.
And by the time the news reaches them, it’ll probably all be
over, one way or the other.”
Nico looked at me. “If General Priscus took the whole
Guards, then all that’s left inside the walls is the Watch.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Six hundred bent coppers. Which
is why we’re going, soon as it’s light.” I paused, looked
round, to signify that I didn’t want to hear anything else
from anyone. “So I suggest we all use our imagination and
pretend we’re soldiers.”
Nobody said anything. They stood up and drifted away.
God help me, I couldn’t blame them for their lack of
enthusiasm. From their perspective, the world was about to
end. Not mine, of course, because I’m not Robur, I have
only a tenuous professional attachment to the City, I can
envisage a world getting along reasonably well without it—
men and women on small farms in places that don’t merit a
mention on any map, but where the sun rises and sets,
summer follows winter, wheat and barley somehow manage
to grow, calves are born and cows give milk, all without the
help or permission of the emperor. Now Nico and his
compatriots couldn’t get their heads around an idea like
that. They couldn’t imagine a world without the City any
more than they could imagine a world without a sun; it
would be dark and cold and silent, and you might as well be
six feet under for all the good being alive would do you.
I wanted a good night’s sleep, in anticipation of a long
and trying day ahead of me, but I wasn’t going to get it.
Around midnight, when I’d finally finished all the planning
and figuring out I had to do and was just about to lie down
and close my eyes, I heard a gentle tap on the tent post. I
sighed. “What?” I said.
In came Nico, and three other officers. My guess is, they
couldn’t sleep, and they had the kind of generous nature
that reckons insomnia isn’t something you hoard all for
yourself, you share it with you friends and loved ones. I
beckoned them in and fumbled with a tinder box. The lamp
was still warm. “What?” I repeated.
They looked at each other. Then Stilico—captain, very
good engineer, twenty years’ service but no chance of
promotion—did one of those dying-sheep coughs. “We
didn’t want to talk in front of the others,” he said.
“Of course. What’s on your mind?”
“Seriously.” He looked at me. “How bad do you think it
is? Really.”
“Really?” I closed my weary eyes and rubbed my eyelids.
“I honestly don’t know. It could be that Priscus wasn’t
stupid enough to leave the City undefended while he went
off chasing phantoms in the woods. Maybe he was able to
call in another unit, and when we get there we’ll find the
walls bristling with spearpoints and the granaries full to
bursting. Or maybe not. Maybe we’ll get there and find a
pile of split stone blocks and ashes. Or maybe we’ll be the
only Imperial forces who can get inside the walls before
whoever it is brings up his siege ladders. Talking of which,”
I added, “has anyone else realised that we left behind all
our tools and equipment? Exactly what you’d need if you
wanted to build catapults, siege towers, battering rams—” I
saw Nico’s jaw drop. I forgave him. Usually he’s quite
bright. “A hundred and thirty barrels of nails,” I said.
“Twenty-seven five-ton winches. If by some miracle I get
out of this alive, remind me to execute myself for gross
negligence.”
I realised I wasn’t helping matters, so I shut up. Silence,
for a long time. Then Artavasdus (only nineteen and his dad
paid cash for his commission, but he’s sharp as a tack) said,
“So let’s think the unthinkable, shall we? How would it be if
we didn’t go home?”
Ah, I thought, so that’s why they’re here. “Good idea,” I
said. “In which case, we turn around and head back to the
coast, where I suggest we split up. What we’ve got is an
amazing advantage; we’re all skilled men. We’re
carpenters, masons, smiths, the world loves us, there’s
never enough of us to go round. Look at me. Even when I
didn’t belong to myself, I was valuable. It’s your actual
philosopher’s stone. Being able to saw a straight line
turned me into solid silver in someone’s pocket, which is
how I got to be colonel of a fucking regiment. We split up,
we melt away, we have long, happy lives making ourselves
useful. Believe me, you can get away with anything if
you’ve got a trade. You can even be the wrong colour, so
you blueskins will get along just fine when the rest of your
kind are feeding the crows.” I smiled at him; at that
moment, he hated me so much I don’t know why he didn’t
go for my throat. “Or we can go back and try and save
your
city, your people and your blue skins. It’s up to you. I’ll go
along with what the rest of you boys want.”
Nico was breathing through his nose, like a bull. Stilico
looked as though I’d just put my hand down his trousers.
That left Genseric. His blood is as blue as bilberry juice, but
he was a bad boy about eight years ago and ended up with
me. Actually, I like him, he’s all right. And he was looking
like he’d just trodden in quicksand. “Well?” I asked him.
“Actually,” he said, “we had a talk and decided that
whatever you decide is fine by us.”
I nodded. “You want it to be my fault,” I said, “that’s
perfectly reasonable. After all, it’s what I’m for. All right,
I’m going back. You lads can do what you see fit.”
“And why would you do that?” Artavasdus said; he was
still burning angry. “After all, you said it yourself. It’s not
your city and we’re not your people. Your people will be the
other side of the wall. Makes no sense.”
I raised my hand. “Artavasdus, I’m sorry I called you a
blueskin. I only did it to make sure you were listening. I’m
going back because it’s my duty. You don’t have to, because
duty is a very bad reason for committing suicide. More to
the point, I’m guessing there’s four thousand terrified men
outside this tent having this same conversation. Whatever
we decide, we’ve got to sell it to them, so I suggest we
make our decision and then clarify our thinking.” I put my
hand down. “Over to you.”
Nico looked round; he was now the spokesman. “The
men want to stay together,” he said. “They reckon that if
we split up, the savages will pick them off and they won’t
have a chance. After all, we do rather stand out in a
crowd.”
I made a show of thinking for a moment. “All right,” I
said. “In that case, if we stick together, wherever we go
we’re under siege. So, makes sense to head for somewhere
with high walls. You have my permission to tell them that
from me,” I added.
“We tell them you’re going home.”
I shrugged. “If you want.”
“The men will follow you anywhere. You know that.”
Actually I didn’t, not until he said it, and for a moment I
felt like I couldn’t breathe. That’s one thing about human
beings I don’t see the point in: love. It does nobody any
good. You love someone, and either they let you down or
they die. Either way, you end up crucified. What the hell is
the point in that? See above, about enemies helping and
friends being the source of all bad things.
But I meant what I’d said. My job is for it all to be my
fault. So, if the men followed me out of love (you can use a
different word, but that’s what it amounts to) and I got
them all killed—my fault. My responsibility. That’s why they
pay me the big money, slightly less than you’d get for
playing the flute in the Court orchestra.
“If you think it’ll help, you tell them anything you like,” I
said. “Me, I’m going to go to sleep now.”
They trooped out, properly solemn, and left me feeling a
bit guilty. Why? Because I had one card up my sleeve, and
I’d neglected to mention it. Not a marvellous card; maybe a
jack or a ten. But if I’d mentioned it, they’d have built their
hopes up, and as far as I’m concerned, hope is also on the
major-pests list, about two down from love. Therefore I
entertained hope, so they wouldn’t have to.
OceanofPDF.com
7
Almost certainly you’re smarter than me, so you’ve already
figured it out. I hadn’t, and neither did Nico and his three
buddies, or if they did they didn’t mention it. Bear in mind
that we were bone-tired and shit scared, not at our best;
and give me some credit, because I woke up about an hour
later, and it was blindingly obvious.
Thirteen thousand dead men stripped bare. Therefore,
imagine you’re the sentry on the City wall. In the distance
you see the sunlight flashing on helmets and spearpoints.
Splendid, you say to yourself, here’s General Priscus, back
already from teaching those savages a lesson. And you yell
down to the duty sergeant to open the gates.
How close would they get before someone saw that their
faces and hands were the wrong colour? What I’d have
done, of course, was get my men in their captured armour
to rub dirt on their exposed skin. Just how smart was the
very smart man who was doing all this? And who the hell
could he possibly be?
It was that special time of night when you wake up, start
fretting and know you won’t be getting any more sleep. I
got the lamp lit and went over my notes for the morning.
Before we set off, I did something I rarely do. I ordered the
men on parade.
I think it must’ve frightened them, made them realise
they were now fighting soldiers; they lined up, stone-cold
quiet and still as death. I walked up and down looking at
them. God help us, I thought.
In the green corner, a minimum of thirteen thousand
superbly equipped warriors, fresh from slaughtering an
entire Imperial army in a flawlessly executed ambush. In
the blue corner, four thousand terrified carpenters. Nearly
everyone had a sword, because you’ve got to have one. The
quartermaster hands it to you, wrapped in oily cloth, with
the inspector’s seal holding the string together. What’s that
for, you inevitably ask, and the quartermaster makes one of
five tradition-hallowed replies, like he’s done a thousand
times. Later you break the seal, because it’s your
responsibility to clean off all the packing grease, sharpen
and polish the bugger, ready for inspection—so that’s what
it’s really for, to be inspected. Marvellous. What you get if
you’re an engineer is a Type Thirteen A. Not a Fifteen, that
masterpiece of ergonomic design. Not a Fourteen, honest,
dependable workhorse of the Imperial military for forty
years. You get a Thirteen A; parallel sides, point heavy,
lozenge-shaped pommel that rubs your wrist raw, rounded
point, steel quality and temper not all it might be, because
the Thirteen A was made to a price, found to be no good
and withdrawn from service seventy years ago. But they
made a quarter of a million of the things, and waste not,
want not. They’ll do for cooks, bandsmen, clerks, stretcher-
bearers, engineers; anyone who’s never going to use the
useless thing but needs to have a sword for inspections.
I said nearly all, because there’s always the clown who
loses it, breaks it, trades it for a quart of cider. To them I’d
issued axes. We had plenty of axes, three-pound head,
straight ash shaft, very well suited for cutting and shaping
timber, lethally useless for fighting with. About a hundred
men had bows, non-regulation, not supposed to bring
privately owned kit with you, but a bit of fresh meat makes
a change from rations. You could kill a deer with one, at
twenty paces. No chance whatsoever of piercing armour.
Talking of which; no, we didn’t have any of that. No call
for it. What we do get given is the issue jack; twenty
thicknesses of linen quilted together around cotton waste.
Actually, it’ll turn any sword, most spears, some arrows; it’s
hot as hell and hinders your movements, but it’s
considerably better than nothing. Real soldiers wear them
under their armour. We all had them. We’d left them, goes
without saying, at home. No helmets or shields, no body
armour, no greaves, cuisses, rerebraces or vambraces,
gauntlets, gorgets or knee or elbow cops. Wonderful.
An old man I met in the slave camp told me once, always
be positive. He died of gangrene, something it’s hard to be
positive about, and he spent his last week on earth
whimpering, but I’ve always tried to follow his advice, even
so. Accordingly: we know what we haven’t got, we don’t
need reminding about what we haven’t got, but what
do we
have? Think about that.
I thought, or tried to, only some fool kept interrupting
me. “Artavasdus is still livid,” Nico told me mournfully, as
we trudged up the fells at Tarent Cross. “He’s talking about
bringing you up on charges.”
“And why not?” I said. “He’s got every right. And if we
get home and there’s someone to bring me up on charges
to, nobody will be happier than me, believe it. Meanwhile,
I’d like your opinion.”
Nico did his wise face. “Fire away.”
“Who do you think these bastards are?”
Oh dear. Picture of a big man trying to think. “The
Sherden?”
I shook my head. “All told,” I said, “in the incredibly
unlikely event you could get them all in one place without
them murdering each other, there’s maybe eighteen
thousand adult Sherden males, total. And they’re thieves,
not soldiers.”
“But they attacked Classis. And the other stuff.”
Walking uphill and talking leaves me short of breath.
“They’re good with ships,” I said. “They’re like us,
specialists.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “geography’s not my
thing. What about those people you told me about? The
Hus?”
Nico, of course, can walk uphill all day long while
singing arias from Teudel’s oratorios. Nevertheless, given
the choice, I’d still rather be smart than fit. “The Hus are
shepherds,” I said. “They herd huge flocks of sheep on the
high downs, always on the move. They wouldn’t go
anywhere without their sheep and their women and kids.
The most you tend to see is a hundred or so crazy young
braves looking to steal enough valuable stuff to raise a
bride-price. And most of the time they thieve off each other.
They only go bothering other people when times are very
hard. Also, they’re petrified of the Robur. They cremate
their dead, so they think you’re ghosts, charred brown by
the flames. Not the Hus.”
I was getting on his nerves. He doesn’t like to be
reminded that he doesn’t know everything. “I don’t know,”
he said. “There’s hundreds of tribes up away north and
east, always moving about and beating up on each other.
Could be some lot we’ve never even heard of.”
“Indeed,” I said. “Like the Alba or the Maldit or the Sanc
Fui or the Sebelot Alliance or the Flos de Glaya or the
Prezadha.” He gave me a blank, worried stare. I shouldn’t
tease him. “But then it’d be like waves on the seashore.
There’s a big storm out in the middle of the ocean, and you
get tidal waves at the coast. The Alba drive out the Maldit,
the Maldit drive out the Sanc Fui, and, at the very end of
the line, the Seventh Army has to cope with hordes of
marauding Bassanegs trying to cross the frozen Astar. And
these things don’t happen overnight. We’d have heard
about it.” I remembered a few Council meetings and
amended; “I’d have heard about it.”
He looked at me. “Nothing like that?”
I shook my head. “We go to a lot of places and I meet a
lot of people. Not the sort you’d be seen dead with. They
tell me things. Anything as big as a mass migration,
someone would have heard something.”
“Nobody has.”
“Nobody’s told me anything.”
I was bothering him. Nobody’s happy out of their depth.
“So who do you think it is?”
I’d done enough harm for one conversation, so I didn’t
reply.
From Phainomai Einai to the City is prime growing country.
It’s where the deer and wild pigs from His Majesty’s
inviolable forest come out to graze on honest men’s
cabbages, safe in the knowledge that it’s five years’ hard
labour for anyone not born in the purple to shoot them.
Stand on top of any of the plump little hills and you won’t
see less than a dozen farms, whitewashed and golden-
thatched, rich green fields quilted with arrow-straight
hedges. In my wildest dreams, I’ve quit the service and
bought one of those farms. Away to the north the land
gradually rises, and that’s where you get the wonderful
vineyards. The point being, a lot of people live there, and
they’re out and about all day, they notice things. They
noticed us. They stopped working and stared.
One old boy came to his yard gate and scowled at us as
we tramped past down the road. I stopped and gave him a
friendly smile. “Excuse me,” I said. “Did the army pass this
way, a few days back?”
“Who wants to know?”
I gave Nico a gentle shove. He’s good with people.
“Captain Bautzes, Imperial Engineers,” he said.
Oh, that accent of his. It impressed the farmer. “Three
days ago, sir.” Sir, mark you. “In a right old hurry. Came
through in the middle of the night.”
I remember a friend of mine, got himself gutshot in a bit
of a scrimmage. We hauled him to the surgeon, who pulled
the arrow out and looked at it; all rusty. Oh dear. A bit like
that.
“Forced marches,” Nico said, keeping his voice down as
we moved on. “We’ve been stopping every night. They’re
not even bothering to forage.”
“No need,” I told him. “They’ll have plenty of food,
courtesy of General Priscus. And the last thing they want is
to raise the alarm.”
Nico went all quiet after that. Splendid. I was able to
think.
So, at the White Bear crossroads, we turned right. Left is
the main road, to the City. Right takes you down beside the
Silverlight to the coast. It’s a deep valley, wooded—a bit
like the road through Spendone forest, a resemblance that
wasn’t lost on my brave men—and it comes out at Bel
Semplan. Just before Bel, of course, is Watersmeet, where
the Isnel joins the Silverlight.
Maybe you don’t think a lot about shit. Why should you?
But it’s an interesting subject. Let me take you back five
centuries, to the Great Plague. After it was over, His
Majesty Euric III got it into his head that it had been
caused by dirt, and nobody had the nerve to contradict him.
So he founded the shit patrol, which still operates to this
day. They’re the band of miserable-looking souls who go
round the streets in the still, small hours before dawn
emptying the shit-pans and piss-pots and scarfing up all the
stinking food and mouldy bedlinen, dead dogs, broken junk,
all the rubbish that Euric was convinced brought on the
Great Death. The shit goes out on carts to the farms to
grow delicious cabbages, the fullers get the piss, but the
rest of it is loaded onto big, flat barges and punted out of
the Watergate down the Isnel to Watersmeet, then via the
Silverlight to Bel. Then they row it out about four miles,
past the point where the currents would sweep it all back
into the City harbour, and dump it. Then they sail the
barges back up the coast to the City. They do it that way so
the river has all the hard work of moving the fully laden
barges downstream, and the tide does the same for the
empty barges on the return trip. Smart. I believe it was a
colonel of Engineers who thought of it, though nobody
remembers his name.
It was a gamble, or do I mean an augury? I think that’s
the word; where you basically give God a choice—if you’re
on my side, let this happen, if not, do what you like. If we
figured in His plans, the shit fleet would be on the river or
in dock at Bel. If it was on its way back to town, He clearly
didn’t want us to save the City, and we’d be free to take
whatever shipping we could lay our hands on and sail away
—up to the Armpit was my favourite option, because
everybody knows the Robur founded a mighty colony at
Olbia, though whether it’s still there and where the hell
Olbia might be are open to conjecture.
I still believe in Olbia, at least I believe in it rather more
than I believe in Him, but I never got the chance to find
out. The barges were tied up at the quay at Bel. No crews;
because they’d done the daily run and were three-quarters
of the way home when they met a gaggle of small boats,
rowing like hell up the coast. The people in these boats
yelled at them to turn back. Don’t go to the City, they said,
it’s under siege. There’s about a million savages all round
the Land Walls and no soldiers to fight them off. We got out
in time. Whatever you do, don’t go back. You’ll be killed.
So the barge crews turned round and rowed to Bel, held
a quick meeting and melted away. Most of them were in the
bars, drinking what was left of their money, on the grounds
that since there would be no tomorrow, why the hell not? I
had my boys round them up, and gave them a talking to.
We, I told them, were proper soldiers, and we’d come to
relieve the City and defend it until the rest of the army
showed up. Guessing we wouldn’t be able to get past the
siege lines in time, we’d come to Bel hoping to
commandeer the shit fleet and sail it into the City harbour.
The question was, had they seen any warships when they
were there? No, they hadn’t. Fine. My biggest fear was that
the Sherden had been brought in to give naval support to
the land forces—it’s what I’d have done, or anyone with
half a brain; if they hadn’t done it, there had to be a
compelling reason (and there was, as I found out later: big
storm off the Needle, Sherden fleet scattered in all
directions; probably an augury, though I still don’t believe
in Him). Anyhow, we could sail into the harbour and there’d
be no pirates to sink us.
Being, in my own small way, a part of Authority, it never
ceases to amaze me how much people believe in it and
trust it. I see it from the inside, of course—inefficiencies,
stupidities, corruption, bloody-minded ignorance and
simple lack of resources to cope with the magnitude of the
endless, ever-multiplying problems. But other people see it
from the outside. They see the Land Walls. They see the
emperor’s head on the coins, with Victory on the reverse.
They see the temples. They see soldiers in shining armour.
They see, and they believe, that the empire is big, strong,
wise, unbeatable. They know they can’t fight it or outsmart
it (though some of my friends in the Old Flower Market
have spent a lifetime trying and haven’t been caught yet) so
they assume nobody else can, either. As witness those poor
fools of barge crews. When I told them we were the army, it
was as though they’d just woken up and discovered it was
all a bad dream. Here we were, so everything was going to
be all right after all. The fact that we were wearing felt
hats, tunics and Type Thirteen As and there weren’t
actually very many of us seemed to escape their notice.
That’s all right, then, they said to themselves, and set about
doing as they’d been told. It probably helped that they were
drunk, but even if they’d been sober I don’t suppose it’d
have made much difference. A man in a uniform gave them
an order, and they rejoiced. I felt bad about that, of course,
but I was on a schedule.
One stroke of entirely unexpected luck. While Stilico’s
men were rousting drunken sailors out of the dockside
bars, he happened to find out that one of the big lumber
freighters that make the run from Weal Eleis to Naufragia
had been forced into Bel by bad weather. It was carrying
two hundred and seventy tons of seasoned Elymaean cedar.
“We’re having that,” I told him. “Bound to come in
useful.”
Stilico went away, came back a bit later. The captain, he
said, refused to allow our men to commandeer the ship or
its cargo without compensation. I sighed, tore a page out of
my notebook, and wrote a draft on the treasury for ten
thousand stamena—
“You can’t do that.” Stilico was shocked to the core.
“That’s ten times what it’s worth.”
“So?”
“It’s public money.”
I considered explaining, but there wasn’t time and I
didn’t have the energy. “Do as you’re told,” I said and gave
him the bit of paper. He walked away, looking deeply
offended. I called him back.
“Better put a couple of dozen of the lads on the ship,” I
said. “Just in case.”
OceanofPDF.com
8
For the record, I’m not at my best on boats. I tell myself it’s
because I’m an engineer. I live in a world of straight lines,
fixed points, things that stay where they’re put, the exact
opposite of the sea. She reckons it’s because of where I
was born, two weeks’ painful trudge inland, up mountains
and across rivers. Nico smiles indulgently and points out
that the Robur have always been a seafaring nation, and
that’s the source of their superiority. In any event, I spent
the short trip from Bel to the City hanging over the side
regretting everything I’d eaten for the past week, which
was very good; I was too preoccupied to think about
anything else. If I hadn’t been, I’d have scared myself to
death imagining what we’d find when we arrived.
Once you’re in the Bay, the wind and the currents calm
down a lot, and I realised that I was going to live after all.
On this occasion, once we were past the Spearhead, we
sort of glided home, as smooth as a bolt down the slide of a
crossbow. Small mercies. I stopped groaning and started
panicking. But there wasn’t a ship to be seen in all of that
vast blue semicircle.
One good thing about the shit barges—they’re
distinctive, no other boats like them on the water. Even so.
I was a bit worried about the reception we’d get. For one
thing, we didn’t look like Imperial soldiers. For another,
whoever was in charge in the City had probably figured out
by now that appearances can be deceptive. Further or in
the alternative, the shit fleet isn’t exactly a state secret, so
our mysterious genius enemy could easily have heard about
it, commandeered it and packed it to the gunwales with
armed men. They’d only know it was us when we were
close enough for the watchmen on shore to see the brown
of our faces; seventy yards, say. Effective archery range is a
hundred and fifty yards. But if I told everyone to get their
heads down, our reception committee wouldn’t see brown
faces and would have every reason to start shooting.
Awkward; except there was no reception committee. The
quays were deserted; no ships tied up, no dockers, nobody
lounging about or selling things. I felt like I’d swallowed a
block of ice.
I was in the lead barge. We nosed up against the quay,
someone jumped across with a rope and tied up. The
gangplank hit the stone with a clatter. I’m not a brave man.
“Nico,” I said, “just run ahead and see if you can find
anybody.”
He gave me that look, but off he went, and nobody was
in any hurry to follow him. He walked up the quay about a
hundred yards, stopped, looked round; then I saw him wave
at someone we couldn’t see. Then he yelled to whoever it
was, and we heard a voice calling back. Beside me on the
barge, the sailors were all on edge, ready to cast off and
jump to the oars in a heartbeat. Then Nico nodded, and
trotted back to us.
“Harbourmaster,” he said. “He’s barricaded himself in
his office. But he’s coming down now we’re here.”
Oh well, I thought, and gave the order to disembark. The
other barges, which had been hanging back, drew in. The
freighter was still standing off, like a fat girl at a dance.
Just as well I’d put men aboard, or they’d have spooked and
bolted.
Up came the harbourmaster. He had a mailshirt on, and
a helmet, a hundred years old and two sizes too small. He
looked straight past me until Nico did the introductions.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“Gone.” The harbourmaster didn’t sound happy. “Soon as
they heard what was going on, everybody was down here,
trying to get on a ship. They were fighting like animals, you
never saw anything like it.”
Gone. “There’s no ships?”
He laughed. “Cleared out, the lot of ’em. Nobody cared
where they were going, so long as it was away from here.
Them as couldn’t get on board went back up the hill to the
temples, fat lot of good it’ll do them.” He peered at me, as
if trying to see in through my eyes. “Wherever you’re
headed, take me with you. I’ve got money.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” I said.
He rolled his eyes and words evidently failed him. He
tottered back the way he’d just come, leaving the harbour
to us. Fair enough.
I stood there, trying to think, until Nico said, “Well, it’s
still standing. What do we do now?”
I dragged myself back from wherever I’d wandered off
to. “Someone,” I said, “has got to be in charge. Who would
that be?”
Nico knows these things. “In the absence of a ranking
military officer,” he said, “that would be the City Prefect.”
My pal Faustinus. Oh God. Still, if you need to knock in a
nail and you don’t have a hammer, use the heel of your
broken-down old boot. “Fetch him,” I said.
“Shouldn’t we—?”
“We’re busy. No, you go, you’re polite.” He stood there,
looking gormless. “Go on. Move.”
He shrugged, and ran. I turned round, so I wouldn’t have
to look at the City, and started ordering people about. It
calms me down, and there was a lot to do.
First things first. We got the barges up out of the water
onto the quay and knocked holes in the bottoms; nothing
we couldn’t fix later, enough to stop desperate citizens
rushing us and taking them. We brought in the freighter,
unloaded the cargo, then sent her out again, too far for
anyone to swim, with five of my best sergeants on board.
Then I split the men up into eight units, five hundred each.
By the time I’d done that, Nico was back, with poor old
Faustinus.
He was drunk. He has a problem that way at the best of
times. It’s no big deal. He waved at me and gave me a big,
crazy grin. I pulled him away so nobody could see him, into
some shed where they kept tackle and stuff. I sat him down
on a big coil of rope and said, “What happened?”
He just grinned at me, so I hit him. Then I helped him up
off the floor and asked him again. “What happened?”
He was fingering his jaw. “You bastard,” he said. “What’s
the matter with you?”
“Tell me,” I said, “what happened.”
So he told me. It started with reports that a gang of
about five thousand savages had appeared out of nowhere
and were burning farms on the far side of the Spendone
escarpment. There was a Council meeting. General Priscus
decided that the only thing to do was come down on that
sort of behaviour like a ton of bricks. He mobilised the
Guards—all of them—and marched out. He wouldn’t be
gone long, he said, it’d be a piece of cake.
A few days later, the watchmen on the towers saw what
looked like the army coming back. Faustinus sent word to
open the gates, get people out into the streets, put
garlands up all round the Hippodrome, make sure there
was plenty of food and drink for the victory street parties.
Then, he told me, our luck must have turned, just a tiny bit.
Some clerk from the War Office had some bit of urgent
business he needed Priscus’s seal on. Rather than wait
until the army got home (and then they’d all be busy
making whoopee, and no chance of getting any work done
or days) he grabbed a chaise from the messenger service
and rode out to meet them. He was right up close when he
realised something wasn’t right; the men in the soldiers’
uniforms were the wrong colour.
He turned the chaise round and dashed back to the gate
hell for leather; a hundred or so cavalry set off after him,
but those chaises are fast. Faustinus was at the gate when
this clerk came racing through, screaming and yelling like
a lunatic, shut the gates, shut the gates. Just as well
Faustinus knew the man and knew he was the most
unimaginative, boring creature who ever drew breath. They
got the gates shut and the bars down a few heartbeats
before the cavalry outriders reached it. By then, of course,
the men on the wall could see milk-white faces under their
helmets. Two Watch sergeants went sprinting off down the
ramparts to the other gates. It was a horribly close shave,
but all the gates were shut in time.
Pretty desperate, even so. Faustinus had at his disposal
the two hundred Watch who were on shift—dispersed, it
goes without saying, right across the City. That was all.
Quite by chance, he had forty or so within the range of his
voice. He got them up on the wall, but he knew he was in
dire trouble.
The bare statistics aren’t widely known, but they’re in
books where anyone can read them. The Land Walls are
thirty-eight feet high, eighteen feet thick at the base. All
the gates are ten plies of oak laid crosswise, so they can’t
be split down the grain, and each of the eight hinges
weighs a quarter of a ton; if nobody disturbs you, you could
hack and bash your way through them in half an hour
(given unlimited manpower and the proper kit) or pile up
brushwood and burn them through in a day. Get through
them and you’re into the Olive Press, a strip twenty-five
yards wide between the Land Walls and the Inner Curtain,
twenty-six feet high, fifteen feet thick; the idea being that
anyone who makes it that far will be shot to pieces in
seconds by the siege engines and massed archers on the
Curtain ramparts, with no cover and nowhere to run to. It’s
an unbeatable defensive setup so long as you’ve got even a
handful of men, which of course Faustinus hadn’t.
In theory, the Prefect has at his disposal all the ten
thousand or so able-bodied citizens who get their pay from
the government; the Watch, the Board of Works, the Fire
Brigade, the Inspectorate of Weights and Measures, all
that. But they weren’t where they were supposed to be.
They were down at the harbour, fighting for deck room on a
ship. The only outfit who were prepared to do as he told
them were the hundred or so operatives from Parks and
Gardens, and then only when he offered to pay them triple
time.
(That I could understand. When I’m out of uniform in the
City, I’m often mistaken for a gardener. A senator explained
it, a few years ago. Milkfaces are shorter than Robur,
therefore closer to the ground, therefore naturally suited to
stoop labour, like planting and weeding.)
So up onto the ramparts they went, holding hoes and
brooms like they were spears. You don’t have to do
anything, Faustinus told them, just stand there, give the
impression there’s somebody home. Amazingly, it worked.
The enemy stopped and drew up three hundred yards from
the wall, sent out scouts to ride up and down and take a
good look. Which they were still doing.
According to the books (there’s an extensive literature
on the subject) there are fifteen ways to defend a walled
city. You can try one of them, and if that doesn’t work—
Indeed. But the books were written for generals, kings,
emperors; better luck next time, and we have plenty more
cities where that one came from. And, to be fair, each of the
fifteen ways is practical and sensible, provided you’ve got
an adequate garrison, and sufficient supplies and materiel,
and a competent staff of trained officers making up a
properly constituted chain of command.
What the books don’t tell you is, there’s a sixteenth way.
You can use it when you’ve got nothing; no stuff, no men
and nobody to lead them. Apart from that, it’s got nothing
to recommend it whatsoever.
Fine, I thought. Let’s give it a go.
“All right,” I said. “Here’s what you need to do.”
Of all the crazy ideas I’ve ever had, that had to be the
craziest. But, Faustinus had said three hundred yards,
which could only mean one thing. A Type 16 torsion engine
(that’s a catapult to you) has an extreme range of two
hundred and seventy-five yards. Of course there were no
Type 16s, no engines of any sort. They’d all been in storage
at Classis, dismantled and crated up, ready for deployment
in the unlikely event that they’d be needed somewhere.
Plainly, the enemy didn’t know that.
Luckily, I knew exactly where to find what I needed. I
sent two of my eight companies down the quay to the West
Dock, where they unload the grain ships. They
requisitioned all the big cranes, dragged them all the way
up that steep hill to the wall, broke them down into their
four main pieces and hauled them up onto the towers,
where they put them back together again and draped them
with tarpaulins. From a distance, if you don’t really know
what you’re looking at, a freight crane covered in a tarp
looks a little bit like a catapult. At any rate, it looks like a
big, powerful machine, or it did to the enemy scouts, which
is why I’m still alive and you’re reading this. Like I said,
crazy.
Meanwhile, Three Company was ransacking the factory
quarter for anything they could find; drop hammers, wine
presses, looms, the mechanism out of the Blue Temple
clock, anything that would look scary under a dust sheet.
By then, word had got about that the Prefect was handing
out silly money to anyone prepared to haul on a rope; we
scraped together about four hundred of the market-square
crowd who reckoned that if they were going to die they
might as well die rich. Bless them, they put in a bloody
good hour’s work, and we got two-thirds of the artillery
niches filled. The scouts stopped cruising up and down, and
the enemy settled down and started putting up tents. And
that, my children, is how Colonel Orhan saved the City.
For now, anyway. The trouble with now is, it’s over in a
heartbeat, and then you’ve got to think of something else.
OceanofPDF.com
9
I’d been putting it off, but it had to be done. But I was
damned if I was going to walk. I was shattered, and it’s a
steep hill. I sent Stilico to find me a horse and he was
confoundedly efficient about it. I hate horse riding.
Never seen the City like it; deserted. Nobody on the
streets, windows shuttered, doors closed, dead quiet. Even
in the dead of night, during curfew, there’s always a drunk
singing or a woman yelling or the Watch beating up a
tramp. In fact, night is a busy time, because that’s when all
the heavy carts come rumbling in from the country—too
many people got squashed when they used to let them in by
daylight; you put your foot down one of the knee-deep ruts
and you’re a dead man, you’d be mad to try and cross the
street between sundown and third watch. Then, fourth
watch, the carters come out from cutting the dust in the
market-quarter bars, which is always lively and
entertaining to see from a distance; fifth watch there’s
generally a murder or a gang fight somewhere, Blues and
Greens finding a healthy outlet for pent-up aggression.
Sixth watch, you get the country people coming in and
setting up stalls, the shit patrol, bakers lighting their fires,
respectable men sneaking home after a night in the
cathouse. Empty, quiet streets are, therefore, a truly
terrifying thing to see, especially in the mid- to late
afternoon.
I passed a gang of my lads hauling something—my best
guess was the drive-shaft assembly from a waterwheel—on
a handcart; I gave them a wave, they waved back. Apart
from them, didn’t see a soul until I reached the wall, where
a drunken Watchman tried to arrest me. I took my foot out
of the stirrup and kicked him in the mouth. Always wanted
to do that.
To get up onto the rampart, you go up one of those
horrible screwthread spiral staircases inside a watchtower.
There’s supposed to be a rope on the outer side to hold on
to, but there wasn’t, and the steps were worn smooth as
glass. I was shaking when I came out into the fierce white
daylight, where some clown shoved the blade of a hoe
under my nose and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Take it easy,” I said to him in Alauzet—I knew he was
from the Old Country by the colour of his hair. “I’m Orhan,
colonel of the Engineers. And you could put an eye out with
that thing.”
He grinned and put it down. He’d heard of me; the only
Alauz to have made good in the big city, I’m famous.
Sold
out is the term they generally use, but I’m sure they mean
it kindly. “Pass,” he said.
I slid by him and put my hands on the parapet. Never
been keen on heights, which is a problem in my line of
work. I looked out over the plain, and saw the enemy.
At first, my brain didn’t register anything wrong. I was
looking at an Imperial army, all shiny and neat in cornrows,
a reassuring sight on any battlefield if you happen to be on
their side. Then I remembered and I got this lump in my
throat and my knees went weak. There were ever such a lot
of them, and they looked the way they’re meant to look:
terrifying.
Except they weren’t doing very much. Five ranks were
standing to arms, shields rested on the ground, spears
pointing skywards. Too hot to do much except stand still if
you’re wearing all that ironmongery. Behind them, a lot of
men in jacks but no metalwork were moving about—setting
up tents, carrying things from here to there, digging
latrines, grinding corn, sitting round fires. I could hear the
tick-tick of distant hammers—farriers shoeing horses,
smiths peening rivets. Quite evidently they were in no
hurry. I took another look round, watching out for signs of
my counterparts working on big baulks of lumber; because
if I was down there, you can bet I’d have been building
scaling ladders or siege towers or a battering ram. Nothing
like that as far as I could see. Or I’d be binding up thick
sheaves of brushwood—fascines, we call them—or handing
out picks and shovels to the sappers, who’d be getting
ready to move the million tons of earth it takes to drive a
sap underground to undermine a wall. And there’d be flat-
bed wagons laden with pit props, handcarts to shift the
spoil, men leading pit ponies. Not something you can easily
hide. Nothing like that, either.
They’re waiting for something, I thought. Or somebody.
But I didn’t know that for sure; and I knew what had to
be done next. Properly speaking, it wasn’t my job, but I had
a nasty feeling I’d be doing it. Hope, however, springs
eternal; maybe I could shuffle off responsibility onto
somebody else. In which case—
In which case, God help me, my next move would have to
be, go and see the emperor.
Clemens IV, brother of the Invincible Sun, regent of Heaven
and Earth, Undefeated, Father of His Country, King of
Kings, whatever. He’d been on the throne seventeen years,
which is not bad going—the average is around twelve, but
that includes the dozen or so who lasted a matter of
months, and who ended up with their heads on pikes and a
splendid view up Hill Street—and he was born in the
purple, which means a lot to the Robur. It’s next best thing
to impossible to know whether the man on the big chair
during your lifetime is going to go down in history as The
Great or The Wise or The Cruel or Old Coppernose or The
Mad; the government boys would have you believe he never
puts a foot wrong and we’re living in a golden age, your
friends in the market or the Two Dogs tell you he’s a
drunken, perverted halfwit and the empire’s going to hell in
a handcart, and what you see with your own eyes (shining
new temples, mighty armies parading at New Year and
Ascension, overgrown fields, starving kids in the street) is
almost certainly atypical or isolated incidents or the
exception that proves the rule. If you’d asked me, I’d have
said that Clemens was probably all right, if a bit misguided
in his choice of advisers. I’d have wanted to believe that.
Besides, what possible business was it of mine?
Certain facts were readily available to anybody who
could read, or hear things read to them. Clemens was forty-
six years old; he had two sons, Audax and Roburtinus,
nineteen and fifteen respectively, so the succession was
well and truly secure. His wife, Volumnia of Molossus—a
cold woman, by all accounts, head in a prayer book most of
the time—had been dead for ten years, and there was talk—
when wasn’t there talk?—about a diplomatic marriage with
one of the Echmen princesses, either for Clemens or Audax
—one princess was fifty-six and the other one was twelve,
but they don’t worry about things like that in those circles.
It must be funny being an emperor.
I needed to see him (I explained to Prefect Faustinus) in
order to get the position straight. If, as I was horribly
afraid, I was the senior military officer in the City, I needed
confirmation or a warrant or something. If there was
someone higher up than me, I desperately wanted to hear
about him and ask him for orders. So, how do you go about
it?
Faustinus looked petrified. “How the hell should I
know?” He’d sobered up, just about, and wasn’t feeling his
best. “I’ve never met him.”
“You haven’t.”
“Of course not, talk sense. I go through channels,
naturally.”
I nodded. “Fine. What channels?”
“The Chamberlain.”
“Right. Take me to him.”
The crazy grin was back. “He skipped out on the first
ship to leave. Also the Grand Logothete, the Chief
Domestic, the Master of the Wardrobe, the Leader of the
House and the Count of the Stables. There are no channels.
They left.”
My head was starting to hurt. “That’s not possible,” I
said. “There must be—”
“No.” He’d raised his voice. He doesn’t do that. “You
know what it’s like in this town, there’s a hierarchy, a
system, protocols. Only now there’s a hole in all that you
could drive a horse and cart through. We’re cut off,
stranded. He might as well be on a desert island. We’ve got
no way of contacting him.”
Poor devil, he believed it. Years of conditioning. The only
way to do things is through the chain of command, and if
the chain breaks you’re stuck. I shoved my hand under his
chin and tilted his head up. “Pull yourself together,” I
suggested. “Now, who’s next after the Count of the
Stables?”
He was staring at me as though I’d gone mad. “Me,” he
said. “I guess.”
“Fine,” I said. “You’ll do. We can go together.”
So we went to the Palace. This is madness, Faustinus said,
we’ll never get past the guards. But there weren’t any
guards. We simply walked in through a half-open door into
a very big, empty entrance hall.
Faustinus wanted to leave. I reasoned with him by
twisting his arm behind his back. We carried on into
another huge, empty chamber. It had the most amazing
painted ceiling, and twice-life-size statues all down one
wall. At the end of it was a green marble staircase flanked
by gilded bronze lions the size of oxen. We went up it,
making the most horrible noise—actually, that was me,
hobnail boots. At the top of the stairs, we met a bald man in
a white tunic. He was sitting on the top step, with his head
in his hands.
“We want to see the emperor,” I said.
He stared at us. Faustinus repeated what I’d just said.
The bald man looked over the top of his head. So I hit him.
That livened him up. “Where is he?” I asked. The man
pointed; right, down a long, high passage with a mosaic
floor. At the end of the passage was a bronze door, twelve
feet high. I gave it a shove. It swung open.
“This is all wrong,” Faustinus said. “We could be
executed for this.”
I smiled. “Who by?”
“We can’t go in there. That’s the Purple. Nobody goes in
there.”
I proved him wrong. The Purple is this enormous square
room, so called because its walls, floor and ceiling are
polished porphyry. I gather it’s a sort of dressing room, only
without a single stick of furniture. The next door looked
worryingly like solid gold. I knew people in the Old Flower
Market who’d have something like that off its hinges and
vanished without trace in five minutes flat.
“The Bedroom,” Faustinus whispered. “We can’t—”
I’d had enough of him. “Stay there,” I said. “I shouldn’t
be long.”
I gave the door a gentle nudge and it opened.
It was dark. I could just make out an enormous bed, hung
round with curtains. Sitting in front of it on a low stool was
an old man.
He turned and looked at me. I guess there was enough
light for him to see my face. He gave me a sad look. I knew
what he was thinking.
“I’m Colonel Orhan,” I said, “Engineers. I need to see the
emperor.”
He laughed. “Be my guest.”
He pointed to the bed. I didn’t like that, but I couldn’t
see what else to do. I walked over, quiet as I could, and
pulled back the curtain.
In the bed lay a man. Ordinary looking; bald, with wisps
of hair combed forward. He was dressed in a plain white
nightshirt. His eyes were open and he was breathing. He
didn’t move.
“He’s been like that for nine months,” the old man said
behind my shoulder. “He had a massive stroke, the day they
told him his sons had been killed. He hasn’t moved since.
I’m his doctor, by the way.”
I remember once riding straight into a low branch. I
didn’t fall off, but I was completely out of it. Like that. “The
emperor,” I said, or something equally intelligent.
“The emperor,” the doctor repeated. “Needless to say,
we kept it quiet. Nobody knew, outside of this room. I
haven’t left it since they brought him here.”
“Will he—?”
“No,” the doctor said. “No chance at all. He’ll be like
that until he dies.”
Made no sense. “The princes.”
I heard the doctor draw a deep breath. “Audax and
Roburtinus took a boat out into the Bay,” he said. “They
were drunk, I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Audax fell overboard. He couldn’t swim. Neither could his
brother, but he tried to save him nonetheless. The old man
was genuinely fond of them, God only knows how. Anyway,
there’s your emperor. Ask him anything you like.”
Faustinus pounced on me like a cat when I came out.
“Well?”
“All done,” I said.
“What?”
I walked away. Faustinus had to trot to catch up with me.
“I asked him for total authority,” I said.
“You did what? What did he say?”
“I got it. I’m now in charge.” I stopped for a moment. I
felt dizzy and sick. “You’re my deputy,” I said. “That’s
official too. You and me are running the fucking empire.”
He looked as though I’d just cut off his ear. I felt sorry
for him. “How are we going to prove it?”
I opened my clenched fist and showed him the Great
Seal. It had been on a table beside the bed. No idea how it
came to be in my hand. It must’ve fallen off and I caught it
without thinking. “Come on,” I said, “we’ve got work to
do.”
The Purple, still empty. Likewise the two echoing marble
halls and the courtyard. We passed through the wide-open
main gate into the Golden Mile. “Where are we going?”
Faustinus asked me.
“The Old Flower Market,” I said. “Don’t suppose you’ve
ever been there.”
He caught my sleeve. “Orhan,” he said. “This is hardly
the time.”
I pulled my arm free. “Yes it is,” I said. “Now keep up or
piss off.”
Nobody in the Old Flower Market. Faustinus had the creeps
quite badly. He kept telling me how many unsolved
murders and stabbings and muggings there’d been down
there in the last six months, which surprised me. I didn’t
think anyone bothered counting. You’ll be fine, I told him,
you’re with me. I don’t think he believed me.
The Dogs was all shut up, shutters on the windows. I
banged and kicked the door a few times, to no effect. “That
would suggest there’s nobody home,” Faustinus said. I
ignored him. There had to be somebody home, or the City
would fall. Therefore, there must be someone home. I
looked around for something to use as a jemmy. Some
hope; things like that aren’t left lying about in that
neighbourhood. I tried shoulder-charging the door a few
times, but had the wit to stop before I hurt myself. Stupid.
Supreme ruler of the empire, couldn’t even get a door
open.
Fortunately, before I burst into tears, a window opened.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said.
I looked up and grinned joyfully. “Open the stupid door.”
“Go away, Orhan,” she said. “I haven’t got time for you
right now.”
“Open the door. Please.”
She called me a name she must’ve learned from her
father, and the shutter slammed. A short time later, I heard
about a dozen bolts being drawn, and the door opened.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t want any soldiers here.
You understand.”
I pushed her out of the way; she took a swing at me, but
I ducked. “I need to talk to the Theme bosses,” I said.
“Urgently.”
“Who’s he?”
“What? Oh, him. That’s Faustinus, the City Prefect. The
Theme bosses, Aichma, where do I find them? It’s really
important. I need to talk to them right now.”
She looked at me. “Is it true? Are there really savages
—?”
“Yes. That’s why I have to see the Theme bosses. Now.”
“But the army—”
“All dead,” I told her, and her eyes opened wide. “There’s
no army and no fleet, there’s just me. Which is why it’s
essential I see the Theme bosses, straight away. Do you
know where they are or not?”
“They can’t be,” she said. “Not all of them.”
“Aichma.”
Known her since she was small enough to lie on the palm
of my hand. Aichmalotus, her father, thought she was the
most amazing thing in the history of the world; my kid,
Orhan, he said to me, like it was some kind of miracle. And
before that, he was the last man you’d ever expect to turn
out to be the proud-father type. It takes some people that
way. Aichmalotus wasn’t his actual name, of course. It
means “prisoner of war” in Aelian, and that was what was
written on the label round his neck. The recruiting
sergeant couldn’t pronounce his real name, so he was
Aichmalotus for the rest of his life. Aichma means “spear”.
He chose it because she was the better half of him, and
sharp as a nail. But she looks just like her mother.
“What do you want them for?”
“
Aichma.” Mustn’t shout. Getting her to do what you
want is like getting a pig into a cart. If you push it, it backs
up the other way with all its considerable strength. You’ve
got to make it
want to go into the cart, or it just won’t
happen. “Use your head. There’s no army, and there’s
about a million savages the other side of the Land Wall.
Why would I want to see the Theme bosses?”
She looked at me. “They won’t—”
“Fine, But I’ll ask them anyway. That’s if you’ll bloody
well tell me where to find them.”
“I can’t do that,” she said. “But I can fetch them here.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Do it now.”
She hesitated for a moment, then pulled her shawl over
her head and walked straight past me through the yard and
out into the street. “What was all that about?” Faustinus
said.
I’d forgotten about him. “It’s something you just don’t
do,” I said, “tell the likes of us where to find someone.
Especially the Theme bosses. You understand that, surely.”
He was getting all het up again. “Oh, sure,” he said.
“What I don’t understand is what you want with a bunch of
gangsters. Most particularly at a time like this.”
I ask you. City Prefect; he’s got the job of running the
capital city of the empire, and to him the Themes are just
gangsters. “Go back to the prefecture,” I told him. “I need
to know exactly how much money we’ve got. Not money of
account, not credit reserves, actual gold coins. Don’t tell
anyone else and come straight back here. And if you see
Captain Bautzes, tell him I want full armour and weapons
for all my lads, and then I want them on the wall.”
“Who’s—?”
“Forget it. Just go and find out about the money. Please?”
And then I was all alone, in front of the open door of the
Two Dogs. I decided it was time for some unilateral
executive action. I went inside and requisitioned a bottle of
brandy. I had the authority, after all; but I left thirty trachy
on the bar, even so.
You’ll have noticed that I used the term “Theme bosses”,
rather than their actual names. That’s because I didn’t
know the names. Very few people do. You don’t become
boss of the Blues or the Greens for the glory. Holding office
in a Theme carries the death sentence, mandatory. In fact,
if anyone really wanted to find out, it wouldn’t be all that
hard. The Themes choose their leaders from working
gladiators, if not the colour’s current champion then one of
the top ten at the very least. Luckily, the government has
always taken the view that someone qualified to be Theme
boss won’t be around for very long by the very nature of his
trade. Why make a big fuss arresting a man and putting
him on trial and hanging him when, sooner or later, a
business associate will do the job for you, with people
paying to watch? For my part, I was sure I knew who the
Blue boss was, and had a pretty shrewd idea who led the
Greens. I was wrong, of course, on both counts. I should be
used to it by now.
Turned out the Blue boss was Hierascus—he always
refused to answer to that, said his name was Arrasc and if
the blueskins couldn’t pronounce it, tough. He was number
four in the Blue rankings, fought forty-seven, won forty-
four, drawn three. His father was Sanc Fui; by the look of
him, his mother was Robur. They tell you that never
happens, but it does. I’d seen him fight a dozen times,
admired his footwork and his controlled aggression, knew
nothing else about him at all. He was a long, lean man,
about thirty-five, so old for a Hippodrome fighter. He
looked like your typical arena bruiser, except that he had
sad, clever eyes.
His opposite number was Longinus, ranked Green
number two. It’s always good to see a friendly face in a
stressful situation. He and I went way back, to when he was
the most blatantly dishonest quartermaster’s clerk in the
history of the Supply Corps. He once sold me two thousand
of my own regulation pickaxes, issued to me under sealed
requisition. He gave me a big smile, which cheered me up
enormously. He was a big, wide man with arms the size of
legs. There were two different versions of his story. One
version was that his mother worked in the leisure and
entertainment sector and he grew up in the Old Flower
Market, a bit like the trees you see growing high up in the
cracks in walls. The other was his mother was a
chambermaid in a very grand house; from her he got his
cheerful disposition, while his physique and intelligence
came from his father. He had the most beautiful voice; he
could have been an actor, he told me once, but he got
carried away in a fight scene and broke the leading man’s
jaw, and after that nobody would work with him. I’d say he
was maybe an inch taller than Nico and about the same as
him across the shoulders, and he was only number two in
the Greens because he hadn’t fought often enough to get
the ranking points. He’d gone thirty bouts in the
Hippodrome undefeated, and he was twenty-eight years
old.
There they stood, with Aichma between them like the
barriers in the lists, as though if they happened to collide
there’d be an explosion. I felt a tiny bit uncomfortable, I
have to confess. Hippodrome fighters have that effect on
people; like big dogs, you can’t really be sure they won’t
suddenly bite. I reminded myself that I was a soldier.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “thank you for coming. Sit down and
have a drink.”
So they sat down, on opposite sides of the table, with me
at the north end and Aichma at the south. I hadn’t asked
her to stay. I hadn’t asked her to leave, either. While I was
waiting I’d raided her private stock for two bottles of date
wine and four horn shot cups. I proposed the old
Hippodrome toast: the losers, God save them. The date
wine made my eyes water. I’m not a drinking man.
“You’ll have heard the news,” I said. They nodded. “Now,
we all know who runs this town. The other side of the wall,
there’s a bunch of savages who just wiped out the Guards.
You boys are in the trade, I’d like you to think about that
for a moment.”
Arrasc scowled at me. “We’re screwed,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “Not yet. I have no idea who these jokers
are, but they’re smart, which is lucky for us. They’re smart
enough to know that the wall is too strong for them, and
they’re smart enough to stay out of catapult shot. Now,
between us four, there aren’t any catapults, but they don’t
know that. Last I looked, they were sitting down, making
themselves comfortable. I don’t know if they’re waiting for
their heavy kit to arrive, or whether they’re planning on
building it on site. In any event, we seem to have a bit of a
breathing space. We aren’t dead yet, gentlemen. We still
have a chance.”
Longinus refilled his cup and sipped it, very refined and
genteel. “I saw some of your boys wheeling a load of junk
on barrows,” he said. “What’s all that about?”
I told him and he laughed. “Give my lads a few days and
a couple of barrels of nails and they’ll be real machines up
there, not pretend ones,” I went on. “But there’s only four
thousand of us, plus six hundred Watch, who I wouldn’t
trust as far as I could fart them out of my arse—” smiles
from both of them “—and the massed hoes of the Parks and
Gardens boys, and that’s it. I need willing hands and strong
backs, gentlemen. You have plenty of both. We need to
make a deal.”
Dead silence. Aichma was getting fidgety, which meant
she was nervous. For my part, I felt like I was standing in a
pen with two bulls. Stupid, really. Aichmalotus was a
Theme boss, and he was my friend.
“Here’s what’s in it for you,” I said. “First, the City
doesn’t fall and we don’t all get slaughtered like sheep. In
case you were thinking of getting out by sea, you can forget
that. There’s no ships. There’s the shit barges and one
freighter. No way you could get even a fraction of your
people out on them. If you want to stay alive, we have to
hold the City. I think it can be done. No promises, no
guarantees, but I reckon it’s possible.”
I took the Great Seal out of my pocket and put it down in
the middle of the table. Longinus raised his eyebrows and
said nothing. Arrasc said, “Is that—?” I nodded.
“Mine,” I said, “so I can do what I damn well like. And
what I’d like to do is legalise the Themes. Legal to join,
legal to wear the colours, legal to hold office. You’ll each
have a charter, like the Knights of Allectus or the Hospitals.
You’ll be able to buy and own land, raise money by
subscription, sue for debts in the courts instead of breaking
kneecaps. We all know that all the government in this City
that’s worth doing is done by you boys. Now you’ll be able
to do it openly, with the Prefect helping instead of making
your lives difficult. If you want, you can even come to civic
dinners and march in the Ascension Day parade.” That
made Longinus laugh. “That’s what I’d like to do,” I said.
“You ask Aichma here, I’ve been saying it for years, it’s
time the Themes are recognised for what they really are in
this town. And I can do all that. All I need is a bit of paper
and some hot wax.”
They were looking at me. Arena fighters look at you in a
special way, dead still, taking it all in, actually watching.
Comes of all that swordfighting. Terrifies the life out of you
until you get used to it, and you really shouldn’t.
Hippodrome men are dangerous, at all times.
“What do you want?” Arrasc said.
“All the men you can give me,” I said. “And women, and
children. I want fighting men on the walls. I want fetchers
and carriers, men to dig trenches and saps, build walls,
knock down houses, find all the stuff I need, get it from A to
B. I need people I can trust to gather up all the food in the
City and hand it out, strict rationing, no cheating. If I left
that to the Prefect, first thing you know, you boys’d be
running a black market, and you’re so much smarter than
he is. So I want you two to do it, and anyone who cheats
gets his legs broken. I want—” I searched for the right
word, but all I could think of was “—co-operation. I think,
as you do, that this is your city every bit as much as it’s the
emperor’s. Fine. You want it, you’re going to have to fight
to keep it. And if we win, I promise you, you’ll have what’s
rightfully yours. And if we lose—well, it’s not going to
matter a shit, is it? Well? What do you think?”
Another long silence. I was worried. Then Longinus said,
“Is anybody going to be paying us for all this work?”
“Yes,” I said. “Rations and cash money. Now I’ll be
straight with you, there’s only so much coin in the City and
we can’t very well send out for some more when that’s
gone, so if this goes on for very long, sooner or later it’ll
have to be paper. But there will be money, and you will get
what’s fair. You can trust me on that.”
They looked at Aichma, who nodded. Big risk for her, but
she didn’t hesitate. Then Arrasc reached out his big bony
paw. “Deal,” he said.
I shook it. He had a grip like a dog bite. I looked at
Longinus. He was thinking about it. That was when I
realised I’d neglected to consider a vital factor. The Blues
and the Greens are enemies, they hate each other. Hell, I
thought.
“I should have mentioned,” I said, “nobody’s expecting
Blues and Greens to work shoulder to shoulder. Perish the
thought. But that’s all right, there’s no need. We’ll sort out
who does what, and it’ll either be a Green job or a Blue
one.”
“And the Blues get all the easy jobs and we get all the
shit,” Longinus said. He was looking at Arrasc when he said
it, trying to provoke him. “Do I look like I’m stupid?”
If you’ve ever cut down a tree, you’ll know about the first
soft little creak that means it’s about to go, and unless you
get out of the way really fast, it’ll quash you flat. Like that.
But I hadn’t anticipated the problem, so I hadn’t figured
out what I was going to say. “Fine,” I said. “If the Greens
won’t work with me and the Blues will, I have no choice,
it’s not up to me. But I’d rather have both of you.”
Longinus gave me a look that would’ve scared a tiger.
But then I thought of all those men on the other side of the
wall, and you know what, he wasn’t as terrifying as them.
“Well?” I said.
Longinus hesitated. “No shit jobs,” he said.
“Plenty of shit jobs,” I said. “But shared equally.”
That made him laugh. “Deal,” he said, and reached out
his hand.
“You did what?”
Faustinus is one of those handsome men; so handsome,
you think he must be an idiot. He’s also shorter than me, so
tiny for an Imperial. He’s, what, forty-five, hard to tell his
age because he’ll look more or less the same when he’s
seventy. His wife died the year before the siege. He was
devoted to her.
“Calm down,” I said. “We got them cheap. We need
manpower.”
Arrasc and Longinus had gone away with long lists of
things to do. I’d hung on at the Dogs because I’d told
Faustinus to meet me there. He’d taken longer than I’d
expected, and it was nearly dark. Aichma had made me a
big kettle of tea, and we’d been talking about old times.
Faustinus was beside himself with fury. “You’ve promised
a
charter to two criminal gangs, plus pay at double what
the Guards get, and you expect me to—”
“Faustinus,” I said, “shut up. You’re not helping.”
He stared at me as if I’d slapped him. Then he looked
away for a moment, then back at me. “You’ve gone too far,”
he said. “You’ll never get it past the House. Then you’ll
have to go back to your gladiator friends and tell them it’s
all off, and then we’ll have riots. What in God’s name were
you thinking of?”
I let him run on. It was easier. Meanwhile, I was doing
mental arithmetic. According to Faustinus, in actual cash
money we had three million, two hundred and seventy-six
thousand stamena, plus gold and silver in hand to strike
maybe a million more. Not a great deal, in other words.
“Faustinus,” I interrupted him. “Who’s boss of the Mint
these days?”
He stopped and looked at me. “Segimerus,” he said. “You
know him?”
“Not any more,” I said. “Find me someone who’ll do
what he’s told. Then we melt down three million stamena.”
“What?”
“Devaluation,” I said. “We won’t have enough money, so
we need to bulk the gold out with copper. We can use
water-pipe, there’s plenty of that.”
“Orhan, what are you talking about? You know the
stamenon’s nine hundred parts pure. It has been for
centuries.”
I shook my head. “While we’re at it,” I said, “we need
smaller coins. We’ll be paying the Theme workers, it’ll take
too long for them to earn a stamenon. So when we restrike,
we’ll issue a new coin, a quarter of the weight. That way,
we have a more useful denomination, and people won’t
notice there’s less gold in it.”
He shook his head. “This is all getting out of hand,” he
said. “I think you’ve lost your grip. I’m sorry, but I can’t be
part of this.”
I yawned. It had been a very long day. “Let’s see,” I said,
“a hundred and sixty tornese to the stamenon, so a quarter
would be forty. Oh, and we’ll need to water down the silver
a bit. Don’t worry about the technicalities. I have friends
who’re good at this stuff.”
Meaningful glare. “I know you do.”
“But that’s all right, it can wait till the morning. Right
now, I need an inventory of the armouries. I don’t suppose
you’ve done that yet.”
He gave me a tragic look. “What’s got into you, Orhan?
I’d say you were drunk, except you don’t touch the stuff.
You’re behaving very strangely.”
“Go and see to that inventory,” I said. “Please.”
And off he went; and Aichma, who’d been sort of
hovering, came and sat down opposite. “He’s right,
though,” she said. “What has got into you?”
I didn’t want to talk about it. So instead, I asked her,
“How would you like to be Minister of Supply?”
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10
I’d have preferred to crash out at the Dogs—a nice heap of
straw in the stables would’ve suited me just fine—but sadly
I couldn’t afford such luxuries. It was dark by now, and I
still had so much to do. I left my new minister still swearing
blind she wasn’t going to do it, and set off through the
Lanes.
I was thinking about various issues, mostly military
equipment, and so maybe I wasn’t paying as much
attention as I usually do. No excuse. A man walks in the
Lanes after dark at his own risk, and his safety is his own
responsibility.
They hit me over the head, probably with an axe handle.
I remember it hurting, and then nothing until I woke up.
First light in the City is a sort of sea-blue. I had a splitting
headache and I was cold and wet. They’d taken my coat,
my trousers and my boots. I put my hand to my head and
felt caked blood. I guess they thought they’d killed me,
which explained why they hadn’t cut my throat. Lucky old
me.
I tried to stand up, several times. Then I realised I was
much better sitting with my back to the wall, at least until
the world stopped spinning. It was while everything was
going round and round that it occurred to me that the
Great Seal had been in my coat pocket.
“You again,” she said; and then, “God almighty, what have
you been doing to yourself?”
I resented that. I sat down on the front step of the Dogs
and let my head bump against the door. “You remember
Thrasso,” I said.
“Is that blood? You’re all covered in blood. Have you
been
fighting?”
“Thrasso,” I said. “I need him now. It’s really, really
important.”
“Hold still while I get some water and a sponge.”
“No,” I said. “Thrasso. Now.”
So she got water and a sponge and washed away the
blood, then scolded me for making a fuss, because it was
only a scalp wound. “Thrasso,” I said. “It’s life and death.”
“Who’s Thrasso?”
I sighed. “Thrasso from Lower Town,” I told her. “You
remember him. He’s Cordouli, about my age. Big nose and
really bad breath.”
“Oh, him. What do you want him for?”
“Find him,” I said. “Bring him here. It’s incredibly
important.”
It was so important, she sent the odd-job boy, an evil
little toad who hung around the Dogs in the hope of
stealing food. By then, I’d more or less given up. I felt dizzy
and sick and I wanted to go to sleep, which wasn’t good.
Just as well that Nico came barging in looking for me.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said, as soon as he
saw me. “We’ve been looking everywhere. They said you
might be here. I said, no, he wouldn’t be so irresponsible—”
He broke off and gazed at me. “My God,” he said. “What
happened? Have you been in a fight?”
I swallowed a couple of times, to keep from vomiting.
“Has Faustinus done that inventory yet?”
“What? No, I don’t think so, I haven’t seen him. Are you
all right?”
I grabbed his wrist. “Get that inventory,” I said. “While
you’re talking to him, get him to tell you about the
Themes.”
“What have the Themes got to do with anything?”
“He’ll tell you. What have we got on the wall, right
now?”
“Two hundred of our boys, three hundred Watch and fifty
or so gardeners. No developments. The enemy are just
sitting there.”
“Waiting for someone.” I hadn’t meant to say that out
loud. “Allow me to introduce our new Minister of Supply.” I
looked round. She wasn’t there. “Oh, for God’s sake.
Aichma, get out here.”
She put her head round the door. “What?”
“This is Aichma,” I said. “She’s in charge of sniffing out
all the stocks of food in the City, impounding them and
setting up rationing. Aichma, this is General Bautzes.” The
fool took off his hat, like he always does when there’s a
female present. “He’s my second-in-command. If you need
soldiers, he’ll give them to you.”
“Hang on,” Nico said. “Did you say general?”
She scowled at me. “First, I won’t do it, it’s ridiculous.
Second, why would I want soldiers?”
“In case anyone gives you any trouble,” I told her. “And
will you stop pissing around with dusters and get to work?
This is
important.”
She was about to argue when the boy came back, with
Thrasso the Cordouli trailing along behind him like a sheep
to slaughter. I gave him a huge smile. “There he is,” I said.
“Nico, Aichma, give us a moment, would you? I need to talk
to this man.”
I poured him a drink. My hand shook so much I spilled
most of it on the table. He sat down opposite, watching me
like a cat.
Thrasso is one of the most evil, unpleasant people I’ve
ever met. When he’s drunk he’s violent, when he’s sober
he’s slippery as an eel. But he’s the best unofficial die-
cutter in the City. “I need you,” I said, “to make me a copy
of the Great Seal.”
He gawped at me, then burst out laughing. “Fuck you,”
he said, and stood up to go.
“Sit down.” I can do it, sometimes. I’d have made a good
bully if I’d had the chance. I’ve learned the craft from
masters, like an apprentice. “The fee is five hundred
stamena, a free pardon and a job cutting dies for the Mint.
I need it now. Straight away.”
He shook his head. “It can’t be done,” he said. “Everyone
knows that.”
Yes, everyone does. The Great Seal was cut four hundred
years ago by Strymon of Leucas, the greatest sculptor of
the age. Strymon’s work is unique, which is why he was
given the job. Over the centuries, God knows how many
clever craftsmen have tried to copy the damn thing, but
none of them has ever managed to get it right, so that it’ll
fool anybody; not even when they’ve had imprints of the
Seal in front of their noses, to copy from. Strymon’s style
simply can’t be reproduced. They’ve given up trying. Can’t
be done.
I called Nico. “Arrest this man,” I said. “He’s a forger.
Cut off his head and stick it on an arch somewhere.”
Thrasso jumped up but Nico was too quick for him. He
got him in an arm lock that made him scream.
“General Bautzes will see to it that you have prints of the
real thing to work from,” I said. “Now, have you got the
materials, or do you need us to get them for you?”
No sooner had Nico and Thrasso left us but Faustinus
showed up. We had a reprise of the where-have-you-been-
what-happened-to-you routine, and then he handed me a
bronze tube with a sheet of paper rolled up inside. “You’d
better read it to me,” I said. “My eyes are a bit funny.”
It was worse than I’d thought. Basically, there were no
military supplies in the City. Why should there be, after all?
We have places like Classis for all that. However, Faustinus
surprised me. He’d used his head. In the cellars of the
Guards barracks were twenty crates of the miserable Type
Thirteen A swords, still in their grease, dumped there and
forgotten about. The Speuthes brothers, dealers in scrap
metal, had recently bought off the government one
thousand suits of regulation armour, classified as unfit for
service; luckily, they hadn’t been cut up yet, and we could
have them at practically cost. Meanwhile, the Imperial
treasury’s list of gifts received by the emperor from foreign
dignitaries over the past six centuries included five
hundred swords, six hundred helmets, seven hundred and
forty suits of armour of various types and patterns—all
enamelled and inlaid with gold and garnets and engraved
with mythological scenes by artists of world importance;
but never mind, at the end of the day, a helmet’s still a
helmet. All told, we had swords for seven thousand, armour
for two thousand; no spears, no bows, no arrows. To all
intents and purposes, we were defenceless.
My head was splitting. I’ll worry about that later, I
decided. “Faustinus,” I said, “I’d like you to meet our new
Minister of Supply.”
“For crying out loud answer the question,” she said, when
finally we were alone for a few minutes. “Why me?”
I sighed. I’d have thought it was obvious. “Because,” I
said, “first, it’s a job that calls for brains, resourcefulness,
clear thinking and imagination. Second, there’s the
opportunities. You’ll have total control over food supplies in
a city of a quarter of a million people. Anyone else, I don’t
care how noble and selfless and idealistic, sooner or later
the temptation would get to him, or else it’d be blackmail,
or the faces of the starving kids. But if this is going to
work, there can be no exceptions, no special cases, no little
favours, no compassion, no graft. It’s got to be done right,
by the book. I need someone I can trust absolutely.”
She looked at me. “You’re crazy,” she said.
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11
I’d managed to put it off this far, but the horrible job still
had to be done. I packed Nico off on an errand to the
ropemakers’ quarter, and sent for Artavasdus and Stilico.
For two pins I’d have set up my office right there, in the
front parlour of the Dogs. But it made Nico and Faustinus
uncomfortable, and the Palace is handier for the walls.
They had to carry me in a sedan chair, which was
embarrassing.
“I want a square of white cloth,” I said, “about so wide
and so long. And a stick to tie it to.”
Stilico’s eyes went wide. “We’re going to negotiate.”
I nodded. “I’m not getting my hopes up,” I said, “but I’ve
got to try. You two are coming with me.”
By this point I was back on my feet, and we walked the
last hundred yards to the North Gate. As the gate opened
and we passed through, a guard in gloriously shiny golden
armour gave me a grin and a cheery wave: Longinus,
pulling a shift on sentry duty. I felt a surge of relief that
nearly knocked me over. I hadn’t had time to ask if any
Theme men had showed up for duty yet.
Stilico was holding the white flag, on the left. Then me,
then Artavasdus. The plain in front of us looked impossibly
wide, and, in the distance, the sun flashing on five endless
ranks of grounded shields. As I have said, I’m not a brave
man. I really didn’t want to be doing this incredibly stupid
thing.
“Our offer is,” I told them, “if they’ll let us evacuate the
City, they can have it. Maybe they’ll let us take some stuff
with us, but if not, so be it.”
Stilico was shocked. “Give them the City?”
I shrugged. “We can’t defend it.”
“But where would we go? All those people—”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
They’d seen us; men were running about. When we were
a hundred and fifty yards from the front line, a gap opened.
I saw a row of men kneel down. “Run,” I said.
They shot at us. Of course, I tripped and went flat on my
face. Stilico and Artavasdus grabbed my arms and dragged
me back to the gate. They told me afterwards they thought
I’d been shot. So much for negotiations.
When I got back to my new headquarters at the Palace,
there was a deputation waiting to see me. They were
standing about in the entrance hall, very unhappy to have
been kept waiting.
I was all covered in dust, with one boot missing. “I can’t
possibly see you all at once,” I said, raising my voice to
make myself heard. “Senator Fronto, if you’ll follow me.
The rest of you gentlemen, wait here.”
Fronto was Leader of the House. He was ready to
explode. A big man in every sense of the word. You could
walk a thousand miles, from Rupilia to the Sea, over land
he or his family owned. Breeding tells, you know. I felt like
if I got within six feet of him, I’d get burned. “Sit down,” I
said. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been rather busy.”
He stayed standing up. People who know about these
things reckon he was the finest public speaker since
Androcles, whose stuff I’ve never got around to reading. He
had soft, thin white hair and a chin you could’ve broken
rocks with.
It was intolerable, he said. Not only had I assumed
command without even notifying the House, let alone
receiving its confirmation, I had proceeded to make
appointments to posts that were and always had been the
prerogative of the House, attempted to negotiate with a
foreign power, granted pardons to criminals, appropriated
buildings and stores—
I hit him.
I’m not a big puncher. I don’t favour the full swing to the
jaw, the powerhouse right-hand cross. I find a short jab just
below the ribcage works just as well, and you don’t waste
your strength or skin your knuckles. He sat down, like I’d
asked him to. For a moment, he was lost for words.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, looking past him at a spot
on the wall. I’d just knocked all the breath out of him, but I
still couldn’t bring myself to look straight at him, like the
sun. “For what it’s worth, I respect the Robur principle of
government, I think it works well. I like the way absolute
power is diluted and naturally tempered by delegation to
successive levels of command and bureaucracy. I admire
the way the House has always stood up for its right to be
consulted. As an outsider, coming from a country that has
no central government or overall authority, I think I can
appreciate the merits of the Imperial system rather more
than most Robur.” I paused for breath. I still wasn’t feeling
right. “Now, though, is not the time. I’ve got a lot to do, and
you aren’t helping. So, please, go home and stay out from
under my feet. Is that clear?”
He looked up at me. He still couldn’t speak. I should
have been ashamed of myself, hitting a man of his age.
“The City,” I said, “is under martial law. I have the
emperor’s commission and the Great Seal. You’re just going
to have to trust me, that’s all.”
I stood up, helped him to his feet, held his elbow as we
walked to the door, which I opened for him politely. Then I
shut it, bolted it and sat down. I was shaking like a leaf.
“You can’t do things like that,” Faustinus told me. “You just
can’t.”
We were standing on the wall. The enemy were still
there, five ranks of shields in front of a bustling community
going about their business. I’d given up trying to count
them, but somewhere in the order of forty thousand. And
they were waiting for someone. I just knew it.
“I can, though,” I said. “Well done with that scrap
armour, by the way. Any more where that came from?”
He shook his head. “I tried all the scrapyards in town,”
he said. “They don’t usually keep bulk stock here,
warehouse space is too expensive. Don’t change the
subject. I know it’s tempting, but you can’t just trample all
over the government and you can’t just ignore it and do
things your own way. You’ve got to work with these
people.”
I hadn’t told him about losing the Seal. No need for him
to know, not yet. “First thing in the morning,” I said, “we’ll
need to pull the roof off the Guildhall. You’d better find
somewhere else for all your clerks for a day or so.”
“What? You can’t—”
“I need the rafters,” I told him. “Really big, solid oak
beams. Private houses, the beams just aren’t big enough.
Besides, nobody lives in the Guildhall.”
He gave me his words-fail-me look.
“Artillery,” I said. “Fifty long-range spoon onagers, at
least a hundred ballistas, and I’d like to put some scorpions
in those corner towers there, for enfilading the approaches
to the gates. For which we need a great deal of seasoned
timber, something we don’t have enough of. Later we’ll
need reinforcing beams for propping the gates and the
walls, and after that I expect we’ll want about a hundred
thousand pit props, for when they start sapping under the
walls and we start countermining.”
“The Guildhall is the administrative centre of the City,”
he said. “You can’t—” Wisely, he stopped and started again.
“There’s a hundred acres of lumber yards in Lower Town,”
he said. “They must have all the timber you want, surely.”
I shook my head. “Softwood, small-section. Oh, we’ll
need all that, but for other things. I’ve asked Longinus and
the Greens to see to stripping the Guildhall roof. I’ve told
them they can have the lead.” I grinned, before he could
say anything. “We’ll be needing that, too, but we can buy it
back from them.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Is it because they’ve always
bullied you?” he said. “Payback time. Is that what this is all
about?”
He deserved an honest answer. “I thought about that,” I
said. “And the answer is probably no. I say probably,” I
added, “I’m not sure.”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it. Punching out the
Leader of the House.”
I shook my head. “I needed to get his attention,” I said.
“I need to be taken seriously. We’re that far—” I pointed to
the gap between the walls and the flashing shields “—from
being slaughtered. If they were to come for us now, right
this minute, we’d hold them up for maybe half an hour.
That’s all.”
His face changed. I guess he hadn’t really grasped it
before. I felt sorry for him.
“They’re waiting for something,” I said. “Or someone.
Someone, I’m inclined to think, because they’ve got all the
things they need, and all the manpower. No, I think their
orders are, don’t start the party without me.” I turned my
head so I couldn’t see the look on his face. There are times
when you don’t intrude on other people’s despair; it’d be
indecent. “With the rafters from the Guildhall roof made
into artillery, I can possibly extend that half-hour into half a
day. With all the pine planks from the Lower Town yards
split and planed into arrows, assuming I can conjure up
bows and someone to shoot them, thirty-six hours. You see
what I’m getting at? Every stupid, bloody desperate little
thing I can think of buys us a tiny scrap more time, once
he
gets here. It’s all ridiculous and pointless, of course, but
I’ve got to
try.” I looked at him. “Everyone keeps telling me
what I can’t do, but they’re wrong. The only thing I can’t do
is nothing.”
He shook his head and walked away.
“I can’t,” she told me. “I’m sorry.”
Late evening on the second day. I’d had about enough.
Thrasso had brought me his attempt at the Great Seal. It
was a beautiful piece of work. Someone told me once, a
really great fake can’t just be as good as the original, it’s
got to be better. Thrasso’s seal was better. I stamped it in
hot wax and was stunned by the beauty of the thing. He
looked at me and knew what I was going to say. I tried, he
protested, God knows I tried, I got my calipers and
measured every distance, to within a hair. I smoked the die
over a candle and put it over a genuine imprint and there
wasn’t a single smudge. It ought to be perfect, he said. I
punched his face, hard. Do it again, I said. I can’t, he said,
that’s as good as it gets. I put the thing of beauty he’d
made under the heel of my boot and ground it into bits of
gravel. Do it again, I told him.
“What do you mean, can’t?” I said.
She was close to tears. “I can’t do this job,” she said.
“They won’t do what I tell them. I have to scream and shout
to get anything done, and they’re so slow, and they make
me feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.” She paused and
looked straight at me. “And they’re right. I don’t.”
There are times when you just don’t want to hear it. “Be
firm with them,” I said. “You know how to do that.”
“You’re not listening. They’re right. I don’t know how to
do this stuff. I’m making it up as I go along, but that’s not
good enough. You need a proper clerk, who knows about
ward registers and where to look up property tax records
and how to roster duty shifts. Maybe I could do it if I spent
a year figuring out a system. All I’m doing is wasting time.
You need people who know what to do.”
“The Theme district mobilisers—”
“No,” she said, “they’re no good. They know where
people live, in Poor Town, and how much money they make,
but it’s all in their heads, not down on paper. Finding things
out from them takes too long. You need the written records.
You need the clerks.” She was quiet for a moment. “You
can’t bypass the system,” she said. “I know it’s the enemy,
but you can’t do anything without it.”
I could feel myself getting angry. The truth does that to
me, when I’m in the wrong. “They’re just a bunch of—”
She shook her head. “You need them,” she said. “I know
what you’re trying to do. The empire failed, so you think it’s
up to the rest of us to save the City. The other empire. The
soldiers all got themselves killed, so we won’t use soldiers.
The City magistrates all ran away, so we’ll use the Themes.
Let’s have a milkface stomping around like he’s the
emperor. Let’s have a woman running Supply. What’s the
old proverb, the worms of the earth against the lions? Let’s
try that. Orhan, I’m sorry but it’s not going to work. You
need the clerks
as well. And you need a clerk doing this
job. I’m sorry. I’m on your side, but I can’t do it.”
“Fine,” I said. “Go back to the Dogs and wash some
dishes.”
She left without a word.
Faustinus had a big pile of papers for me, all needing the
Seal. I told him I was too busy. Fine, he said, lend me the
Seal and I’ll get them done for you. It’s in the pocket of my
other coat, I said. I’ll send for it directly, soon as I’ve got a
minute.
Nico came back from the ropewalk. There’s only one in
Town these days, where there used to be a dozen, but the
noble family who owned the freeholds closed them down
and sold the land to builders. Not to worry; the Pausa
brothers were still very much in business and they had
plenty of rope. Something going right for a change.
“We’ll need about a mile of the good stuff, horsehair for
choice, for the catapult springs,” I told him, “and get them
to send three miles of best hemp over to the Blue lodge.
Tell you about it later,” I explained. “Just see to it, will
you?”
He’s used to me. “Right away,” he said. “Look, can I ask
you something?”
“If you’re quick.”
“What’s going to happen when they cut the aqueduct?”
I know my faults. One of them is, every time I go away
on a job or a visit, I forget something. Spare pair of boots,
pen nibs, keys, the present I promised to bring someone
from the City, always something. However hard I try,
however many lists I make, there’s always one damn thing,
and it always makes me feel unbearably stupid. Like that.
“The aqueduct.”
“Yes, the Aqueduct of Jovian. It supplies all the water to
Lower Town and the mills.”
I shook my head. “They’d need the proper tools.”
“Yes, which we left behind in Spendone forest,
remember? Chisels, wedges, screwjacks, lifting gear,
everything they need. If you recall, I did say at the time—”
Dear God. “Leave it with me,” I said, “I’ll think of
something. Right now, I need that rope.”
OceanofPDF.com
12
The aqueduct. How could I have been so colossally stupid?
You say things like that—out loud, inside your head—
trusting on some level that someone will contradict you—
you can’t think of everything, you’ve had so much else on
your mind, there’s nothing anybody could have done. You
exaggerate, taking on yourself more blame than you
deserve. Truth was, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. We
were still alive because they were waiting for someone, and
when he eventually got here, it’d be a matter of time and
how much of a nuisance we could make of ourselves before
we all died. But every little step I took—real siege engines
instead of olive presses under tarpaulins in the artillery
niches on the wall, Theme button-men bulking out my tiny
garrison, decommissioned substandard swords and armour
instead of empty hands and bare bodies, each pointless
flare-up of ingenuity, each minuscule triumph in the face of
impossible odds pushed the final fall of the curtain just a bit
further back; we might last days instead of hours, thanks to
me, and apparently my reward for all that hard slog and
brainwork would be getting shown up as the halfwit who
hadn’t arranged for an alternative water supply when they
cut the aqueduct. So, fine, I wasn’t really expecting a laurel
crown and a chariot drawn by white horses to carry me
under a triumphal arch with my name on it. But would it be
too much to ask that one of those minuscule triumphs made
things easier, instead of crushingly more and more
difficult?
I appointed a clerk by the name of Hrabanus Geticus as
Minister of Supply. He was a short, hairless, shrivelled little
man, looked eighty but according to the file he was sixty-
two, started in the Cartulary at age fifteen, been there or
thereabouts ever since. In six hours he designed a
collection, storage and distribution network that was a
miracle of elegantly simple efficiency, while his ten under-
clerks, who were obviously petrified of him, divided the
City up into search-and-enter zones for the collection
squads. He wasn’t the least bit bothered at the idea of
using Theme officers to do the actual collecting. Good idea,
he said, not looking up from the schedule he was working
on, they know the people and the districts, and who’s got
false ceilings and hidden cellars, and who’s been buying
more than they can possibly eat. I left him to get on with it,
feeling guilty and defeated, even though I’d clearly just
made a brilliant appointment.
“Linen,” I said. “Lots and lots of linen, and glue. But
glue’s easy, you can make it out of practically anything.” I
looked down my nose at them. “You do know how to make
glue, don’t you?”
Yes, they knew just fine, so I condescended to explain. In
Chorroe, six months’ journey to the east, where no Robur
had ever gone, they make very fine armour out of linen and
rope. They do this because there’s no iron ore in those
parts; they have to import all the iron they use, at ruinous
cost. So they take fifteen layers of linen and glue them
together, and the result is light, cool in summer and warm
in winter, easy to repair and maintain, and it’ll keep you
safe when people are trying to hurt you just as well as a
mailshirt or a coat of scales. Furthermore, in Chorroe the
manufacture of armour is exclusively the province of
women, of whom we had an ample supply.
Silence—they found me embarrassing; then one of them
(big fat man, ran the Blue Swallow mill) stood up and
bowed politely. “With respect,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “What?”
From his sleeve he took out what looked like a small tile.
“My grandfather probably heard the same travellers’ tales
as you did,” he said. “We looked into linen armour about
forty years ago.” He rapped the tile with his knuckle;
sounded like a man knocking on a door. “This is seventeen
thicknesses of unbleached coarse linen. The glue’s just
basic gesso—rabbit skins,” he explained (you do know how
to make glue, don’t you?). “And, yes, it works very well,
according to my grandfather’s notes. He bashed it with
swords and axes and shot arrows at it, and the
Quartermaster General was most impressed, he
recommended it for an extended trial, which it passed. But
the emperor said he wasn’t sending his men out to fight in
bits of botched-up rag, he’d be a laughing stock, and that
was the end of that.” He handed me the tile. “You’re quite
right,” he said. “It would do admirably.”
“Well, then.”
He nodded. “In hot weather,” he said, “it takes a
minimum of thirty days for the glue to dry.” Smile. “A bit
like planting acorns, don’t you think, in the circumstances.”
Indeed. Plant oak for the very finest timber, but you’ll
never live to use it. “Thank you,” I said. “I’d be grateful if
you’d share your research with the rest of these gentlemen.
In light of what you’ve just told me I don’t think we’ll
bother with prototypes and all that stuff. Crack on and
make me as many suits as you can, and I’ll see you all in a
month.”
Awkward moment. “About the money side of things,”
someone said.
I did a vague hand wave. “You tell me how much you
want,” I said. “Believe me, that’s the least of our
problems.”
Acorns and oaks. It’s the tradition, where I come from, that
on the day you’re born your father plants an apple tree. It
grows with you, and when you die they dig your grave in its
shade. Nice idea; it’s all about stability and continuity and
the pretty notion that things, left to themselves, will get
stronger and bigger, and that when you go to bed at night
there’s a better than even chance that the world will still be
there in the morning.
Maybe my tree’s still standing, I have no idea. I know
from personal experience that things end suddenly, that the
axe achieves more in ten minutes than the tree does in
twenty years. First time I saw the City, I remember
thinking, here’s a tree nobody can cut down. I liked the
idea of the emperor, as represented on the back of the
money. The emperor’s face never changes, only the name;
the portrait is that of Mezentius III (though I bet you he
didn’t look like that) who died four centuries ago, after a
reign of nine months. So: names and bodies come and go,
like leaves on a tree, but the emperor stays the same,
always, imperishable, like the wall. Meanwhile, on my
watch, it’s generally understood that thirty days is so wildly
optimistic, it’s probably not worth bothering. Planting
acorns.
“What are they up to?” Stilico asked me.
He’s a better man than me, but I have better eyesight. It
was one of those needle-sharp mornings, when the sea-mist
clears at dawn and you can see for miles. “They do say,” I
said, “that in Chorroe they have these brass tubes with bits
of glass in them—”
He grinned. “You’ve been reading a book,” he said.
“Fascinating place, by all accounts. Anyway, with one of
these tubes you can see things a mile away as though
they’re right in front of your nose.”
“And they make armour out of bits of rag, I heard about
that. It was a good idea.”
The moment anybody starts to bleed, there’s Stilico with
a pinch of salt between his fingers. “Not much, is the
answer to your question,” I said. “They’re building
something over there, look, between that stand of ash trees
and the old gravel pit, but there’s tents in the way and I
can’t make out anything except scaffolding. You’d probably
get a better view from the North Gatehouse.”
“It’s a siege tower,” Stilico said. “A bloody great big one.
I had my sergeant take a look.”
Bad news, like the cough that won’t go away. “We know
what to do about siege towers,” I said.
Stilico nodded. “I’ve got the Greens requisitioning
cooking oil,” he said. “It’d help if we knew which gate they
were planning to use it on.”
“Doesn’t have to be a gate,” I told him. “How’s the
artillery coming on?”
“Surprisingly well. Maybe the day after tomorrow, if
we’re lucky.”
I took a deep breath. The view from the wall was like
looking up, at the stars, as though the world was besieged
by the sky. “Stilico,” I said, “you’re a bright boy. Is there
anything we could be doing that we haven’t already done?”
He didn’t need to think long. “No,” he said. “Me
personally, I’d have built boats, not catapults. By now we
could’ve thrown together a bunch of rafts, enough to save
maybe a thousand people. But that’s just my opinion.”
I nodded. “Which thousand?”
“Ah.” He smiled. “That’s why I’m glad I’m not in charge.”
“I considered that. But then we’d never have got the
Themes on our side. They’d have known they wouldn’t be
on those rafts. And without them, we couldn’t have done
anything.”
“True.” He turned away, breaking eye contact with the
enemy, like you’re not supposed to do when you’re facing
down a lion or an angry bull. “We’ve been ingenious,
resourceful and inventive, and we haven’t let ourselves be
hindered by outmoded or irrelevant ways of thinking. It’s a
shame, really, because nobody will ever know how clever
we were.”
So I made a decision. We were going to wreck their siege
tower.
Amazingly, and worryingly, nobody yelled at me or told
me I must be out of my tiny mind when I announced it at
that evening’s staff meeting. Instead, there was a long
silence, and then Artavasdus said, “Well, I guess we’ve got
to do
something,” and Nico made that grunting-pig noise
that means he wishes you weren’t right but you are, and
Arrasc of the Blues said, “Finally,” or something like that,
and I think the only person round that table who reckoned
it was a truly terrible idea was me.
“Fine,” I said. “So, how do we go about it?”
I rarely ask for suggestions, because, when I do, people
tend to make them; in this case, all at once and very loudly.
Nico was all for a head-on frontal assault; the element of
surprise, do the thing they least expect you to. Arrasc
agreed with him before he’d even stopped talking, so,
naturally, Longinus of the Greens had to disagree; Arrasc
called him a coward, Longinus said the Greens wouldn’t be
taking part, and for a moment I thought I’d been let off the
hook. Then Artavasdus lost his rag with both of them and—
I really don’t understand people, give me inanimate objects
any day—they both said yes, you’re right, we really do need
to do it, and suddenly it was all on again. And then they
turned and looked at me.
My head was completely empty. No ideas, not a clue.
And then I heard myself say, “What we’re going to do is
this.”
OceanofPDF.com
13
Allow me to introduce Aelia Zenonis, universally known as
Sawdust.
She was born, thirty-two years before the Great Siege,
somewhere in the Poor Town district, a Blues
neighbourhood. Her mother was indentured in a button
factory. Sawdust worked in the factory until she was nine,
and would probably have stayed there if her mother’s
foreman hadn’t lost her in a game of knucklebones. The
winner was a freelance carpenter by the name of Zeno, a
Green, who spent most of his time in and around the
Hippodrome, earning money building and fixing bleachers,
rails, fittings, you name it, and then losing it betting on the
fights and the chariot races. The carpenter had no son and
his daughter, a superior creature, stood an excellent
chance of being taken on as a lady’s maid in a good house,
so Sawdust became a carpenter’s monkey—carry the tools,
hold this, pass me that; unusual for a female but not
unheard of where a man’s too poor to afford an apprentice.
The life must have suited her, because she shot up, filled
out, picked up the trade like other people get mud on their
boots; by age fifteen she could cut a dead square mortice,
taper a barrel stave, dovetail a joint, as well as old Zeno or
better. Most men would be embarrassed, but Zeno didn’t
mind; she earned him good money, her mind was almost
always on the job and she had a cheerful, uncomplaining
disposition which made a very pleasant change from what
he was used to at home. She genuinely enjoyed the work—
she liked being good at something, she explained—and,
most of all, she positively relished constructing the props
and gadgets for the masques and stage shows that they put
on to mark the opening of the big events: the
Championship, the Gold Crown, the Wooden Sword and so
forth. Now that sort of thing doesn’t just mean careful,
precise work (and always on an impossibly tight schedule);
it also calls for a degree of imagination and ingenuity,
designing the clever little mechanisms for trapdoor latches,
rising flats, revolves, all manner of tricky stuff that hasn’t
been done before and for which no guild-approved pattern
exists. Needless to say, it’s also horrendously competitive;
the Greens want their Grand Entrance to be a hundred
times better than what the Blues did last year, and vice
versa. You have to be very, very good to be entrusted with
the commission, but if you prove you can do it you’ve got
the respect and admiration of your Theme sewn up in a
little silk bag, regardless of who or what you are; even if
you’re some indentured fatherless brat from Poor Town;
even if you’re a milkface; even if you’re a
girl.
When Sawdust was nineteen—the name, of course,
referred to her skin, the colour of freshly sawn pine, and
her hair, ditto oak; brush the sawdust off, the other kids
would jeer, knowing that she couldn’t—Zeno celebrated a
lucky win at the track with a boisterous night at the Two
Dogs, and next morning stood on a scaffolding plank that
wasn’t there, ninety feet above the Prefect’s Box. By now
his wife was dead, his daughter had married and he had no
other dependants; his property, therefore, passed by
custom and tradition to the Green treasury—including,
needless to say, Sawdust’s indentures. Custom and
tradition likewise ordained that all such legacies be put up
for public auction. Whose bright idea it was for the Blues to
buy Sawdust, at a ridiculously high price after a furious
bidding war, we’ll probably never know, but it was a
masterstroke of tactical malice, leading to street fights and
bloodletting, all to no avail. Come the next Prefect’s Trophy,
the Blue fighters made their entrance into the arena on a
three-quarter-size replica of an Imperial warship. I was
there, and I saw it; most amazing thing. There were no
ropes or levers, not that anyone could see. The sails filled
out and billowed, and the ship suddenly moved forward—
out of the tunnel under the stands, mark you, so not a
breath of actual wind, the billowing effect must all have
been done with wires sewn into the sailcloth, and how they
got the ship to move, let alone glide along smoothly just
exactly as if on the water, I’m not ashamed to confess I still
don’t know to this day. It was the biggest coup the Blues
had pulled off for about a decade, and they made no bones
about who deserved all the credit. Sawdust, the little
chippie girl, sold by the idiot Greens, bought, freed and
elevated to her rightful rank of Master Carpenter by the
intelligent and perceptive Blues.
Anyway, that was Sawdust. So, when I wanted someone
who’d be able not just to copy the Pattern 68 stationary
catapult but tweak it up to add an extra fifty yards’ range, I
knew exactly who I needed.
Most carpenters are Green, most stonemasons are Blue.
I sent for the big man in the masons’ guild and told him
what I wanted. Can’t be done, he said. I told him where he
could find the specialist equipment he’d need, in yards
staffed and controlled by his guild members. That’s not
nearly enough, he said. I told him who to see about getting
the machines copied, and how many he’d need to build, and
how long it’d take. He told me I was being wildly optimistic.
So I showed him the warrant for the arrest of him, his
entire family and forty-six leading members of his guild. I
had my hand over where the Seal should have been. He
gave me a terrified look and said he’d do his best. No, I
said, do what you’re told. He went away, hating me to bits.
Can’t say I blamed him.
Then I sent for my general staff—Nico, Stilico,
Artavasdus, Menas, Arrasc and Longinus. While I waited
for them to show up, I amused myself throwing stones and
little wooden balls at a flower pot, which cheered me up no
end. I wish it hadn’t, because—you’ll have to take my word
on this—I really don’t enjoy the thought of bloodshed, or
damage to human bodies. You spend your life trying to fix it
so that the people doing dangerous jobs under your
command don’t get all smashed up, and then you find
yourself figuring out ways to hurt people on purpose. It just
doesn’t feel right, somehow. Probably why archery
instructors make such poor soldiers.
The next day was busy, busy, busy—for everyone else, not
for me. I had my men patching up the holes they’d knocked
in the shit barges. I had Theme hands working back-to-back
shifts, the masons and Sawdust’s carpenters. I had Parks
and Gardens men drilling with swords on the parade
grounds, Hippodrome wranglers sawing and banging away
in the coachworks sheds out back of the Blue Portico, and
that was just the hands I’d assigned to special duties.
Everywhere else, everyone else (except me) was skittering
about executing the orders I’d given yesterday, or the day
before, or the day before that. Hrabanus’s clerks and the
Theme ward bosses were counting the stores, which were
now all safely lodged in secure warehouses, with savage-
looking gladiators guarding the door; inside, you couldn’t
move for sacks of wheat and barrels of bacon and jars and
jars of that horrible pickled cabbage. Three and a half
thousand Green women were glueing strips of linen. Four
thousand Blues were pulling down public buildings—the
Mansion House, the Arch of Valerian, the Chamber of
Deputies—and hauling away the salvage; stone to the
masons’ yards, timber to the lumber mills, even the nails,
shipped off in barrels to the smiths for forge-welding into
spearblades and arrowheads. Without realising it, or
intending to, I’d changed the City out of all recognition.
The market squares were empty. No stalls, no shoppers, no
beggars or clusters of surplus manpower lounging in the
shade of the porticos spoiling for a fight. No surplus
manpower anywhere. Thanks to the Great Seal (or the
illusion thereof) and my friends from the Old Flower
Market, there was money for everyone who cared to show
up and do a job of work. We’d reopened the old clay seam
in Poor Town, closed down seventy years ago because it
was cheaper to ship in clay from Proxima, and nine
hundred Greens were making bricks again—we’d be
needing bricks by the million once siege engines started
pounding the walls. On the waterfront, the last two
shipyards to close down were back in business. Glory be,
they’d never managed to find buyers for the real estate, so
when we smashed down the gates (the padlocks were too
rusty to open) we found everything more or less as it had
been when the last shift moved out: saw benches, cradles,
cranes, tools still in their racks, still with an edge on them.
Four hundred Blues who’d worked there before the closure
were turning Guildhall rafters and Mansion House
floorboards into warships, using the grey-with-age patterns
they’d found hanging on the walls, where they’d left them
ten years earlier. Five thousand women were splitting
cedar planks and planing them down into arrowshafts in
Watchbell Yard; another two thousand were glueing on
feathers. And two hundred and seventy Greens who’d
drifted unasked into the City when the copper mines at
Dauris shut down had formed the new Miners’ Guild, with
the Haymarket Watch House for their guildhall. We chose it
because a lot of people can queue up outside it without
obstructing the traffic. The Miners’ Guild was recruiting:
half a tornece a day for trainees, a full tornece once you’d
got your ticket. We’d be needing every sapper we could get
once the enemy started undermining the walls. All told, it
was as close as you’d ever dream of getting to the Great
Society. A well-paid job for everyone, working together in
harmony for the greater good; no fights, no muggings,
because anyone caught doing that stuff would be thrown
out of his Theme, and no Theme, no food, simple as that.
Besides, why bother when you could earn silly money doing
a proper job? Indeed.
And of course it was built, like all Great Societies, on
lies. Lie One: there was no Great Seal. Lie Two: the silver
tornece flowing like water out of the Paymaster’s were
three parts copper, lovingly made for the government by
professional forgers. Lie Three: everyone had plenty of
money in their pockets but nothing to spend it on, with food
and booze centrally issued and strictly rationed, all the
markets and shops shut, even the brothels and gambling
halls closed down by order of the Themes (and since the
Themes ran them all, we had a unique example of
prohibition that actually worked). Oh, and Lie Four: the
happy dream that if we all pulled together and did our bit,
we’d still be alive in a month, or three months, or a year;
that we’d live to lay the bricks and man the ships and shoot
the arrows; that we weren’t all just waiting for him to
arrive, take command and issue the order to storm the City
and stamp it into the ground.
Lies; so what? Many years ago we were building a
bridge in Monouchis. We had to dig down deep to find hard
rock to rest on, and we turned up the ruins of a city.
Whoever they were, they’d built to last, and they dressed
their massive ashlar blocks immaculately, every corner a
dead square, every line unimpeachably straight, every
block lettered and numbered, in letters and numbers none
of us recognised—I don’t give a damn, but one of my junior
officers was a scholar’s son, and he copied down examples
to show his father, who said he’d never seen them before.
So there was a city, for all I know every bit as big and brave
and strong as ours, and no doubt they had their emperors
and their first families and their guilds and Blues and
Greens; all gone now, as though they’d never existed, and if
we hadn’t been building a bridge we’d never have guessed
that the green-topped hummocks had once been a glorious
living city, teeming with vitality and action, and
determination to survive, and hope. Their lies didn’t save
them in the end, did they?
Still; so what? At least we had work to do, and work fills
in the time, and time is the enemy. Personally I’ve never
had a problem with lies, so long as they serve a useful
purpose. Lies have consistently and reliably done me far
more good than the truth. The way I see it, the truth is just
barren moorland, all useless bog and heather. It’s only
when you break it up and turn it over with the ploughshare
of the Good Lie that you can screw a livelihood out of it.
Isn’t that what humans do? They take a dead landscape and
reshape it into what they need, and want, and can use. I’ve
never hesitated to adapt the world to suit me, when I can
get away with it.
Forgive me, I’m drivelling on. The next day; busy, for
everyone but me. The day after that, some clown dragged
me out of sleep while the sky was still dark blue with a
message from Sawdust; come and see, we’ve finished.
So down I went to the artillery yard, only to find it
deserted. Eventually, I found an old man cooking porridge;
for when they get back, he told me. They’re all up on the
wall, didn’t you know? So I dragged myself up onto the
wall, where Sawdust’s Greens had just finished installing
forty-six newly built Pattern 68-As.
I’d granted her the glory and privilege of that -A as a
special reward, in recognition of her outstanding effort and
achievement; the highest honour I ever paid anyone, as a
matter of fact. The emperor can make you a duke or a
prince, the priests can declare you a saint, you can make a
million stamena buying and selling and the House can
ennoble your swineherding family back fifteen generations,
but these are trivial distinctions, meaningless, because
nobody can possibly know if you’ve really earned them or
not. But to be the one who establishes a new class in the
Imperial military nomenclature; that’s something else. Take
me. Fifteen years ago I designed a revolutionary new
pontoon, one that actually works. There must be thousands
of the things out there in service right now, all across the
empire, from sunrise to sunset. But look in the inventories
and the pontoons are still listed as Type 17, like they were
before I was born. Not 17-A, or 17*, definitely not Pontoon
(Orhan’s). Actually, I resent that like hell. But so what?
I looked at the things, and saw the pitch glistening on
the newly sawn timbers, and smelled the tar on the ropes,
and suddenly I was terribly afraid. A wise man once said,
it’s not the despair that destroys you, it’s the hope. Forty-
six state-of-the-art artillery pieces, pointing at the enemy.
Sawdust’s foremen told me there’d be sixty-nine more in
place by the end of the day. Suddenly we had artillery;
suddenly, the big lie I’d managed to pull off that first day
when we blew in on the shit fleet had turned into the truth.
Artillery, but nothing to shoot out of it. Which was, of
course, my fault. Tell you about that later.
A perceptive soul like you will have noticed the strong
hint of whining that’s crept into this story. Forgive me. I
never intended to be a commander, a giver of orders,
though I don’t exactly object. At heart, though, I still think
of myself as a carpenter; and all around me there were
wood shavings curling up off the plane, and not me making
them. All I’d done was tell people to do things, which I can
never bring myself to think of as work. Truth is, I felt left
out, useless, lazy. So I went and found Sawdust. She was
down on her hands and knees, trueing up the lie of a
catapult cradle with a straight edge and a protractor. I
stood over her and got in her light. “Go away,” she said, not
looking up.
“Nice job,” I said.
She jumped up, banged her head on a thwart, made a
sort of whimpering noise, wriggled round and scowled at
me. “Are they all right?” she said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know, do I? You tell me.”
She got up and flicked a tiny proportion of the dust off
her smock. “Well,” she said, “I think we sorted out the
problem with impact stress on the crossbar with an extra
three turns of rope, and the creep in the joints is probably
no big deal so long as we keep an eye on it, and the
ratchets—”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “You’ve tested them,
haven’t you?”
She gave me the filthy look such a stupid question
deserved. “Yes, at a quarter power. You said we can’t wind
them up to full.”
I nodded. My fault, like everything else. The enhanced
performance of the new pattern was part of the element of
surprise, which was really the only thing I had going for
me. Therefore, we couldn’t test the bloody things, therefore
we had no idea if they’d work or tear themselves to pieces,
not until we started actually using them in anger against
people dead set on killing us. Bloody stupid way of going
about things, and entirely my decision.
I asked her some detail of the calibration system, to
which she answered (as I knew she would) that without a
chance to zero the engines at full power, any attempt at
calibration was at best an educated guess. Completely
irrelevant, in any case, but all I wanted to do was keep the
conversation going.
“I’ll need them ready to go by sunset,” I said.
“Can’t be done,” she said. “We need the trestles, for
raising the front ends. Otherwise I can’t give you that
trajectory you asked for.”
I gave her a big smile. “No such word as can’t,” I told
her, and walked away, giving her plenty of back to swear at.
Ready by sunset. As I said it, I felt my insides turn to ice.
At sunset, we’d be doing a bloody stupid thing, on my
orders, and if it went disastrously wrong it’d all be my
fault.
So I went to the Blues’ masonry yard, where they’d
somehow managed to do what I’d so unreasonably asked of
them. The results were being loaded on huge wagons with
the biggest crane in the City. No chance of testing that
theory, either. It would work, or it wouldn’t; and if it didn’t,
four hundred Blues and Greens and three hundred Parks
and Gardens men would be slaughtered in about a minute
and a half, all to no purpose. No pressure, then.
So I went to the Hippodrome workshops, basically three
enormously long sheds, where generations of skilled
craftsmen have lovingly built and maintained the most
carefully designed and crafted artefacts in human history:
the racing chariots.
To give you an idea. It costs five thousand stamena to
build a warship for the Imperial fleet. A racing chariot costs
three times that. Every inch, every ounce, has been
pondered over, fiddled with, improved, reimproved,
rethought from scratch. There are two hundred and seven
nails in a racer, and some of the brightest, most brilliant
minds that ever lived have thought with terrible intensity
about every aspect of each of those nails; could it be longer,
shorter, thinner, thicker, slightly more tapered at the front
end, made out of a slightly different alloy? Could we do
away with just one of those nails and get away with two
hundred and six? Could we do away with all of them and
use hickory dowels instead? Crazy. If we could breed
people the way they build racing chariots in those sheds, a
man would be eight feet tall, weigh ninety pounds, run ten
miles in twenty minutes, live to be two hundred and never
catch a cold. When I walked through the shed door, fifty
faces turned and scowled at me. Quite right, too. What I’d
told them to do was far worse than murder.
OceanofPDF.com
14
“We don’t have to go through with this,” Nico said. His
teeth were chattering, I assume because of the cold.
Actually, it was quite warm. “We could go back.”
Nico is as brave as a lion. I’m the coward. “No,” I said.
He was standing on the gangplank. “It’s a good idea,” he
said, “on paper. But we’re not soldiers. You’re always
telling us that. And everything depends on the timing, and
things we haven’t really tested properly.”
“Move,” I told him.
The plank bowed slightly under his weight. Actually,
there was no need for him to go, and the sensible thing
would’ve been to leave him behind, in case something bad
happened to me. Come to that, there was no need for me to
go. In fact, both of us were likely to be more of a hindrance
than a help. But there. I shuffled along the plank and
someone helped me aboard the barge, like I was
somebody’s old aunt. It was dark as a bag. I could hear the
barges creaking but all I could see was vague dark shapes.
Stilico was there to see us off. If we bought it, he was in
charge. I couldn’t see his face. “Remember,” I told him,
“red flag means start, green flag means—”
“Good luck,” he said. Then I heard the rope splash in the
water, and the barge began to move.
“Ah well,” Nico said. I sat down. The bottom of a barge
isn’t comfortable for sitting. “You’ve got the flags?”
I held them up, but of course it was too dark for him to
see them. “Yes, of course,” I said. “Now shut your face and
settle down.”
We’d timed it so that the ebb tide would take us out; no
need for oars or flapping sails, anything at all that might be
seen by the watchmen I knew the enemy had posted on the
promontories either side of the Bay. We’d be out of their
sight and earshot by the time we needed to set the sails or
start rowing. Nothing to do but keep absolutely quiet for a
couple of hours. Sheer torture.
No need whatsoever for me to go on this escapade.
Artavasdus, who didn’t even like me, had begged me not to
go. He said something embarrassing about how I was the
heart of the defence; if anything happened to me,
everything would fall apart and they might as well unlock
the gates and let the bastards just walk in. I knew he was
right—at least about the pointlessness of me going along—
but you know how it is when you simply can’t bring
yourself to do the right thing. So we compromised. Instead
of leading the attack proper—where I’d be sure to get in
the way, almost certainly get myself killed and everyone
else with me—I was going to be the signalman, perched on
the top of the old watchtower on Beacon Hill. Since there
was a better than even chance there’d be enemy sentries
up there, Nico was coming with me as half of my
bodyguard, the other half being Lysimachus of the Greens,
currently ranked Number One in the summer League,
therefore by definition the most dangerous man in the
world. With Lysimachus along, Nico was obviously
superfluous, but I made him come with me anyway. To
protect me from Lysimachus, I rather suspect. That man
can’t help looking villainous, it’s his job, but I really didn’t
want to be alone with him if I could help it.
The captain of our shit barge had never been out in the
Bay at night, needless to say. Nobody in the City had, or at
least nobody admitted to it, for fear of being appointed
Lord High Admiral and forced to take part in this damnfool
caper. Since none of the barges had lights, we had no way
of knowing where the other six were, and all seven of us
had only a vague idea of where presumably deserted Bel
Semplan was, and that was where we were headed. The
idea was, we’d drift out until the tide stopped drawing us,
then bear sort of right until first light, at which point we’d
know where we were. Bloody stupid idea. Guess whose.
I’d talked airily of getting some sleep on the barges, but
I was deluding myself. There we all were, twenty men and
ten horses to a barge, all wide awake, scared stiff, bobbing
about in the pitch black. Faustinus had suggested, very
sensibly, that we leave in the middle of the night, or better
still three hours before dawn; we’d be there in plenty of
time and no pointless hanging about on the dark sea. I’d
overruled him, blathering about catching the ebb tide—a
slight advantage, to be fair, but hardly a game-changer, we
had oars, for God’s sake, and it wasn’t far. No, I’d known
that if I’d had to wait around in the City until third watch,
my nerve would’ve gone and I’d have called the whole
thing off. Hardly a good reason, but realistic.
“Artavasdus was right,” Nico said. We were well away
from shore by now, so I had no excuse for shutting him up.
I really didn’t want to talk, though. “He often is,” I said.
“About you being the heart of the defence.”
“Oh, that. No, that’s bullshit.”
“No it isn’t. Just think what you’ve achieved. When we
got here, we were an hour or so away from the savages
storming the gates. You—”
“Bullshit,” I repeated, slightly louder than I should’ve.
“They haven’t attacked the City because they’re not ready.
That’s all there is to it.”
“You keep saying that. I’m not sure I believe it.”
“Suit yourself.”
Poor sod, he was trying to be nice; and he’s one of those
people who thinks that if you’ve got something on your
mind, you ought to put it into words. All that expensive
education, probably. Me, I talk about the job in hand,
problems to be dealt with, possible solutions; technical
issues, properties of materials, the defects and qualities of
things. Of course I do, I’m an engineer.
What I can do, though, is put together a schedule, a
sequence of events. Thus: first light, and we could just
make out a dark blue blur on the skyline. We altered course
and headed for the coast; just shy of where the captain
guessed the shoals were, they lowered a horrible little boat
and Nico, Lysimachus and I got into it. I had my arms full of
flags; they rowed. By the time we hit the beach, we could
see the Beacon quite clearly. I hadn’t appreciated just how
steep that bloody hill is. Halfway up it, Lysimachus the
bruiser gave us professional soldiers a look of utter
contempt and suggested that we wait there and rest while
he went ahead; if there were sentries up there, he pointed
out, they’d hear us gasping and panting a quarter of a mile
off.
He was gone for a long time and I was getting worried.
Timing was crucially important. Either he’d been killed by
the sentries, in which case the whole thing was off but we
had no way of telling the main party, or by the time he got
back from the top and then we’d dragged ourselves up
there, we’d be ages behind the clock and everything would
unravel into a tangle. But back he came, eventually, with a
gash on his right shoulder and blood on his hands that I
assume wasn’t his. “All done,” he said. That man scares me.
No dead bodies when we got up there, so he must’ve got
rid of them somehow. The sun was now well and truly up—
in fact, we were exactly on time, entirely by luck rather
than judgement. I scrambled up the semi-derelict stone
steps to the top of the tower, then rested my arms on the
parapet and caught my breath.
Amazing view from up there. I could see the North Gate
guardhouse, where Stilico would be waiting. I could see the
scaffolding all round the enemy siege tower, which must be
nearly finished. I could see the back lines of their camp,
which we’d had to guess at when we were planning this
nonsense. By the look of it, we’d slightly overestimated the
extent of their rear defences. There were three rows of
tents, housing the rearguard; I’d anticipated four. No big
deal, either way. They simply weren’t expecting an attack
from that direction, knowing full well there was nobody out
there to attack them. And I could see the little round ash
spinney that marked the furthest extent of the Citomer
forest, another of His Majesty’s deer parks, which stretches
up from the sea to within a half mile of the North Gate.
What I didn’t know was whether a man sitting in the
topmost branches of one of those tall ash trees would be
able to see me. If he couldn’t, we were all screwed. I’d
gambled on that, and there was no way of testing it
beforehand. Stupid, stupid idea.
Still, here we were, and it was time. I went to raise the
flag—
“Not the green one,” Nico hissed at me. “The red.”
Just as well he’d come along, wasn’t it? I raised the red
flag and gave it a waggle. Then I waited, to see if my big
idea was actually going to work.
All started many years ago, when I was a sergeant. We’d
just finished a job and the boys were relaxing, taking their
boots off, pulling corks. Come and play Bollocks, someone
said. What’s Bollocks, I asked.
Answer: the typically elegant and tasteful name the
Imperial army gives to the universal game of throwing a
stone and then seeing who can roll a wooden ball closest to
it. Everyone everywhere in the world plays this game or a
variant thereof. Turned out I was quite good at it; good
enough to be popular with the men, not good enough to win
and show myself up for a smartarse. But it set me thinking,
all those years ago; and this is what I thought.
You start with a stone, any old stone. You pitch it up high
in the air; it comes down thump, lands, stays put. Then you
take your smooth, perfectly round wooden ball and you
gently pitch it, on a low trajectory. It lands, bounces once
or twice, then rolls implacably toward the mark. All in fun,
of course, and it’s a good game, especially when you’ve
been drinking.
Now think about artillery. Your Pattern 68 hurls a two
hundredweight slab of rough-hewn asymmetrical rock up in
the air at an angle of forty-five degrees, which science and
experience have concluded is the optimum angle for
distance. It goes up, it peaks, stalls and goes down, it hits
the deck and half buries itself. Extreme range, from a
perfectly tuned catapult with new horsehair ropes, all the
joints tight to reduce vibration, etcetera: two hundred
yards. Which was why the enemy had drawn up their triple
line two hundred and seventy-five yards from the wall.
Let the catapult shot be the mark; now think of the
game. The round wooden ball cruises easily up to it, often
as not goes past it. Now picture me, walking up Hill Street
one evening, pausing to admire the perfect stone balls,
about twice the size of my head, stuck up by some rich man
to decorate his gateposts.
It’s the way my mind works, and I’m not proud of it. I
went down to a masons’ yard I know, made out I wanted to
buy a pair of stone balls, like the ones I’d seen. No
problem. Out of interest, I say, how do you make them so
perfectly round? Is that some poor sod chipping away with
a chisel? I get a smile for my naivety. We’ve got a machine
for that; and he shows me, a stone lathe, bloody great big
thing powered by six donkeys turning a mill, though the
bigger yards downtown use water power. Turns out a
perfect seventy-pound stone ball every hour, each one
identical; yours for the ridiculously cheap sum of—
Told him I’d think about it; that was no lie. Thought
about it a lot. But, having thought it over for about fifteen
years, came to the conclusion that I wasn’t put on this
earth to make trouble for people. I build bridges. True,
from time to time people cross those bridges on their way
to slaughter the enemies of the empire, or to take food and
supplies to the slaughterers, or carry messages backwards
and forwards to and from them—you spin it out, like flax,
and after a while it gets thin and vague, and you’re not
really doing anyone any harm, you’re just making it easier
to get from one side of a river to another, nothing bad
about that. So, I thought about it, decided I’d think some
more, got on with something else. Until now.
Until I waved the red flag.
For a count of maybe three, nothing happened, and I
thought, that halfwit Stilico, he’s screwed everything up.
Then something caught my eye, something a long way
away, a curved line in the air more than an object, a flat
arc. I didn’t hear the distant slam of the catapult arm
against the frame until some time later, because for some
reason sound is much slower than seeing.
The soldiers drawn up in triple line, two hundred and
seventy-five yards down the gentle slope, saw it, too. They
laughed when the shot pitched woefully short. They
laughed when it bounced the first time, and the second.
The third time they didn’t laugh at all, as a hundred and
fifteen seventy-pound balls bounced a third time and
smashed into them at head height, snapping necks, pulping
bones in the first, second, third ranks; bounced a fourth
time in the open space between the back rank and the
tents; then carried on rolling along the ground, actually
picking up pace thanks to the damned slope; seventy
pounds rolling just faster than a man can run is a lot of
momentum, takes a hell of a lot of stopping. Bone can’t
stop it, neither can tent poles, wagons, tethered horses,
flesh, blood. Nothing can stop it until the ground levels off
and starts to slope upward, and by then—
By then, of course, Stilico’s men had loosed another
volley.
I heard Nico swearing fluently beside me. Lysimachus
was staring as though he’d just seen the Ascension, the
most wonderful thing he could possibly imagine in his most
profound yearnings, bloodthirsty savage. Me, I felt—You
couldn’t possibly understand. But I’m an engineer, I work
with massive weights in motion and suspension. When I
was a captain they made me safety officer, it was my job,
my responsibility, to make sure that those massive weights
didn’t get loose to smash bone and crush flesh. And most of
the time they didn’t, but sometimes they did—my fault, I
freely confess, my bloody stupid fault. I’ve seen men
squashed like fruit until their guts burst, I’ve seen sharp
ends of bone sticking out through pulped skin and muscle,
I’ve seen men decapitated by flying ropes, legs and arms
ripped off by runaway rollers and timbers, men with their
spines crunched up like the veins of a dry leaf and still just
about alive—I was safety officer, my responsibility, you
can’t blame the wood or the stone or the rope. There was
nothing you could’ve done, they told me, and even when I
believed them it didn’t make any difference. It’s not
something you let happen. It’s definitely not something you
do deliberately—
“The flag,” Nico was yelling. “The green flag, for crying
out loud.”
I’d forgotten all about it. He snatched it from my hand
and waggled it about above his head. Stupid green flag. All
I could think about was what I’d done. More stone balls in
the air; the whole plain in front of me was moving, men
running like lunatics, a lot of men, a
lot of men not moving
at all. And I couldn’t remember the flag for ceasefire
(because there wasn’t one, of course; we
wanted this to
happen) so I couldn’t make the ghastly accident stop, only
it wasn’t an accident. And Nico was waving a flag, which
made no sense until I remembered. Phase Two.
Out of the little round ash spinney the chariots came
racing. Aboard each chariot, designed with infinite skill and
care for one man, were two men, one driving. The other
had charge of fifteen road pins, a pottery jar of lamp oil
with a bit of cloth stuffed in the mouth instead of a stopper,
and a storm lantern.
Road pins—bit of iron rod about four feet long, half-inch
diameter, with a point on one end and a wiggle like a
shepherd’s crook on the other. Bet you you’ve seen them,
just never knew what they were called. We mostly use them
for surveying, but they come in handy for all manner of
things; including the traditional Engineers’ game of
Throwing the Road Pin; closest to the mark wins a beer.
You can’t chuck them much more than fifteen yards
because they’re so heavy, but you can get quite accurate
with them, and they’ll go through sixteen-gauge steel plate.
Or armour.
I knew there’d be trouble, because the chariots were so
light and flimsy. I saw three turn over before they got
anywhere near the line of tents. But the rest made it, and
just as they got there, men started spilling out from under
the tent flaps, and got road pins in them just for being in
the way. Past the tents—another two chariots went out of
control and crashed—and they were where I’d wanted them
to be, right up close to the siege tower, magnificent under
its covering of hides. I saw little flares of yellow light, the
pots of oil with lit wicks sailing through the air to shatter
against the frame of the tower. The surviving chariots
turned and went back the way they’d come. For a while I
was sure the flames on the siege tower had gone out or
hadn’t caught; then a fat orange bloom, then thick black
smoke. Was that it? Had we won?
“Come on,” Nico said. “Time we weren’t here.”
I let him lead me down the hill. I felt stupid, like the time
a beam got loose on a rope, swung round and hit me right
between the eyes. Had it worked or hadn’t it? I didn’t know.
No idea what victory’s supposed to look like.
Halfway down, Nico said to me, “You do realise what
you’ve done, don’t you?”
Last thing I needed to hear. “Enlighten me.”
“You’ve only revolutionised battlefield infantry tactics for
a generation,” that idiot said. “From now on, field artillery’s
going to rule the battlefield. Close-order heavy infantry and
phalanx formation have just been made obsolete at a
stroke. Sheer genius. It’s probably the greatest single leap
forward in tactical—”
“Nico,” I said. “Shut the fuck up.”
OceanofPDF.com
15
Had it worked or hadn’t it? I remember talking to a man
once, a captain in the regular cavalry, who was in some
battle. He’d been given his orders—ride over to that hill
there, cut out their light cavalry, turn round, come back
here. So he did that, and (according to him) did it
supremely well. The enemy didn’t see him coming until it
was far too late, so he was able to roll them up like a carpet
and slaughter pretty nigh the lot of them, with none of his
boys killed, two or three with minor scratches. So, done
that, collected up his men and trotted back over the hill,
which of course had masked his view of the rest of the
battle. Whereupon he found his general dead, the infantry
massacred, the light cavalry running like deer across the
skyline, the enemy in possession of the field. He did the
only thing he could: crept back over the brow of the hill
and got the hell out of there.
The general feeling in the City seemed to be that, yes,
we’d won. At least, we’d killed a lot of the enemy, forced
them to pull back a quarter of a mile, burned their siege
tower and made them look very, very stupid. People were
out on the streets like they hadn’t been since it all started,
cheering, shouting, as though it was League Final day in
the Hippodrome. The sight of them made me feel angry,
and if Nico hadn’t bustled me inside the Palace I’d probably
have started yelling at them.
Artavasdus and Longinus of the Greens came busting in
to congratulate me; brilliant, magnificent, we really showed
them, didn’t we? Showed them what, I didn’t ask. I told
them to go away and get on with some work—Longinus
laughed, Artavasdus was offended and stomped out in a
huff. Then Faustinus came in and told me he’d always
known I had what it takes, and surely now they’d realise
they stood no chance, and go away.
I cleared everyone else out of the room. “We’re in deep
trouble,” I said.
Not what he’d been expecting to hear. “What? What
trouble?”
“The bloody Seal,” I said. “That clown of a forger can’t
copy it. We need the real thing. I’ve got a stack of
requisitions and warrants a foot thick, and no seal. Any
minute now, people are going to realise there’s a problem,
and then we’re screwed. No money. No authority. Probably
they’ll hang us.”
He looked as though I’d just hit him. “That’s terrible,” he
said, usefully.
“Isn’t it? Listen, we need to find the real thing. Someone
in this town knows where it is.”
He looked at me. “If I’d stolen the Great Seal,” he said,
“I’d get rid of it, damn quick. I’d throw it down a well or a
garderobe, before I got caught with it. Everyone knows it
can’t be sold. It’ll be long gone by now, I’m sure of it.”
“It can’t be,” I said. “We need it.”
He had that dazed look, as though he couldn’t believe
this was happening to him. “Well, you’d better get your
Green and Blue friends to find it,” he said. “They control all
the thieves in this city.”
“Don’t be so stupid.” I hadn’t meant to shout. “I can’t let
them know that all the paper I’ve been paying them with is
worthless, or that all the promises I’ve made them are just
bullshit. That’d be the end. We won’t need the enemy to
trash the City, the Themes’ll do it for us.”
He was silent for a while, letting me get a grip. “You’ll
have to tell them,” he said. “Otherwise, it can’t be found.
Only they can find it.”
I drew in the breath to tell him he was crazy, out of his
mind, but I knew he was right. “Get Arrasc and Longinus,”
I said. “Right now.”
Credit where it’s due, they took it quite well. There was a
deadly silence. Longinus was looking murder at me; God
knows how anyone ever had the guts to face him in the
arena. Then Arrasc sort of shook himself, like a wet dog.
“Right,” he said. “What are we going to do about it?”
Longinus gave him a horrified look. I ignored him. “Find
the Seal,” I said.
But Arrasc shook his head. “Don’t hold your breath,” he
said. “It’ll be in the Bay by now.”
Didn’t want to hear that, so I looked at Longinus instead.
I could see him forcing himself to think about something
other than ripping my head off. “Who have we got to fool?”
he asked, quite quietly.
Arrasc didn’t understand; I did, after a couple of
heartbeats. “Everyone who has to authorise payments on
government scrip,” I said.
“Meaning?”
The man was a genius. Actually, there weren’t that many
of them. “Paymaster’s office,” I said. “Treasury department.
Works and Ways and Means.” I paused, hardly able to
believe my luck. “That’s about it.”
Longinus nodded. “Most of the clerks will be Greens,” he
said. “Get rid of the ones who aren’t and replace them.
Then let me handle it.”
Time for Arrasc to look daggers, but I couldn’t be
bothered with him right then. “You can square them.”
He nodded. “No problem. I’ll tell them it’s our scam,
they’ll believe that.”
Now that woke me up, like a smack round the face. Call
me an innocent; it hadn’t occurred to me that, at a time like
this, the Themes would even contemplate ripping off the
desperately cash-strapped government. The way Longinus
said it, I got the impression that it wasn’t just a matter of
contemplation. Still, I told myself, it’s all pretend money
anyway. Either we were all going to die, in which case it
didn’t matter, or else we’d survive, and some other poor
fool would be left to deal with the apocalyptic mess I’d
made of the Imperial finances, in which a little mild
peculation by the Greens would be neither here nor there.
The labourer is worthy of his hire, after all.
I looked away from him and turned to Arrasc. “You have
to be all right with this,” I told him.
I could feel the weight on his shoulders. Nothing in it for
him, apart from the survival of the City. He took a long time
to find his words. Then he said, “We’ve got a forger, a good
one.”
“I’ve tried that. Can’t be done.”
Arrasc shook his head. “Our forger is very good.”
“You can’t copy the Seal.”
It’s nice when you give people opportunities to enjoy
themselves. I’d done just that. “We already have,” he said.
The things you learn. “You’re kidding me.”
He grinned at me, not a kind smile. Then he told me
what to look up, in which archive. Copies that had already
passed muster and been accepted. “We don’t use it very
often,” he said. “It’s sort of a last resort.”
Longinus was half out of his chair by now; one of the
documents Arrasc had just referred to was a death warrant,
that of a leading Green. Then he sat down again.
“We’ll do both,” I said. “I’ll replace all the honest clerks
with Greens, and I’ll pay you a million stamena for your
Seal. Agreed?”
That stunned both of them. Then Arrasc said, “You’ll pay
us a million stamena for a fake seal we could have used to
write warrants for ten million.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll seal it with the fake.”
My turn to smile. “It won’t be the fake by then,” I said.
“It’ll be the real thing.”
“Oh look,” she said. “The conquering hero.”
My belief is, either you understand things or you
understand people. Nobody can do both. Frankly, I’m
happier with things. I understand stuff like tensile strength,
shearing force, ductility, work hardening, stress, fatigue. I
know the same sort of things happen with people, but the
rules are subtly different. And nobody’s ever paid for my
time to get to know about people.
“Get me a pot of tea, would you?” I said. “I’m gasping.”
Aichma gave me a look that would’ve stripped rust.
“Coming right up,” she said.
I’d seriously considered going somewhere else—the Blue
Posts, or the Victory; but all the good bars are Blue or
Green, and if I went to a Blue bar I’d have the Greens
imagining treachery, and vice versa. The Dogs was the only
neutral ground in Lower Town. Also, nowhere else did tea.
As it was, as soon as I walked through the door the whole
place went quiet. I didn’t like that at all. I’m used to
walking into the Dogs and everyone there knows who I am.
This was different. You remember the old parable about the
holy prophet who got thrown into the lions’ den. I felt like a
lone lion in a den of prophets.
She slammed the pot down in front of me. “Fifteen
trachy,” she said.
“You what?”
“Fifteen trachy.”
Never ever, in my entire life, have I paid for a drink in
the Two Dogs. I stared at her, shocked half to death, then
dug around in my pocket and found a single tornece. A
good one, too, government-made. “Keep the change,” I
said.
She breathed out through her nose. “Thank you,” she
said, and walked away.
The hell with this, I thought. But I’d arranged to meet
some Theme bosses, two Blue and two Green; it had to be
either the Dogs or the Palace, and they were nervous about
going Uptown, so I had no choice but to sit there until they
showed up.
Hapax, the Green, turned up early. I knew him from way
back, and he’d known Aichma’s father. He gave me a funny
look as he sat down.
“What’s got into her?” I asked.
I knew he wasn’t going to tell me, though he knew what
it was. “Women,” he said.
Fine, I thought. I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by
pressing the issue. “You’d better buy your own drink,” I
said. That made him grin.
Then the others showed up, and we conducted our
business in a reasonably civilised manner, made a deal and
went away. I was headed down to the sawmills. I was nearly
there when someone I didn’t know ran up to me, waving his
arms. He was out of breath and looked terrified.
“You’d better come quick,” he said.
“Slow down,” I said. “Who are you and what do you
want?”
“There’s been a stabbing,” he said. “At the Two Dogs.”
I went cold all over. I just knew. The message itself was
like—well, suppose someone stopped you, all wild-eyed and
breathless, and told you the sun had risen that morning.
There’s always a stabbing at the Two Dogs. To make it
newsworthy, therefore—
“Is she—?”
“I don’t know, do I?”
Sometimes I wonder why they made me an officer. Other
times—like this—I knew they made the right decision. It’s
all to do with how your brain works.
I grabbed his left hand and stuck a gold five-stamena in
it. “You know Cartgate?”
“Yes.”
“Sixteen, Cartgate,” I said. “Doctor Falx. If he’s not
there, they’ll know where he is. There’s another one of
them when you’ve got him to the Dogs. Run.”
He stared at the coin in his hand, then at me. Then he
ran. I’ve seen men running for their lives, but he was faster.
Incentive is everything.
He’d gone, and I needed support staff. I ran down
Temple Court. There were two sentries, Parks and Gardens
men, outside the Admiralty building. “You two,” I panted at
them. “Know who I am?”
“Sir.”
“You,” I told the one on the left. “Get me a horse and
cart, or a chair. Anything that moves, the first one you see.
Bring it back here. You have absolute authority,
understand?”
The look on his face. But he jumped to it; he had no
choice, because of the look on mine, and that’s why they
made me an officer. “You,” I told the other one, “I want ten
sheets of parchment, pens, ink and the Admiralty seal.
Move.”
Temple Court’s a good place for hijacking vehicles. Even
with all the restrictions I’d imposed, there’s always some
senator or permanent secretary paying a call. The sentry
came back a minute or so later with a chair and four
porters. I recognised the livery painted on the door; under
any other circumstances, I’ve have pissed myself at the
thought of the enemy I’d just made. I fished in my pocket
and found four half-stamena, one in each of their big, damp
hands. They looked at them; like the Ascension. You believe
it exists, at some level you hope one day you might get to
see it in the distance, as one of a crowd of blessed pilgrims;
you never imagine it might actually happen to you.
Then the other sentry came out. There was a clerk
behind him, dragging on his sleeve, being towed along like
a small, inefficient plough. “Stop him,” the clerk was
yelling. “He’s stealing the Seal.”
Of course the clerk hadn’t been on the wall, didn’t know
who I was, so I hit him. He went down hard, which I
regretted, but there just wasn’t time. I grabbed the Seal,
the bits of paper and the pens and hauled myself into the
chair. “Know the Two Dogs?”
“Sure,” said one of the chairmen.
“Quick as you like,” I said, and they were off. I only just
had time to beckon the two sentries to follow me before we
were out of sight round the corner into Salt Street.
My enemies have always done best for me, but complete
strangers come a fairly close second. The chairmen ran
their hearts out, and all for a few bits of metal. That’s
magic. Reminds me of a story. A man sets up a stall in the
market. For five dollars, he says, I’ll sell you a magic token
which will make anyone give you anything you want. Fine,
says a passing merchant, here’s five dollars, prove it. So
the showman leads him to a baker’s. He pulls out a penny.
Give me, he says to the baker, a loaf of bread. Indeed.
That’s real magic.
Bloody doctor hadn’t got there yet; if he’d been there, I’d
have smashed his face in for not being there yet—which is
how your mind works when you’re in that sort of a state. I
jumped out of the chair—the sentries hove in sight behind
me, panting like tired dogs—and grabbed the first man I
saw. “Where is she?” I yelled at him, like it was all his fault.
He gave me a terrified look and pointed. I spared his life,
ran inside.
They’d got her lying on a table. Blood everywhere. She
was wearing the smock I’d seen her in an hour before,
except that there was a gleaming red patch the size of a
ham. There were men and women standing round her, not
doing anything, gawping. Get out, I told them. I looked
round for water and a cloth, couldn’t see anything like that.
I had no idea what to do.
Enter Doctor Falx. Ex-service, retired before they threw
him out, some nonsense about embezzling from regimental
funds. Since then, he’s been the patcher-up in residence at
the Hippodrome, except when he’s in the Watch House for
practising medicine while disqualified, and nobody on
God’s earth knows more about puncture wounds. He
doesn’t like me one bit, possibly because it was the
Engineers’ funds he was caught thieving from, and it was
me who did the catching. He looked at the thing on the
table, then at me.
“Friend of yours?” he said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I assume that means she is.”
I think that if he could have let her die, he would have.
But he didn’t, of course, any more than a savage dog can
help biting if you tease him. I watched his face as he
worked. I’d seen him in action before, notably when he
pulled a splinter of wood ten inches long out of the side of
my neck. He looked worried. That wasn’t good.
“Why have you stopped?” I yelled at him. He didn’t
answer. He stood there, his hands red to the wrists, doing
nothing. “Look, if it’s money, you can have what you want.
Or your licence back. Both. Just for God’s sake—”
He looked at me. “I’ve finished,” he said.
Oh. “Will she—?”
He shrugged. “It’s a deep cut from a long, thin knife.
She’s lost a lot of blood. It could go either way from here.”
He plunged his hands into a basin of water, which turned
pink. “Absolutely no way of knowing.”
“What else can we do?”
“Nothing.”
I turned away, sat down, wrote him a draft on the
Admiralty for fifty thousand stamena and sealed it with the
Admiralty seal and beeswax from a candle. I handed it to
him. He glanced at it, dropped it on the floor. I can never
understand people who bear grudges.
“Thank you,” I said.
He wiped his hands on the only clean towel in the place.
“Drop dead,” he said. “After I’ve gone,” he added, and
walked out.
OceanofPDF.com
16
I wanted to stay but I couldn’t. Some fool came looking for
me. The enemy had brought up trebuchets.
Trebuchets, for crying out loud. We knew about them,
because about forty years ago someone smuggled a copy of
a book out of Echmen. There’s a description, which makes
no sense (problems with translation, I assume), and a
highly improbable picture; and ever since we’ve been
trying to build one, only it can’t be done.
The idea’s quite simple. You have a lever, balanced round
a fulcrum, mounted on a massive frame. The lever has a
short end and a long end. On the short end, you hang a
heavy weight—crate full of rocks does just as well as
anything. At the end of the long end you fix a sling. Pull on
the long end with a rope to raise the counterweight, then
let it go; the short end drops, the long end whips up and
the sling hurls a stone a very long way. In theory.
Can’t be done, was the conclusion reached by the
standing committee. The stress on the long, thin end of the
arm is too great; it snaps like a carrot as soon as it reaches
peak load. Also, you can’t get the sling to release; and the
stone gets trapped in the net, whirls round, breaks the arm
and falls on the heads of the crew. Also, the cradle shifts so
much it tips over, assuming the arm doesn’t break around
the axis pin under the weight of the raised counterweight.
Therefore, the whole thing had to be wishful thinking by
some armchair theoretician, and the reports of trebuchets
actually being used in sieges in the far eastern provinces of
Echmen were just misinformation and fake news. There’s
no such thing as trebuchets; likewise dragons, elves and
magic swords.
I plodded up onto the wall. It was starting to get dark. I
said, “Some fool’s been spreading stupid rumours about—”
One of my officers, his name slips my mind, put a hand on
my shoulder and pointed.
Oh, I thought.
Five hundred yards is too far to see details, but plenty
close enough for shapes. I’d seen the pictures—copies of
them, anyway. At rest, the throwing arm leans slightly
back, like a tall, spindly tree blown by a wind coming
straight from behind you. The cradles were massive;
probably oaks from one of His Majesty’s insufferable deer
parks, where the shipwrights aren’t allowed to fell and
trees grow huge. They’d built them on a small hillock, safe
from our bouncing, trundling artillery balls. I counted
seven.
No guarantee they actually work, I told myself. They
could only just have finished building them, prefabricating
the parts offsite and only carting them up here for
assembly, so chances were they hadn’t tested them.
Untried, unproven, untroubleshot; just like our artillery,
which snapped men in half and smeared them like
squashed beetles. And meanwhile, Aichma was lying on a
table at the Two Dogs, possibly dying, and I wasn’t there
with her.
I heard Menas’ voice in my left ear. “Now what?” he
said.
I tried to think. While I was trying, I said, “Get our
artillery down off the wall, right now. If those things work
and they open up on us, we can’t afford to lose a single one.
And get masons up here. I want a reinforced redoubt round
every catapult emplacement. Then get the catapults back
up.”
Oh, is that all? “Right,” he said. “How thick?”
“What?”
“How many courses of brick should be emplacements
be?”
My head was starting to hurt. “I don’t know, do I?
Enough to withstand a direct hit from one of
them. If they
work.”
Just then, I heard a noise; a creak, and a whistle. It
didn’t sound sinister, but it made me look up. Nothing to
see; then, with a shock that made the stonework I was
standing on quiver, something hit the wall. Menas
stumbled, grabbed hold of me, nearly pulled me over. I
hauled him up. Another impact. No idea where, whether it
was close or far away; we were both on our knees. What
the hell’s going on, I asked myself. Then something
different. Not the same bone-jarring thump, but the air was
full of flying stone. A chunk missed me by an inch. Menas
was a foot away from me, no more than that, and the left
side of his head was gone. I had a glimpse of bone, and
brains, and the right side of his face wearing a puzzled
expression; then the rampart three feet to my left
disintegrated. Something brushed my face, like a bird’s
wing or a cow’s tongue licking me, the same rough feel,
only very quick. I put my hand up and saw blood on it.
Dust, I realised; grit, moving incredibly fast, had scoured
the skin off my cheek.
“Get down!” someone was yelling. I didn’t move. My
brain was still trying to catch up, because nothing seemed
to be making sense. Then someone, no idea who, charged
up behind me and dragged me down. He was on top of me
when the next stone hit, and I felt his blood soaking into my
clothes and trickling in fat streams, like melted ice only
very warm, over my face and down my neck. I realised why
I couldn’t move. You say scared stiff, not really thinking
about what it means or whether it means anything. Believe
me, that’s exactly what it’s like. You go stiff, like you’re
frozen, like your arms and legs are splinted, like you’ve
been dipped in something melted that’s cooled off and set
rock hard. The way a dead body stiffens, and if you try and
straighten it you’re more likely to break the bone than
overcome the locked joints and sinews. Like that. And my
eyes were full of dust, and I couldn’t move my hands to rub
them clear, and my mouth was full of blood, and I’d shat
myself for the first time since I was a little boy. And then
the next impact, and the next, and the one after that.
(And in the back of my mind, sounding quite calm and
faintly reproachful: was this what it was like for the men
who happened to be in the way of your damned ever-so-
clever bouncing stone balls? Did they freeze so they
couldn’t run? Which is worse, objectively speaking: half
your face sliced off by a flying splinter, or all your bones
and guts crushed until you burst like a sausage skin?)
Some fool, some brainless idiot with absolutely no
imagination whatsoever, was standing over me, dragging
me by one foot. Any second now, there’d be another impact
and the flying gravel would shred him into bloody tatters,
my fault, because it was me he was trying to save. If my leg
had been working I’d have kicked him in the face. Then the
halfwit slipped, my head banged against something, I felt
the most intense pain of my whole life and the light closed
in around me like the mouth of a sack.
I opened my eyes. They felt gritty and sore; I rubbed them,
but it didn’t help. I could see a face looking down at me, a
great golden face, oval, with big sad eyes and a small, faint
mouth. I recognised it as the Mother of Sorrows. I was in
the Palace chapel, where they have those old mosaics that
people bang on about all the time.
Then two other faces, closer, leaned in on me. One was
that idiot Faustinus, and the other was Sawdust, the
carpenter. And a voice I didn’t recognise was saying, “He’ll
be fine now” in a tone suggesting he was in a hurry to be
somewhere else, doing something important.
“Thank you,” Faustinus said. Then he gazed earnestly at
me. “How are you feeling?” he said.
Then I remembered. It was like looking down and
realising you’re just about to step over a cliff. “How is she?”
I whispered—voice none too good. “Is she still alive?”
Faustinus frowned, didn’t know what I was on about. “I’ll
go and find out,” Sawdust said, and then she wasn’t there
any more.
“You’ve had a nasty bump on the head,” Faustinus said,
like I was eight years old, except people didn’t talk to me
like that when I was eight. “You’re going to be fine, but
you’ve got to stay still and quiet for a bit. It’s all right,” he
added quickly, as I tried to get my mouth working properly,
“the bombardment’s been stopped and we’re seeing to the
damage right now. Everything’s fine.”
Oh, that. I couldn’t talk, but I could raise my left hand. I
grabbed his ear between the nails of my thumb and
forefinger and dragged his head down so he could hear me.
“Is she still alive?”
He forced my fingers apart. Dear God, he was stronger
than me; obviously I was in a hell of a state. “I’m sorry,” he
said, “you’re not making any sense. That’s perfectly natural
when you’ve had a bit of a bump. You’ll be fine soon, I
promise.”
Sawdust had understood and gone to find out. That was
the best I could hope for. I sighed, let my arm fall and
closed my eyes. “Go away,” I said, and pretended to go to
sleep.
(And then I guess I was asleep, because I distinctly
remember being left alone with the Holy Mother, who gave
me a reproachful look out of that vast, golden, unchanging
face. I was a great disappointment to her, she said; she’d
always hoped I’d make something of myself, but here I was,
been fighting again, and look what that had led to. I tried to
explain, but my words came out in Alauzet, which obviously
she couldn’t understand. So then she took a hammer and
drove a nail into my head, and—)
I woke up, with a pounding headache. There was a great
crowd of faces round me, most of whom I didn’t know. But I
recognised Faustinus, and Lieutenant Genseric, and
Longinus of the Greens. I blinked at them. It felt like
someone had made a lot of money selling tickets to watch
me sleep.
Someone yelled, “Doctor, he’s awake”, and the crowd
parted, and that miserable old fart Falx loomed over me,
stuck out his hand and peeled my eyelid back. I hate that. I
lifted my arm and knocked his hand away.
“He’ll do,” Falx said.
I grabbed his wrist. “What are you doing here?” I
shouted at him. “Why aren’t you at the Two Dogs?”
He grinned. “She made it,” he said. “More or less.
Nearly lost both of you. And what a real shame that
would’ve been.”
Then he twisted his wrist and my fingers were broken
free, and he stepped neatly back out of range before I could
get at him again. “Who gets the bill?” he said.
Faustinus opened his mouth but Longinus was quicker.
That surprised me a lot. Falx withdrew. I turned to
Longinus. “Aichma,” I said.
“She’s fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about her.”
“I want him back there now,” I said, and then I felt dizzy.
It was as though someone had got hold of my feet and was
pulling, almost as though I was back on the wall again.
Then someone said, “Orhan” loud and clear, and I sort of
broke free. “What?” I said.
“You nearly died,” Faustinus said. “You’ve been asleep
for five days.”
My head twanged like a cable. I winced, couldn’t help it.
“For crying out loud,” I said, “don’t shout. What do you
mean, five days?”
“I mean you’ve been lying here nearly dead for five
days,” Faustinus said. “And things are a real mess, believe
me. It’s been one nightmare after another.”
Then I remembered. “The wall,” I shouted. “The
trebuchets. What’s happening? Have they broken in?”
“He needs to rest now,” said a voice behind me
somewhere. “Please leave, all of you. Come back in four
hours.”
“Don’t you dare,” I yelled. “Tell me what’s happening,
I’ve got to know.”
“Everything’s fine,” said Faustinus, who’d just told me it
was a real mess and a nightmare. “Soon as you’re better,
I’ll tell you all about it. Don’t worry. Everything’s under
control.”
“Did they break in? Where’s Nico?”
“Get some rest,” Faustinus said, retreating out of my
field of vision. “Try and get some sleep. The sooner you’re
back on your feet, the better, believe me. Everything’s just
fine.”
So I got some rest, about half an hour’s worth, as long as it
took for everyone to go away. Then I got up, snooped
around for some clothes, found an old workman’s tunic
hanging up on a hook in a corridor and a pair of cracked
old boots with half of one sole missing in a heap of trash in
a small yard. My head felt like it was full of nails. Time to
go and rule the empire.
Where to start? What I wanted to do was get straight
down to the Dogs. But Longinus had said she was fine,
whereas Faustinus had said everything was a mess, one
nightmare after another. So I set course for the wall,
wondering how far I’d get before an arrow or a lump of
rock stopped me.
The streets were quiet but not empty. I saw a man I
recognised, had to think for a moment who he was,
remembered he was one of my lance corporals. He was
bustling along with a big canvas toolbag over his shoulder.
I had to break into a trot to catch up with him, which half
killed me.
“Colonel.” He gave me a scared look. “They said you
were—”
“What’s been happening?”
He blinked, then set down his toolbag and stood to sort-
of-attention, which is about as close as we get in the
Engineers. “We stopped ’em, sir,” he said. “Sorted ’em out
pretty good.”
He seemed to think that constituted a report. The hell
with it. I suddenly felt shattered and we were about a
hundred yards from the King of Beasts, from which I’d been
banned about ten years ago for antisocial behaviour. “I
know,” I said. “I’ll buy you a drink. No, I haven’t got any
money. You buy me a drink, and you can tell me all about
it.”
He gave me a startled look, as if I’d just kissed him on
the mouth. “Very good, sir,” he said, and led the way.
I always miss all the fun, and the last five days had been
no exception. Apparently, according to Lance Corporal
Scevola and his fellow historians in D Company, it was the
bruiser Lysimachus—you remember, the Green champion,
my bodyguard when we burned the siege tower—who
saved my life on the wall, dragging me out of the line of
fire, when the tower we were on was pounded into gravel,
and Menas was killed. He hauled me to the top of the stair,
which was great; then he tripped, and I went down the
staircase on my back, head-first, which wasn’t so good,
though I’d lived to hear the tale, so no real harm done.
I think I may have mentioned that this Lysimachus
scared the life out of me, and I never felt comfortable in his
company. Fine. But when he saw me lying in the rubble at
the foot of the tower, dead (as he thought)—I’m not sure
how to account for it, really. True, he was an arena
champion who carved people up for a living; a pretty
straightforward sort of man, in other words, with one
instinctive response to all contingencies; and he was my
bodyguard and (he thought) he’d failed and I’d been killed
on his watch, and arena men actually do believe in honour
and shame, up to a point. Anyhow, for whatever reason,
when he thought I was dead he went a bit berserk. He
sprinted down to the Hippodrome, liberated one of the
chariots that had made it back from our jaunt outside the
walls, grabbed a half-dozen lanterns and told the North
Gate guards to open the gates. They were Greens, so an
order from the Green champion was like a command from
God. While they were at it, Sawdust the carpenter, who’d
been on the wall prepping the catapults—(You will recall
that I’d ordered Menas to pull the catapults off the wall,
just a moment or so before his head was cut in half. Talk
about your silver linings. My spectacularly stupid order
never got carried out, which saved the City. All thanks to
the enemy; as usual.)
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17
Sawdust came running down the stairs, saying what the
hell do you think you’re doing, and the guards told her,
Lysimachus told us to open the gates. So there’s Sawdust,
standing directly in front of Lysimachus and four foaming-
mouthed Hippodrome horses, demanding to know what he
thought he was playing at. I’m going to burn those catapult
things, he told her. They killed Orhan, and I’m going to kill
them.
I like that girl. She can think. Fine, she said. In that case,
take a direct line straight at them, don’t go a foot right or
left, and I’ll see what I can do to help.
Don’t suppose Lysimachus had a clue what she was on
about, but he had the wit to believe she knew what she was
doing. He lashed on the horses and they shot out through
the gate like an arrow from a bow. Sawdust, meanwhile,
was back up on the wall, where her catapults were all
spanned and ready to loose. She made a few quick
adjustments to the lie of a few of them, then gave the order.
Off went a hundred of those horrible stone balls, bouncing
and rolling—but leaving a clear channel for Lysimachus’
lunatic one-man cavalry charge. Needless to say, as soon as
the balls were in the air, the enemy dropped whatever they
were doing and ran like deer for the high ground; all except
the crews on the seven trebuchets, up on that bloody
hillock.
Of the seven, two had broken down after the first couple
of shots. One had bust its beam as soon as they tripped the
sear, just like all the theoreticians said it would. The other
one, the sling didn’t release and the net wrapped itself
round the beam and snapped it off. That left five, all
working just fine. My guess is, the trebuchet crews were
too busy to notice Lysimachus until he was right up close,
and by then it was too late. In his hurry he’d neglected to
bring any weapons with him, but in the event that hardly
seemed to matter. Besides, the crews would have been
engineers, and everybody knows they can’t fight worth spit;
he tore apart two or three of them with his bare hands and
the rest of them hopped it—straight into the path of
Sawdust’s stone balls, worse luck, but that’s war for you.
With them out of the way, Lysimachus got busy with the
lantern oil, waited just long enough to make sure the
trebuchets were burning prettily, and set off back to the
City. He walked; the chariot had bust its axle in the home
straight, so to speak, and a man like Lysimachus wouldn’t
run, it’d look bad. He
strolled, probably with a bit of a
swagger, back to the North Gate, with the man-slaying
stone balls bouncing on either side of him, pausing only to
pick up the snapped-off end of the second busted trebuchet
and hoist it on his shoulder, as the only convenient thing he
could find for a trophy.
(And, in so doing, did more good to the cause than
practically anyone in this story. Tell you about that later.)
Anyhow, I wasn’t dead after all, and all seven trebuchets
were out of action, and when Nico and my lads came to
look at the damage—I’m getting ahead of myself; to the
point where the corporal and I had finished our drink, and I
asked him, rather nervous about the reply I’d get, what had
happened to Nico. Oh, he wasn’t there, Corporal Scaevola
told me, he was downtown at the sawmills; of course he
was, because I’d sent him there with a job to see to, only
I’d forgotten.
He was on the wall when I finally managed to drag
myself up there. He was horrified to see me. Why wasn’t I
in bed?
“Shut up,” I explained. “What’s the position?”
What follows is what Nico got from Artavasdus, who was
on the wall when the bombardment started. He was five
towers down from where I was, but as soon as the
trebuchet stones started to hit, he sprinted up the
battlement catwalk, only stopping when a stone took out
the walkway a yard in front of his feet. So, being
Artavasdus, instead of diving for cover and shitting himself
like any normal human being, or me, he stood there,
watched carefully and took notes. He quickly figured out
that the enemy were trying to pound a breach in the wall
big enough to get in through. But the stones that hit the
lower wall just bounced off, doing some damage but not
much. It was only the ones that hit the rampart that had
any significant effect, because the rampart was only
supported from below, therefore more liable to fracture and
shatter. In real terms, therefore, the trebuchets could
smash up the ramparts and battlements, but they couldn’t
easily breach the wall itself. Once Artavasdus realised this,
he quit worrying. Smashing up battlements was all very
well, but with only seven machines it’d take a very long
time for them to do enough damage to compromise the
defence in any meaningful way, and the only position the
enemy had where trebuchets would be safe from our
catapults and still in range of the wall was that confounded
hill. Long story short; if the trebuchets couldn’t breach the
wall enough to let soldiers get in, the most they’d be able to
achieve would be to make life a bit miserable for some of
our people, some of the time.
Anyway, that was Artavasdus’s story, as told to me by
Nico, who didn’t seem to think there was anything
remarkable about a man standing rock-still and straight as
a die with trebuchet stones thundering down all round him,
provided there were useful observations to be made and
valid conclusions to be drawn. That’s Imperials for you, and
it’s why I can’t really find it in my heart to loathe them,
even though they rape and plunder the earth, and regard
the likes of me as so much garbage. The worms of the earth
against the lions; the old rebel rallying cry, all through the
Social Wars and the slave revolts and the provincial
rebellions. And, yes, the Robur are predators, who kill and
maim as of right, and if they give anything in return it’s
unintentional, just as lions are the carrion eaters’ most
bountiful benefactors. Still, and even so; if it’s a choice
between lions and wolves and jackals and foxes, give me
lions any day. You can’t ever justify what they do, but
they’ve got style.
So, where were we? The panic was over. The trebuchets
had been stopped, the wall was still in one piece, I wasn’t
dead, Faustinus was in charge of the City until I got better.
A disaster, in other words, poised hovering, waiting to
happen.
And he was trying to do the right thing, bless him. He
wanted to see the grateful, admiring look on my face when
I came round and the first thing I heard was, the villain
who’d knifed my Aichma was in jail awaiting trial and
execution. So he had the Watch—can you believe that, theWatch—go down to the Two Dogs and find out who did it.
Needless to say, when they got there the place was
deserted, apart from Aichma and the doctors and nurses
the Blues had sent to look after her. So the Watch started
pushing the doctors around—they hadn’t arrived on the
scene until six hours after the event, had seen and heard
nothing, never mind—and when that didn’t work, they woke
Aichma out of the first proper sleep she’d had since it
happened and asked her. Goes without saying, she told
them nothing, so they threatened her with jail for
obstructing justice, whereupon she told them to go away, in
that special way of hers; they left. Then they went to Blue
headquarters and started arresting people at random on
suspicion. Of course, of
course, that led to a riot, and it was
only the incredible forbearance and public spirit of the
Blues and the personal intervention of Arrasc himself that
got them out of there alive, though naturally a bit worse for
wear.
Faustinus realised he’d probably been going about
things the wrong way. How he’d got it wrong he honestly
didn’t know, but he could read between the lines. So he
tried another tack; five thousand stamena reward for the
name of the perpetrator. Could’ve told him he was making
trouble for himself. Within an hour he had a list of a
hundred names, all with witnesses who swore blind etc.,
even though they hadn’t been there at the time. While he
was busy getting rid of these idiots, a Green who had
actually been there walked up and gave him the genuine
name: Solisper.
Remember, this is Faustinus we’re talking about.
Immediately he has the roll checked; there’s only one
Solisper in the City, so he sends twenty Watch to arrest
him. What he should have done, what any fool would’ve
done, what any fool’s pet rat would’ve done, was ask
Longinus of the Blues (remember, a Green laid the
information) if the name Solisper rang a bell. Whereupon
Longinus would have told him, yes, that’s my father.
It’s been a long time since the Victory riots, and maybe
people in Upper Town have forgotten just how grumpy the
Themes can get when someone does something really
stupid to annoy them, such as arresting the father of a
Theme boss. Arrasc had managed to rein in the righteous
indignation of the Blues, out of patriotic spirit and, I rather
suspect, personal regard for me. But it wasn’t his old man
who was sitting in the Watch House with chains on his
wrists. To do him justice, I think Longinus did make at least
a show of trying to calm his people down; they weren’t
having it, and he quickly gave up and let them have their
heads. Fair enough. If he’d made a genuine attempt to stop
them, he wouldn’t have been Green boss for very much
longer. Also, quite reasonably, he was mad as mustard.
When it’s family, the hell with the City and doing your best
for the public weal. And quite right, too.
I maybe ought to mention that Solisper was indeed
guilty. He was drunk, and he wanted to stab someone
who’d insulted him, and Aichma tried to stop him, and he’d
stabbed her instead. These things happen. The rights and
wrongs of the matter were entirely beside the point. I
imagine that, left to himself, as soon as Aichma was up to
seeing visitors, Solisper would have crawled in there
looking pathetic and sad, apologised profusely, meekly
taken his tongue-lashing and lifetime ban from the Dogs
and gone away. Then a substantial sum of money would
have changed hands, honour would have been satisfied and
everyone would have been happy; which is how things go in
Poor Town, so long as the law keeps its sticky paws out of
other people’s business.
So; we have the Greens in arms, ready to loot and burn
and smash the Watch House to rubble. It was therefore
predictable and inevitable that Arrasc should have led the
Blues out in full force to bar the way. That’s the very
essence of the Themes. If the Greens want to do something
—anything—it’s the bounden duty of the Blues to stop
them. So there’s Arrasc, piously spouting the truce and the
accords while his men gear up for a real good rumble; how,
you ask, could Faustinus possibly make this atrocious
situation worse? Good question. But he managed it. He
called up the Corps of Engineers—my lads, who had
important work to be getting on with, patching up the
damage the trebuchets had done; my lads, who weren’t
involved and who most definitely aren’t soldiers—to go and
stand between the Themes and stop them butchering each
other.
Goes without saying, no normal Engineer officer
would’ve stood for it. But who’s in charge of the regiment
while I’m sleeping peacefully in the Temple infirmary?
Nico. Nico the Imperial gentleman, Nico the Slave of Duty.
Of course he told Faustinus he was being a bloody fool and
fifty times more dangerous than the enemy on the other
side of the wall. But Faustinus had given him a direct order,
so he had to obey it.
From time to time I say harsh things about Nico, all of
them true to some extent. But when he hasn’t got me
breathing down his neck he’s no fool. He has his own way
of doing things, and from time to time I find myself
wondering if perhaps he might be safe out on his own
without a nursemaid one of these days.
I want you to imagine you’re coming up Fish Street with
the Greens. You’re mad as hell because the authorities,
with whom you’ve been collaborating like mad, against a
lifetime of instinct and experience, because we’re all
supposed to make nice to save the City, have arrested
Longinus’s dad and thrown him in jail. Now you’re coming
up to the crossroads with Horsefair; on the other side of
which are the Blues, taking this opportunity to stab your
Theme in the back, well, we’ll see about that. And once
we’ve dealt with them—
Well, there are the Blues. They’ve come to a dead stop
and they’re all bunched together on the north side of the
Horsefair junction. So, this is where it’s going to happen.
Fine. But as you get closer, you get the impression that
they aren’t lined up to fight. It’s like there’s something in
the way; a sinkhole’s opened up in the street, or angels
with fiery swords are blocking their way. So you crane your
neck for a better view; and there, in the middle of
Horsefair, is this man sitting in a chair.
He’s in ordinary clothes—well, ordinary Rich Town
clothes, not a uniform is the point—and he’s clearly
unarmed but the chair he’s sitting in is an army folding
camp chair, and you recognise him as Nicephorus Bautzes,
the milkface Engineer’s top sidekick. You’ve seen him often
enough, rushing about telling people what to do. You have
no opinion about him one way or another. But there he’s
sitting, in his chair, wine jug on the ground next to him,
reading a book.
The Blue front rank opens and a man comes forward.
You know him, of course, it’s Arrasc, the Blue boss. He
walks up to General Bautzes, who appears not to have
noticed him. He stands there for a moment, clears his
throat, but it must be a really good book because Bautzes
doesn’t seem to have heard him.
As a Green, you naturally find this amusing, which
makes Arrasc look a fool. You can practically smell him
struggling to keep his temper. He takes a step forward and
says something; Bautzes suddenly notices that he’s there,
puts a bookmark in the book to keep his place, gives him a
friendly greeting. There’s a short conversation, which you
can’t hear, though I imagine you get the gist of it. Then
Arrasc stomps back to his line with a face like thunder. Cue
raucous Green laughter.
Then you notice that Longinus, in the Green front rank,
has got that look on his face. He’s not happy at all; but he
steps up, and Bautzes greets him politely, and they talk.
You can see Longinus getting angry; he’s waving his arms
about, but Bautzes just shakes his head. Nothing doing.
Longinus comes back to the Green lines. The Blues are
hooting and sniggering, which is pretty hard to bear,
considering that their man got humiliated in exactly the
same way a moment ago.
And while all this has been going on—first the curiosity,
then laughing at the Blues, then sort of laughing inside
where nobody can see at Longinus getting the same
treatment; somehow, the burning rage that made you want
to kill people and break things has sort of gone off the boil
a little. You can figure out what’s happened. Bautzes has
told both of them, politely but firmly, that if they want to
have a bloodbath followed by mass looting and storming
the Watch House—fine, there’s nothing he can do to stop
them, obviously. But first, they’re going to have to walk all
over him, which is basically the same thing as walking all
over Colonel Orhan and everything we’ve all been doing for
the City; and he’s so quiet and calm and so unfazed by it
all, because he
knows that deep down we’re all sensible
people who want to save the City, and the only way to do
that is to stop fighting each other, pull ourselves together
and start acting like grown-ups. In other words, the
moment has passed. We’re not a mob any more, we’re six
hundred or so responsible adults who can see painfully
clearly what a bloody stupid thing we were on the point of
doing, and probably the best thing would be to go home
and never mention all this again—
“I was scared shitless,” Nico told me. “Naturally. But I
just couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
So I went to see Longinus, and handed him his father’s
release order, so he could be the one to deliver it to the
Watch. Thank you, I told him, for not killing my boy Nico,
and thank you for not trashing the City. Don’t mention it, he
said, and I’m really sorry about what happened to your girl.
He meant it, too. He’s a decent enough man, apart from the
duplicity and that vicious streak.
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And then, finally, I was free to go down to the Dogs and see
if she was still alive.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s you. I was wondering if you were
ever going to bother to show up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I got sidetracked.”
She looked awful, sort of grey and brittle, as though if
she fell on the floor she’d shatter. “You look like death,” she
said. “I gather you got a bump on the head or something.”
“Something like that.” I took a deep breath. “I let
Solisper go. I had to. Longinus was foaming at the mouth.”
“Arsehole,” she said. “Still, it’s more that lunatic of a
Prefect’s fault than yours. You ought to put a muzzle on
him. He’s a menace.”
“I intend to have words with him,” I said, “when I’ve got
five minutes. How are you feeling?”
“Awful,” she said. “Oh, and I’ve got a bone to pick with
you. Your bloody Supply Commissioners have been here
saying I can’t have any more booze for my customers. How
am I supposed to run a bar with no alcohol?”My Supply Commissioners. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but it’s
got to be the same for everyone, you know that. Damn it,
you were doing the job yourself, you should know better
than anyone—”
“Oh, shut your face,” she said. “What’s the point of being
friends with the top man if nobody’s going to make a few
small exceptions?”
“Aichma—”
“And another thing. There’s no black market in this
town. Really. You just can’t
get anything. And you know
why?”
“Listen—”
“Because you’ve got the bloody Themes, who should be
running the stupid black market, going round telling
anyone that if they sell so much as a cashew nut off ticket,
they’ll get their legs broken. That’s just not right. It’styranny.”
“Aichma, shut up and listen.” She gave me that shocked
look, as though I’d just kicked a kitten. “Aichma, you were
in charge of it, you know perfectly well why it’s got to be
that way. Just a minute,” I added, as the penny finally
dropped. “Have you been trying to buy stuff off ration?”
“Yes, only there isn’t any. I’ve tried the Corason
brothers, I’ve tried Lampadas and Streuthes, but they’re all
petrified. It’s barbaric. You simply can’t do that sort of
thing, you’re the government.”
“For crying out loud,” I didn’t shout, not quite. “Have
you the faintest idea how it would look if it came out that
my—a personal friend of the Colonel’s been trying to trade
on the black market? How could you be so irresponsible
—?”
“Fuck you,” she said. “I’ve got a business to run, it’s my
living. I can’t run a bar with no booze.”
My head was hurting, and I don’t think it was the
concussion. “All right,” I said, “fair enough. You figure out
how much money you’re losing, and I’ll make it up to you.
Now I can’t say fairer than—”
“You’re missing the
point.” She yelled so loud she scared
me; I didn’t want her busting stitches. “I don’t want charity,
I want to run my bar, and you’re stopping me. You know
what those bastards did? They came round here with a
handcart and took away all my flour, all my dried meat, all
my figs and raisins and olives—”
“Well, of course they did. And you got paid, didn’t you?”
“Oh, right. They gave me a stupid bit of paper, like that’s
worth anything. And they weren’t Watch or Town Hall, they
were bloody
Greens. My own Theme, marching in here and
stealing my stuff. I ask you, Orhan, what’s the point of
fighting those savages out there? They aren’t going to do
anything much worse to us than that.”
She was starting to get on my nerves. So I thought what
Faustinus would say at this point, or Nico, and I said it.
“Fortuitously,” I said, “it doesn’t actually matter. After all,
you won’t be running the bar for a good long time, not till
you’re all healed up. So really, it makes no odds.”
“You’re barred.”
“You what?”
“You can’t come in here any more. Take your horrible
stupid tea and get someone else to make it for you.”
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“I think you may have been right,” Nico said.
He startled me. It was the way he’d said it, the very
reluctant respect. “About what?”
We were on the wall, inspecting the repairs. The masons’
guild had rebuilt the ramparts in soft, half-baked brick.
Theory was, if it copped another direct hit it’d crumble, not
shatter into a million razor-edged flying shards. We were
talking about facing the whole length of the battlements
with the stuff, as and when we had five minutes.
“About them waiting for someone,” he said. “I didn’t
believe you, but now I do, I think you may have something.”
I felt like I’d just been handed a golden crown. “Thank
you,” I said.
“I think,” he went on, “that the trebuchets were meant to
be ready for when he gets here, but not used till then. But
when we launched our sortie it made them lose their
temper, or else they felt they had to do something to
restore morale. So they did something, but it didn’t work.”
On that damned hillock they were hard at work, building
seven new trebuchets. It seemed to be taking them a long
time, and I guessed they didn’t have the same calibre of
carpenters as us. Fair enough; it’s easy to forget when you
live here, but this is, after all, the heart of the world.
Naturally we have the best.
“I think,” Nico went on, “that
he, whoever he is, won’t be
happy when he gets here and finds out they’ve blown their
principal advantage. If they’d had seventy trebuchets
instead of seven—”
“We’d have smashed them to bits with bouncing balls,” I
said. “He wasn’t expecting that, either. The idea was to
pound us to dust from four hundred yards, when our
maximum range is two-fifty. And he believed the trebuchets
could crack the base of the wall, and they can’t. Probably
we’ve saved him lives and embarrassment.”
Nico smiled. “Maybe,” he said.
I heard footsteps behind me; someone slipping on the
smooth stone of the staircase and catching their balance by
grabbing the wall. Sawdust; she’s one of the clumsiest
people I’ve ever met. “Excuse me, but have you got a
moment?”
Something was bothering Nico. He looked panic-
stricken. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said. “Things to do.” And
he bolted off down the stairs, nearly knocking the poor girl
over. Hello, I thought. But I could be wrong. I usually am.
Sawdust, with something under her arm wrapped in a
blanket. “What’ve you got there?” I asked.
She unwrapped it. A sort of iron hook thing, and a ring
for it to go in, and a catch of some sort, and the frayed end
of a rope. “It’s the release mechanism from one of the
trebuchets,” she said. “Lysimachus brought it back, did
they tell you?”
Vaguely remembered something of the sort. “Let’s see,” I
said, and she handed it over.
Refined, aesthetic types like you would get that sort of a
thrill from seeing a Monomachus altarpiece, or hearing the
monks at the Silver Star singing the Absolution. I’m an
engineer. “It’s amazing,” I said. “So simple.”
She smiled at me. “You just pull on the rope, and the
slider falls back, and that drops the sear, and you’re away.”
I pressed the catch and the hook fell into my hand; no
fuss, no hesitation. So simple; but you could see how
difficult the problem was, to which this was the perfect
solution. Whoever made it did good work. But we had good
workers, too. “That still leaves a whole lot of problems,” I
said. “The beam snapping under impact. The shear force on
the axis pins.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said, and from the
sleeve of her tunic she pulled a brass tube, out of which she
poked a scrap of paper.
I have this flaw in my otherwise godlike character. I can’t
help finding fault, if there’s any to be found. So I tried. I
was silent for a long time, trying.
“Have I missed something?” she said.
I looked at her. “No.”
She beamed at me. Not one of those women who’s
always grinning all the damn time. She looked quite
different, somehow.
“I want a prototype,” I said. “And we’re going to test it,
somewhere they can’t see us. Set it up on the docks and
chuck stones in the sea. I want this to be a surprise for
them.”
The next three days were solid, torrential rain, the sort we
get in the City every five years or so. It turned the streets
into swamps, so we couldn’t move carts, there was flooding
in Lower Town and about thirty tons of irreplaceable
charcoal got soaked and ruined. And I was so happy I could
hardly look out of the window without bursting into song.
Why? First, because we had houses with roofs, they had
tents. Second, because all that rainwater poured down off
the slates and tiles into drainpipes and gutters, and
eventually found its way into the storm drains, which I’d
ordered to be diverted into cisterns.
Excuse me for a moment, I’m going to boast about
something. I designed the whole system, and it worked. I’m
particularly proud of the banks of gravel through which the
drainwater passed; filtered out all the crap and litter,
leaving stuff fit to drink, provided you boiled it first. I can’t
remember where I first heard about that trick, but it works.
The fourth day, I was down at the docks. It’s a strange
place when there’s no ships, like a hill covered in stumps
when all the trees have been felled. Actually, that’s not a
bad comparison, because it reminds me of a young
plantation in winter, when all the leaves are off; rows of
tall, bare poles sticking up at the sky. But there wasn’t a
mast in sight that day, and the only pole was the beam of
the Trebuchet, Experimental, Mark One. Got to hand it to
that girl, she works quickly and well. I’d hate to work for
her. You’d kill yourself trying to keep up, so as not to be
humiliated by a woman.
You can tell when someone hasn’t slept or eaten much
lately, let alone washed. She had cuts all over her hands,
just the normal nicks and gashes that can’t be helped when
you’re handling chisels and rasps and planes. I think she’d
reached the stage where she was past tired and out the
other side, moving slow but steady, ignoring the
inconvenient fact that everything hurts.
“You’ve changed the beam taper,” I said.
She nodded. “I found a piece of hickory just the right
size,” she said. “So I’ve gone slimmer and gentler in the
taper, for more spring.”
“That’s not a very good idea,” I said. “We’ve got to build
hundreds of these things. Where are we going to get
hundreds of straight hickory beams?”
“We’ll use ash and the original spec.” She yawned so
much she nearly tore her face. “Ash is lighter, so it’s broad
as it’s long.”
I hated doing it, but I said, “Did you make an ash beam?
To spec?”
“Got one rough-hewed, but then we found the hickory.”
“Fine. Finish it, take off the hickory, shift the fittings
over to the ash and use that. A one-off proves nothing.”
She gave me a pitiful look, then nodded. “You’re right,”
she said, “I’m sorry. I just thought, well, hickory’s better.”
“It would be. A buffalo horn thirty feet long and backed
with dragon sinew would be better still. But we haven’t got
any of those, either.”
She stifled another yawn, then tottered away to tell the
crew to take down the beam they’d just bust a gut winching
into place. I heard raised voices; they weren’t happy, and
who can blame them? They were my lads, so I went over
and gave them a filthy look. No more trouble.
It took the rest of the morning to finish the ash beam,
drill it for the ironwork, fit it out, get it mounted. I hung
around, itching to grab a plane and join in, but I couldn’t
quite trust myself to do good enough work, in front of
everyone. Stupid, really. It’s not something you forget, and
I was a skilled man, once upon a time. So I hung around
getting under people’s feet, occasionally dealing with some
nonsense or other brought down by runners from Upper
Town. I could’ve gone back and got on with my own job, but
the temptation was too great, so I told myself I was still
sick and needed the fresh air. I guess that’s what it’s like
for retired athletes or arena men. They can’t do it any
more, so they watch.
Typical of me, I was looking the other way when the
beam eventually dropped into place and they slid the axis
pin home; job done. I was reading some idiotic supply
report; I looked up and there it was, finished, towering over
me like a monster crane fly with a broken wing. I looked at
Sawdust; she was swaying slightly. She caught my eye,
grinned and said, “Give us something to shoot at.”
Hadn’t thought about that, had I? “See that marker
buoy?” I pointed. “A hundred stamena if you hit it.”
They didn’t, of course. It was five hundred yards away,
and very small, just a floating log with a flag stuck in it. But
they weren’t all that short and they weren’t all that wide,
and most of all, the bloody machine didn’t break. There was
a cheer the enemy must’ve heard, and then they were
winching the counterweight back down. “Now do it again,”
I said.
Sawdust was giving orders; two minutes up, three
minutes left. Missed again, but a fraction closer. “All right,”
I said, “try something easier.”
So we launched a shit barge and I had them row it out
four hundred and fifty yards, then row back in the dinghy.
Just as well Sawdust didn’t manage to hit it, though she
came unpleasantly close. What really impressed me was
that she overshot it a couple of times—four-fifty yards
plus,
so a good fifty yards further than even the mythical
trebuchets of Echmen were supposed to be able to shoot. I
decided I’d save up that extra fifty yards for a rainy day and
make sure nobody mentioned it to anyone.
OceanofPDF.com
20
Thanks to Nico, we’d got away without a full-scale Green-
and-Blue war, but things like that don’t just melt away like
the snow in spring. There were a lot of people going around
muttering things like
we should’ve given those
Greens/Blues a proper seeing-to while we had the chance,
and I couldn’t help noticing that the two Themes weren’t
getting along as well as they had been. Only natural, I
suppose. They’d been working flat out side by side with
their worst enemy for weeks on end, on the strict
understanding that if they didn’t the world was going to
end; but it hadn’t ended, and now we’d beaten the savages
in the sortie and seen off their secret weapon, so obviously
the so-called emergency had been blown up out of all
proportion; in fact, more than likely the whole thing was a
scam put up by the government to break up the Themes
and kid people into working their guts out for rubbish
money. And what were the Theme bosses doing about it?
I think Arrasc had his people on a pretty tight rein, but
that wasn’t Longinus’s style. He got into leading the Greens
because he liked to be popular, and suddenly he wasn’t. His
view, if he ever thought it through to such an extent, was
that he’d been elected to look after his people and get them
what they wanted. Obviously looking after them came first,
and when we’d been defenceless with the enemy at the
gates, he’d done his deal with the Devil and it had worked,
no regrets on that score. But that was some time ago, and
it was now clear enough that the savages weren’t actually
up to much. The bouncing balls had sent them running for
cover, their siege towers and trebuchets were now so much
firewood, and all they did was sit there; we could take them
if only we had a proper soldier leading us, and as soon as
the Fleet came home the marines and the navy boys would
make short work of them, and that would be that. So, all a
lot of fuss over nothing. Meanwhile, what the Greens
wanted was a showdown with the real enemy, and as Green
leader it was his duty to give it to them.
So now we recognise (as they say in the House) yet
another unsung hero who saved the City single-handed,
although that wasn’t what he intended to do, and I don’t
suppose he knew he was doing it. Said hero is one
Antigonus Vorraeus, no fixed abode, occupation a dealer in
stolen property and illegal merchandise. Vorraeus was a
Scaurene, been in the City about five years—he jumped
ship off a freighter—and didn’t belong to a Theme. What he
was really good at was being invisible, and neither the
Blues nor the Greens knew much about him. He was very
hard to find unless he wanted to be found, and having no
affiliations he was uniquely positioned to start up a one-
man black market, if only he could lay his hands on some
stuff to sell. He also had a broad, uninhibited imagination,
and a small boat he’d neglected to hand over to the
authorities.
At great personal risk, therefore, he sneaked out of the
harbour in the middle of the night and rowed all the way
down to Chirra, against the tide, in the hopes of finding
something to buy. He got lucky. He fetched up in Chirra
about seventy-two hours later, half dead with exhaustion,
and immediately ran into a Scaurene freighter, which had
turned back with its cargo hold full of wine and strong
cider because there were no buyers from the City in town.
They hadn’t heard about the siege in Scauroe yet.
Vorraeus and his countrymen did a deal. In return for a
sum of money—a small fortune to the Scaurenes—they
gave him their ship’s longboat, loaded with barrels until it
was barely afloat. The longboat had a sail, and fortunately
there was a handy following wind all the way back to the
City. Vorraeus hung about on the other side of the Cape till
nightfall, then drifted in nice and easy on the midnight tide.
He had a hell of a job unloading all that booze single-
handed, but he managed it somehow, got it off the boat,
into a handcart, then about two dozen trips to the broken-
down shed he used as a warehouse. He had just enough
strength left to stow the boat away in a corner of a friend’s
boathouse, and crawled away a little before daybreak for a
well-earned rest. Next afternoon, when he’d recovered
enough to move, he went down to the Two Dogs, where he
knew the management was offering stupid money for off-
ticket booze.
And that’s how Vorraeus saved the City. Thanks to him,
the Dogs had wine and cider again, so the bar was open, so
the Green war council had somewhere to meet and be
overheard when they planned the big rumble.
It was the middle of the night. Actually it was later,
about the time when bakers light their ovens and the
fullers do their rounds, and everyone else is fast asleep.
Everyone but me; I had financial reconciliations to finish,
though my head weighed a ton and kept drooping on my
neck like a dead flower. Didn’t help that we had absolutely
no money at all left, and I had to think of some way to
disguise that fact before morning, when I was meeting the
Paymaster. I was adding up a column of figures for, I think,
the fifth time, and some fool came banging on my door.
“Go away,” I said.
Silence. Good. I started again at the top of the column.
About a third of the way down, more banging.
I may have said something uncouth. But the tiny part of
my brain devoted to the exercise of common sense was
insisting that nobody who knew me would come bothering
me at that hour if it wasn’t lethally important. “Come in,” I
said.
Enter Pamphilus. He’s all right, actually, even though
he’s one of Faustinus’s clerks. I’d had dealings with him
before the emergency, back when I was nobody, and he’d
been helpful and not too fastidious about interacting with
dross like me. Accordingly he was now my assistant
personal secretary. And, yes, he knew better than to hassle
me in the wee small hours for anything less than the
Second Coming.
“Someone to see you,” he said.
I yawned. “You’re serious, aren’t you? For crying out
loud, Pamphilus—”
He had that worried look. “You gave orders,” he said.
“She’s to be admitted any hour of the day or night.”
Which could only refer to one person. Only she was
supposed to be half a mile away, under the zealous care of
tyrannical nurses. “She’s here?”
“Downstairs. She can’t manage stairs, she said.”
I jumped up, spilling the ink over my night’s work. I
winced, cursed. “See if you can clear that up, will you?” I
said, ever the optimist. I was pulling on my slippers. “Is she
alone, or—?”
“There’s two women with her, and a man. I think he’s a
doctor.”
I left him dabbing at a sea of ink with the corner of his
sleeve. Down the stupid marble stairs, three insufferable
flights of them. She was in the lobby. For idiotic aesthetic
reasons, there’s no chairs in the lobby, so she was standing,
her arms round the necks of two nurses. A Theme doctor
whose name I couldn’t remember was hovering, looking
anxious. “What the hell are you doing here?” I yelled at her.
“You should be in bed.”
That’s what we told her, said the nurses’ faces. They had
my sympathy. “In there,” I said, pointing at the nearest
door. It was one of sixteen ante-rooms, all the size of a good
hay meadow, but there were chairs in there, and couches.
“Get her comfortable.”
In the Palace they have bells in every room, which you
ring by yanking on a silk rope. Damn thing came away in
my hand. Then I remembered I’d fired—I mean reassigned
—ninety-five per cent of the Palace staff.
“Stop fussing, I’m fine,” she said, then squealed like a
pig.
“What is it?” I snapped at the doctor. “Is it the stitches?”
He was rolling up her dress to have a look. She smacked
his face so hard, it echoed off the ceiling. He carried on as
if nothing had happened. “They’re fine,” he said.
“I’m holding you responsible,” I said. “What the hell
were you thinking of, letting her come here in her state?”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at me. Quite right,
too.
“You three, get out.”
That was her, not me. Remember me telling you, on the
subject of my old pal Ogus, about the concept of the
natural-born leader? That makes two I’ve known in my
lifetime. The doctor looked at me and I nodded. The poor
man had suffered enough. He left, and the nurses followed.
“No,” she said, “shut up and listen. In just over an hour,
when the bell rings for Matins at the Silver Star, the Greens
are going to burn down the Blue clubhouse.”
I have my faults. But when I hear bad news that’s
palpably true, I don’t argue or ask for proof. I took one look
at her face and knew she was serious. Then I was in the
lobby yelling out names at the top of my voice: Nico,
Artavasdus, Menas—no, wait, he’s dead. Genseric. Dead
silence; then I heard their boots on the marble.
During that dead silence I knew what we were going to
do, as though someone had told me and I was just passing
on the message. Genseric to the Blues, warn them, full
permission to take all steps necessary for their defence.
Artavasdus to the Watch—fat lot of good they’d be—and the
Parks and Gardens. Nico to send for Faustinus, then
downtown to fetch our boys. I stopped him just long
enough to scrawl the order of battle and basic moves in the
dust on a small mahogany table. He grasped it instantly,
nodded once—meaning he understood and approved, and,
boy, did that make me feel better—and then he swept the
dust away with his elbow and was off like a chariot in the
Hippodrome, and I was alone again.
I went back into the ante-room. She was sitting up on
the couch. “Am I really barred?”
“What?”
“From the Dogs. You said, don’t come round here any
more.”
“
What? No, of course not, I didn’t mean it.” She looked
straight through me and out the other side. So what? I’m
nobody special. “What are you going to do?”
“Stop it, of course,” I said. “Look, will you be all right?
I’d better go.”
“Take care.”
Useless advice for a man heading for a combat zone, but
nice to hear. “You, too,” I said.
I put on my armour. Complete waste of time. Yes, it
protects you when you’re on your feet, up to a point, but
not if you’re down on the ground. Also, it really slows you
up when you’re running away. But it’s expected of you if
you’re in command, so I tied myself in knots squeezing into
the scale cuirass on my own—it’s a two-man job, you just
can’t reach the straps, let alone tease them into the stupid
buckles—snapped the greaves round my legs and
whimpered as the bottom front edge dug into the top of my
instep; the helmet came down over my eyes, so I fiddled
with the liner laces, and then it just about balanced on the
top of my head, and fell off as soon as I moved. Fine, I
decided, I can carry it under my arm. Then down two
flights of stairs, realised I’d forgotten my sword, trudged up
the stairs again (it’s misery walking upstairs in armour that
doesn’t fit; the neck of the cuirass crushes your windpipe
and the greaves shred the skin all round your ankles),
couldn’t find it, found it, back down the stairs—exhausted,
like I’d done a day’s work, and I hadn’t even left the house
yet.
Lurking by the door was an ominous dark shape.
Lysimachus. You’ll recall he’s a Green.
“Clear off,” I told him. “Won’t be needing you tonight.”
He gave me a grave look. “Reckon you will.”
“You do know—”
“Yes. You can trust me.”
God, I thought. Just when you think it can’t get worse.
For some reason, though, I believed him. “Fine,” I said.
“Though I’m not going anywhere near the fighting.”
He grinned. “Suits me.”
There was a two-porter chair waiting for me in the
courtyard. The porters would be Themesmen, of course.
Everyone is, in this town. But it was that or walk in those
crippling greaves. We set off at the run, with Lysimachus
loping alongside like a horrible dog, the sort that won’t go
away even if you throw stones at it. I tried to think serious
tactical thoughts, but my mind was a complete blank.
Everything depended on the element of surprise, which I
was convinced—treachery, or just blundering about like
fools in the dark—we wouldn’t have. But the chair stopped
three blocks short of Goosefair, and Lysimachus and I
walked smartly up as far as South Parade, where I hoped to
God Artavasdus would be waiting, his men all neatly hidden
in the shadows. No sign of anyone, until I was nearly
skewered by a Parks and Gardens man who jumped out of
nowhere with a bloody great pike. Lysimachus took it away
from him before he could hurt anybody, and then he
recognised me, so that was all right. He led me into a
building, in the back and out the front. In the porch,
Artavasdus was crouched down, gazing at the front door of
the Blue House, directly opposite.
“Nothing yet,” he whispered.
“Is Nico—?”
He shrugged. “Let’s hope so.”
The Blue House door was shut, all the windows were
shuttered. Inside there, I hoped, Genseric and the Blues
were ready to repel the first assault. Of course, the mission
statement as I’d heard it had been to burn the place down,
not bust it open and sack it. But it’s much easier to torch a
building from inside, and, as far as Lysimachus knew, there
was nobody home apart from a senile old caretaker.
I’ve never been much of a one for waiting around. I
fidget, I can’t get comfortable crouching in doorways.
“Keep
still,” Artavasdus had to hiss at me more than once
(me, the supreme commander, like I was twelve years old.)
I’d made up my mind that the whole thing had been a
mistake, trick, diversion because the real attack was
happening right now on the other side of town, when I
heard a familiar noise, the creaking of handcart wheels. I
looked up, and suddenly it was a whole lot lighter—I’d been
staring at the ground, and missed the sunrise, typical.
Nothing to see, just creaking wheels. Then they came
round the corner of Rose Street; about twenty-five, thirty
abreast, with carts in the middle of the line, loaded down
with timber. I recognised it as rafters we’d stripped out of
the chapel in the Gardens of Pacatian; absolutely prime
seasoned timber we desperately needed for catapult
crossbars, and they were proposing to use it as firewood. I
think that made me angrier than anything else.
Longinus wasn’t hard to identify; taller than everyone
else, middle of the front rank, leading in every sense of the
word. He had his very best arena armour on, so he sort of
glowed gold in the dawn sunbeams. On either side of him,
men with whom I’d been doing a lot of business lately, men
I trusted, convinced they’d got the message and were on
our side. I admit it, I was shocked, let down, like I’d just
caught my wife with my best friend. Stupid of me; because
I’d really been kidding myself I understood the Themes and
what they mean to people—me, from out of town, the
milkface, presuming. I’d been filling my head with worms
and lions to the point where I’d forgotten what the Themes
are for, and what they came out of. Not us against them but
us against us, because that’s what people are really like,
that’s what they actually want.
Well, it was out of my hands now. I wished I hadn’t come.
Remember me telling you about the old Engineers’ game
of Throwing the Road Pin? Nico kicked off with a volley,
from the balconies of the houses on either side. First the
poor devils knew about it was men dropping to their knees,
slumping backwards, dead men’s heads banging the heads
of their friends in the rank behind; yelling and screaming,
and nobody knowing where it was coming from or what
was happening. Then up jumped the Watch and the Parks
and Gardens, yelling, clashing swords against shields, not
moving an inch. Somewhere out back where I couldn’t see,
Nico and fifty of my best lads would be creeping into
position, to cut off their retreat. Now the door of the Blue
House swings open, and the Blues inside launch their volley
—arrows, slingshots, javelins, road pins. Longinus is
standing there perfectly stunned, realising he’s surrounded
out in the open, not knowing who’s against him or how
many. He’s exactly where I want him, where he’s supposed
to be.
A shrill voice, a woman’s voice, behind the rear of the
Green column. I’m ashamed of myself. I closed my eyes.
The woman was Sawdust, up on the wall, and what she
yelled was the order to loose. Twelve catapults, trajectories
racked right down; twelve bouncing stone balls, looping
over the roofs of the buildings of Horsefair and Rosemount,
pitching in the back two ranks of the Greens, bouncing and
rolling through solidly packed ranks of my fellow citizens,
whose fragile bodies took so much way off those
obscenities that they rolled up to the Blue House wall, sort
of nuzzled the stonework like friendly sheep, and came to a
gentle stop.
I’d ordered just one volley, but you know what it’s like, at
night, with inexperienced crews and everyone a bit on
edge. For the second volley they shifted the point of aim
two minutes left, so the balls wouldn’t waste their mayhem
on dead bodies. Standard procedure, the two-minute shift
had become, as Sawdust had noticed the tendency of a
formation under bombardment to bunch up out of the way
of the fall of shot, like the furrow cast up by the plough,
thereby presenting an even juicier target if you came over
just a tad…
And that was that. The clattering of dropped weapons
was like rain on a roof. They were all howling, we
surrender, don’t shoot, hands in the air like the canopy of a
birch forest grabbing at the light. And up close, the bodies,
the crushed, squashed, smeared, popped, every-bone-
broken bags of seeping mince; what had Nico called it, the
greatest single advance in the science of land warfare, or
something like that?
There were several things I wanted to do at that
moment. Standing up and talking wasn’t one of them. But it
had to be done. Had to be me, nobody else. A natural-born
leader would’ve been on his feet and shooting off well-
chosen phrases like a rat up a pipe. Me? Standing up was
like being a tooth pulled from a jaw.
So I stood up, and I don’t suppose anybody saw me, and
I was wondering how the hell I was going to make myself
heard above all that screaming and yelling. I tried shouting,
but I couldn’t hear myself, it was as though my mouth was
working but nothing was coming out. Ludicrous.
Just as well that thug Lysimachus was with me; he knew
what to do. He jumped up, grabbed a couple of Parks and
Gardens men—literally, by the scruff, lifted them single-
handed off the ground, brought them over to me like a cat
with a kitten in its mouth. He told them something, I
couldn’t hear what it was. They took hold of a shield
between them; then Lysimachus put his arm under my
shoulders and hoisted me like I was five years old onto the
shield, and the two Parks men lifted it shoulder high.
A moment later, you could’ve heard a pin drop.
Explanation, if you don’t happen to be Robur: lifting a man
on a shield is an incredibly symbolic, meaningful thing.
Back in the distant heroic past, it was basically an act of
coronation. After the battle, the winner’s soldiers lifted him
on a shield, and that’s how everybody knew he was now the
king. Things have blurred a bit since then, of course, and
we’ve got two thousand years’ worth of the most arcane
and impenetrable court ritual the world has ever seen.
Even so; couldn’t say who was more shocked and stunned,
me or everybody else—Greens, Blues, Watch, my lads, the
artillery crews on the wall. It was one of those moments
that change everything, a man standing on a shield,
something that grabs and monopolises your attention even
if you’ve just had your leg ripped off by a bouncing stone
ball.
(I asked Lysimachus later; why did you do it, what the
hell were you thinking of? To which he replied; you wanted
them to look at you. His mind works that way. Achieve the
objective, and the hell with collateral damage.)
And then I felt myself wobble a bit. Note: the shields
we’d issued to the Parks crowd were slightly curved, not
the easiest thing to keep your footing on. I swear to you, if
the shield had been flat and I’d felt just a tad more secure,
I’d have jumped off, believe me. But I couldn’t, not without
slipping and coming down on my nose or my arse, the
worst possible omen, as various would-be emperors found
out the hard way over the centuries; fall off the shield and,
trust me, you don’t live long afterwards. No, the moment
had passed, there was no way off that shield, I was stuck,
as surely as if I was cut off by the tide. And everybody was
dead quiet, staring at me as though I had three heads.
A voice in my head said,
can’t be helped. Why do I listen
to those voices? Common sense dictates that any voice you
hear inside your head must be just you, thinking; so, if you
know it’s just you and you know you’re basically an idiot,
what possesses you to do what the stupid voice tells you?
Anyway. I opened my face and this is what came out.
“Wounded,” I said, “stay where you are, don’t try and
move, we’ll get doctors to you as soon as we can. Greens,
go home, right now. Longinus is dead, this never happened.
Be at work as usual first thing in the morning if you know
what’s good for you. Blues, go home. Soldiers, to me.”
OceanofPDF.com
21
That was it. Oratory’s not my thing. It worked, though.
Goes without saying, there weren’t enough doctors.
Faustinus had managed to rustle up a dozen, and the Blues
had fifteen or so in the Blue House; not enough to do very
much, though most of the bloody messes on the ground
there were past help anyhow. Nobody said anything out
loud, but the ones who were too badly smashed up had
their veins opened, and what else could you do? But there
were a couple of hundred we did manage to save, which
under the circumstances wasn’t bad at all.
“Soldiers, to me” was the only way I could think of to get
down off that fucking shield. Once my lads were crowded
round me, screening me from sight, I hopped, not giving a
stuff about how I landed. As it happens, Nico caught me
and lowered me gently until my feet touched the ground.
“Are you out of your mind?” he asked me.
“Not my idea,” I told him. “Really.”
He didn’t believe me. Nor did Artavasdus, Genseric, or
any of the others. I could read them like the golden letters
on the Arch of Maxentius; you planned this, and you didn’t
tell us because you knew we’d try and stop you. Fuck them,
I thought. Then Artavasdus said, “Orders?” I looked round
for Lysimachus; I wanted to stick a knife under his chin and
make him tell them, it was his idea, not mine. But he wasn’t
there, the bastard. Always there when not wanted, but
when I actually needed him, nowhere to be found. Typical.What’s done is done, said the stupid little voice. “Right,”
I said, trying to do an impersonation of me and making a
hash of it. “What’s happening? I can’t see.”
“They’re going home,” someone said. “Greens and
Blues.”
Success. The disaster averted, albeit at unspeakable
cost. You could almost say, triumph. Except that, at the
crucial moment, some idiot gladiator had done one small
thing that made that unthinkable triumph barely relevant, a
sideshow, a footnote. “I want discreet patrols,” I said.
“Make sure they don’t hang about anywhere. And I want
the names of any Greens who don’t show up for work.”
Someone pointed out that there were about three
hundred dead Greens who’d never clock in ever again, but
since we didn’t know their names yet, my order would be
hard to put into effect. I hadn’t thought of that, naturally.
Do it anyway, I said, and get those bodies identified.
Nico was looking at me, like I was some sort of monster.
“What do we do about the Greens?” he said.
“Nothing,” I told him. “But I want you to go to the Green
House later today, find out who’s in charge, tell them I want
a new Green boss elected and in place in the next forty-
eight hours. Tell them it’s their business entirely who they
choose, so long as they choose someone. And then I want to
see him, whoever he is. Got that?”
Nico hesitated. I knew why. He wasn’t sure how to talk
to me, now I’d proclaimed myself emperor. To someone like
Nico, formalities
matter. So, was I Sir or Your Majesty or
Your Imperial Highness, or what the fuck? “Nico,” I said,
“don’t stand there goggling, move.” He gave me a startled
look, then the faintest, most perfunctory of salutes (he’s
never ever saluted me, only once, when I forbade him ever
to do it again) and marched stiffly away, back as straight as
a set square.
“You did the right thing,” Aichma told me.
I don’t like swearing at women, so I didn’t reply.
“You did,” she said. “If the Greens had burned down the
Blue House, the whole city’d be a war zone right now.
Thousands of people would be dead, and the savages—”
“Leave it,” I said. “Please.”
“You had to stop it,” she continued. “And you simply
didn’t have enough men to do it any other way. Actually, it
was quite brilliant.”
She was feeling better, I could tell. I’d flatly refused to
let her go back to the Dogs. So far, no reports of any
trouble in the streets, but it was too early to be sure;
besides, there was a real risk that someone might figure
out how I’d learned about the Greens’ plans, in which case
she couldn’t go back to the Dogs ever again. No point
trying to explain that to her, of course. She wouldn’t listen.
“Also the coronation thing,” she said. “Now that was
smart.”
I shut my eyes. She wasn’t being ironic. You know when
Aichma deploys irony, just as you know when a volcano
erupts. “It wasn’t my idea,” I told her.
“Of course it wasn’t.” Now that
was irony; red streams of
lava tumbling down the shattered mountainside. “Stroke of
genius. No, really, I mean it. Suddenly, nobody’s going to be
talking about anything else. You actually managed to
upstage a major riot. That’s class.”
“It was Lysimachus,” I said. “And when I lay my hands on
him—”
“Risky, of course,” she went on, over me, like a cartwheel
over a hedgehog, “but you judged it just right. It’s what
everybody wanted, though I don’t suppose they knew it till
it happened. No, I take my hat off to you, it was exactly
what was needed. Of course, it changes everything.”
“Aichma,” I said. “Will you please shut the fuck up?”
Nico was still speaking to me, though he was jumpy as a
cat. Artavasdus kept looking sideways at me, as if
expecting me to turn back into a dragon at any moment.
Faustinus took me to one side and said he’d thought long
and hard about it and he was on my side, no matter what,
but even so, he felt he ought to protest, in the strongest
possible terms. Oh, and crowds started cheering me in the
street, which was just bizarre.
The Green committee came to see me. It was all a bit
awkward to start with; they stood there, with their hats in
their hands and imaginary invisible nooses round their
necks, until I offered them a beer. Then they all sort of
shuffled backwards, leaving one Bronellus sort of stranded,
like a beached whale.
I looked at him. “You’re it, then.”
Bronellus isn’t someone you look at if you can help it.
He’s got this scar, cheekbone to cheekbone, no tip to his
nose. He didn’t say anything, which I took to be a
confirmation.
“Congratulations,” I said, and stuck out my hand. He
shied back, then took it and shook it. “Right, we need to get
you up to speed. Basically, these are the areas the Greens
are responsible for.”
I don’t suppose he took half of it in, though I came to
realise he was an intelligent man; rather more so than
Longinus, rest his soul. Later I heard that nobody wanted
the job at any price; there was a deathly silence in the
Green chapter-house, everybody holding his breath and
trying to be invisible. Eventually Bronellus stuck his paw in
the air and said, “I’ll do it,” like the fifth man cast away in
the open boat with water enough for four. Apparently he
was the life and soul of the party when he was younger. But
when he got the scar he went all quiet, and had stayed that
way ever since.
I prattled about his duties and responsibilities until I
couldn’t think of anything else to say, and then I smiled at
him. He looked at me. “What’s going to happen to the
Greens?” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“After the other night. What are you going to do?”
“Oh, that,” I said. “All right, tell you what. When you can
think of some punishment that won’t make matters a whole
lot worse, come and tell me and we’ll see what we can do.
Otherwise, put it right out of your mind, as far as it’ll go.”
He considered me as though I was an equation, then
nodded. “No more trouble,” he said.
“Plenty of trouble,” I replied. “Everyone seems to have
forgotten, but we’re under siege. If they attack, and if they
can stomach the losses they’ll take getting as far as the
gate, I don’t think there’s very much we can do to stop
them. I’d like you to think about that.”
His eyes went wide. “As bad as that.”
I nodded. “But that doesn’t leave this room. What we’ve
got to do,” I went on, “you and me and Arrasc and a few
others, is make sure they don’t attack. Not till the Fleet
gets here.”
“You’ve heard from them.”
“No,” I said. “But out there somewhere we’ve got six
hundred warships, with a full complement of marines.
Sooner or later they’ll come sailing up the Bay, and then
things will be easier. Then we’ll have a chance. Meanwhile,
we hold the fort. All right?”
He nodded. “No more trouble,” he said. “I promise.”
“Good enough for me.” And I meant it. In the course of a
long (feels that way, anyhow) and eventful life, I’ve learned
that nothing encourages good faith, loyalty and a desire to
work tirelessly for the common good like blind terror. If he
was scared enough, who knows?
OceanofPDF.com
22
Unless you’ve spent your entire life in a cave under a
mountain somewhere, you know all about the volcano that
buried the mighty city of Perennis under a million tons of
ash in about five minutes, roughly a thousand years ago.
What you may not know is that Eugenes IV, the scholar-
emperor and philosopher-king who lost half the eastern
provinces and presided over plague and famine, and is
therefore referred to in the histories as The Wise, sent
three regiments of Guards to the site of Perennis to dig it
all up. Which they duly did; it took three years and cost
more than the Fifth Fleet, or enough corn to feed two
provinces, but they managed it, in spite of Eugenes
insisting that they remove the hardened ash with trowels
and little brushes, to avoid damaging the remains.
About a hundred years before my time, of course, but I
read the official report, which ended up in the Engineers’
archive, presumably because the project involved digging.
What they found was weird enough to jangle the brains of
the career Guards officer who wrote it all up; you can tell
how deeply it got to him by the way his style deteriorates,
from textbook military reportage to barely coherent
ramblings. It takes something special to do that.
What they found was human shapes; not bodies, but a
sort of eggshell of hardened ash enclosing where the body
had once been—a bit like the lost-wax process the bronze-
casters use. One smart tap and the outer shell crumbles
away and there’s nothing inside, flesh and bone having long
since rotted and seeped away through the porous shell.
There was no chance of making out fine detail, faces and so
on, because all of that information would’ve been on the
inside of the shell. Instead, what remained was a sort of
generic human shape; Everyman, if you like, frozen in a few
minutes of crucial action, going about his supremely
ordinary life just as the world exploded around him.
Because the ash came down so damn fast, the report
said, there was no time to panic. Most of the dead clearly
hadn’t really understood what was going on. They found
people asleep in bed, sitting on stools writing up ledgers,
squatting on potties, one couple at it like knives in an
alleyway, completely oblivious of everything except each
other—touching, or bloody stupid; what they didn’t find
was people panicking, running through the streets,
kneeling before altars in prayer, writhing on the ground in
agony. So quick, they never knew it was happening. Vague
human shapes, no faces. You and me. Everyman.
I mention this because that’s how the world changes. It’s
either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so
gradual that we don’t notice. It’s only later, when books are
written and scholars decide what mattered and what didn’t,
that red lines are drawn—before this point, the world was
this way, after this point, everything was different. You
could be there and not have a clue. You could be asleep, or
looking the other way, having a quiet shit or screwing in an
alley, and an unseen pen draws a line. Here the Empire
ended. Here the Dark Ages began.
I
was there, as it happens. And I was awake, and taking
notice; possibly the only man alive who was looking out for
it, expecting it to happen. I was lying in bed, unable to
sleep, going over the minutiae of trebuchet design in my
head. I know Faustinus was at home, fast asleep; Nico was
officer of the day, so he was in his lair at Headquarters,
probably drawing up duty rosters. Aichma was playing
checkers with one of the cleaners. Probably I asked
Artavasdus where he was—later, of course—and
presumably he told me, but if so I’ve forgotten what he
said. Anyway, that’s us accounted for when the ash of
History started to fall. None of us were looking up, so of
course we never saw it.
Not that there was anything much to see. A junior
button-man of the Blues who was on sentry-go on the North
Gate tower reckons he saw torches, about seven, eight
hundred yards away. He says he wondered who was riding
into the enemy camp at that time of night, made a mental
note to report it when he came off shift but forgot to do so.
Who knows? Maybe what he saw was the moment that
changed everything, or maybe it was someone else riding
into camp in the middle of the night, and when the real
event happened he was looking the other way, or having a
crafty piss in a dark corner.
Like it matters. There was, of course, nothing we could
have done about it, any more than the poor fools at
Perennis could’ve stopped the ash.
No, the first we knew about something having changed was
when a column of soldiers appeared on top of the Hog’s
Back ridge, heading down the valley on the old West Road.
And, because people are idiots who will insist on hoping for
the best, we honestly believed that they were our boys,
Imperial troops marching to relieve the City. Suddenly
everyone was up on the wall, trying to see. People with
especially good eyesight were hustled to the front, and they
said, whoever they are, they’re wearing red cloaks, they’ve
got regulation shields, they look like our boys; and we’d all
filled our lungs to start cheering when the column turned
sharp left down the Toll Road—heading not for the gates
but the enemy camp. Fine, we all said, they’re going to
attack. But horsemen were riding out to meet them. A brief
conference of leaders; then the new army marched into
camp, and they lit fires to cook them breakfast.
All morning and half the afternoon they filed in, regiment
after regiment; they pitched their tents, stacked their
shields and spears, unloaded their carts, lined up for beans
and bacon. We put the total at about twenty thousand, give
or take a few hundred. That was the first day.
The next day, eight thousand more. Two days later,
twelve thousand. The day after that, nine thousand, mostly
cavalry. Five days after that, twenty-one thousand. The
whole of the flat plain between Nine Springs and Old Castle
was filled with their supply carts, and the meadows where
the City women used to do their washing beside the river
became a corral for their draught oxen.
Seventy plus forty is a hundred and ten. A hundred and
ten thousand men; almost as many outside the walls as
inside.
“You were right,” Nico said to me. “They were waiting
for something. I think we can guess what it was.”
Yes, I didn’t say, but it makes no sense. Something was
missing. Or something else had happened (more important
than the arrival of seventy thousand enemies), and at the
time we’d been looking the other way.
“Imperial issue stuff,” Artavasdus repeated. “Everything
they’ve got is Imperial issue. They must have taken
Classis.”
I reminded him; Classis was ashes. “Well, obviously it
isn’t,” he replied. “Because all the gear for the whole
empire is stored and issued there. So, obviously, that’s
where it’s all come from.”
“It could be surplus,” someone suggested. “We sell off a
lot of equipment.”
“Not that much,” Artavasdus snapped. “Not current
pattern.”
“Then maybe they’re copying our stuff,” said Glycerius, a
young second lieutenant I’d recently promoted. “You can’t
tell if it’s genuine or copies. They’re too far away to see
details.”
“I think the supply clerks at Classis must’ve been selling
stores on the quiet,” Genseric said. “They were always a
bunch of crooks. Isn’t that right, Chief?”
“Quite true,” I said. “But the scale of it. Seventy
thousand sets of full kit.”
“Drop in the ocean,” Genseric assured me. “You’ve been
to Classis, you know the vast amount of stock they carried.
And the stories I’ve heard, about wastage. You went into
the stores with a chit for twenty Size Three bolts, they’d
say, sorry, you can’t have just twenty, they come in barrels
of a thousand or not at all. I imagine it was the same for
breastplate scales, mail rings—”
“It’s possible,” I said. “Not sure I’m convinced, but it
could have happened. A lot of our stuff came to us that way,
I know that for a fact.”
I like to let them talk things out, but fact isn’t a
democratic process; if a thing isn’t true it isn’t true, even if
everybody votes that it is. I was fairly sure I knew how the
enemy had come by all that equipment. But this wasn’t the
time for saying that sort of thing out loud.
Aichma, however, likes to brandish the truth in your face.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” she said. “They got it where the first
lot got their stuff from. Off dead bodies.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” I said.
“Of course it did. That’s why nobody’s come to relieve
us. They’re all dead.”
“Keep your voice down.”
Her eyes went wide, and she lowered her voice. “It
explains everything. That’s what they’ve been waiting for.
They didn’t want to start the assault until the rest of our
armies had been accounted for.”
She was feeling better, evidently. “I’m not sure,” I said.
“You mean you’re deluding yourself.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But seventy thousand is a lot of men.
Where did they all come from? And it’d be more than
seventy thousand,” I added quickly, before she could
interrupt. “If they’ve really wiped out all the armies in the
provinces, inevitably they’ll have taken heavy losses. Say
fifty thousand, and that’s as low as I’m prepared to go. A
hundred and twenty thousand competent fighting men,
good enough to beat Imperial regulars? Where did they
come from?”
She frowned. “Search me,” she said. “Where the forty
thousand who wiped out General Priscus came from,
presumably. Nobody’s ever explained that, but we know it
happened. The mystery just got a bit bigger, that’s all.”
Sometimes she can be so annoying. “You can’t leave it at
that,” I said. “They must have come from somewhere. They
must be something. Unless someone got hold of a box of
dragons’ teeth and neglected to read the warning on the
lid.”
She gave me that look. “Of course,” she said patiently.
“But we don’t know and we’ve no way of finding out, unless
there’s stuff you haven’t told me. Is there?”
“No.”
“Fine. Saloninus the philosopher reckoned he could
deduce the nature and origin of the whole universe from a
single grain of sand. I work for a living, so I haven’t got the
time or the patience. When you get some more facts, tell
me and I’ll see what I can do.”
OceanofPDF.com
23
I was in a meeting with the Blue and Green bosses. Nobody
had told me that, back end of last season, Arrasc and
Bronellus had met in the arena, one of those mock battles
the punters like so much; ten men on each side, and it’s
over when there’s only one man standing. That had been
Bronellus. Everyone thought Arrasc was dead, but Doctor
Falx pulled him round and sewed him up and he survived;
than which there’s no greater disgrace, apparently. The
rule is, no grudges. More honoured in the breach, as the
saying goes.
So, it was a sticky meeting. Neither of them took their
eyes off me for a second, for fear of having to look at the
other man. Actually, we got a lot done, since each of them
was trying to be more reasonable than the other. Still, it’s
hard to feel at ease when you’re in the same room as a
combined mass of nearly six hundred pounds of top-flight
killer and you just know that one wrong word—
A clerk came in, I didn’t know his name. Strict orders not
to be disturbed, and the poor man looked petrified.
“What?” I snapped at him, mostly because I was so
nervous.
“There’s an embassy,” he said.
Made no sense. “Sailed into the Bay?”
“No, sir. From the enemy. They’re flying a white flag.”
You may recall that, when I tried to negotiate, they shot
at me. “You’re kidding.”
“No, sir.”
I jumped up. “Gentlemen, I suggest we adjourn. Thank
you for your time.” I left them sitting there—crazy thing to
do, but luckily no harm came of it—and followed the poor
clerk out into the courtyard, where Nico was waiting for
me, looking worried.
“They want to talk,” I said.
“Apparently.”
“How many?”
“Twelve horsemen, one white flag. They’ve stopped
about three-fifty yards from their lines.”
Well within shot from the catapults, in other words. For a
moment, I had my hands full just breathing.
“Fine,” I said. “I guess we’d better go and see what they
want.”
Lysimachus came, too. I think Nico would’ve had to fight
him to make him go away, and I’m not sure who’d have
won. So, the three of us, on horseback, rode out of the
North Gate, feeling very strange indeed. It had been so
long since the gate had been opened, and since we’d any of
us done something as normal as riding down a paved road.
Lysimachus, by the way, was no horseman. He was clinging
to the pommel of the saddle with both hands, the reins
knotted on the nape of the horse’s neck, the way kids ride.
Fifty yards between them and us, and someone called
out, “That’s far enough. Leave your blue friends there and
come on alone.”
I thought about it, and came to the conclusion that if
they wanted to kill me they could do it perfectly easily with
or without Nico and Lysimachus. “It’s all right,” I told
them, “I’ll be fine. Stay here, and don’t interfere.”
I rode forward. So did one of the twelve; a dazzling
figure head to toe in actual gold armour—not polished
bronze, not even gold plate, the real deal. Nothing else
shines quite like it. The clown, I thought; but he was the
size of a house and he seemed to be controlling the horse
by sheer willpower; bareback, no reins. I only ever knew
one man who could do that, and I knew for a fact he was
dead.Leave your blue friends. Odd way to start a negotiation.
He stopped his horse about fifteen yards from me, slid
off easily, walked towards me. I dismounted; rather a
performance, as I got my foot stuck in the stirrup; grace
isn’t my strong suit. My back hurt, and I was crouching like
an old man.
Golden Man was wearing one of those parade helmets,
where the visor’s a mask that covers your face. His was the
face of the Eternal Sun. He undid the buckle and lifted it
off. I stared.
I know him, I thought. Only—
“Caltepec,” I said. Couldn’t stop myself. The name burst
out, like the evil sheep that won’t stay in the pen.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “It’s me.”
Caltepec; I’d know him anywhere. He taught me to tickle
trout and flip a flat stone across a river, when I was five
years old. But it couldn’t be Caltepec, because that was
over forty years ago, and he’d have changed. Also, he was
dead.
He was looking at me. Overjoyed to see me, exasperated
because I was being so dense. “Who are you?” I said.
“Orhan, for crying out loud.” Caltepec, the blacksmith in
our village. Tallest, strongest man in the district, also the
gentlest and the kindest. The father of my best mate. The
Sherden killed him. “Orhan, you halfwit, it’s
me.”
And then, just as the penny dropped and I realised, he
lunged forward, threw his arms round me and gave me a
hug that forced all the air out of my lungs. He never did
know his own strength, my pal Ogus.
“Let go of me,” I whispered. “I can’t breathe.”
“Say what? Oh, sorry.” He let go and I staggered back,
gasping for breath. He really did look the spit and image of
his old man. “You know what, Orhan, you haven’t changed
a bit. God, it’s good to see you.”
“Ogus? What the
hell are you doing here?”
He gave me that grin; like looking straight into the sun,
which you aren’t really supposed to do. “Long story,” he
said. “Come on, let’s have a drink.”
I was still short of breath. “I can’t,” I said. “They’ll think
—”
“Oh, screw them,” said Ogus cheerfully. “Tell ’em you’ll
be back directly.”
Crazy. But I turned round to face my escort. They were
on foot. Nico had Lysimachus’s arms behind his back, to
restrain him from charging up and pulling Ogus’s head off,
for touching me. “It’s all right,” I called out to them. “I’m
going to their camp, to talk. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
The way the wind was blowing, I didn’t catch what Nico
said. Didn’t need to. Are you out of your tiny mind, or
words to that effect. But what the hell. It’s not every day
you meet an old friend. “I’ll be fine,” I repeated. “Go back.
Take the horse.” Then I turned my back on them and
walked back to Ogus, my pal.
OceanofPDF.com
24
“I knew you were here, of course,” Ogus was saying, as we
walked back to the enemy lines. “Counting on it, if truth be
known. Of course, you being in charge of the whole
shooting match is the most amazing stroke of luck. I never
anticipated
that.”
His legs are so much longer than mine, so I always have
to trot to keep up. All my life I’ve walked really fast, habit I
got into, keeping up with Ogus when we were kids. “Ogus,”
I said, “what are you talking about?”
“This is my tent,” he said, pointing at something the size
of the Capitol, only made of cloth-of-gold rather than basalt.
“I managed to get some of that tea you like, the black stuff
with the dried yellow flowers.” He stopped and gave me
another terrifying hug. “You have no idea how good it is to
see you again, my dear old friend. Tea!” he thundered. And
there it suddenly was, on a silver tray.
I lowered myself awkwardly into a sort of seething bog
of cushions. Ogus wasn’t drinking tea, of course. He
knocked the top off a bottle and took three enormous glugs.
“How long’s it been?” he said. “Thirty years?”
“Thirty-seven,” I said. “I thought you were dead.”
“Me? God, no.” He was grinning. “Oh, of course, you
were sold on when I was down with that nasty go of fever.
Actually, that was a real stroke of luck. By the time it
cleared up the buyers from Lepcis were in town. That’s
where I went. Marvellous place. Been there?”
I shook my head.
“I was seventeen years in Lepcis,” he said. “Worked my
ticket in six, set up on my own, made a go of it. Then, of
course, I came back. I know all about you, of course. You’ve
made a real go of it, I’ll give you that. I always knew you’d
do well.”
It was the tea I especially like. You can’t always get it,
even in the City. No idea where it comes from. “Thanks,” I
said. “Ogus, what are you doing here?”
He gave me a blank look. “How do you mean?” he said.
“With these—” Couldn’t think of the right word. Probably
just as well.
“What? Oh come on, Orhan, you never used to be stupid.
This is my army.”
Now I looked at him, I could see the differences. Caltepec
was a bit rounder in the face. And, of course, his eyes were
grey, not blue.
“I always knew this was what I was born for,” Ogus was
saying. “Ever since—well, you know. I remember sitting by
that miserable fire in the rain, that day we reached the sea.
I thought to myself, this is all wrong, it’s got to stop. And
then it sort of came to me, out of the blue. Someone’s got
to stop it, and that someone is me.”
I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “Excuse me,”
I said. “Stop what, exactly?”
“The Robur, of course.” He was still beaming at me.
“Wipe every single one of those bastards off the face of the
earth. It’s the only way, you know that, a smart fellow like
you.”
“It was the Sherden—”
He raised his hand, and I couldn’t have said anything
even if I’d wanted to. “They don’t matter,” he said. “The
Sherden only steal children because the Robur pay money
for them. I don’t hold a grudge against the Sherden.
Actually, they’ve been bloody useful. Well, you know that,
obviously.”
I looked at him. He’s the sort of man everybody’s eyes
naturally turn to, like sunflowers. “You did all this.”
“Took me a while,” he said. “It’s been a real game, I’m
telling you. There were times when I thought, the hell with
it, why me, why should I bother? And then I thought of
you.”
It could have been worse. The sky could have fallen on
my head, with nail-studded clouds. “You what?”
“Don’t you remember? My God. You must remember.”
“Remember what, for crying out loud?”
At which point, I remembered.
Picture me, nine years old, huddled by a dying fire, wet
through, beside a road somewhere between what used to
be home and the coast. Ten days’ forced march in the
Sherden slave caravan; we’d had a couple of bowls of filthy
porridge and a few slurps of muddy water out of puddles,
our feet were bare and raw, the ropes round our necks and
wrists had chafed the skin off—to be honest, all that hardly
registered. Nine days’ march, I’d been so numb I wasn’t
taking it in. Just numb, that was all. I hadn’t shed a single
tear—not sure I ever got round to it, now I come to think of
it. Too wrapped up in my strange, confused thoughts, which
were basically: this can’t be happening, none of this is true,
sooner or later they’ll let us in on the joke and we can all
go home. Tenth day, the penny dropped. My life was going
to be different from now on. I wasn’t angry or frightened.
I’m not sure I gave a damn. As an experiment, I tried to
remember what my father and mother looked like. Is that
them, I asked myself, and I wasn’t sure. The pictures in my
head were like the portraits on the coins; exaggerated,
idealised, crude, could be more or less anybody, and you
only know who it’s supposed to be by the letters round the
edge; Siyyah, father, or Erstam, mother. I remember
thinking what a callous, worthless little shit I must be, to
feel so very little.
But Ogus, next to me, was crying his eyes out. Now that
was really weird. Ogus didn’t cry; not when he fell and cut
himself to the bone, not when he was caught stealing and
whipped, not when his sister was carried away by the river
and drowned. Not that he was callous and unfeeling, like
me (apparently). If anyone else was sad or frightened, Ogus
would be there, saying exactly the right thing or not saying
anything at all, strong, wise, dependable, master of every
situation and vicissitude, invincible. Never could figure out
why someone like him chose to hang out with someone like
me; but that was Ogus for you. He didn’t need a reason to
be your friend, he didn’t need anything in return—what
could anybody give him that he hadn’t already got?
And there he was, broken at last; it shocked me more
than I could believe possible. And, goes without saying, I
hadn’t the faintest idea what to do or say. All I knew was, I
had to stop those tears, before I lost all faith in everything.
It was like seeing your father cry, or God. So I said the first
thing that came into my head, something like, “Don’t worry,
it’ll be all right, we’re better than them, one day we’ll get
them for this, you’ll see.” I think I said that because Ogus
was a great one for honour, in those days; if someone got
you, you had to get them back, or the balance of nature
would be disturbed. And once he’d exacted vengeance a
few times, nobody wanted to mess with him, and so of
course he was proved right. Not that I ever doubted him for
a minute.
Well, he stopped crying, at any rate, but he went all
quiet, not like him at all. Then, the next day or the day after
that, he stumbled and fell on the march, stood up and got
back in line, and he had something crushed in his hand, a
mushroom. I whispered to him, you don’t want to eat that,
it’s poisonous. He looked straight ahead and hissed back, I
know. And the day after that, when it was our turn to take
the guards their food, I think (couldn’t swear to it) I saw
him drop something in one of the bowls; and that night one
of the guards woke us up with his screaming, and was dead
by morning.
I didn’t say anything. But, as we walked past the body,
he sort of nudged me and said, Thanks. I pretended I
hadn’t heard.
“Oh, that,” I said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I thought about it,” he said, offering me a plate of
honeycakes; my favourite. “Years later, when I was in
Lepcis. I realised, it wasn’t the Sherden’s fault. Might as
well blame the arrow for the archer. And I thought of what
you said to me, and how it had given me the strength to go
on, to
prevail—” He smiled. Just like his old man when he
smiles. “You know that saying, may the best man win? It
doesn’t make sense, when you stop and think about it, it’s
nonsense. The best man always wins, because the winner’s
always the better man. By definition. It’s that simple. If you
beat me, you’re the better man. If I come out on top, I am.
That night, on the road, I proved it. I was just a little kid, no
weapons, all trussed up with ropes and kicked around, but I
beat that bastard, I won, I was better than him. That was
what you meant, when you pulled me through my bad
patch.”
“Actually—” I said. He wasn’t listening.
“Then,” he went on, “when I was settled nicely in Lepcis
I heard about you. You’d just been made a captain, and
you’d come up with some clever improvement for building
pontoon bridges, and some trader or other had got wind of
it and brought the idea to Lepcis and was trying to sell it to
some people I knew. Youngest ever captain in the
Engineers, he said, and him a milkface; only goes to show
what a man can do if he sets his mind to it. And I remember
thinking, Orhan would be so ashamed of me if he could see
me now, all comfortable and settled, making money, not
getting on with the job. So that night I got talking to some
people, and between us we figured the whole thing out.”
He beamed at me. “And now, here we are, you and me, and
it’s all about to happen. Isn’t that grand?”
I took a deep breath. He was—is—my oldest friend, and I
don’t suppose anyone’s ever known me better. “Ogus,” I
said, “I’m on the other side.”
He laughed. Good joke. “Doesn’t that just make it
perfect?” he said. “Almost like it was meant. All along I
figured, when things start happening, you’d be called back
to the City for the defence, there’ll be someone there on
the inside I can count on, so long as I can figure a crafty
way of getting in touch. But to find you in charge of the
whole thing—I ask you. Can you think of any better proof
that this was meant to happen? You, of all people. You and
me, in at the kill.”
I needed time to think, so I said, “Who are all those men
out there? Where did they come from?”
“My army, I just said.” He snapped his fingers. More
honeycakes came, just like that. “About two-thirds of it,
anyway. The rest are busy right now, but they’ll be along
directly.”
“Was it you?” I said. “At Classis. The Sherden.”
He looked troubled, not exactly guilty, but I think he felt
he owed me an explanation. “The way I see it,” he said,
“they’re like a weapon. When the fight starts, the other
man’s got it. So you knock it out of his hand, and then it’s
your knife, it’s gone from bad to good, just like that. The
Sherden are victims every bit as much as we are, Orhan. It
took me a long time to understand that, but once I’d got it,
everything just sort of fell into place. It’s us against them
now. You remember that old saying back home, the worms
of the earth against the lions, who would win? It’s our turn
now.”
My breath caught in my throat and it took me a moment
before I could say anything. “I was at Classis,” I said. “They
nearly killed me.”
That bothered him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Obviously, if I’d
known—” He shrugged. “But you’re all right, so that’s fine.
Have another cake. You haven’t been eating properly.”
That made me laugh. Then I realised, it was supposed to.
“Let’s talk peace,” I said.
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I’d said the wrong thing.
“Sorry,” he said, “I don’t quite follow.”
Suddenly I was desperate for a way back. “Surrender,” I
said. “Terms. I’m sure between us we can sort something
—”
“Terms?” He was staring at me, as if he’d realised he’d
been talking to a stranger under the misapprehension that
he was an old friend. “What are you suggesting?”
“Oh, come on,” I said, with a sort of ghastly forced
cheerfulness I feel ashamed of to this day. “Whatever you
want, to lift the siege. You name it.”
You know those silences where you find yourself saying
any damn stupid thing, just to fill them. I managed to keep
my face shut, but only just.
“All right,” he said, as if he could barely keep his temper.
“Pile up all your weapons and open the gates.”
“And then?”
“We march in and slaughter the lot of them.” A long
pause, and then he added, “Not you, of course. We’re
friends.”
He’d said them, not you. But he was looking at me in a
way I didn’t like at all. He always had a bit of a temper,
Ogus. And he hated anything he could possibly manage to
construe as disloyalty. “Why?” I asked.
“Because they’ve got to go, that’s why,” he snapped.
Then he realised he’d been shouting. “You understand,
don’t you? You of all people. We can’t just let them go,
forgive them. It’s got to be done properly or not at all.”
My turn to be silent. He stuck it out for a couple of
heartbeats, then went on; “Besides, it’s out of my hands
now. I promised them, every last Robur. If I tried to go back
on that now, they’d tear me to pieces. For God’s sake,
Orhan, what’s the matter with you? You haven’t grown
attached to these people?”
“A bit,” I said.
“You can’t,” he said, hard as stone. “It’s not like trapping
a spider under a cup and putting it outside instead of
squashing it. They’re blueskins. We’ve got to start the
world all over again without them.”
I took a deep breath and let it go slowly. “What exactly
do you mean, “ I said, “they won’t let you?”
He stared at me, then broke into a big wide grin.
“Haven’t you figured it out yet? Who my men are? They’re
two-thirds of the bloody Imperial army. Not the blueskins,
of course. Auxiliaries. Poor fools from the conquered
nations, given the alternative; come and fight for us or we’ll
burn down your villages. It’s how the empire garrisons its
territories, now they’re so big there’s not enough Robur to
go round. Well, it worked for a long time, until some clever
soul—I think it was me—realised that these days there’s a
lot more milkfaces than blueskins in the Imperial army.
Trained by the Robur, supplied and kitted out from the
same stores, every bit as good at soldiering, and when
there’s actual fighting, who gets stuck in harm’s way in the
front line while your precious Robur stand by in reserve?
So, once it was explained to them—Doesn’t apply to the
navy, worse luck, they never could quite bring themselves
to trust savages with their beloved ships, so I had to do a
deal with the fucking Sherden. Worth it, though. Right now,
all that’s left of the blueskin regulars are cooped up in
fortified cities all across the empire, with my boys sitting
under their walls making sure they don’t get out. So, that’s
one third of the army kettled up safe, another third keeping
them there, and the third third is right here, to stamp on
the snake’s head. So that’s what I was talking about. Do
you really think those men are going to let the Robur walk
out of here alive? Of course not. They want blood. And so,
come to think of it, do I.”
I drank some of the excellent tea. I’d let it go cold.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” I said.
He gazed at me as though I’d gone mad. Then he burst
out laughing. “There’s nothing to think about,” he said.
“Dear God. This isn’t a situation where you carefully weigh
up the pros and cons. You just
know. Or don’t you? What’s
come over you, Orhan? You’ve changed.”
It suddenly struck me that he was right. I remembered
the boy he’d known. That wasn’t me any more. Curious
thing. You don’t notice yourself changing, because it’s so
gradual. Then one day you catch sight of your reflection in
a pool or a puddle, and you wonder, who’s that? But talking
to Ogus again—I’d mistaken him for his father. Easy
mistake to make, he’d grown into his father’s image. Maybe
I had, too, don’t know, can’t honestly say I remember what
my old man looked like. I have a lot of memories with him
in them, but his face is always turned away, or he’s in
shadow; like the icons and triptychs, where the artist’s
been paid to add in his patron as a minor saint or a
bystander, but the convention demands that he’s somehow
obscured, barely noticeable. They say that if you can
smuggle yourself that way into a great icon, by a truly
inspired master, all your sins are forgiven. That’s cheating.
Robur thinking.
Now the question: had I changed for the better?
Well, not for me to say. Ogus clearly thought not. “I build
bridges,” I heard myself say, thinking aloud. “I’m not a
soldier. All I ever wanted to prevail over was a few rivers.”
“It’s not about what you want,” he said. “And we’re all
soldiers. We didn’t start the war, but we’re all in it.”
“If it wasn’t for the Robur—”
“Sure.” He spat the word at me. “They found you useful.
And it’s good business to look after your tools, and your
livestock. After all, they cost money. Be honest with
yourself, Orhan. Are you really grateful to them because
they sharpened you, and gave you your own hook on the
rack?”
“I’m my own man. I’m the colonel of the fucking
regiment.”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s true. You’re so good at your
trade and you’ve done such good, valuable work for them,
sometimes they actually condescend to treat you like a
human being. Some of them even pretend not to notice
there’s something wrong with your skin. Such good
manners. And for that you love them. Good dog. Well-
trained dog.” He knew he was getting on my nerves. He
knows me so well. “Come on, Orhan. It wouldn’t hurt if you
hadn’t already thought it yourself.”
“Getting your own back,” I said. “It was always so
important to you.”
“Yes.”
I waited. He took his time. “And to you, too,” he said.
Which was true. Is true. I get my own back on the empire,
the army, the established institutions, the arrogant blueskin
masters of the earth, by cheating. I forge seals, I embezzle
money, I pay with false coin. I keep my self-respect with
countless small acts of dishonesty. I do it to get my own
way in spite of them, and to prove to myself that I’m so
much cleverer than they are. The worms declared war on
the lions, and all the animals in the forest were sure the
lions would win. But the lions couldn’t catch the worms,
because they dug down into the ground and wouldn’t come
out and fight. But at night, when the lions were asleep, the
worms crawled in through their ears and ate their brains
and killed them, every one. It’s a popular story where I
come from, though the Robur have never heard of it. And
when I tell it to my Imperial friends, I always ask them first,
which would you rather be, a worm or a lion? And they all
say, lion, of course—except Artavasdus, of all people. Why?
Because, he said, I’m an engineer, and worms dig really
good tunnels. Mind you, he only said that because he knew
it was a trick question.
“I know what you do,” he said. “You cheat them, every
chance you get. You steal from them because you want to
get back at them, and you make it all right with your
conscience by lavishing the spoils on your engineers. You
prey on them. You wouldn’t do that if you loved them.”
“I never said I—”
“Good. You didn’t tell a lie.” He looked at me, straight in
the eye, point-blank range. “I can understand why you
fought for them when you thought it was just nameless
savages. I can understand why you invented those horrible
bouncing stones and slaughtered the enemy. But we’re not
the enemy. We’re your people. We’re me. Do you want to
crush me to death with one of your bouncing stones,
Orhan? Do you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Every one of those boys you kill is me. Can’t you see
that? Your own kind. People just like you. More like you
than those blue monkeys can ever be.”
Blue monkeys. I don’t let my friends, my milkface
friends, talk about the Robur like that. Maybe because I’m
afraid that if they do, I might catch myself agreeing with
them.
He looked at me with his head on one side, like dogs do
when they can’t figure out what you’re doing. “Maybe
you’re sorry for them,” he said. “Is that it?”
“Maybe.”
“Fine. There was a doctor like you once. He had a
chance to wipe out the plague, once and for all. But he
didn’t. He felt sorry for it.” He pursed his lips. “Three
guesses what he died of.”
“Maybe I think that what you’re planning to do to them
isn’t much better than what they did to us.”
Fake yawn. “I don’t know about better,” he said. “I’d say
it was the same thing, more or less. You’ve been around
these people too long, Orhan, you’re starting to think like
them.”
“Maybe.”
“
Maybe”, in a mock-childish voice. “Definitely. You know
how the Robur think? If they win, it’s manifest destiny;
spare the conquered, grind down the proud with war.
Recognise that?”
“I do read books.”
“Delighted to hear it. So, if they win, it’s that. If they
lose, it’s
fighting is wrong. It’s
there has to be a better way
for rational human beings to settle their differences. No,
trust me, Orhan, there’s nothing wrong with fighting,
nothing at all. It’s how you tell the better man from the
worse.”
I cracked a grin. “But the Robur always win.”
He wasn’t smiling. “Not this time.”
“That still doesn’t make it right. You know that, don’t
you?”
And then Ogus turned his head to the side and cupped
his hand round his right ear. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t quite
catch that.”
Now I think of it, there’s one thing I neglected to mention.
Don’t know if you remember the story I told you, about
Ogus poisoning the Sherden slave-driver. Well, it was a few
days after that. There was one of those Sherden who’d
made up his mind he didn’t like me. Don’t know why; it
happens, people take a dislike to you, doesn’t have to be a
reason. This man couldn’t stand me, never missed an
opportunity to kick me or smack me round the head. Well, I
thought about what Ogus had done; but I’m no killer. My
talents lie in other directions. So, when we stopped that
night I worked away like fun to get the rope round my
wrists and ankles loose. Then, when the guards were
asleep, I sneaked over to where my enemy was lying. I’d
noticed he had a little whalebone carving of a dolphin that
he wore round his neck on a bit of leather string for a
lucky-piece; a dolphin, presumably, as a charm against
drowning. Nice and slow and easy, I took the knife from his
belt, cut the string, took the dolphin, put the knife back
where I’d got it from—razor-sharp edge about an eighth of
an inch from his throat while I was doing it, never even
crossed my mind to do anything except rob him. A nice
thing like that, I told myself, will be worth something to
someone at some point in the future, and in the meantime
I’ve got my own back on the bully, I’ve prevailed, I’ve won.
Some lessons you learn the hard way. For example, don’t
go robbing people, even in the middle of the night, when
the ground’s sodden wet, because you’ll leave footprints.
Hadn’t seen them, of course, it being dark. Come morning,
plain as anything.
The guard woke me up with a kick to the collarbone,
which is one of the most painful places you can hit
someone. I think he was planning on killing me, because
he’d dragged a senior colleague along, to bear witness that
I’d robbed him and he was within his rights. Didn’t take
them long to find the dolphin, tucked away between my belt
and my tunic.
“Fair enough,” the other guard said. “He’s all yours. Do
what you like.”
“It wasn’t him.”
They both looked round. There was Ogus, sitting up,
wrists and ankles unbound. “It wasn’t him,” he said. “I stole
the dolphin. It was me.”
My special friend the guard roared at him, bullshit, but
the senior man made Ogus say it again.
“I did it,” Ogus said. “And I hid it on my friend, so if we
got found out it’d look like he did it, because everybody
knows the fat guard doesn’t like him. But I was stupid, I
forgot about the footprints.”
The senior man looked at him for a long time, and I do
believe I could read what he was thinking. I’m pretty sure
he didn’t believe him, but there was no way of proving it
one way or another; also, I reckon, he was thinking: if this
kid’s got the guts to take a beating for his pal, fair play to
him, let him. So he nodded, then lashed out with his boot
and caught Ogus the most terrible blow on the side of the
head.
I was sure he’d killed him; there was blood trickling out
of his ear, and he wasn’t moving. “That’s how we deal with
thieves,” the senior man said. “Think on.” He walked away.
The bully gave me a long look, then followed him; and the
odd thing was, he didn’t give me a hard time after that.
Ogus was all right, more or less, eventually. But he was
deaf in his right ear ever after, until we were parted. Still
is.
I didn’t reply. No answer to that, is there?
“Besides,” he went on, “you’re overlooking one
important thing. The City can’t be defended, not against an
army this size, there’s no way on earth it can be done.
Sure, you’re so clever and resourceful and imaginative, and
your men love you so much, you’ll put up one hell of a fight.
Probably you’ll make a real mess of parts of my army, with
your bouncing balls and your trebuchets and God knows
what else you’ve thought up and not told anyone else about
yet. But it won’t make the slightest difference, in the long
run. The City will fall. The people in it are dead already.”
He paused and I looked at him. “So?” I said.
“So.” He met me, look for look. Bit like a mirror, really.
“If there was the faintest chance you could beat me, then
fine, yes, absolutely, fight your damnedest and bloody good
luck to you. But there is no chance. Your blue pals are
dead. There’s nothing anybody can do.”
“Except?”
Mild grin. “Except,” he said. “Because you’re my best pal
and I could never hurt you, I’ll let you save—what, let’s say
a dozen of your pet blueskins: Nicephorus Bautzes, your
man Faustinus the Prefect, Artavasdus, Gaiseric—”
“Genseric.”
“You’re quite right, Genseric. Lysimachus, your loyal
bodyguard. And of course there’s Aichma, your old pal’s
daughter, and Aelia, the little carpenter girl. She likes you,
by the way.”
Where did that come from? “Bullshit.”
“She does, you know. Trouble brewing in that quarter if
you’re not careful, because Captain Nicephorus likes her,
and she likes you. Anyway, that makes seven, leaving you
five more. Or we can make it two dozen, if you’d prefer.
Simple fact: if you decide to defend the City against me,
they’re all going to die. Well, maybe not the carpenter girl,
because she’s a milkface, my boys won’t hurt a milkface,
she won’t come to any harm. But the rest of them—” He
drew the tip of his finger across his throat. “But if you join
me, they’re safe. Your friends. The people you care for.
That’s not a threat, by the way, do what I tell you or your
pals get it. When the time comes, I’ll give orders, find these
people and spare them if you can. But Nicephorus and
Artavasdus will die before they surrender, stupid blueface
honour, and only a few of my officers know the others by
sight; with the best will in the world, I can’t help them.
Only you can do that. Or are you the sort of man who’d
watch your friends die just because of your stupid
principles and your stupid pride?”
You’re not meeting Ogus at his best. That said—
People change, sure, but not that much; besides, I hadn’t
observed anything about him that was inconsistent with the
boy I once knew, loved, worshipped. And worshipped why?
Because he was strong.
I guess you can only understand the significance of that
if you were a small, weak kid, like I was. At that age,
human beings are animals. The biggest and strongest rule
over the small and the weak; no justification needed or
sought, it’s instinctively recognised as the way things are—
and should be; the small, weak kid doesn’t doubt the
validity of the system, he just thinks it’s unfair he was born
little. Later, we learn to talk, to talk our way out of trouble,
into what we want; charm, deception and lies take the
place of height and muscle, and that’s what we call being
grown-up, being intelligent, rational humans, being
civilised. Same difference, if you ask me, where justice is
concerned, but that’s beside the point. When we’re kids,
grown-ups govern and command us because they’re bigger
and stronger than us and can hit harder. Naturally, we use
the same system of values among ourselves. For a start, it
makes sense—so much more so than the things they try
and kid you into believing later, morality, right and wrong,
good and evil. Can’t say I’ve ever really got the hang of any
of that stuff. Can’t honestly say I’ve really tried.
Ogus was a big, strong kid; I wasn’t. But Ogus, who
could have been friends with anyone he chose, chose me.
He defended me, let me bask in his glory—there’s a little
fish, they tell me, that lives by battening onto the hide of a
shark, and the other fish never give it a hard time, and it
feeds on the scraps the shark doesn’t want. That was me.
Never anything asked in return, not even flattery, praise or
adulation, the sort of thing the gods want, apparently, but
not Ogus. I never asked him why but I know what he’d have
said if I had; because we’re friends. Simple as that.
Now reflect on what I’ve told you about my life. When
Ogus wasn’t there any more to keep me safe, I did the
obvious thing and looked around for another big, strong
bully to look after me; I found the empire. Of course, they
wanted something in return. They wanted bridges, put up
fast, guaranteed not to fall down. Hardly selling my soul to
the Evil One. Sure, they weren’t particularly nice to me, but
they weren’t utterly horrible either. I was useful, so they
put up with me, even though I persisted in going around
the wrong colour, knowing how distressing that must be to
people of refinement.
People like Nico don’t approve of me hanging round
places like Poor Town and the Old Flower Market. They
don’t hold with the company I keep: thieves, cheats,
deceivers and prostitutes; especially the latter. Me, I’ve
never had any problem with whores. I’m one myself.
I hadn’t said anything for a bit. Ogus smiled at me.
“I know you’re not like that,” he said. “I know you’d do
anything for a pal. For me, and your new City friends.
Lucky, isn’t it, that the interests of all your friends
coincide.”
“You’ve changed,” I said.
“No,” he said, stating a fact, “I haven’t. Neither have
you. Think about it, will you? What have you been doing,
ever since you suddenly found yourself in charge?”
I gave him a grin. “The best I can.”
“A bit more than that, I think you’ll find. Soon as you had
the opportunity, you started trying to build the Great
Society. The poor people were shut out and exploited, so
what do you do? You sideline the House and all the rich
bastards, you legalise and recognise the Themes, you find
every excuse you can to pay good wages; you even try and
get a woman to run a major department of state, because
it’s not right that women are excluded just because of
what’s between their legs. It’s the worms of the earth
against the lions, and you couldn’t resist. Soon as you had
the chance.”
I had nothing to say to that.
“And look what happened,” he went on. “Aichma does the
job for a few days and resigns. The Themes work together
for a bit, and then there’s a riot, you have to turn your
amazing new artillery on your own people, just to stop
them butchering each other. Orhan, it can’t be done—not in
there, in the City, the Great Society won’t work there. And
you know why? It’s because they’re who they are, Robur.
It’s not the worms against the lions, it’s just stronger lions
and weaker lions. And you think they love you for it, but
they don’t. Read this.”
He took a small brass tube from his sleeve and tossed it
to me. I caught it, poked out the slip of paper and read it.
Then I looked at him.
“Perfectly genuine,” he said. “You recognise the
writing?”
“Yes.”
“And the seal?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Now tell me what it says.”
I didn’t want to, but Ogus is hard to disobey. “Senator
Fronto, who I punched in the face, and half a dozen other
leading members of the House have arranged to have me
killed. Once I’m dead they plan to take over the City and
crown Fronto as emperor. They’ve recruited five hundred
Greens who don’t like Bronellus and hate me because I
killed their fellow Themesmen. They’re also going to kill
Nico, Artavasdus, Faustinus and Aichma, because they’re
afraid they’d make trouble after I’m gone. The plot is set
for the day after tomorrow.” I rolled it up and tried to put it
back in its tube, but my hands were shaking; Ogus took it
and did it for me, then handed it back. “You might want to
hang on to that,” he said. “Oh, and this, too.” He handed
me something, wrapped in a scrap of blue silk. The Great
Seal. “Now then, look at me.”
I didn’t want to do that, either, but I did.
“All right,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”
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Ogus offered me a horse but I said no, thanks, and walked
back to the North Gate. Nico was waiting for me. “What thehell—?”
“Long story,” I said. “Tell you later.”
“For crying out loud, Orhan—”
“Later.” Didn’t mean to shout; a bit overwrought, if truth
be known. Anyway, it shut Nico up. No small achievement.
“You were gone a long time,” Faustinus said. “What did he
want?”
“Total surrender,” I told him. “No guarantees. I told him
no.”
“Thank God for that.” He looked at me, nervous, as
though he expected me to bite him. “Who is he?”
“Good question,” I said. “As far as I can make out, he’s
some sort of lunatic crusader. He wants to overthrow the
empire. Not take it for himself. Get rid of it.”
That got me a stare. “Why?”
“Because it’s evil and tyrannical and mankind can never
be free until it’s been disposed of. Go figure.”
“That makes no sense. The empire is the greatest force
for civilisation in the history of—”
“Tell him that,” I said. “Though I think you’d be wasting
your breath. The bad news is, he’s turned the auxiliaries
against us.”
“Oh God.” Faustinus’s eyes went wide. “Which unit?”
“All of them.”
I thought he was going to pass out. “But what about—?”
“The Robur troops? Cooped up in the garrisons, under
siege. No hope whatsoever of them coming to the rescue.
They’re waiting for us to rescue them.”
“He’s just saying that.”
I shook my head. “It’s true,” I said. “He introduced me to
about a dozen auxiliary officers. They confirmed it. They’ve
bought into his crusade. The conquered nations don’t like
us any more.”
“Oh my God, Orhan. What are we going to do?”
I gave him my calm, steady look. “Hang on,” I said. “One
thing he did let slip, the navy’s rock solid. Well, they would
be, they’re all Robur. And they’re still out there somewhere.
And sooner or later they’ll come, and it won’t just be us any
more. We’ll survive.”
“What, just the marines against all those savages? We
can’t beat them off like that.”
“That’s not what I said,” I told him. “I said we’ll survive.
If we have the Fleet, and they can’t breach the walls, they
can sit there for a thousand years and we’ll survive. We
control the sea. We have ships to bring in food, we have
thousands of skilled workers, the best in the world; we can
make goods to trade for food, which is what we do anyway.
The Fleet can raid the rebel homelands, make their lives
miserable. Eventually it’ll dawn on those idiots out there
that they’re wasting their time, and then we can make
peace. A sensible settlement, negotiated by rational human
beings. Meanwhile, we have to hold on. We can do it,
Faustinus. We’re better than them.”
He gave me a curious look. “What aren’t you telling
me?”
“What sort of a damnfool remark is that?” I snapped at
him.
“I’m sorry. Only you sounded like you were trying to
convince yourself of something. I worry when you do that.”
“You’re an old woman, Faustinus. You worry about
everything.” I felt in the sleeve of my tunic and took out the
silk bundle. “Meanwhile,” I said, “guess what turned up.”
I threw it to him. He muffed the catch, stooped and
picked it up. “My God,” he said, “that’s not the real—”
“Keep your voice down, there’s a good lad. Yes, the one
and only. It’s back.”
“Where did you—?”
“Trust me,” I said. “You don’t want to know.”
That startled fawn look. “No, I imagine I don’t. Still, this
is a stroke of luck. It’s marvellous.”
I nodded. “I would’ve told you earlier, but I got
sidetracked. That’s the good news. The bad news.” I found
the brass tube. “See for yourself.”
He read it and whimpered. “Why me, for God’s sake?”
I like a man with priorities. “Because you’re my right-
hand man, of course.”
“We’ve got to do something about this,” he said. “Right
now.”
I laughed. “Such as what?”
“Arrest them. Straight away.”
“Right. I send soldiers into the House and have seven
respected senators dragged out by the hair.”
“You’ve got the Seal, you can do anything.”
“They’ve got five hundred armed men. What they don’t
have, but what you seem hell bent on giving them, is
justification for their actions. No, first I talk to Bronellus.
You don’t say anything to anyone. And keep inside, don’t go
anywhere without a guard, Blues or my boys. Leave the
whole thing to me.”
I found Bronellus at the Green House. He was shocked and
saddened—well, he would be; his own people thought he
was no good. I told him what to do.
Then I went to the State Cartulary, which is a mouldy old
tower sticking up out of the spine of the Resurgence
temple, which used to be a monastery, years ago. They
never got around to shifting all the mountains of old
government papers stored there; reports from the Prefect’s
office, mostly. I found an old clerk who reckoned he knew
where to find what I was looking for. It took him a while,
but he pulled out a big brass tube as thick as my leg and
handed it to me with a beam of satisfaction.
It wasn’t what I needed, but at least it told me where to
look; in the Clerk of the Works’ archive, on Needle Street.
Down in the vaults there’s a wall covered floor to roof with
shelves, each shelf crammed with brass tubes, all
numbered. Took me four minutes to find the tube I wanted.
Simple as that.
Interesting stuff; a report on the collapse of a street of
houses in Poor Town about a hundred and seventy years
ago, and a map showing the affected area before it fell
down, and a couple of other maps from a century before,
and one very old map indeed.
“Can I borrow these?” I asked the archivist.
“It’s strictly forbidden to remove any document from the
premises,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, and went back to the
Palace.
Bronellus showed his five hundred dissidents the error of
their ways. One in ten were killed; the other suffered
various injuries. Wherever possible I don’t ask questions
about how work I delegate to others gets done.
The planned coup never took place. Senator Fronto fell
ill after eating something that didn’t agree with him and
died howling. The other six senators found themselves
shuffled onto a subcommittee; lots of work, no spare time.
They were no bother after that.
I didn’t tell Nico or the others. I did tell Aichma.
Everything. Nearly everything.
“So,” she said, “what are you going to do?”
Aichma takes after her father, but she looks like her
mother; both of them were half milkface, but with Aichma
you have to look quite hard to see it, though it’s there. Her
mother was the daughter of an immigrant tent-maker who
fell on hard times, ended up having to sell his kids on a ten-
year indenture.
(Marvellous system, indentures. In theory, once you’ve
done your time, you’re free as air, so it’s not slavery, which
is uncivilised and barbaric. But while your indentures are
still running, your master’s perfectly entitled to bill you for
food, clothes, lodging, training in any trade he may require
you to learn; and of course there’s interest running on all
that, fixed by statute at fifteen per cent compound. Goes
without saying, by the time your indentures are through,
you’ve run up a hefty tab, which you can only clear by
labour, for which you’re paid a wage, also fixed by statute,
illegal to pay more. And while you’re working off your debt,
naturally, you’re still eating and wearing clothes and taking
up bedspace. It isn’t slavery, because slavery’s an
abomination which the Robur have vowed to put and end
to. It just amounts to the same thing.)
Anyway; Aichma looks like a diluted version of her
mother. There are savages out east who mix their tea with
milk; a bit like that. Adulterated is the word I’m groping
for. But her mother was a sweet, gentle soul, kind to
everybody, never a harsh word, with a sort of serenity
about her. Aichma takes after her father.
“Tell me,” I said. “If you were in my shoes.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Are you kidding?”
“Tell me.”
“Take the deal, obviously. You just told me what he said.
If you don’t, you’re dead and so are all of us. I don’t want to
die out of solidarity to the empire. It’d serve no useful
purpose, and, besides, they’re arseholes.”
“You’re Robur.”
“Not quite Robur enough, so I’ve been given to
understand. Also, I’m rubbish. It’s not my empire, I just live
in it. More to the point, we can’t win. Therefore I’m going
to die, unless you do the deal. Don’t tell me you had to stop
and think about it.”
“I thought about it very hard.”
“Why? What the hell was there to mull over, for crying
out loud?” She had that oh-for-God’s-sake look on her face.
“It’s like—all right, supposing there’s a fire. What do you
do? You grab everyone and everything you can and you get
the hell out of there. You don’t agonise about letting the
fire win. Staying alive doesn’t make you the fire’s
accomplice. Orhan, you’ve had the most amazing stroke of
luck. Just for once in your life, being who you are’s worked
out in your favour, not against you. And if you’re still not
convinced, think about your friends. Trust me, this isn’t a
grey area. This one’s pretty bloody straightforward.”
“You think so.”
“Idiot,” she said. “Stupid fool. You just told me, Fronto
and the senators were going to murder you. Five hundred
Greens were going to help them do it. If you want to know
what a representative cross-section of Robur society think
of you, there’s your answer. Fuck them. Fuck the lot of
them. Take the deal.”
It annoys her like nothing else when she gets all forceful
and I stand there stone-faced. “What do you think your
father would have said?”
“Him? Take the deal. Save my little girl’s life. You
promised, remember?”
“That’s true,” I said. “I did promise.”
She frowned. “You have made your mind up already,
haven’t you? You never ask my advice unless you’ve already
decided.”
“I’m not sure,” I told her.
“Not sure? What kind of an idiotic answer is that? Pull
yourself together, Orhan, this is
important.” She made a
visible effort, lowered and softened her voice. She can do it
if she has to. “Listen, you did your best. You did amazingly
well. When you got here, we were an hour or so from being
slaughtered like sheep. You held them off, you gave them a
bloody nose, and while you were at it you shook up this
stupid city like nobody’s ever done before, you tried to
make it into something that might conceivably be worth
saving. But it couldn’t be done. The Themes are still at
each other’s throats, even with Death banging on the front
door, and the boss Robur want to knife you in the back.
How many times have you got to hear it before it finally
sinks in? Don’t bother trying to save the City, it can’t be
done. Save us instead. We’re your friends. Everybody else
hates you.”
I let her see that I was still thinking. Then I nodded. “So
on balance,” I said, “you think I should take the deal.”
“On balance,” she said, “yes.”
OceanofPDF.com
27
Opening the gates of a besieged city to the enemy isn’t as
easy as you might think. It takes a lot of thought and
planning, involves a great many people and calls for careful
timing and excruciating attention to detail.
You don’t think so. You think, all you have to do is wait
till the middle of the night, sneak down to Foregate, pull
back a few bolts, job done. In which case, I’d like to live in
your city. With citizens like you, it has nothing to fear from
treachery.
I knew how the gates were guarded, because I’d set up
the system myself. With the people split into two warring
factions, an aristocracy that hated me and what I’d done,
not to mention a substantial criminal element perfectly
capable of betraying the City for money, I wanted to make
the system as traitor-proof as possible. So; each gate was
guarded by not one but two contingents, one Theme and
one official. Thus, one night it’d be Greens and Engineers,
the next Blues and Parks and Gardens, then Greens and
Watch, Blues and Engineers: you get the idea. Each guard
unit was fifty men, ten of whom would be standing directly
in front of the gate, in full kit. Each pair of gates was fitted
with five bolts, thick as your leg. To reach the fifth one, you
needed a long ladder and someone to hold it for you; if you
tried to shoot the top bolt without someone at the bottom,
you’d fall and break your neck. Also, each bolt was fitted
with a padlock, and for these padlocks there were only two
sets of keys: one for the gatehouse, one in a safe in my
room at the Palace. Just to make life interesting, custody of
the keys was split between the two details—if it was Greens
and Engineers that shift, the Greens would have the keys to
bolts one, three and five, the Engineers would have two and
four. That wouldn’t be a problem for me, of course, since I
had the master set.
So what? I’m in charge of the City, everybody has to do
what I tell them. No problem for me to walk down at a time
I’ve agreed with the enemy outside and issue a direct
order: open the gates. No, I’d thought of that. The idea
was, what if I’m killed or otherwise indisposed? Command
passes to Nico, or Faustinus, or the Theme bosses, whoever
happens to still be alive. The men on the gates probably
won’t know what’s going on; they have to take someone’s
word for it that I’m dead and so-and-so is legitimately in
command, and you can see the potential for deception
there. Also, the City is simply crawling with actors—the
Hippodrome, the Opera, the Comedy and Tragedy, probably
the finest theatrical tradition in the world—and one of our
favourite genres is impressions. Never saw much to it
myself, but you’d be amazed how many people will pay
good money to watch a man dressed up to look like
someone else. Bear in mind that a good number of the men
on duty on the gates at any given time will only have seen
me once or twice, in passing, at a distance. Since I’d
become a public figure, I’d earned the dubious honour of
being impersonated, and I have to say, some of them were
very good indeed at being me, rather better than I am
myself. Therefore, insufferable smartarse that I am, I’d
taken precautions. Nobody, not even me, could give the
command to open the gates on his own. There had to be
two authorised officers, out of a small and select pool—me,
Nico, Artavasdus, Faustinus, Arrasc and Bronellus (both
together, not one on his own)—together with the duty
officer for that particular gate on that particular shift, who
had to have seen a written order bearing the Great Seal.
I’d explained all this to Ogus, who rolled his eyes and
said something about too clever by half, with which I found
it hard to disagree. But that’s all right, he went on, you set
up this cockamamy system, you can replace it with another
one. Not really, I told him, it’d look a bit suspicious, and, as
you just demonstrated, I’m not exactly popular with a lot of
the key players right now. But not to worry, I assured him.
There are other ways into the City besides the gates.
“So you’re the little bird,” I said.
He stared at me. Someone more unlike a little bird it’d
be hard to imagine. His name was Nausolus and he was an
Honour Sergeant in the Blues. That’s a responsible job. An
Honour Sergeant—there’s a dozen in each Theme—sees to
it that Themesmen who commit honour violations (passing
on information to the authorities or the other Theme,
disobeying the orders of the Theme bosses, murder, rape or
aggravated theft against a fellow Themesman, that sort of
thing) come to a bad and well-publicised end. Honour
Sergeants are handy with small knives, poisonous
chemicals and dangerous objects and processes. They know
everybody and have very few friends. They’re paid well,
direct from Theme funds. No Honour Sergeant has ever
gone to the bad, because of what would happen to him if he
did.
When he wasn’t doing all that, Nausolus kept poultry, in
five long, stinking sheds down by the North dock: chickens,
ducks, geese, doves and pigeons. He was particularly good
with the pigeons, and before the siege he’d trained about a
dozen of them to carry messages, to his cousin Vossus in
the Paralia. When the savages came, he sent a pigeon to his
cousin with a suggestion: go and find the enemy leader, ask
him how much it would be worth to him to have regular
detailed news from inside the City, from a very well-placed
source indeed. A deal was quickly made, and the pigeons
had been busy ever since. Mailing the Great Seal by pigeon
post had been a particular triumph; he’d hung it round the
bird’s neck on a short strap, and tied it down with string
under the armpits, for want of a better word, to keep it
from coming loose and bobbing about. Can’t be done, the
wiseacres on Ogus’s staff had declared, but Nausolus and
his champion bird had proved them wrong.
“The mine of information,” I clarified. “The bringer of
glad tidings.”
Nausolus was quick, I’ll say that for him. He was on his
feet, past the guards and halfway through the door before
Lysimachus brought him down with a beautifully thrown
chair, to which we tied him thoroughly before resuming the
interview.
“Now I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t
want to,” I told him. “If you don’t want to co-operate with
me, that’s fine, I quite understand. I’ll just hand you over to
Arrasc and tell him what you’ve been doing.”
He didn’t seem to like that idea very much.
“Glad to have you on board,” I told him. “Now, I’m quite
happy for you to carry on sending messages to the enemy,
provided I see them first. The sort of stuff you’ve been
giving him so far will do fine. If your stuff suddenly turns
useless, he’ll get suspicious, and then you’ll be no good to
me at all. Very occasionally, I’ll get you to send something
I’ve written. Now, that’s not a problem, is it?”
He assured me it wasn’t.
“Fine,” I said. “Nice to have met you.”
I don’t hold with codes, ciphers, all that rubbish. Clever
men can figure them out. If you’ve got the code and
someone sends you a message, you find yourself spending
hours compiling charts and diagrams and writing things
out in rows and columns until your fingers ache, just so you
can read:
nothing much happening at this end, we had fish
with parsley sauce again, how about you? Life’s too short.
Much easier to use normal, regular words, provided
they’re in a language nobody but you and your pal can
understand. Alauzet, for example, my and Ogus’s native
tongue. There may have been three dozen other Alauzet
speakers in the City, maybe a couple of hundred in Ogus’s
massive army; we don’t get around much, unless we have
no choice. The only slight drawback is that Alauzet has
never been a written language, since none of us can read
or write. Still, there’s a first time for everything. I found I
could write Alauzet more or less acceptably using the
Jazygite alphabet—no
y, and you have to use
uu for
w;
otherwise, no big deal. I happen to know Jazygite—long
story, not important—and there was bound to be someone
in Ogus’s polyglot multitudes who knew it, too, but
Jazygites are even thinner on the ground that Alauz in
these parts. Now that’s what I call cryptography.
“What’s all this?” Nausolus asked, when I gave him the
message to send. “It looks like gibberish.”
“It is gibberish,” I told him. “Completely meaningless.
Think how much time and energy they’ll waste before they
figure that out.”
The other way into the City, I’d told my oldest and best
friend, calls for a bit of work on your part, but you won’t
mind that. Then I asked for paper and something to draw
with. I sketched out the course of the main drain, which
naturally empties out into the Bay, on the southern side, so
the current washes all the crap out to sea. What my scruffy
hand-drawn map showed, and all the up-to-date official
ones don’t, is the old spur drain, which was closed down
and sealed off after the sinkhole incident in Poor Town. This
spur originally led out to a soakaway outside the walls, I
told him, in what was then marshland; it was drained about
seventy years ago, and now it’s lush green grass. Now
then, I said, if someone were to dig a sap, precisely fifty-
seven feet down below the surface, starting from the
derelict tannery and driving directly towards the belltower
of the Golden Hope monastery, pretty soon he’d find
himself cutting into the side of the abandoned spur drain,
which would lead him to the bricked-up junction with the
main drain, and once he was there he could take his pick of
a dozen or so wide, well-maintained access tunnels leading
to the surface. Nobody would hear him digging, not that far
down, and if he chose to emerge in, say, Cutlers Fields in
the middle of the night with a thousand or so of his very
best men, he could overwhelm the guards on the East Gate
before they had a chance to raise the alarm and have the
gates open before anybody could do anything about it.
The only problem he’d encounter (I went on) was about
thirty feet of solid rock, which he’d bump into about a
hundred yards from the junction with the main drain.
Originally, I explained, the spur drain had bypassed this
obstacle, going round it in a long, wide loop. But the loop
section had caved in, taking several streets of houses with
it, and was now comprehensively blocked. It would
therefore be quicker and easier to cut through the original
obstacle than muck about trying to clear the caved-in
bypass, assuming you could even find it. Yes, I pre-empted
him, cutting through thirty feet of rock is no small
undertaking; but in an army of a hundred and twenty
thousand men, surely he had skilled and experienced
sappers who’d breeze through something like that as
though it wasn’t there. Yes, he admitted, he had, at that.
There you are, then, I told him. And if you start your sap at
the old tannery, under cover of the walls, and make sure
you’re discreet about it, anyone watching from the walls
won’t be able to see that you’ve got mining operations
under way, and I won’t be obliged to make life hell for you
with catapults and trebuchets.
I wasn’t there, having work to do, so I didn’t see what
happened. My guess is, something like this.
Soldiers, or Watchmen, banging on people’s doors in the
middle of the day. This is never good. Eventually, someone,
probably the woman of the house (men are by nature very
brave, except when it comes to opening doors to strangers)
answers and says, What do you want? The soldiers tell her.
What the hell do you want that for, she says, not
unreasonably.
The soldiers, with whom the reason has not been shared,
shrug and say, Don’t know, don’t care, orders is orders. You
got any or not? The woman says No. The soldiers say, You
sure about that? Only, anyone says no, we got orders to
search their place from top to bottom.
Come to think of it, the woman says. Wait there.
And she comes back a minute or so later with a pudding
basin, a preserving pan, a jerry. The soldiers take them and
put them carefully on their handcart. Will I get them back?
the woman asks. The soldiers say thank you and move on to
the next house.
An hour or so of foraging, and now we have about a
thousand bowls, buckets, pans, basins, chamber pots.
These are unloaded off the handcarts and placed carefully
on the ground, a foot or so apart, all the way up Masons
Alley, Portway, Key Street, Monksgate, Shambles, Potters
Ground and halfway up Shepherds Walk. A bunch of Blues
follow on with a two-wheeled bowser and buckets, filling
each one two-thirds full with water. When they’ve finished
they move on; their places are taken by Engineers, one
man to a hundred buckets. For the next six hours, they
walk up and down the line, staring at the buckets as though
their lives depended on it.
It’s a bit of a performance, but it works. Mining operations
deep underground can’t be seen or even heard, but they
can be felt; the vibrations make the ground shake, ever so
slightly. You may not be able to feel it, even kneeling down
with the palms of your hands pressed flat on the deck, but
water can. A very slight ripple on the surface of a wide
enough pan will tell you where the tunnel is, and how fast
the sappers are progressing. It’s an old dodge—I got it out
of a thousand-year-old book, tried it out just for curiosity’s
sake many years ago, tucked it away under the lining of my
mind in case it ever came in useful. For some reason,
people don’t bother with the old books these days. More
fool them.
About midday I went down to Poor Town to find out for
myself. I’d put Genseric in charge of co-ordinating and
correlating. He started me at Porters Yard, where the water
was trembling like anything, then led me down New Alley,
across the Old Flower Market and up Key Street, where I
saw the faintest trace of ripples just starting to form.
Genseric was with me when I did my experiment, back
when I was still a captain and he was a freshly minted
second lieutenant. He could read the signs as well as I
could. “It’s massive,” he said. “There must be hundreds of
them down there.”
“About a thousand, I’m guessing,” I said.
“What the hell are they up to?”
I shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” I said.
I got the impression he couldn’t understand why I was
taking it all so calmly. “We’d better do something,” he said.
I nodded. “Like what?”
Good question. “Countermine?”
I shook my head. “First you tell me where to start
digging, and how far down you want me to go. No, we’ll
never find them.”
“We can’t just wait for them to come up somewhere.”
“Actually,” I said, “that’s what I had in mind.”
He gave me a bewildered look, then pulled a brass tube
out of his sleeve. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s an old map, I
found it in with some other junk in the Surveyor-General’s
office.”
“That’s a very old map.”
“Here.” He jabbed with his forefinger. “It’s colour-coded,
see. The red’s all heavy clay, the blue’s porous limestone
and shale, the green is that crumbly yellow muck and the
grey is your actual hard sandstone.”
I made a show of orienting myself, though of course the
map hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know. “So
right now we’re standing on the grey.”
He nodded. “One big solid blob of it,” he said.
“Which they’ll be running into,” I said, “any minute now.
That’ll spoil their day, for sure.”
I think he may have guessed that his map hadn’t come as
a complete surprise. “That’s why you’re not worried,” he
said.
“I admit, I knew that lot was there.”
He gave me the might-have-told-me look, then prodded
the map again. “What I can’t make out,” he said, “is what
this line here means.”
“Oh, that.”
OceanofPDF.com
28
Some people have a talent for treachery. I’m not one of
them, which surprises me, given how dishonest I
fundamentally am. I think nothing of cheating, stealing,
forgery, lies and deception. As I think I’ve already pointed
out, I owed my promotion in the Imperial service almost
entirely to my gift for getting hold of stores and supplies by
any means necessary. Let’s not beat about the bush: I’m as
crooked as a mountain path. But treachery, no. I draw the
line. Loyalty matters to me.
Which raises the question: loyal, but who to?
My emperor, my city, my people or my friend? What a
choice to have to make.
The emperor was a vegetable; to all intents and
purposes, practically speaking, I was the emperor. That is, I
had his Seal. So we can forget about him, for now.
My city; not mine at all. There are substantial parts of it
which I’m not allowed to go to; no milkfaces allowed. There
are temples I can’t go in, parks I can’t enter, drinking
fountains that would be polluted by the touch of my lips. I
wasn’t born here, and I’m not allowed to own a house or
any real estate.
My people. My people are the Alauz, and if the truth be
told I can barely remember them. Redefine people,
therefore. My people are the Corps of Engineers and a few
select friends, most of them blueskins. Or my people are
those I have most in common with: the excluded, the
oppressed, the have-nots and the not-allowed-to-haves, the
worms of the earth (diggers, as Artavasdus pointed out, of
exceptionally fine tunnels). But the Blues and the Greens
resent me because I won’t let them rip each other to
shreds, and, besides, they don’t care much for milkfaces
either. Which leaves the other earthworms, such as the
ones fifty feet under the soles of my boots, right now
hacking into a massive ridge of sandstone with tools and
resources I didn’t have.
My friend. Well. That’s my business.
“That,” I told him, “is the River Tace.”
“The what?”
“The River Tace. It’s all right, you won’t have heard of it.
It’s, what’s the word, subterranean. It rises in the
mountains on the east coast, runs directly through the
middle of the hill under Hill Street, down across here, look,
and eventually drains into Lake Patera, away down there
somewhere. A hundred years or so back, it ate through all
this clay here, flooded one of the subsidiary drains and
undermined a large chunk of this part of town. The only
thing holding it back, in fact, is that big lump of sandstone
we’re standing on. If it wasn’t for that—”
He stared at me, then burst out laughing. I didn’t laugh
with him.
I saw it all happen, in the bowls of water.
First, a frantic shuddering, which I could feel through
my boots, and water actually slopped out of the bowls onto
the ground. Then steady rippling, all the way from Key
Street to Porters Yard. Then nothing. Still, flat, motionless.
All over.
If you’re obliged to do something unpleasant, such as
betray your people and your friend, you might as well get
any collateral benefits that happen to be going while you’re
at it. So; when Ogus’s men broke through the sandstone
and unleashed the river, and it flooded their sap and
drowned them all in probably less than a minute, the
following good things came about.
One, I’d killed off my enemy’s best sappers—skilled men,
rare as hens’ teeth among the less favoured races, because
the Robur don’t teach savages key skills like deep-level
mining. The only way he’d be able to take the City would be
by undermining the walls, for which he’d need trained,
experienced miners, which he no longer had. No doubt he’d
be able to replace them, but not quickly.
Two, an unlimited supply of fresh water, previously
inaccessible because it was too far down, was now ours for
the well-sinking. I’d known practically from the moment I
took command that when, not if, the enemy broke down the
aqueduct, we’d be in desperate trouble unless an
alternative could be found. The Tace would do admirably,
except that there was this impenetrable mass of sandstone
in the way. To clear solid rock underground you need skills
and equipment that we hadn’t got. Wasn’t it lucky that
Ogus had both.
Goes to show, doesn’t it, how clever I am—and how
worthless. Oh, and let’s not forget stupid. Nothing had
changed. There were still a hundred and nineteen thousand
enemy soldiers outside the wall; they wouldn’t be digging
their way in any time soon, but inevitably they would come,
and they would win, and we would all die. I’d achieved
precisely nothing. That’s me all over.
“Right,” I said, “there’s nothing more for us here. Pack up
all the crockery, I’m going back to the Palace.”
Genseric looked at me. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“What just happened?”
I looked at him, as if at a mirror. “Put it somewhere
safe,” I told him, “we’ll be needing it again.”
I was right about one thing. Next morning, all the pumps
and fountains in the City ran dry. The enemy had cut the
aqueduct. Panic.
Fortunately, the Corps of Engineers was on hand to save
the day. Miraculously, the colonel of the regiment happened
to have by him a map of the City showing where and how
deep to sink wells; no trial boreholes or fooling about with
hazel twigs, probably just as well since I can’t ever
remember seeing a hazel tree anywhere inside the walls.
Eighteen hours after the pumps ran dry, the first bucket of
water was winched up out of a well in Monksgate. It was an
offputting sort of brown colour, but I gather they’re used to
that in Poor Town.
Goes without saying, wells in that part of the City
weren’t much use to respectable people. So it was handy
that I’d recently made good use of an idle hour or so
figuring out the shortest route for a pipe to connect up the
new water to the main system, using the existing pumping
stations. Took three days, during which time the honest
citizens of Upper Town had to collect their water in jugs
from bowsers and water carts. They took it in good part,
even though they (or, rather, their servants) had to queue
up in the midday heat. Look at us doing our bit, they said to
each other, we’re all in this together, and you don’t smell
too bad if you splash on plenty of scent.
Complicated feelings of guilt on my part. I’ve found over
the years that I don’t brood nearly so much if I’m occupied
—not paperwork or supervising or marching around the
place giving orders, but actually doing something with my
hands—so I joined the work detail digging the trench for
the new pipe. Nico didn’t approve but Faustinus said that,
actually, it was a good idea, leading by example, not afraid
to get his hands dirty, all that; I tried to put that out of my
mind in case it ruined the whole thing for me. I never was
much of a one for digging, but someone had to cut and fit
the timbers to prop up the sides. It was nice to find I could
still saw a straight line and cut a mortice square by eye.
Needless to say it came on to rain, and my clothes and
boots got caked with mud. Somehow the miracle of water
isn’t quite so miraculous when you’re standing up to your
ankles in it, and it’s running down the back of your neck.
We hit a few snags, needless to say. The City’s been
there a long time, and you never quite know what you’ll run
into when you start digging. At one point, we came up
against stonework, some old building or other; marble, so it
must’ve been quite grand in its day: they haven’t built here
in marble for six hundred years. But the sledgehammers
dealt with all that quickly enough. Later I found out that
we’d stumbled across the long-lost tomb of the First
Emperor. It was supposed to be heaped up knee-deep in
golden chalices, but we didn’t find anything like that. My
guess is, scholars and antiquaries from Poor Town had been
there and discovered the site some time ago, but for some
reason neglected to publish their results.
By the time we connected up with the main pipe we were
worn out and filthy. The sun had come out, caking the mud
into the cloth, and, for once in my life, a casual observer
might have mistaken me for a Robur. The hell with the
dignity of labour, I thought. Nobody was watching, so I
sloped off.
Victory Park—you probably know it as Bakers’ Fields—is
one of my favourite places in the City. Not many people go
there during the day (don’t go there at night, whatever you
do) and you can wander along the avenues of poplars and
almost forget you’re in the heart of the capital of the world.
I sat down on a stone block left over from some old building
and tried to make sense of what I’d done, but it was all too
confusing. I tried not to think of the poor devils—milkfaces
—who’d been down there in the sap when the water broke
through. It would’ve been quick; nobody can outrun a
torrent of angry water, inside a tube, fifty feet under the
ground. They’d have been scrambling, tripping, shoving
and clawing at each other, but not for very long. We used to
use the same method to deal with rats under the haybarn;
the lions of the Earth against the worms.
I looked at my hands; they were caked with mud,
practically black. For some reason, that made me laugh out
loud—if you can’t beat them, and all that. But it was wrong
of me to presume to an honour I could never achieve, so I
wandered over to the fountain. It wasn’t running, which
puzzled me, until I remembered: no water, not until
someone pulls up the manhole, climbs down into a hole,
primes the fountain with a dozen or so strokes of the pump.
So I did that; and, behold, water.
It’s pretty stuff, and useful as well. I stood and watched
it, tumbling and frothing. It can kill you, but there’s no
living without it. Ambiguous, you see, like pretty much
bloody everything.
I remembered why I was there, and set to washing the
mud off my face and hands. When I’d done that, I realised
how thirsty I was, so I cupped my hands for a drink. At
which point, a Parks and Gardens man came up. He
wouldn’t have recognised me, all scruffy and horrible.
“You,” he said. “Yes, you. What do you think you’re
doing? Can’t you read?”
He was pointing. There was a sign, a brass plate with
white lettering;
Robur only.
I opened my hands and let the water drop through them
as though it was burning me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I promise, it won’t happen again.”
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“Haven’t seen you for a few days,” she said.
She was looking better; different, but better. Something
like that’s bound to change you, even if everything still
works the way it’s supposed to. Henceforth her face would
always be thinner, her chin narrower, her eyes deeper in
her head. She didn’t look quite so much like her mother
any more.
“Been busy,” I said.
“
Well?” She looked round, lowered her voice. “When’s it
going to happen?”
“Already has,” I told her.
She listened, without interrupting. Then, “You idiot,” she
said.
I shrugged. I wasn’t in the mood.
“You bloody fool. What in God’s name possessed you? Of
all the stupid, thoughtless,
selfish things to do—”
“Selfish.”
“Too bloody right, selfish. You put your stupid morality
ahead of saving my life. And the others, your friends. And
it’s all pointless. You said so yourself.”
“Maybe,” I said mildly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I reckon I’ve improved our chances considerably,” I
said. “We’ve now got water, a secure supply, as much as we
need. I killed God knows how many of their engineers, so
they won’t be in a position to start sapping for quite some
time. So, not quite such a foregone conclusion as it might
have been.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “You’ve just put it off, that’s all. And
you’ve pissed off your friend, so bang goes any chance of
him telling his people to let us alone when the City falls.
How could you do something like that? Don’t you give a
damn about anyone except yourself?”
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“You’ve got to come right now.”
I was getting sick of hearing that, ten or twenty times a
day. But there was always the chance that it might really be
something important, so I went. “This had better be good,”
I said.
The clerk looked at me. “It’s a ship,” he said.
Running isn’t my thing, to be honest with you, though I
imagine it could be if I was ever in a battle. But a ship
—“Wait for me,” I heard the clerk wailing behind me.
Screw him, I thought. I ran.
Sure enough: an actual ship. It had been a long time
since we’d seen one of those. It looked very strange and
lonely out there on the North Quay, half a mile long, poking
aggressively out into the Bay like a pointing finger.
I don’t know spit about ships, but the harbourmaster told
me it was a cog: a round, podgy sort of a ship, like half a
walnut shell, with a single tall mast. “Not a warship,” he
explained, “a trader. This quay used to be crammed with
them.”
The crew were standing about on the quay, surrounded
by Watch. I pushed my way through. “Who’s in charge?” I
said.
One man, no different from the rest, raised his hand. I
gave him my big smile and a handshake. “Who the hell are
you?” I asked. “And how did you get here?”
His name was Teldo, and he was from the island republic of
Selroq, about twenty miles offshore from the Echmen
border. The Selroq people aren’t Echmen; they’re too dark
for milkfaces and too pale for Robur and nobody knows
where they came from originally or how they ended up
where they are now; nobody cares much, either. Their
function in the great scheme of things is to be neutral, so
that when the Robur and the Echmen are at war, which is
nearly all the time, there’s a safe, legal conduit for Echmen
silks, copper and spices to be exchanged for Robur wine,
olive oil, iron and dried stockfish. Selroq is tiny and nothing
grows there; I believe there’s one freshwater well on the
island, which is plenty because everybody drinks wine. The
whole island is covered with houses, shipyards and
warehouses. Under normal circumstances we see a lot of
the Selroquois, though we know so little about them. They
bring us nice things we couldn’t otherwise get, and they
keep themselves to themselves. Whether a Selroq would be
allowed to drink from the fountain in Victory Park is a moot
point. I don’t suppose one has ever tried. He’d have more
sense.
“We didn’t plan on coming here,” Teldo said, wiping his
lips with his sleeve. I poured him another drink. “The
blockade, you see. Nobody’s been able to get past it for
weeks.”
“There’s a blockade,” I said. “Well, we guessed it was
something like that.”
“There was a blockade,” Teldo said. “But we got caught
out in a freak storm out of the north-east, which blew us
right down here—we were headed for Psammetica—and by
the time we’d got control of the ship, we could see the Five
Fingers. We were terrified.”
The Five Fingers are a bunch of rocks about ten miles
outside the Bay. You can’t see them from here, because the
south headland is in the way. “Go on.”
“That’s where the blockade’s supposed to be,” he said.
“Forty Sherden galleasses, they’ve been stopping and
sinking every merchantman that’s tried to get in here. But
they weren’t there.”
I frowned. “You mean you managed to slip past them.”
He shook his head. “They weren’t there. I don’t know if
the storm scattered them, or they’ve been recalled, or
someone came and chased them away. It’s not a case of
slipping past them, if they’d been there it couldn’t be done.
Right now, for the time being at least, there is no blockade.
Anybody who wants to can come and go as they please.”
Artavasdus, who was duty officer, had given express orders
to keep the arrival of the ship deathly quiet. In this town,
not a hope. About an hour after I got there, the docks were
crowded so you couldn’t move; men and women and kids
and handcarts. Artavasdus shut the gates and put a double
cordon of Parks and Gardens men round them; a bit of a
nuisance, because although they did a bang-up job of
keeping people from getting in, it meant I couldn’t get out.
We made an announcement; there is no ship, go home. The
crowd started to drift away around sunset.
The ship was fully laden, a hundred and twenty tons of
cargo; bales of silk, barrels of cinnamon, pepper and
nutmeg, crates of distilled essence of rosewater, exquisite
pale blue eggshell-thin porcelain, jasmine tea, boxes and
boxes of chessboards and ivory-backed mirrors and the
world-famous and justly celebrated Echmen pornographic
wall-hangings. Would you care to make me an offer for the
lot, Teldo asked. No, I said. We don’t want it. What we want
is wheat, dried fish, bacon, cooking oil, lamp oil, hemp rope
and arrows. Sorry, haven’t got anything like that.
“Fine,” I said. “Go away and get some, and I guarantee
I’ll make you rich. Same goes for all your friends and
relations. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
“But suppose the Sherden come back.”
“Quite,” I said. “If I were you, I’d go now. How soon can
you go home, load up and get back here?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“I quite understand,” I said. “Your choice. But in that
case, I’ll impound your ship.”
“You can’t do that.”
Which made me want to laugh. You can’t do that, it can’t
be done. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t like it myself. But
compared to some of the truly appalling things I’ve done
lately, stealing your ship barely registers.”
I’d lost a friend. Story of my life. “In that case,” he said,
“we’ll do as you say. We can be back here in five days, if
we’re lucky with the wind.”
“Actually,” I said, “you won’t be going. You’ll be staying
here. That way, I can be sure your shipmates will do what
you’ve just agreed to. They will, won’t they?”
He shuddered. “Yes,” he said. “Most of them are my
family. They’re decent people.”
“They wouldn’t like it here, then,” I said, and poured him
another drink.
“There could be all sorts of explanations,” Nico said. He
has an exceptional flair for the unhelpful remark. “We
daren’t make any assumptions.”
Also, he’s got a loud voice, and that precise, clipped
Imperial blue-blood diction that means you can hear
everything he says perfectly clearly half a mile away in a
thunderstorm. “Not so loud,” I told him. He looked puzzled,
then guilty. It’s a problem his sort have—the mighty, born-
to-rule Great Families, I mean. All their lives, wherever
they are—in the street, at home, probably squatting for a
shit or screwing their wives, for all I know—they’re
constantly waited on and surrounded by a legion of
servants. You couldn’t live like that unless you taught
yourself to believe that the lower classes are stone deaf.
They aren’t, of course; and yet Nico’s lot never cease to be
amazed that they can’t keep a secret.
I wanted him to keep it down because we were standing
on a scaffolding platform up against the wall in
Canonsgate, watching fifty Greens and forty Blues pouring
a mixture of water, quicklime, sand and pumice (you want
to know the exact proportions? In your dreams) into a hole
in the ground. To explain: the hole we were filling was the
one Ogus’s sappers had made, before I flooded them out.
The weird mix is a recipe I came across in Tomae, right up
in the frozen, godforsaken north; it’s a sort of mortar,
except that you can cast it, like bronze, to make slabs and
pillars and whole floors—you make a wooden box out of
planks and boards and fill it with the gloop, and when it
goes off it sets hard as stone, even—now here’s a miracle, if
you like—underwater. I can only assume it’s never caught
on because you need pumice, which most people haven’t
got in any useful quantity. But we have; there’s a vein of
the stuff running right down the middle of North Hill,
under Hill Street and out into Old Castle. If ever I get out of
the military, I’ll make my fortune with the stuff. You could
build whole cities out of it, and never have to shape another
stone block or lay another brick.
Secrecy—sorry, I got sidetracked there—because the
rumours about a ship suddenly appearing out of nowhere
had spread across town like the plague, and people were
getting excited. Ships meant a way out of the City before
the savages broke in, and I still had a double guard posted
outside the docks gate, which was still firmly closed and
bolted. Ships were therefore not something I could be
heard talking about in public, especially not with ninety-
odd Themesmen straining to catch every word I said.
“You must have some idea,” Nico went on, in what he
thought was a whisper. “You talked to the man. What did he
say?”
“I told you,” I said. “His ship got blown off course, and
where he expected to find the blockade, there was nothing.
That’s all I know.”
“Makes no sense,” Nico said. “Mind you, it begs the
question. If they’ve got ships for a blockade, why haven’t
they tried to attack us by sea?”
You think you know people. He said it like it had only just
occurred to him. I’d been losing sleep over it since about
Day Two of the siege. I’d assumed he’d thought of it, too,
and we hadn’t discussed it because it was too depressing.
Still; good question.
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“It’s obvious,” she said. She was feeling a lot better. They’d
propped her up with about a million cushions in a gold-leaf
chaise longue that used to belong to the Empress
Theophano. I didn’t tell her that, of course; it’d have given
her the horrors. “How many Sherden ships did you say you
saw at Classis?”
“Seventy odd.”
“Well, then. That’s probably how many ships they’ve got.
Plenty for a blockade of the Bay, if you stand out beyond
the Five Fingers, and of course you wouldn’t dare come in
any closer because of the evening currents—”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Sailor stuff, of
which I know nothing. “Of course,” I said.
“But hopeless for an invasion,” she went on regardless.
“Seventy ships carrying twenty marines, that’s fourteen
hundred men. To capture and hold the whole of the docks.
That’ll be why.”
That was roughly what I’d come up with on Day Three,
hence my ability to get at least some sleep. “I’d figured
there must be a blockade,” I said, “because of no ships
coming in, and I guessed we couldn’t see them because it’s
too dangerous to hang about in the Bay itself. I don’t know
why, but I gather it just is.“
“It’s all to do with the rip tide and the undertow off Start
Point, which means that when the tide turns mid-morning
coming in from the west—”
“Yes,” I said. “Quite probably. And I thought, sooner or
later they’ll have repaired that bloody lighthouse, and the
Fleet will be able to get back here, and—well, I didn’t
bother thinking past that, because as soon as the Fleet gets
here, I hand over command to whoever’s in charge of it, I’m
off the hook and none of it’s my problem any more. But
time’s gone on, and no Fleet.”
She frowned. “If I was them,” she said. “Sorry, if I was
your pal Ogus, the first thing I’d do is get hold of that
lighthouse and make bloody sure it’s out of action and
beyond repair.”
I nodded. “I think we can assume he did that. And
likewise, it’s a certainty the Fleet’s been trying to take it
back. I’ve never been there so I don’t know the geography,
but I’m guessing the Imperials built it there precisely
because it was safe from an attack from the sea.” I looked
at her. “Which doesn’t shed any light on anything really,
does it?”
She doesn’t give up that easily. “Possibility,” she said.
“The Fleet’s broken through, and the Sherden have been
called off the blockade to stop them.”
“No chance,” I told her. “The Sherden against the Fleet?
They wouldn’t do it. And if they did, they wouldn’t last five
minutes, the Fleet would be here by now. Stand-up fighting
against a superior enemy isn’t the Sherden way. Or an
inferior enemy, come to that.”
“All right,” she said. “Possibility. The blockaders got
messed up by the same storm that blew those traders off
course.”
I nodded. “That’s a good one,” I said. “And, as we all
know, I don’t know sailor stuff from a hole in the ground.
Even so. If a nasty big wind blew the Selroqois off their line
into the Bay, wouldn’t it also have blown the blockaders in
here, too? Or can a storm have two nasty big winds blowing
in two opposite directions at once? I honestly don’t know,
it’s too technical for me.”
She glared at me. “Good point,” she said. “All right,
possibility. The Sherden are the only ships Ogus has, and
he needed them for something somewhere else.”
“Distinct possibility,” I said. “Such as?”
“It could be anything.” She scowled at me. “If you’d had
half a brain, you’d have asked him when you had the
chance.”
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As a matter of fact—
I hadn’t told her about that part of the conversation. I’ve
been making arrangements for a big push, he said, on the
off-chance you wouldn’t listen to reason. But I won’t have
to bother with all that now.
Big push?
He nodded. We just cleared the blueskins out of Leuctra
Opuntis, so that’s another thirty thousand men available.
Also, we had a stroke of luck there.
That was all he said. But I’m in the trade; I know that
Leuctra Opuntis is where they store most of the siege
equipment captured from the Echmen in the last war, or
the war before that. You’ll have grasped the significance.
All government-issued equipment has to go through
Classis. But stuff looted from the enemy isn’t our-
government issue. A canny provincial general would
therefore make damn sure he got hold of it and kept it safe,
to be sure of having it to hand if he ever had need of it,
rather than going through channels. And the Echmen;
they’re rotten soldiers or we wouldn’t keep beating them,
but they’re a long way ahead of us—don’t tell anyone I said
this—when it comes to making things. Trebuchets, a case in
point. It stood to reason, therefore, that Ogus’s stroke of
luck was a cache of state-of-the-art siege equipment, which
some fool had neglected to soak in lamp oil and set light to
when the savages started coming over the wall. From what
I’d heard about the stores squirreled away in Leuctra,
seventy Sherden ships would need to make several
journeys to shift it all. Something to look forward to.
That, in my experience, is the way life works. Things tend
to come in linked pairs of opposites. Thus, a heaven-sent
chance to stock up on supplies, hand in hand with the
prospect of heavy plant and equipment which would kill us
all.
Faced with something like that, the sensible man thinks
at right angles. Ships, or at any rate, a ship comes to the
City laden with wheat. It unloads, and is empty. Of rather
more interest, in the wider scheme of things, is not what
the ship can bring into the City but what it could take out
of it. Me, for instance. Or, if I’m hell-bent on being noble,
the people I care for.
Then I stop and think a bit more. Aichma; who else? Nico
and Faustinus and Artavasdus; for a start, they probably
wouldn’t go. Question: my friends? Define friend. And any
meaningful definition of friend, applied in my case,
probably wouldn’t include them, but would definitely apply
to Ogus; my old friend, my mate, my pal. And if I’d wanted
to save my friends, or, to be more accurate, my friend’s
daughter and my colleagues, I had a splendid opportunity,
which I pissed on. The difference being, in order to save my
pals by taking up Ogus’s offer, I’d have had to betray the
City. Putting them on a ship to Selroq wouldn’t have the
same unpalatable consequences.
I was still agonising over that when the ship came back:
alone, just the one ship, but riding dangerously low in the
water because of its weight of cargo.
“Of course,” I said, as they unloaded, “you’ll want paying
for all this.”
Teldo, a much-enduring man I’d treated very badly, gave
me a sour look. “You don’t have to,” he said. “You could just
take our stuff and not pay for it, just like you kidnapped
me.”
“I’m sorry you see it that way,” I said. “and of course
you’ll get paid.” I glanced down at the manifest. It was
short and to the point. One hundred and fifty tons of wheat,
in sacks. If his brothers and cousins had paid more than six
hundred stamena for it, they didn’t deserve to survive in
business. “Five thousand stamena, “ I said. “Fair?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Amazing how
simple arithmetic can change your world view. “All right,”
he said.
“Of course,” I went on, “we can’t give you actual coins.”
“What?”
“Sadly, no. But instead I’ll give you a letter of credit
guaranteed by the Imperial treasury and bearing the Great
Seal. Every bit as good as gold, if not better.”
He looked as though I’d just pulled out his front teeth.
“Fine,” he said. “That’ll have to do, then.”
“Alternatively—”
It’s how I do things. First, despair. Then hope.
I took him for a tour round the Palace—the ground-floor
rooms and the library—followed by the Council Chamber,
the Golden Chapel of the Blue Feather monastery, the
Scriveners’ Guildhall, a few other places like that. City
people see these places every day. If they even notice the
icons, the triptychs, the altarpieces, the tapestries, the
incunabula, the iconostases, all they see is a vague, familiar
blur of gold and bright colours; they don’t stop and think,
just how much is all that lot
worth?, because of course it’s
not for sale. Nobody bothers stealing it, because who in his
right mind would buy it? We have tons, literally tons, of the
stuff; painted wood, mostly, you can’t melt it down or
hammer it into sheets. But in Echmen, where the Selroqois
do so much of their business, or further east still, where
the silk and the jade come from, giving evidence of great
and prosperous realms governed by men of exquisite taste
—and entirely legal, with a bill of sale and a provenance,
and each piece guaranteed unique…
Worth risking a blockade for, even.
He looked at me, wild-eyed. “You’re sure,” he said, “this
stuff is yours to sell.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I hold the Great Seal. I can do what
I damn well like.”
So much better than gold, which is heavy; the most a
little Selroqois cog could carry would be a hundred and
twenty, hundred-thirty tons. But the Ascension of the
Golden House—egg tempera on lime boards, thirty-one
inches by twenty-seven, weight one pound nine ounces;
plenty more where that came from…
“And all you want is wheat,” he said.
“Wheat and arrows. A few thousand bowstaves would
be nice.”
He looked at me the way the male spider gazes at his
beloved. He knows he’s going to get eaten afterwards, but
it’ll be worth it. “Deal,” he said.
“You can’t,” Faustinus said. He was almost in tears. “You
can’t do it. It’s unthinkable.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t think,” I said.
“You can’t do it, Orhan. No, listen.” He was beside
himself with fury. “Those paintings are the soul of this city.
Let them go and you may as well burn the place to the
ground.”
“I beg to differ,” I said. “I think the soul of the City is the
people who live here. But they won’t live much longer with
nothing to eat. No, you listen. Have you been to the stores
lately? It may be all right now, just about, but fairly soon
it’ll be pretty desperate. And people aren’t fools. They
know as well as you and I do, what we had stored before
the enemy came won’t last forever. Do you really want corn
riots, on top of everything else?”
Usually you can shut him up with stuff like that. He’s
terrified of the common people, afraid he’ll wake up one
morning and find them standing over his bed, ready to eat
him. But not this time. “I don’t give a damn,” he said. “Your
precious Blues and Greens aren’t the empire, they just live
here. In a hundred years’ time nobody will remember their
names. But the Golden House Ascension is probably the
supreme achievement of the human race, and it belongs
here. And if you think—”
I looked at him, and he trailed off. “Actually,” I said, “I
agree with you. Which is why, if the Selroqois didn’t want
to trade wheat for it, I’d beg them to take it for nothing.”
“You what? Are you mad?”
“No, you are. You’d leave it, and all the other really
precious stuff, for the savages to smash up and burn. They
won’t care about
art, Faustinus. As far as they’re
concerned, it’s Robur, so they’ll kill it. Which is why it’s got
to go somewhere safe.”
That shut him up.
“And, if we survive this,” I went on, “we’ll save up our
pennies for a hundred years and we’ll buy it all back. But
it’ll still be there, even if we aren’t. It won’t have gone up
in smoke. What do you take me for, Faustinus, a
barbarian?”
Simple as that.
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33
Three days later, there were seventeen Selroqois cogs in
the Bay.
No point trying to keep it a secret. I had all the Watch
and the Parks and Gardens guarding the docks gate, but
they weren’t much use. For one thing, I had a lot of
difficulty trusting them not to leave their posts, charge the
quay, steal the ships and sail away in them. But the crowd
of desperate would-be refugees outside the docks was huge
and dangerous. People were getting trampled to death. It
wouldn’t be long before they figured out that the Watch
wouldn’t use their weapons if they made a concerted attack
on the gate with a battering ram. You’ve got to do
something, Faustinus said, useful and resourceful as ever.
I knew what I had to do. But I was damned if I was
prepared to do it.
But they didn’t know that. So I gave orders for five of the
catapults on the dockyard watchtowers to be turned round
to face the crowd.
It takes a while to turn a catapult. You run a pair of long
levers into iron hoops driven into the sides of the carriage.
Then, of course, you’ve got to chock up the back end to get
the reverse elevation. Enough people had relatives and
friends who did shifts on the wall to recognise what was
going on. It didn’t take long for the noise to die away.
Instead, there was the most appalling silence. But they
weren’t moving.
It was going to be an absolute disaster as and when they
did move, of course. Ever seen a really big crowd break up
in a panic? It’s not like they’re trying to hurt each other,
they simply don’t have a choice. Someone pushes, someone
else overbalances, falls against someone else; now there’s
people on the ground, people tripping over them, boots
landing on faces, bodies piling up, weight beyond the
tensile strength of arms and ribs and skulls. Query whether
the catapults could do significantly more damage, or even
as much. I realised I’d just made a catastrophic mistake.
Just as well there was time to undo it.
“Turn the bloody things back again,” I yelled.
I think the crews were only too happy to oblige. And
then it occurred to me that I might just have done a clever
thing by accident. Sheer fluke; but I’d managed to shut
them up, which meant I’d be able to make myself heard.
I don’t have a loud voice and I don’t like shouting. This,
though, wasn’t something I could delegate.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I yelled, and remembered to
pause, give the words time to get there. “God knows you’ve
tried my patience, but I’ve decided not to shoot you after
all. But what I will do, if you don’t disperse quietly and
sensibly, is give the order to those catapults to sink the
ships in the Bay. We haven’t unloaded all the food yet, so
most of it’ll be wasted, but please understand this. If we
can’t all go, nobody goes. And if anybody so much as leans
on this gate, so help me I’ll scuttle those ships so fast it’ll
make your head swim. Thank you for listening.”
I’ve done some bloody stupid things in my time, but I
reckon that has to be the prize exhibit in the collection. If
one voice had shouted or one hand had thrown a stone, I
don’t believe the entire Imperial army, at full strength in its
glorious heyday, could’ve kept them from sweeping away
the gates and crushing my soldiers underfoot like snails.
What can I say? I got away with it, and it worked. When the
crowd had thinned out by about four-fifths, I sent out
stretcher parties to pick up the poor devils who’d got
trodden on. There wasn’t a lot we could do for most of
them. Just think of what could have happened, and judge
me accordingly.
I was still shaking like a leaf, but I had to get those ships
unloaded and on their way quickly, before my fellow
citizens realised they’d been tricked and came back to tell
me what they thought about that. Maybe presumptuously,
I’d had half the public buildings in the City surreptitiously
looted of their moveable artwork; we had it all stacked up
in a big warehouse on Quay Six, and thank God there
wasn’t a fire. I’d have liked to take my time showing those
Selroqois round and screwing them to the wall for the best
possible deal. As it was, we more or less shovelled artworks
into their outstretched arms until they couldn’t carry any
more, then sent them on their way. As it was they missed
the evening tide, but I insisted they stand out to sea so that
at least they were out of sight from anywhere in the City.
And please come back, I added, as quickly as you can.
“Sure,” said one of them. “If you think you can handle
the trouble that’ll cause. Were you actually prepared to
launch stones at your own people?”
“No, of course not.”
“Mpm,” he nodded. “How about us? Would you have
sunk us, like you said?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “I need you.”
Not long afterwards, Artavasdus asked me the same two
questions. I answered yes to both. I’m not good with the
truth. I guess I just want people to like me.
The next ship that sailed into the Bay wasn’t Selroqois,
and it wasn’t bringing wheat. It was Sherden, and they
unloaded their cargo into a small boat, which they cast
adrift so that the early morning tide could bring it ashore. I
was sent for.
Inside the boat, packed in wicker hampers, was a
considerable number of human heads. Some of them I
recognised: they were the Selroq merchants I’d talked to
the last time, and members of their crew; most likely their
brothers and nephews and cousins, trade being a family
business on Selroq. Others were new to me. I imagine they
were other members of the mercantile community, eager to
cash in on a very good thing while it lasted.
Pinned to one hamper was a note. Nobody could read it;
hardly surprising, since it was in Alauzet, written in
Jazygite script.
We ought to talk. Ah, I thought.
Goes without saying, nobody had any paper, or ink, or a
pen. Someone found me a thin bit of charcoal from a
brazier. I scrawled on the back of the note, then called for a
volunteer; five stamena for anyone who’ll row out to that
ship and give them a letter.
I had my pick of three. Never ceases to amaze me, the
insane things people will do for money.
It had been good while it lasted. The granary wasn’t exactly
full, but at least we couldn’t see those distressing patches
of bare floor any more. We’d also picked up a quarter of a
million arrows, which really isn’t that many when you come
to think of it.
You have to pay for everything in this life, however, and
the food and the arrows cost me any popularity I may have
had in the City, even with the Themes. Arrasc and Bronellus
were still talking to me, though they insisted on having
witnesses present, and the work was still getting done. But
Lysimachus—he still liked me, and I was still terrified of
him—lost no opportunity of warning me not to go here or
there where I’d felt safe walking alone all my life, because
I’d be bound to be recognised and torn to pieces by the
mob. The Watch and the Parks and Gardens were livid with
me because I’d nearly put them in the position of having to
launch bouncing stone balls into a street packed solid with
women and children. The Engineers were still on my side,
though they reckoned I’d lost the plot recently. The sections
of society who’d always hated me—the House, the civil
service, the mercantile and commercial sectors—hated me
more than ever. I tried not to let it bother me, with
indifferent success.
So what? We still had the wall, and superior artillery (for
the time being), and plenty of good water and a certain
amount of food—enough to last the rest of our lives, if I was
right about the captured Echmen siege machines, but we’ll
come to that in a minute. My Engineers had been renamed
the First Imperial Regiment of Archers; we’d kept the bows
and arrows for ourselves, on the grounds that archers are
further away from the enemy than other troops, and we
wanted to put as much distance between ourselves and
those murderous bastards as we possibly could. And, being
engineers, they’d figured out how to use a bow, practised,
tried a few modifications to bracing height and fletching
configuration, added a few new skills to their repertoire.
They weren’t good archers, but they were competent, and
an overwhelming improvement on what we’d had before,
which was nothing at all. Meanwhile, there were basins and
buckets on every street corner. True, the general public
used them for purposes other than those intended, but
since that tended to increase rather than decrease the
amount of fluid the containers contained, why the hell not?
I’d found an interesting book in the military science
section of the abbot’s library at the Blue Spire monastery. It
was very old and very depressing;
Notes on Siegecraft, it
was called, and chapter thirty-six was about how you
capture an otherwise impregnable city by undermining the
walls.
Hardly catapult science; but you need an awful lot of
men, materials and time. You start to dig well beyond the
maximum range of the defenders’ best artillery. For most of
the distance between your lines and the wall, you needn’t
go down terribly far; an open trench about ten feet deep
will do just fine, but you don’t drive it straight at your
objective, because a skilled artilleryman could drop a shot
into the trench, squash your sappers and probably collapse
a section of the works. No, you follow a zigzag line, and you
pile up the spoil you’ve just dug out on the side facing the
wall. Your soft, crumbly earth stops projectiles rather
better than stonework or brick, which are stiff and fragile
and prone to shatter into clouds of flying splinters. A stone
hitting a bank of earth is cushioned, it sinks into the soft
bank, maybe scatters it a little, but causes relatively little
incidental damage by way of shrapnel. If you can be
bothered (and Ogus undoubtedly could) you line the
outside your bank with big wicker baskets filled with sand,
to keep the heaped-up dirt from sliding down and leaking
out if it takes a hit, or if it rains. To speed the digging there
are a number of handy mechanical aids, most of them
Echmen in origin. There’s a giant screw mounted on a
frame like a battering ram, for boring through heavy clay.
There’s cranes for shifting the spoil and carts that run on
rails, hauled back down the trench by a relay of winches, to
save you having to lug the stuff about in baskets. There’s a
thing like a colossal bellows on wheels, for blasting a jet of
hot flame—if you run into solid rock, you heat it up real hot
with the bellows gadget, then douse it down with cold
water or (for some reason, not explained) vinegar; the rock
splits, and you can get in there with crowbars and big
hammers and break it up small enough to shift. When
you’re two hundred yards or so from the wall—that is, still
comfortably outside arrowshot—you start to dig deep.
Ideally you want to go down as far as the wall is high.
When you reckon you’re directly under it, you dig a big
chamber, which you stuff full of dry brushwood. This you
soak with oil and set alight. The fire burns through the pit
props supporting the tunnel; the tunnel collapses; the earth
on top of the tunnel is displaced and falls down to fill the
chamber, displacing the ground above it, on which rests the
heavy, rigid wall. Result: the wall cracks up and subsides
into the hole, leaving a sprawling heap of rubble, over
which your shock troops can climb into the city. Simple as
that.
Chapter thirty-seven is much shorter. It tells you what
you can do to defend your city from sappers. You need to
figure out or find by trial and error where the enemy
tunnels are; then you dig tunnels of your own to undermine
or intercept them. If you can bring the roof down before
they reach your wall, splendid. If you can break into their
tunnel, from the sides or above, you can send in your
soldiers, or light fires of damp hay, so that the backdraught
will suck the smoke down into the enemy’s working, or—
and here, I think, the author was letting himself get carried
away—you can turn loose wolves or bears or even lob in a
couple of dozen beehives, then seal up the breach as fast as
you can. But mostly what you can do, and are advised to do,
is surrender. The trick is to time your capitulation just
right. Not too early, or he’ll know you’re scared and strike a
viciously hard bargain. Not too late, or by that stage he’s
nearly there, so why bother to negotiate. But time it
perfectly, and he’ll give you good terms rather than waste
time, lives and money. He may let you leave with what you
can carry, or leave but empty-handed, or let the civilians
out with a few possessions but the soldiers stay, or maybe
he’ll kill the soldiers but sell the civilians; it all depends on
the circumstances of the case, the skill of the negotiators,
the level of malice so far generated and the timing of the
offer. There’s even a handy chart, to help you do the
calculations. One thing, however, always happens,
regardless of the other terms of surrender. The defending
king, general, governor or garrison commander is handed
over and slowly executed. That’s a given, and non-
negotiable.
Thanks ever so much for that, I thought, and put the
book back where I’d found it.
I lent Nico the book. He read it and gave it back to me.
“Well?” I said.
“Well,” he replied, “obviously we haven’t got any wolves
or bears. Under normal circumstances we could get some
from Garia or somewhere like that, like we do for the
Spring Games, but if the blockade’s back, that’s out of the
question. But what we could do is round up a load of stray
dogs and not feed them for a week, and then turn them
loose. What do you reckon?”
Ye gods. Sometimes I think he lives in a world of his own.
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34
I was racking my brains trying to figure out how Ogus
would get a message to me, replying to mine saying, yes,
let’s meet. His spy’s carrier pigeons had long since gone in
the pot (not bad, actually; a bit stringy, perhaps) and he
hadn’t mentioned any other resources of his inside the
walls. I needn’t have worried. My trouble is, I think sly and
furtive, which comes of having a fundamentally dishonest
nature. Ogus thinks on a grand scale, as befits a conqueror.
He sent an ambassador: a pleasant enough old boy,
dressed in monks’ habit, complete with hood and cowl. His
arrival puzzled me, because I knew for a fact there was
nothing to talk about; and so it proved. We had him in and
sat him down in the throne room of the Palace; me,
Faustinus, Nico, the Theme bosses. I was waiting for him to
slip me a message on a scrap of paper, and hoping to God
he wouldn’t be too obvious about it. Given my disastrous
slump in esteem, the last thing I wanted was for anyone to
suspect that I was in secret communication with the
enemy; difficult, since I wanted to be just that. But no,
nothing of that sort. We sat on one side of a big rosewood
and ivory table, he sat on the other. He demanded our
unconditional surrender. We said no. He rephrased it. We
said no, again. This went on for a bit—that man had a
remarkable gift for saying the same thing in different ways
—and then it was obvious we weren’t getting anywhere,
and he got up to leave. As he did so, his hood, which he’d
kept up all the time we’d been talking, slipped sideways,
while he was facing me but not the others. Then he put the
hood back up again, thanked us politely for our time, and
left.
That’s what I mean about doing things in the grand
manner. On the old boy’s tonsured head were tattooed—not
just written on, but actually pricked and inked into the skin
—a few well-chosen words, written in Alauzet using the
Jazygite script. Anyone seeing them—almost anyone seeing
them—would’ve taken them for some of the weird stuff
monks get decorated with if they’ve been particularly good
or clever; mystic runes and cabalistic sigils and whatever.
That’s the difference, I guess, between my old pal and
me. I would never be able to bring myself to believe that
any scheme of mine was important enough to justify some
poor innocent going around for the rest of his life with the
words
Lead a sortie against the ram and get captured, your
safe return guaranteed indelibly carved into his scalp. For
Ogus, I feel sure, it was just a chance to get his message
across and show off at the same time.
What ram? Oh, that ram.
It was a beauty. The moment I saw it, I wanted one. The
next moment, my blood ran cold. It was a magnificent piece
of engineering and construction, but it was headed directly
for my gate, and if it got there we wouldn’t stand a chance.
Then I remembered, it wasn’t supposed to.
Indulge me, though, and let me tell you about it. When
the Echmen—nobody else could have designed or made
something like that—built it, they’d addressed all the
problems I’d thought of and reckoned to be insuperable
and brushed them away like flies. Direct hit from a
catapult? Surround it with a stout frame covered with
stitched-together hides and padded like a cushion. Same
principle as the dirt banks; don’t resist the impact,
dissipate it. Brilliant. The sixty-strong team of oxen needed
to move the thing vulnerable to arrows? Padded jackets for
them, too—covered from nose to tail, I kid you not, in
quilted armour of a quality the Imperial guard never
aspired to. All right, what about a direct hit on the oxen
with a catapult stone, squashing them flat and shattering
the yoke boom? Simple; have ten more teams of oxen
standing by, plus a quick-release connection so you can
uncouple the smashed yoke and couple up the new one
faster than you could say it—the spare teams protected, of
course, by huge wooden pavises the size of warship sails,
mounted on wheeled limbers. The pavises alone would be
enough to give you nightmares; they’d stop arrows and
almost certainly slow down my horrible bouncing stone
balls. The ram itself was a straight oak trunk about fifteen
yards long, with a bulbous tip that was almost certainly
bronze filled with lead. There was a marvellous-looking
winch arrangement on the back, so that a relatively small
crew protected by shielding could wind the thing up and let
it go without being exposed to arrows from the ramparts. I
couldn’t begin to tell you how much the whole thing must
have cost; more than my entire Engineers’ budget for a
decade, and then some. If ever I get the chance, I’m
definitely going to go and work for the Echmen. Those
people must really appreciate fine engineering.
Even if I hadn’t seen the writing on the ambassador’s
head, I’d have ordered a sortie; it was the only way of
stopping the monster. Trust Ogus to make it all delightfully
plausible for me. His note hadn’t said whether we’d be
allowed to stop and destroy his wonderful gadget; the
implication was that, yes, we had his permission, because if
we didn’t it’d complete its mission and crunch the gate into
kindling. Typical Ogus. He always was generous with his
toys.
“What we need to do,” Nico said beside me, and his
voice wasn’t as steady as it might be, “is dig a sap, quick,
right in front of the gate. Then, when that thing rolls on top
of it, its own weight will cave in the sap and it’ll fall
through and break its back.”
I was impressed. Hadn’t thought of that. “Don’t be
stupid,” I said, “there isn’t time.”
He gave me a sad look. “You’re quite right,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“Put our lads on the wall with their bows,” I said, “and
get me the hundred best Blues. We’re going to have to go
out there and smash it.”
“A sortie? But that’s—”
“Yes,” I said. “But your idea’s stupid and I can’t think of
anything. What does that leave?”
He nodded, the minimum movement to convey
agreement. “I’ll go,” he said.
“Like hell you will. I need you here. I’ll go.”
“With respect—”
“Quiet.” I hadn’t meant to yell at him. “Stopping it and
killing the crew won’t be enough, we’ve got to pull it down
and break it. Engineering. You stay here and be a soldier,
like you always wanted.”
I’d hurt his feelings. “Of course,” he said, and ran off to
organise the sortie. But naturally I couldn’t let him go, he’d
never come back, and neither would most of the poor
bastard Blues. And if they did supremely well and proved
themselves true heroes and killed the monster, it really
wouldn’t signify worth a damn, since the whole
performance was just an irrelevance, a show put on
because Ogus couldn’t trust me to have myself lowered
over the wall in a laundry basket at midnight without
getting caught. I reckon the way you go about doing things
says a lot about the sort of man you are. I’d never have
thought up something like that in a million years. Which
explains why Ogus, not me, was leading the great crusade
against the forces of darkness, and why I was trying to stop
him.
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35
It was a shambles. My fault. We came running out in a sort
of shield-wall configuration—running isn’t my thing, as I
think I may have mentioned—but they’d got about a
hundred archers tucked away behind those bloody pavises,
and we ended up kneeling in the dirt behind our shields,
pinned down and not daring to move. Which would
probably have worked out fine in the end—we could have
surrendered, thereby achieving the object of the exercise
while avoiding all the mess and bloodshed—except that
bloody Lysimachus suddenly jumped up and led a charge,
howling at the top of his voice. Lysimachus is a Green and
the rest of them were Blues, so by rights they should have
stayed put and let him get shot to bits; I don’t know. Maybe
it was the shame of being outmachoed by a Green, there’s
no accounting for idiotic heroics when you’re dealing with
Theme fighters. Anyway, there was a terrific yell and off
went all five hundred of the fools, leaving me kneeling
there in the dust all on my own.
About seventy of them didn’t make it; the rest covered
the distance to the ram in an amazingly short time,
followed not that much later by me, gasping for breath and
thinking I was about to die. Lysimachus was already
halfway up the side of the ram, running up it like a rat up a
curtain. Whoever those poor devils were on the ram, it was
clear they hadn’t signed on to face dangerous lunatics like
Lysimachus. They shot at him until he got close, then they
scrambled down a convenient ladder and scampered away
like rabbits. I think he managed to catch two, but the rest
got away. Still, you can’t have everything in this life.
A second or so later, fifty-odd Blues were swarming all
over the ram, making ropes fast to beams and throwing the
ends down. The ram itself sheltered them from the archers
behind the pavises, and we still had enough manpower to
haul on the ropes and topple the ram; which we did. For a
moment I thought the padding would keep it from breaking
up when it fell, but the leverage was too good. The thing
was twice as tall as it was wide; its own weight tore the
tenons out of the mortices, and it came apart like a stack of
firewood. Victory, in the face of insuperable odds, and I
hadn’t been captured. Don’t you hate it when that happens.
Time was running out. I looked round for some way of
separating myself from the rampantly triumphant Blues
without being obvious about it or getting shot, but I
couldn’t see anything. The Blues were drenching the
trashed woodwork with oil; someone yelled at me, “Time to
go”. He was grinning happily. This is ridiculous, I thought.
Then the pavises in front of me slid aside, and out came a
half-company of heavy infantry, running straight at me.
I heard the Blues shouting; then something dashed past
me and knocked me off my feet. By the time I’d scrambled
to my knees, Lysimachus had hurled himself at the locked
shields of the advancing heavies. He leapt into the air,
kicking hard with his left foot and battering down a couple
of shields; then he was through, the line was broken. The
snatch squad surged on past him as though he didn’t
matter. Then he broke through them from behind, scattered
their line, stumbled, fell forward onto his face. A spear
stuck up between his shoulders like the mast of a ship.
Someone grabbed me and pulled me up. I took no notice.
I was staring at Lysimachus, dead on the ground, being
trodden on. They dragged me towards him, over him, my
foot on his head; I think I turned my ankle on it. Loads of
yelling behind me, fighting noises; two men were
frogmarching me toward the pavises, we passed them, they
slid together behind us. There was a single riderless horse;
they helped me up onto it. Nobody spoke. Someone gave
the horse a slap, and it started forward. I nearly fell off but
hands pushed me upright in the saddle. Then it was off at a
brisk canter, with a man either side of me, running flat out,
hanging onto the stirrup leathers. One of the men looked
up at me, grinning. He said: “That was close. Who was that
lunatic?”
I didn’t answer. I hate people who can talk and run at the
same time.
The first time I visited Ogus’s tent, it was magnificent.
Since then, he’d smartened the place up a bit. I don’t know
anything about art, so I couldn’t say for sure, but I think
the stunning altarpiece he’d set up behind his favourite
chair was the Chrysostoma Transfiguration, which I seem
to remember being the pride and joy of the abbots of
Shasida, up in the frozen north-east. The three-quarter-size
ivory figure of Our Lady in her aspect of the New Moon was
definitely the one that used to stand in the atrium of the
governor’s mansion at Molan, because I saw it there ten
years ago. The tapestries looked remarkably like the set I
once saw on the walls of the Marshal’s court at Spendone,
way down south on the border. My guess is, they were
trophies, like stags’ heads. I don’t think Ogus had them
there because he liked looking at them.
“Hello, Orhan,” he said.
I wanted to laugh. He was wearing the full outfit: the
purple floor-length robe that only the emperor can wear,
the crisscross gold-embroidered sash, heavy as armour and
to my mind unspeakably vulgar, the ermine cape and a
really very good replica of the Triple Crown, except that
the egg-sized uncut ruby in the middle of the central fleuret
was, if anything, a mite too big. “Aren’t you hot in all that
lot?” I said.
He grinned. “A bit,” he replied. “Beats me how your man
can spend all day in this get-up. It’s an hour’s work to take
a pee.” He moved his fingers very slightly, communicating
perfectly that I was allowed to sit. Never seen it done
better, to tell you the truth. I stayed put.
“You promised,” I said. “When we’re done here, I can go
back.”
“Fuck you, Orhan.” He scowled at me. “What, d’you
think I’d break my word?”
I shrugged. “I did.”
“Yes, well. Oh, sit down, for God’s sake. Please?”
I sat down. The chair was four elephant tusks, with a
seat of gold wire. Not, however, very comfortable. “Would
you like me to say I’m sorry?” I said.
“Yes, but you aren’t. Are you?”
“Actually, I am,” I said. “I’m sorry because instead of just
saying no, I’m not interested, I tricked you into sacrificing
your best sappers and doing a job I needed doing that I
couldn’t do. That was dishonest.”
“You’re dishonest. I knew that.”
“Did you think I’d betray you?”
He shrugged. “It was a distinct possibility,” he said.
“Let’s say it didn’t come as a total surprise.”
“But you sent all those men to their deaths—”
“It was worth the risk,” he said, and his face didn’t
move. “I knew I was asking a lot of you. I thought maybe
what I’d said was enough to win you over. For that, I
apologise. I should’ve known, you’re too smart to be taken
in by fine words.”
“They weren’t bad,” I said. “Most of them I agree with.”
He smiled. “I cheated,” he said. “I hired a lawyer—well,
half a dozen of them, actually, from Sozamen, you have no
idea how much those vultures charge. I told them to
prepare the case, then put it into my own words. You don’t
mind that, do you?”
“Why should I?”
“It struck me as a bit—well, you know. Getting other
people to polish up my arguments for me. Making me look
cleverer than I am.”
“Did you use much of what they gave you?”
“Some of it. Didn’t work, though, did it?”
I shook my head. “I’m not a court of law,” I said. “I’m not
bound to do what’s just, or what’s right, or what’s in the
interests of the human race. If I was, you’d be warming
your hands by a nice big fire right now. But I’m not. And I
reserve the right to be wrong, if I choose to be.”
He laughed. “When this is over,” he said, “I want us to
be together again. You can be joint emperor. You can rule
the east, and I’ll have the west.”
“You mean, after you’ve burned down the City and killed
all the Robur.”
“That’s right. By then you’ll have made your point and
I’ll have made mine. I’d really like that.”
“This is after I’ve opened the gates, like I promised you
the last time.”
“No.” He waggled one fingertip, meaning serve the wine.
But for me it was my favourite tea. “I can see now, I was
wrong. Stupid of me. I should’ve known, I can’t make you
do what you don’t want to. I shouldn’t have tried. It wasn’t
the act of a friend. No, you crack on, make the best defence
you can, I know how much it means to you to do your very
best.” They poured the tea. Just the smell of it was heaven.
“On the way here, we passed that bridge you built, about
eight years ago, over Hoar Water. I didn’t know at the time
it was one of yours, but soon as I saw it, I knew, Orhan built
that. It was like meeting an old friend.”
I couldn’t remember which one he meant. I’ve bridged
Hoar Water at least four times, but the bloody thing keeps
flooding. “That’s what I do,” I said.
“Of course it is,” said Ogus. “Well, there’s ever such a lot
of rivers in the world, needing bridges. Or cities. Ever
fancied building one?”
“You’re doing it again,” I said.
“Sorry. But seriously, have you? I’ll be needing a city,
when all this is over. Will you build me one? Anywhere you
like.”
“Here?”
He looked at me. “If you insist.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “What did you want to see me
about?”
He sighed. “Just to tell you no hard feelings, I guess. It’s
been on my mind. Please build me a city. I’ve destroyed so
many lately, it’d be nice to put something back.”
“No hard feelings? Are you serious?”
“Of course. You’re my oldest friend.” He said it as though
it didn’t need saying. “The people in that city aren’t your
friends, Orhan. Which reminds me, did you sort out those
bastards who were going to kill you?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“They weren’t your friends, Orhan. But what the hell. I
know you, you hate it when someone lets you win. It was
always like that when we were kids, you’d sulk and be
miserable all day. You need to know you actually won, or
it’s all spoilt for you.”
Perfectly true. Of course, I never beat Ogus at anything,
unless I cheated. Which I did, whenever I could. I figure,
winning is winning. Cheating is just one of many ways of
prevailing; just happens to be the way I’m best at.
“Like I said,” he went on, “give it your best shot. Do it
the hard way. Only, please don’t get yourself killed. There’s
only so much I can do to protect you. And I will, of course.
But don’t make that hard for me, too.”
“I won’t, trust me,” I said. “I’m a coward.”
He laughed. “You’re sensible. Not the same thing at all.
Anyhow, the hell with this. How about a game of checkers
with your old pal?”
We used to play checkers, with a set we’d made
ourselves. I carved the pieces out of wood and bone. There
had been times when I’d won. Guess how. “I should be
getting back,” I said.
“Don’t be stupid. You’ve got to stay here a while. No,
really, otherwise it’s going to look pretty odd.”
True. “How am I getting out of here, by the way?”
“Ah. You escape, naturally.”
I scowled at him. “Talk sense.”
“No, honest. Well, you’re rescued.”
“You what?”
He smiled at me. “By that pet ape of yours, Lysimachus.”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh no he isn’t. Strong as a bull. And that glued-cloth
breastplate saved him. Never seen anything like it. Your
idea, naturally.”
Something I’d read in an old book. “Yes,” I said.
“Brilliant. Anyway, we pulled him out and patched him
up, he’ll be a bit sore for a while but nothing serious. He’s
being guarded by a bunch of drunks who carelessly leave
weapons lying about, and who happened to mention where
you’re being held. I think we can leave the rest to him,
don’t you? I mean, what’s the point of having a hero if you
don’t make use of him?”
Lysimachus was alive, at any rate. “He nearly died.”
“He’ll be a hero, he’ll like that. The girls’ll be all over
him.”
“He doesn’t like girls.”
“Robur,” he said, and clicked his tongue. “Ah well.
Anyway, it’s going to take him a while to get loose, so in the
meantime we can stop talking business and act like human
beings for a change. For a start, I’d really like you to meet
someone.”
I like to think I know what the person I’m talking to is
going to say next. Not this time. “Who?”
“My wife.”
Some things you just don’t see coming. “Wife?”
“Yes, you idiot, my wife. My better half, the love of my
life,” he grinned. “I’m not exaggerating. I can’t wait for you
to meet her. She’s gorgeous.”
Other people’s wives. The wife, for example, of my good,
dear friend Aichmalotus, who died in the arena. I can’t wait
for you to meet her, he said.
I remember, all too clearly. She seemed like a nice
woman; short, younger than he was, rather quiet and
serious. We talked awkwardly for a while and then
Aichmalotus was called away and there was one of those
fraught silences. You feel uncomfortable alone with your
best friend’s wife, You want to be friendly, but you’re on
your guard; a man doesn’t know what to say to a woman
under those circumstances. Some men are like the good
dog, that knows its job is to chase sheep but not these
sheep, for some reason. I’m not a great chaser at the best
of times. This is hardly surprising. I’ve spent most of my life
as a milkface among Robur. First, it’s illegal. Second, it’s
highly unlikely. Robur are taller, stronger, more muscular,
finely built and toned. Even Faustinus is stronger than me.
I’m used to thinking of myself as ugly, comical, misshapen,
appropriate for other purposes but not
that. Hard to get out
of that way of thinking, even with a half-milkface woman
who’s shorter than me.
Anyway, after a while we had to start talking, before the
silence set harder than mortar. We talked about being
milkfaces in the City, about where we were from originally,
about Aichmalotus—turned out she didn’t actually like him
very much (she didn’t say that), but she’d married him
because it was so much better than the alternative; why he
was crazy about her she really had no idea, but he was, and
so that was all right; most women, Robur women who’d had
choices in their lives, at least at some stage, are put up
with rather than loved; being loved, she said, made things
easier, it was one of those irrational advantages, like being
born rich or pretty, it meant life wasn’t quite such a
struggle, all the damned time. I wouldn’t know, I said, then
wished I hadn’t. She looked at me, then said; no, I suppose
not. Count yourself lucky, she said.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. You just said
yourself, I said, it makes things easier.
True, she conceded, it does. But it’s such a responsibility.
I confessed I’d never thought of it in that light. Like I
said, she replied, you’re lucky. By being loved, you’re under
an obligation. You’ve undertaken to still be there, tomorrow
and the next day. When things get to the point where it’s
just plain stupid to carry on, you can’t simply drink
hemlock or open a vein. You’re stuck. The ship’s sailed
away without you on it.
Strange conversation, I thought. I’ve never considered
not carrying on, I told her.
You’re very lucky, then, aren’t you, she rebuked me,
gently but firmly. Of course, you’re a man, you get so many
more choices and options than a woman does. You need to
be a woman to understand the true meaning of being
totally and hopelessly stuck. The closest you’d ever come
would be if you got locked up in a cell for forty years.
I nodded slowly. And being loved is the gaoler, I said.
Probably just as well that Aichmalotus came back at that
point. He was cheerful and smiling, having just been paid
some money he’d never expected to see. I remember he
brought her an apple.
So Ogus introduced me to his wife.
You’ve heard about trophy wives. She was more a
triumphal arch; a monument, I guess, to how far Ogus had
come and how far he still intended to go. Beautiful isn’t the
word. A few centuries back, when it was time for the
emperor to choose a wife, they sent emissaries all through
the empire rounding up girls, by the thousand, by the tens
of thousands. These were sent on to regional centres, who
weeded out the dross and referred the cream to Area
Command, who sent up the top ten per cent to the
provincial governor, who chose the best ten, who went on
to Division headquarters; eventually, about five hundred
made the trip to the City, where a House committee pared
them down to two hundred, who were passed on to Special
Commissioners, who selected seventy-five for the
consideration of the Chamberlain’s office, who picked out
forty for the emperor to choose from. Ogus’s wife would
have sailed through to at least the Special Commission,
unsightly skin condition nothwithstanding, and quite
probably the Chamberlain.
I can’t say I care much for beautiful people. I think I
resent them. Beauty rather more so than other kinds of
outrageous privilege. I’ve known a number of very rich
men, and nine out of ten of them were bastards, but some
of them had earned their wealth, which is supposed to
make it better, and all of them could’ve lost it in a matter of
hours. I’ve known rather more rich men’s sons, and they’re
harder to take—but Nico’s all right and so’s Artavasdus,
and when you get to know them you can learn to ignore the
differences and focus on the things you have in common.
Outrageously clever people are worse, but quite a few of
them mean well, and often they tend to have disadvantages
(of appearance, manner, social skill) that allow you to
forgive them. Beautiful people, though, I struggle with.
Unless you keep your eyes shut or look the other way, you
can’t help but have the awful fact ground into you, like the
wheel of a heavy wagon running over your neck, that here
is someone divided from you by a vast, unbridgeable gap,
and they’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve it. Ogus’s
wife—her name was Sichelgaita—was that level of beauty. I
won’t even try to describe her, because they don’t make
words that could take the strain. You felt ashamed to look
at her.
“So you’re Orhan,” she said. “I’ve heard ever such a lot
about you.”
Aichmalotus was a good friend to me. He passed the
word along; this man may wear a uniform, but he’s not one
of them, he’s one of us. Suddenly my life got easier. Things
stopped disappearing from my stores. Civilian contractors
finished early and under budget. I met interesting peeople
at Aichmalotus’s place, the sort of people who helped me
turn government gold into useful and plentiful silver, who
could get me stuff I couldn’t get elsewhere, at a price I
could afford. Suddenly, there were people in the City who
didn’t seem to mind the fact that I didn’t look right. As a
direct result, I was able to get things done; getting things
done got me promoted; I became the colonel of the
regiment. I spent a lot of time at Aichmalotus’s place.
Whenever I was in the City, he insisted I stayed with him,
wouldn’t hear of me lodging at an inn or guest quarters at
the barracks. His work called him away, and I was left at
home with his wife. She was a pleasant enough woman and
I think she liked to have company.
Sometimes, she told me, I have this dream. I’m watching
him fight in the Hippodrome. And then suddenly I’m down
there and I’m the one fighting him. And I try and explain,
I’m not a gladiator, I’m a woman, women don’t fight, but
I’m wearing this helmet that muffles my voice and nobody
can hear me. So I try and tell him, it’s me in here, it’s me,
but he can’t hear me either. And he keeps stabbing and
slashing at me, and somehow I manage to block him but I
know it’s only a matter of time. And also I’m up in the
stands, cheering him on. I want him to win, even though I
know perfectly well who’s under that helmet. And then he
drops his guard for a split second and I can see a gap, and I
draw back my hand to stab him, even though I know that if
he dies, I die, too.
And? I asked.
That’s when I wake up, she said. And then I lie there,
listening to him breathe, and gradually the dream fades
away, but I feel like I’ve done something really bad,
something horrible.
I seem to remember saying something, I have no idea
what. I hate him, she said, I wish he was dead. You don’t
mean that, I told her. He’s not a bad man really, he’s my
friend. You sleep with him then, she said.
Is that the problem, I asked. Not that it’s any of my
business. Part of it, she said. He makes my skin crawl, like
a spider on your face.
Ogus’s Sichelgaita wasn’t just a pretty face. I’d done my old
pal an injustice, assuming he’d picked her for her looks.
She was smart, shrewd, sharp, bright, cheerful, funny, and
when she cupped her face in her hands and listened to you,
only then did you realise just how wise and brave you
actually were. I seem to recall talking a lot about building
bridges, and I swear she was hanging on my every word.
But that was all right because Ogus was there, and I was
happy to be his little friend, his pet monkey; we weren’t
talking business and I knew she was being polite. Fine,
until someone in a shiny breastplate pushed aside the tent
flap and told Ogus he was needed for something. Won’t be
a moment, he said, and there I was, alone with my best
friend’s wife.
She was still and quiet for about ten seconds. Then she
leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“You’re his friend,” she said. “Can’t you talk some sense
into him?”
“You’re his wife,” I remember saying to her. “Can’t you talk
some sense into him?”
She looked at me. “Why should I want to?”
(Aichmalotus had just got himself carved up in the arena.
The other guy, of course, was carried out on a door, but
Aichmalotus nearly died, too. It’s time you called it a day, I
told him as he lay there in the hospital, you’ve got nothing
left to prove. He just grinned at me. It’s what I like doing,
he told me. How could you, I asked, how could anyone
enjoy killing? And he grinned some more and said, the man
who’s tired of killing is tired of life.)
“I can’t wait,” she said, “for them to come from the
arena, looking all solemn, and break the news. I’ll probably
scream and sob and tear my hair out, because you’re
supposed to, aren’t you, but when they’ve gone I’ll dance
round the room singing. The thought of it’s the only thing
that keeps me going.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said.
No reply.
“He’s my friend,” I said.
She nodded. “You’re very loyal,” she said. “He’s your
friend, so you’re on his side, no matter what. That’s a
wonderful way to be. I envy you.”
Third evening that week that I’d stayed and sat with her
while Aichmalotus was in the hospital. Look after her for
me while I’m laid up, he’d said, there’s a pal; and then,
you’re a true friend, Orhan. Indeed. But that wasn’t really
why I was there. Other men’s wives. A true friend would’ve
made an excuse and set off for Olbia.
I fell in love for the first time at the age of thirty-four. It’s
like other childhood ailments. If you catch it when you’re a
kid, it doesn’t do much harm, and then you’re basically
immune. But if you get it when you’re grown up, it can be
very serious indeed.
So, that evening, while my best friend was in the Guild
hospital, his wife and I put our heads together and figured
out how to get rid of him, for good. Murder, we decided,
wasn’t our style; too risky, neither of us could live with the
worry of getting found out; besides, there really was no
need, given Aichmalotus’s line of work. All I had to do was
find the Greens a new champion, someone really good. How
hard could that be?
It took me eight months. His name was Bestialis (I kid
you not) and I met him for the first time when his sergeant
brought him up on charges: fighting; grievous bodily harm
to a fellow soldier, to wit, biting off one ear; assaulting an
officer. Son, I said to him, you’re just not cut out for an
engineer, but have you ever considered a career in the
arena? His eyes lit up. It’s all I ever wanted, he said, but I
never got the breaks, you need to know people, you need
contacts. Funny you should say that, I told him.
Bestialis had the most meteoric career in the history of
the Hippodrome, rising from unknown newbie to Green
champion in an incredible twelve weeks; fought thirty-six,
won thirty-six, all clean kills. When he fought Aichmalotus,
there wasn’t a seat to be had for any money—they’d been
queuing all night to get in, and the lines went right back to
the South Gate. I wasn’t there. I don’t like watching that
stuff.
By that time, she was dead, in childbirth; the father
wasn’t Aichmalotus, though my dear friend didn’t know
that. I remember him saying to me, before he went to the
arena for that fight, the biggest of his career; if anything
happens to me, you’ll look after little Aichma, won’t you?
She means everything to me. And then, you’re a pal, Orhan.
I know I can rely on you.
Bestialis lasted about two minutes. Aichmalotus came
out of it without a scratch. He told me afterwards, it’s a
great help in the arena if you really don’t give a damn if
you make it or not.
He lasted another twenty-six fights, and then he turned
his ankle over in the middle of a stupidly flamboyant
volta—
I think that’s the technical name for it—and that was the
end of him. Showing off, because the crowd loved it. They
cheered him to the echo when he pulled off stunts like that,
and they cheered the man who killed him. Say what you
like about the Hippodrome crowd, they don’t let
favouritism get in the way of their appreciation of true skill.
I hated them all that day. If there’d been an enemy laying
siege to the City, I’d have opened the gates, because while
my friend lay dying they were cheering for his killer. Well,
there you are. Bestialis was no great loss, but he’s on my
conscience. So is she, the only woman I ever loved, and the
fact that I killed her with my dick rather than a knife is
neither here nor there.
“You’re his friend,” Sichelgaita said. “Can’t you talk some
sense into him?”
It took me a moment to recover from that. “If he won’t
listen to you,” I said, “what chance have I got?”
She looked at me as if I was stupid. “You don’t get it, do
you?” she said. “You mean everything to him. You’re all
that’s left of what was taken from him. As far as he’s
concerned, there was a disaster and only two survivors, you
and him. Everybody else doesn’t matter, they don’t count,
not real people. I thought maybe if you really talked to him
—”
I was too stunned to think straight. “I tried,” I said. “But
it’s hard. I agree with him. That makes it really difficult.”
I wasn’t winning many points with her. “Then open the
stupid gates and let him win,” she said. “You know he will
sooner or later. At least it’ll be over quicker, and then
perhaps we can put all this behind us. The way it is now, I
don’t know how much more I can take.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I can do that.”
She sighed. “In that case,” she said, “we’ll just have to
kill him.”
Other men’s wives. “Why would I want to do that?” I
said.
I really wasn’t making a good impression. “Oh, I don’t
know,” she said. “End the war at a stroke and save your
stupid city from annihilation? It’s the only way. You know
that, don’t you?”
“He’s my friend,” I said. Of course, she didn’t know I’d
said that before.
“Well, you’re just going to have to sort your priorities
out, aren’t you? One or the other, because you can’t have
both. Sorry, but it’s a hard world.”
I looked at her. A tiny, stupidly unrealistic part of me was
clinging to the hope that this was all a trap, to see if I’d
betray my friend for a pretty face and the salvation of a
city. But she meant it. Superb communication skills, on top
of everything else. You always knew exactly what she
wanted. “Why don’t you leave him,” I said, “if he’s such a
misery to live with?”
She laughed at me. “You can’t just leave someone like
that,” she said. “I wouldn’t last five minutes. Don’t get me
wrong,” she went on, “I’m used to men like him and most of
the time we get along just fine. But ever since we came
here, it’s all been different. He’s obsessed, and I can’t
stand it. Have you ever tried living with a lunatic? It’s
slowly killing me, I feel like I can’t breathe. So, either the
city’s got to go or he has. I’d rather it was the city—
actually, I’d rather he gave the whole thing up, he’s got the
rest of the world, this is just ridiculous, but he won’t give
up, it’s not in his nature.”
She was fascinating. Listening to her, I’d stopped
noticing what she looked like. “It’s only a matter of time,” I
told her, “you said so yourself. Can’t you hang on and tough
it out till the City falls? That’s got to be better than
murdering your husband.”
Her face said, I should’ve known better than to expect
sympathy from the likes of you. “Frankly, no,” she said. “I
know him. He wants to give you a chance. Chances. If he’s
got to fight you, it’s got to be with one hand tied behind his
back. So it’ll take months, and I simply haven’t got that
much patience left. Come on, I made you an offer. You
won’t get an opportunity like that anywhere else.”
“Let me think about it,” I said.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said. “What’s there to
think about?”
Not long after that, Ogus came back. I’ve never been so
glad to see anyone in my entire life.
The more people try and impress me, the more nervous I
get, so I didn’t like the guest tent much. The silk sheets
made me itch, and the scented pillow turned my stomach. I
lay on my back, waiting for that idiot Lysimachus, and
worried.
One thing that didn’t worry me; it was all right that
she’d opened up to me like that, because a woman that
beautiful would never for one moment imagine that a man
would betray her confidence; besides, she expected I’d take
her up on her offer without a moment’s thought. I worried a
bit that at that moment she was telling Ogus a plausible
story and showing him her torn dress, but, no, she was too
shrewd for that. Ogus knows me too well.
I worried because I didn’t want to take her up on her
offer. She was right, of course. The siege would be over, the
City would be saved, I’d have won and Ogus was an
obsessive, a menace, he had to be put down. Ogus was
right, too, about the empire. It was an abominable thing,
intolerable. How could any sane man want to protect it? My
duty was to stamp on its head until it stopped twitching.
I’m an engineer, I told myself. People bring me problems,
and I fix them. I’m an engineer; my answer to any and
every problem is a gadget, a trick, a device. I don’t
consider the politics or the ethics. If a bridge needs to be
built, I rig something up with logs and ropes. If the system
is so hopelessly fucked up that I can’t get pay or supplies
for my men, I manufacture coins and seals. If the City is
threatened with a fate it richly deserves, I modify and
improve catapults, improvise armour out of bedlinen,
manufacture, sorry, forge (both senses of the word) new
communities—fake ones, naturally, authorised by a fake
seal. I fix broken people with things, with stuff; with tricks,
lies,
devices. I’m resourceful and ingenious. I don’t
confront, I avoid; and one of the things I do my best to
avoid is justice, and another one is death.
People don’t fix easily, and neither does the world they
live in. If I’d been the Creator, we’d have ten months, each
month ten days long, each day ten hours, each hour a
hundred minutes, each minute a hundred seconds; it’d
work so much better, it’d be
efficient, it’d be
convenient,
and everyone would know what was going on, and why. It
would be sunny all day and rainy all night, and the snow
would fall on time in the right places, and everyone would
get on with everyone else, and there would be no more love
—
Where did that suddenly come from? Best not to ask.
Sichelgaita had been rather helpful, though she didn’t
know that. In order to convince me of the hopelessness of
our position, she’d told me that Ogus had ordered to be
built fifty enormous barges—he’d had to capture the
dockyards at Phyle intact in order to do it—on which he
could mount trebuchets, catapults and cranes. These
barges, escorted by the Sherden pirates, would sail into the
Bay and bombard the docks to cover a fleet of landing craft,
bringing in fifty thousand soldiers. There was absolutely
nothing I’d be able to do about it. The barges were already
on their way, they’d be here in a week or so.
Thank you, I said. Forewarned is forearmed. She
laughed. You idiot, she said, don’t you get it? Fifty barges,
fifty thousand men. You can’t bounce stone balls across
water. You haven’t got a chance.
Ah, I told her, but I do. I happen to have it on very good
authority that the Fleet is on its way. No disrespect to your
people, but they’re the ones with no chance, not against a
squadron of Imperial warships.
She looked at me. Don’t know where you got that from,
she said, but it’s bullshit. Your fleet’s still holed up the
wrong side of the lighthouse. It’s cost Ogus fifteen
thousand men to hold that promontory against your
precious marines, but, guess what, we’re still there and
you’re nowhere. So, sorry, no fleet. Think again.
So; thanks to her I now knew two things I hadn’t known
before. I knew the nature and timing of the grand assault,
and I knew we were still on our own. When you know all
the relevant facts, all you have to do then is figure out the
solution.
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36
Bloody Lysimachus didn’t come that night; too busy lolling
in bed, the idle turd. So, next morning, breakfast in the
Commander’s tent with my old pal, dressed today in an old
tunic and hobnail boots, with the lovely Sichelgaita
reclining next to him on a gold and ivory couch and asking
if she could tempt me to another honeycake. Then Ogus
had to go and see to something, and we were alone
together. Again.
“Well?” she said.
“I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
“What do you need me for?” I said. “If you want to kill
him, kill him. A pillow over the face, or funny mushrooms in
his soup. It’s hardly catapult science.”
“I need you,” she said, “to take command, the moment
he stops breathing. Otherwise all hell’s going to break
loose, with all the contingent and regional commanders
tearing each other to bits over who takes his place.”
“I don’t follow,” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Ogus will have made a will,” she said, “naming you as
his heir. His best friend, and all that. They raise you on a
shield, you pardon them for mutiny, they go back to their
provinces, everything’s how it was. I know where he keeps
his seal,” she said. “And it’s common knowledge, you being
his friend from back home.”
You can warm to people. That’s what I’d have done, in
her shoes. “You don’t need me,” I said. “Write him a will
naming you as heir. You’re his wife.”
Scornful look. “You’ve been away too long,” she said.
“That lot aren’t going to accept a woman. It has to be a
man, and you’re the only one I can trust.”
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I told her.
“Because our interests coincide exactly,” she said. “All
right, I’ll make it easy for you. I’m going to kill him anyway,
whether we make a deal or not. So; do you take advantage
of the situation to save your blueskin city, or do you waste
it and wait for those barges to sail into the Bay, albeit
under the command of someone else? You’re not the
sharpest arrow in the quiver, Orhan, but even you should
be able to figure out that one.”
Wait for those barges to sail into the Bay—that rang a
bell at the back of my mind. Then, quite suddenly, I knew
how I could defeat the barges and the seaborne invasion.
Brilliant; only I had to wrench my mind away from it and
deal with her instead. Some people have lousy timing.
“It occurs to me,” I said, “that the soldiers probably
won’t accept you just because you’re his widow, and they
may not accept me just because I’m his friend and the heir
in his will. But if I was his friend and heir, and married to
his widow—” And I let it hang in the air, like a worm with a
hook inside it.
She kept a straight face, which showed strength of
character if nothing else. “That’d do the trick.”
“I think so,” I said. “ And, anyway, it’s time there was
something in this for me. If I’ve got to betray my friend, I
ought to get something out of it, wouldn’t you say?”
She nodded sagely. “Perfectly fair.”
“And a reasonable result for you,” I went on. “You’d go
on being queen or chieftainess or empress, that’s got to be
worth something.” I grinned at her. “I’ll try not to be too
much of a pest. How about it?”
“I like powerful men,” she said. The ghastly thing was, I
think she probably meant it.
We sealed our bargain. Not my finest hour, though she was
very polite and long-suffering. But it had been a long time
and, besides, my mind was on other things; winches, lifting
gear, the reliability of Polynices’
Histories, the effective
range of trebuchets and the drying time of my special
pumice mortar. Not even my not-finest hour. More like
fifteen minutes.
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37
It was a long day, what with one thing and another. I was
tired and went to bed. I’d just dropped off to sleep when
this idiot woke me.
His hand was over my mouth. I couldn’t breathe.
“It’s me,” he said.
I remembered, just in time, that the last time I saw
Lysimachus he was dead. He relaxed his fingers. “You’re
alive,” I whispered. “I thought—”
“Shh.” There’s gratitude for you. “We’re getting out of
here.”
Yes, I know. About bloody time, too. “How can we?
There’s guards everywhere.”
I couldn’t see his face in the dark but I bet he was
smirking. “I brought a hostage.”
Oh God. Well, he would, of course. The sort of man who’s
never properly dressed without one. I peered into the
gloom but I couldn’t see a damn thing. “I’ll just get my
shoes,” I said.
He hissed something uncouth about my shoes, so I left
them. Getting soft, is my trouble. I didn’t wear shoes till I
was seven, but now I can’t go a few yards barefoot without
hobbling.
Outside the tent, in the moonlight, I could see who his
hostage was. He’d stuffed a gag in her mouth and tied her
wrists, but the moon glinted on her golden hair. Terrific.
“You’re insane,” I hissed at him. “They’ll crucify both of
us.”
“This way.”
Later I found out it was just fool’s luck, or hero’s luck,
same difference. The first tent he came to happened to be
Sichelgaita’s private latrine. He didn’t know she was
Ogus’s wife; just figured a pretty lady would make a dandy
hostage. How can anyone doubt the existence of God when
evidence of His sense of humour surrounds us on all sides?
We got halfway across the parade ground before the
sentries spotted us; and then Lysimachus was in his
element. Naturally he’d got hold of a knife, a whacking
great big one; he’s like a magnet, sharp instruments just
seem to sidle up to him and beg him to take them with him.
He made a big show of prodding her under the ear until
she squealed. I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life.
Lysimachus being Lysimachus, it never occurred to him
to be suspicious about the ease with which we got out of
there. It was easy, he doubtless told himself, because he
was such a superlatively excellent hero. In fact there were
half a dozen times at least when a half-competent archer
could’ve picked him off as easily as a popinjay in a low tree.
But pretty soon we were outside the light of the watchfires
and running like hell; let her go, I panted, she’s slowing us
down. Which wasn’t actually true, because he was towing
her along by the hair, on account of which she was making
pretty good time, but just for once he did as he was told
and let go. I heard a few arrows swishing past us, well over
our heads, and voices baying behind us. How we were
going to get back inside the City was another matter
entirely. As I think I mentioned, opening the gates was no
casual matter. That genius Lysimachus hadn’t thought
about that, of course.
So, not long afterwards, there we were under the North
Gate. I knew for a fact there’d be nobody chasing us, but of
course I couldn’t tell him that. “Watch my back,” I told him,
then I craned my neck back and started hollering: it’s me,
Orhan, throw down a rope for God’s sake.
Praise be, it was Bronellus’s shift on the North Gate
tower, and he recognised my voice. They hauled us up like
grain sacks. One damn thing after another.
“What the hell—?” Nico started, but I cut him off short.
“First,” I said, “sort something out about Lysimachus.
Grand procession down Longacre, then standing ovation in
the Hippodrome, and finish off with presenting him with
the Bronze Crown. He’ll like that, and it’ll give people
something to cheer about.”
He never makes notes, he just remembers it all, like a
barmaid. “Right,” he said. “Good idea. What
happened to
you? We thought—”
“Next,” I said, “I need to write a letter. Now.”Orhan to Ogus, greetings.
One good turn deserves another. Your wife is going to
kill you. I’m supposed to take your place. She’s got a mole
on the inside of her left thigh about two inches down from
her crack. If you stroke it, she hisses like a kettle. Take
care of yourself.
That ought to cover it, I thought. I wrote it in Alauset
using the Jazygite alphabet. I wrote OGUS on the back in
ordinary letters, put it in a silver-gilt reliquary and had
them leave it on the ground a hundred yards from East
Gate under flag of truce. Either the right thing for the
wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason. What
are friends for?
“Right,” I said, to Faustinus, because by now Nico was
busy. “I need divers. At least fifty. Right away.”
“Divers? Orhan, are you feeling all right?”
“Divers,” I said. “Matter of life and death.
Go.”
Nobody bothers with history any more. How many people
walk past the stone blockhouses at either end of the Long
Quay and know what they were built for? Maybe one
person in ten will tell you, weren’t they something to do
with Jovian’s Necklace? And when you ask them what that
was, they just shrug.
Two hundred and forty years ago, give or take a decade,
Jovian V lost a great sea battle against the Echmen. It
wasn’t the end of the world; he’d lost two of his four fleets,
but the enemy weren’t going to come sailing into the Bay
quite yet. But Jovian—let’s skip the pretence—Jovian was a
halfwit who only cared about breeding pedigree
wolfhounds, but his City Prefect Martialis was a very smart
man, though maybe a tad overcautious. What if the other
two fleets were to go the same way? So Martialis and his
colonel of engineers put their heads together, and the
result was Jovian’s Necklace.
They made an enormous bronze chain, each link as thick
as a man’s waist, long enough to stretch all the way from
one side of the Bay to the other. Most of the time, it lay
underwater, deep enough so that all classes of ship could
sail over the top of it. But the moment the enemy were
sighted, the chain could be raised, blocking the entrance
completely. It was, I can categorically state, the biggest and
most effective project ever undertaken by the Engineers. It
was delivered on time, on budget, and it worked; at least, it
would have worked if an enemy fleet had ever tried to sail
into the Bay. But that never happened. Jovian was
assassinated, not before time, and his successor Pacatian
started off his reign with a string of dazzling victories over
the Echmen that gave the Robur control of the sea for two
generations. The Necklace wasn’t needed any more. It
became something of a joke—read Galba’s
Satires, he’s
very witty about it—and they stopped holding chain-raising
drills and greasing the winch; the chain itself was bronze
but the winch-chains were iron, and they rusted. One night,
they quietly and unobtrusively gave way, and the Necklace
sank to the bottom of the Bay. Eusebius II sold it to a
consortium of scrap metal dealers, who tried very hard to
raise it until their money ran out. That was ninety years
ago. Received wisdom is that there’s no point trying to do
anything about it now, since its precise location has been
lost and forgotten. Besides, bronze is much cheaper now
than it was, thanks to the new mines in Thouria. Even if you
could find the damn thing, it would cost more to salvage it
than the metal is worth.
Regimental archives—we never throw anything away if
we can possibly help it—gave me the designs for the winch,
which of course we’d have to build from scratch. I nearly
burst into tears when I saw them. Still, as we say in the
Corps, if it was made once, it can be made again. I put
Genseric on it; matter of life and death, I told him, and for
crying out loud be nice to the Greens and Blues, the
regiment hasn’t got the manpower to do it all ourselves.
Finding the bloody thing; Polynices Simocatta, the
dreariest poet ever to set pen to paper, wrote a triumphal
ode to celebrate the completion of the project, for which
Jovian paid him good money, God knows why. It’s hard
going, believe me (I’ve read it, so you don’t have to), but
there’s a bit where he compares the chain to a rainbow,
stretching “from Sidera’s porch to Actis’ shimmering fane”.
Generations of scholars have dismissed this as Polynices
being his usual tiresome self. For one thing, they point out,
a rainbow is a great big arch, while a stretched chain is flat
and level. Sidera’s porch and Actis’ fane they take to mean
sunset and sunrise; Sidera, the evening star, Actis, the
morning star, fair comment. No help there, then. But take
the trouble to read round it a bit and you’ll find that in
Jovian’s time there were temples to Sidera and Actis in the
City; really read deep and you’ll discover that they were at
either end of the Quay. In which case, Polynices was doing
one of his trademark hideously laboured double conceits.
The rainbow stretches from one end of the earth to the
other—evening and morning, understood in poetic
convention to stand for the west and the east—while the
actual chain is anchored in two places: the temple of
Sidera, at one end of the Quay, and the temple of Actis, at
the other.
If you think I’m being brilliant and displaying my
encyclopaedic knowledge of the minor Robur poets, think
again. I got all that out of a report compiled by some
unknown freelance for the scrap metal boys—not the ones
who went bust, another outfit a century later, who thought
about salvaging the necklace, did some research and then
decided against it. I have this document because some fool
gave it to me in the hopes of interesting me in yet another
salvage venture; I pointed out the change in bronze prices,
he gave up and went away. The whole thing only lodged in
my mind because I happened to know where the temple of
Sidera used to be; because the Engineers did some work at
that end of the quay and stumbled on stone slabs inscribed
with religious texts, and we had the devil of a fuss with the
ecclesiastical authorities before we were finally allowed to
crack on and finish our job. But, no doubt whatsoever in my
mind. Sidera’s temple used to stand where the new
slipways for the Class Four warships stand now. And, if the
unknown scholar and that moron Polynices could be relied
on, somewhere very close by, but under a lot of water and
probably a lot of mud, was one end of the mighty bronze
chain that might just save all our lives. And, guess what,
it’s a chain. You really only need to find one end. The chain
itself will find the other end for you.
“That was two hundred and thirty years ago,” Nico said,
trying to keep his temper. “It’ll be nothing but rust and
slime by now.”
“It was
bronze,” I told him. “Bronze doesn’t rust, it just
goes green. It’s still down there, I know it. Nobody’s
salvaged it, it’s too big and heavy for anyone to have stolen
it, it won’t have squiggled away on its own like a great big
snake. All we’ve got to do is find it.”
One of the things I like about the City is the unbelievable
range of skills lurking inside its walls, just waiting to be
needed. Water diviners? Put out a sign saying water
diviners wanted, they’ll be lined up round the block. Snake
charmers? Offer the right money and get yourself a big
stick to fight them off with. Pearl-divers? No problem. The
Blues and Greens found me a hundred and sixty-two
experienced pearl-divers in a matter of hours.
It works like this. Out in the far reaches of the empire,
there are places where people have learned and practised
esoteric specialist skills for generations. Then the empire
comes along. Realising there’s money to be made from
water divining, snake charming, pearl diving, whatever, the
new Robur governor and his staff turn that particular field
of endeavour into a government monopoly, grant the right
to carry on doing what they’ve done for generations to a
favoured few (in return for a modest fifty per cent of the
take) and drive out the competition to fend for themselves
as field labourers or beggars. They—doubtless because,
having had a taste of the advantages that contact with a
superior culture brings, they yearn to immerse themselves
in the fountainhead, so to speak—gravitate to the City,
where there’s bound to be a shanty town full to bursting
with their compatriots, and a skilled pearl-diver can earn
good money (compared with what he was used to getting in
the old country) gutting fish or loading the shit barges.
Naturally, the first thing they do on arrival is join a Theme
(in return for a modest twenty per cent). So; one hundred
and sixty-two pearl-divers, just like that. God bless the
empire, I say.
I thought that for men and women used to fishing out
tiny oysters from the bottom of the sea, finding a stupid
great big chain in the Bay would be a piece of cake. I was
wrong about that. It took them three days, during which
time I kept scanning the horizon for the characteristic
brown-and white-striped sails the Sherden use, and by the
time they found it, there were one hundred and forty-seven
trained pearl-divers in the City rather than a hundred and
sixty-two. I remember thinking, that’s a nuisance, we’ll
need divers to get the damn thing linked up; a nuisance,
just listen to yourself. Imperial thinking, omelettes and
eggs. Clearly, therefore, Ogus is right and the empire has
got to go. But Ogus spends lives like a rich man who’s just
bought a house in the country spends money. I wish things
would make sense, but they don’t.
Meanwhile, the winch—you don’t want to hear about the
winch. I could get very boring very easily telling you about
the winch, which had triple-locking ratchets and a gear
train so beautiful it nearly made me cry. To work the
original, they harnessed teams of a hundred oxen to the
capstan. We didn’t have a hundred oxen, so we had to make
do with people, which meant a fundamental rethink,
something I’d have loved to do myself but had to delegate
to Artavasdus because I was too busy. He moaned like hell
because he had so much work on his plate he barely had
time to breathe. I think I may have lost my temper with him
when he told me that. In the end, I think a young lance
corporal did the actual design, which was simple and
brilliant and much better than anything I could’ve come up
with, after too little sleep and too much trying to make
myself heard at meetings. I used to be an engineer, but that
was a lifetime ago.
After all that, they told me it couldn’t be done, because
I’d specified bronze chains to connect the necklace to the
winches, and there wasn’t that much bronze left in the City.
I was ready for that. We were in the Small Audience Room
at the Palace at the time, so I was able to lead—I forget
who—to the window and point at the colossal equestrian
statue of Quietus II down in the courtyard below. Look, I
said, bronze; use that. Then, a minute or so later when
they’d yelled themselves hoarse, I said; fine, we’ll call in all
the bronze coins in the City and melt them down instead,
starting with your regiment and your Theme.
It’s a big statue,
was a big statue. We had eighty-five
pounds of good bronze left over, which I sent to the Mint.
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38
But it was all taking too much time. Two weeks, according
to Sichelgaita, quite possibly less, and the barges would be
here; and a construction project, as anyone in my line of
work will tell you, proceeds at the pace of the slowest
contractor. In this case—and, dear God, could you blame
them?—the divers. It was their job to join the new winch-
chains to the two ends of the Necklace, tie the other end of
each rope to the new chains, then pass the rope through
the end links of the old one. I make it sound simple. Not
really. The Necklace was down there all right, down at the
very limit a human being can reach before having to return
to the surface. Add to that the fiddly job of manipulating
the end of a heavy, waterlogged rope, and you’re four,
maybe five seconds outside the capacity of mere flesh and
bone. So, what happens? Silly question. You have two
options. You try and you give up, or you stay down there,
try a bit harder, and drown. Mostly, my divers took the first
option, then went back and tried again. Some of them
reckoned there was a third option, and that was the last
anyone saw of them. I’d have cried my eyes out except for
the little voice in my head saying, these people, can’t they
do anything right?
Finally, when we were all at our wits’ end, who should
save the day but that insufferable pest Lysimachus, now
fully healed of his wound and bouncing around the place
looking for further and better deeds of exceptional valour.
No, he’d never been a pearl-diver, but he could swim, and
hold his breath; how hard could it be? I’m ashamed to say I
agreed, in the pious hope that he’d drown and I’d be shot of
him.
By now he had a regular fan club numbering in the
thousands, all of whom turned out to watch him, naked as a
baby and smeared all over with olive oil, diving
magnificently off the West Quay with a rope’s end clenched
in his shining white teeth. He sliced into the water like a
smug dolphin, and then everything went quiet. We waited,
counting under our breath. No way can any mortal man
hold his breath for more than six minutes; six sixties is
three hundred and sixty. Round about two-ninety we were
starting to worry. At three-thirty, you could’ve heard a
mouse squeak. At three-seventy I could distinctly hear
sobbing. Damn, I thought. The fool’s gone and drowned
himself, and it’ll all be my fault. Some people have no
consideration.
I’d given up counting by then, but I’m reliably informed
he broke the surface after four hundred and nine seconds,
with the rope still in his teeth, punching the air with both
hands as the crowd bayed for pure joy. Someone rowed out
in a little boat to pick him up but he was fine, no ill effects
whatsoever. So I ordered him another public triumph and
the Order of the Bronze Chain, first class; silly fool had won
all the existing honours so I had to invent him a new one. I
never could abide a show-off. Still, it got the job done.
“A hero is no bad thing,” Faustinus assured me, while I
sulked all the way back to the Palace. ”People need a
figurehead, someone to put their faith in. This Lysicrates—”
“Lysimachus.”
“He’s just the man for the job. Typifies all the Robur
virtues. He’s strong, brave, loyal, altruistic, dedicated to
the service of his superiors—”
“The right colour.”
He gave me a nasty look. “That, too. People need heroes,
just like they need legends. Probably in a thousand years
it’ll be Lysimachus who defended the City and saved us all,
and you and I will just be a footnote.”
“You think this lot’ll still be here in a thousand years?” I
said to him. “Get real.”
After that, it went like a dream. I don’t suppose I’ll ever
forget the first time I heard the winch. There was this deep
ringing sound, like a bell, which tells you that the iron is
strong and true, with no cracks or flaws, no cold shuts or
inclusions in the welds, and then the most amazing soft,
sharp clicking as the ratchet hand engaged with the
detents and dropped exactly into place—click, click, click,
and it was telling you, everything’s fine, the strain’s being
taken, you’re in safe hands now. I swear, there’s nothing in
this world as satisfying as the sound of a beautifully made
machine working perfectly. And I thought: I caused that to
be, I’m responsible for its being called into existence, that
beautiful piece of work. And I thought: I didn’t make it,
someone else did, while I was having meetings and doing
the paperwork. Ah well.
We were having trouble finding enough bodies to work
the capstans. Then Nico, who very occasionally shows signs
of starting to think like me, suggested that Lysimachus
might like to go down to the Market Square and call for
volunteers. I gather several people were quite badly hurt in
the crush, but we got our winch crews, one shift on and
another standing by.
(“Lysimachus,” I said, “how would you like to be the new
City Prefect? Faustinus won’t mind, I’ll promote him to
Lord Chancellor or something. People really like you. It’d
be a great help to me.”
He looked at me. “I can’t,” he said.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “We’ve got loads of
clerks to read stuff out to you and take dictation, and I’ll
have them make up a stencil so you can sign things.”
He shook his head. “My place is at your side,” he said.
Shit. Still, it was worth a try.)
Five of my best smiths from the regiment on each end of
the chain, welding shut the ends of the connecting chains,
which is harder than you think with bronze. You need a
localised heat, so they’d rigged up bellows with long, thin
nozzles, like the blowpipes people use for getting a fire
going. Soon as they’d finished, the winches took up the
weight until the chains were taut; we were ready to go.
Part of me really didn’t want to give the signal, because
what if it didn’t work? What if the Necklace was corroded
through, somewhere out at the bottom of the middle of the
Bay, or maybe the connecting chains wouldn’t stand the
strain, or the winches bent or snapped, or simply weren’t
powerful enough? I could see all these contingencies as
clearly as if they’d already happened, they were memories
rather than fears, part of me was already saying, he
should’ve known better, calls himself an engineer? Shut up,
I told them, and gave the signal.
Lots of clicking, as several hundred yards of shining
golden chain wound itself round the winch spools. Then
someone gave a great shout. Out in the distance, on the
other side of the Bay, something broke water, like a dolphin
or an enormous seal. A second later, the same on our side;
then, it was as though God had drawn a straight line across
the water with His fingertip, and there was this low, slow
rumbling, a bit like the noise the incoming tide makes when
it rolls the pebbles together. It looked like a wrong-way-up
bridge, or—God help me, I thought of that clown Polynices
and forgave him, and was properly ashamed of myself—an
upside-down rainbow, the reflection of a green rainbow in
dead calm water; and still the winches clicked softly, no
grunting or straining because they were machines, and
machines can be perfected, unlike their makers; and then
they stopped, because there was no more slack, and the
Necklace was raised. Three feet clear of the water at either
end, just dipping under the surface in the middle; an
amazing, extraordinary thing. I stared at it, and I realised,
my mind was too small to take in what I was looking at. It
was as though the Gods had dropped something—a comb, a
hairpin, a needle—and it had fallen down to earth;
unimaginably huge and incomprehensibly magnificent,
made of celestial materials by a divine craftsman, too big
and too beautiful to have any place in our world, utterly
incongruous, a numbing statement of the difference
between Them and us—
Excuse me. It was an impressive sight. It was a very nice
chain. And I was damned if I could see how any ship, from a
cockle boat to a quinquireme, was going to get past it. Job
done.
Job almost done. The most vulnerable point—sorry, the only
vulnerable point—was the winch housings. So we built
hollow moulds out of planks and poured in the magic
pumice mortar; two instant castles, walls eight feet thick,
fitted with iron doors we’d borrowed from the strongrooms
of the Imperial treasury (where they were redundant these
days, since we’d spent all the money). Then, because we’d
learned a thing or two, we buried both castles in soft sand
and earth, to take the impact out of trebuchet stones.
From start to finish, twelve days. Not bad.
I was fast asleep. I’d had a long, hard day. In a siege, sleep
is the only luxury you have left.
“Wake up,” some idiot was shouting in my ear. I told him
to go away, or words to that effect. He was shaking me by
the shoulder.
“You’ve got to come right now.” Not a he, a she.
“Something’s happening.”
“Sawdust.” She can’t stand being called that. “You
lunatic. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“
Now,” she said.
Sawdust isn’t one of those loud, assertive women, and
she never shouts. Something was wrong. “What’s going
on?”
“We don’t know. You’ve got to come now.
Please.”
Dark night, no moon. Some fool had put out all the lights on
the wall. “That was me,” she hissed.
She’d been up there fine-tuning the catapults (in the
middle of the night, because she hadn’t had time during the
day; for Sawdust, sleep is something that happens to other
people). But everyone (she blushed when she got to this
part) needs to pee sometimes, and in the pitch dark, over
the side of the wall’s as good a place as any and better than
most. So she was squatting there, pissing into space with
one hand on the crenellation to stop her falling over, and
out of the corner of her eye, at the extreme edge of her
peripheral vision, she saw something move.
“But you can’t have,” I said. “It’s dark as a bag out
there.”
She explained that working late on the wall had done
marvels for her night vision. She’d seen something move,
out there in the space between the wall and Ogus’s
watchfires. So she’d come running and woken me up.
“You stupid bloody woman,” I said. “If you saw anything,
which I doubt, it was a fox or a stray dog or something. But
you didn’t see anything, because it’s too dark.”
She’d seen something, she said. And when a quiet, shy
woman tells you something three times, even though she’s
been shouted at and called a stupid bloody woman, you
start asking yourself:
did she see something? And then you
worry.
“Besides,” I said, “even if you’re right, what am I
supposed to do about it? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Actually,” she said.
She hadn’t told me, she explained, because she didn’t
want to mention it until she was sure it would work; but it
had occurred to her that if you filled a narrow-necked pot
with palm oil, stuck a bit of rag in the neck and lit it, and
then shot it out of a catapult on a high trajectory, when it
landed it’d burst into flames and give you quite a bit of
light. It’s been tried, I said, loads of times, it can’t be done.
Yes, she said, but I’ve been thinking—
Just so happened she had a stack of suitable jars handy,
modified to her specifications, and a barrel of oil. I helped
her load a jar into the spoon of a catapult, and we jacked
up the ratchet to forty-five degrees. This won’t work, I told
her, and it’s dangerous. Probably it’ll shatter on the spoon
and we’ll get spattered all over with burning oil.
It made the most amazing whistling noise as it sailed
through the air, and when it pitched it split open in a
fountain of blazing slops. There was a split second when
the flames roared up into the sky, and then they died right
down. And in that split second, we saw—
“The bastard!” I yelled. I’d forgotten she was there.
“Fucking shitty bastard, he lied to me.”
We saw pavises, huge hide-covered pavises as tall as a
house moving forward in a line across the empty plain.
Which meant she’d lied to me, he’d lied to me through her.
The attack wasn’t coming from the sea, there weren’t any
trebuchet barges, he’d blindsided me, used that bitch to
make a fool of me, tricked me, his friend; I wanted to circle
his throat with my hands and squeeze. How could he do
something like that?
“It’s all right,” she was saying—stupid woman, of course
it wasn’t all right, my best friend—“We need all the
catapults, now.”
What? Oh, that. I tried to remember who was duty
officer, but the name escaped me. “Duty officer!” I yelled,
so loud I scared myself. “All crews to stations, now.”
It was the Blues’ night on shift. I reckon it was no more
than four minutes before they were in their places, hauling
the levers to span the catapults. Four minutes; how far had
the pavises moved in four everlasting minutes? “Let’s have
another of your firebaskets,” I said.
We hadn’t moved the windage or elevation. The jar went
splat against a pavise. Something to aim at. “Line ready,”
someone yelled. “Loose,” I yelled back. The thudding of
catapult arms against frames made the parapet shake.
“And get those bloody trebuchets going,” I shouted.
“Wake up, you idiots. Have I got to think of every damn
thing?”
The trebuchet crews had been on station at the same
time as the catapult boys, but their machines take three
times as long to span. They went off while the catapults
were still winding up. A trebuchet shot hisses as it flies—
swish, swish, swish, very fast. Even if you can’t see a damn
thing, you get a pretty good idea of what it’s hit by the
noise. A stone pitching idly in the dirt is a dull, soft thump.
A hit on any form of structure is a crash, like an accident, a
pile of bricks falling over. No fluke; in a matter of seconds,
they’d taken a mark on the brief yellow flare and shot a
spread at fifty-minute intervals on either side. Amazing
work; the Echmen royal artillery couldn’t have done better.
I suddenly thought: whose job is it to call out the
garrison? Mine, probably. “Keep going,” I snapped at
Sawdust, one of those entirely redundant orders I seem to
specialise in, and groped my way along the wall to the
tower.
On the stairs, which shuddered like a fly-bitten horse
under the shock of the pounding artillery, I tried to draw
myself the bigger picture. We had artillery and they didn’t;
we had lots of very good artillery, enough to carpet the
plain with smashed bones and crushed bodies. They had
pavises. A pavise is a shield the size of a ship’s sail, on a
wooden trolley. Hit it high up and it falls over; hit it low
down and you smash the frame. Directly behind it you’ll
generally find between ten and fifty men, pushing. They’re
meant to protect against arrows, not monstrous balls and
blocks of very fast stone. Hit the pavise, it’s inconceivable
that you won’t hit, kill, crush double figures of men pushing
it or crouching behind it. The bloody fool, I thought; bloody
bastard cheat, bloody fool.
I reached the bottom of the stair, where the answer lit up
in my mind like a lamp in the darkness. Pavises are a
liability for men crossing open ground against artillery, but
essential when you bring heavy machinery within
arrowshot of a wall. Therefore, it wasn’t men, or just men,
behind those things, it was engines. Ogus was making his
big push. He’d done it at night, hoping to get across the
plain without being cut to bits but not really all that fussed
if it cost him a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand dead.
He was bringing up his brightest, best, most beautiful
weapons, his pearls of great price from the treasures stolen
from the Echmen; that would be the worms, which screw
into wooden gates and crumple them up like a bit of paper
or a dry leaf.
Across the empty space, where the Bailiffs’ Market used
to be (but I’d cleared all that; streets and blocks of wooden
buildings just begging to go up in flames, and we needed
the timber). I thought, he knows I’ll have undermined the
approaches to the gates, so that anything heavier than a
haywain will break the frail underprops and go crashing
down twenty feet. So he’ll have wagons of big rocks, our
catapult and trebuchet shot, most like, to fill in our mines
and make hard standing for the worms. Does he seriously
imagine enough of his pavises will make it across the plain
to shield his engineers while they’re doing all that?
Answer? Not bothered, one way or the other. Omelettes
and eggs. I know Ogus fairly well, and one thing he’s not is
penny wise and pound foolish.
Thank God Nico was where he was meant to be, asleep
in his own bed in the prefecture. All I had to say was,
they’re here, they’re coming, and he knew what I meant. I
told him what I was expecting while he scrambled into his
armour—aketon and cuirass next to the skin, he didn’t
bother with clothes, no time—then I scuttled away, yelling
for someone to take a message to the Miners’ Guild.
Ogus, I figured as I ran back towards the wall through
streets that were rapidly clogging up with suddenly
mobilised, sleepy, terrified people—Ogus didn’t know me
quite as well as I knew him. He figured I’d take artillery off
the wall to defend the harbour against his mythical fleet. I
hadn’t done that. I’d built new engines; because the
machines on the wall had been modified to throw the
bouncing balls, and we’d have had to modify them back to
use against ships, quicker and easier to build new ones
from scratch. No, fair play to him, only an engineer
would’ve realised that. Therefore he was anticipating
maybe a third less firepower on the wall; losses horrifying
but not catastrophic, therefore a reasonable price to pay,
acceptable, omelettes and eggs. I could imagine him being
annoyed to find he’d missed a trick. Serve the bastard
right.
The Miners’ rep was at the tower gate waiting for me. I
knew him slightly, a Green, quiet sort of a man, seemed
dependable. I explained: you know those saps you dug
under the gates? Well, they’re bringing up heavy gear, and
when they get here they’ll collapse them and start filling
them up with stones. What I want you to do is open the
saps up from our end, go down there, start fishing out the
stones as fast as they drop them in. Can you do that? He
gave me a look that told me I’d asked a stupid question.
Ten minutes, he told me. Thanks, I said.
Artavasdus was in charge of assault drills and
procedures: where the hell was he? Actually he was up
there already—I asked myself, when did we get so good at
all this, when did we turn into
professionals?—and I could
hear him, shouting orders in that rather too high, slightly
annoying voice that shows he’s in control but only just.
Moving his men into position, and if I could hear him, so
could the enemy. Not that it mattered, but I clicked my
tongue. Maybe not so professional after all.
Back up the stairs, onto the wall; I realised, nobody
knows where I am, this is very bad. People will need to be
able to find me, I’m supposed to be in charge. Then
Faustinus, in a yellow silk dressing gown and slippers…
They told me you’d be here, he said. Then, this is terrible,
what are we going to do?
The tower I was in became command headquarters for
the entire defence, simply because I was in it and I was so
busy with people running in wanting decisions that I didn’t
have time to move somewhere more sensible. Needless to
say we couldn’t hear ourselves think, with that damned
racket of catapults going on outside, and the walls and floor
shaking; no table, no chairs, nothing to write on or with
(but then a Green turned up with a fat sheaf of paper, a
horn of ink and a whole box of pens; God knows who sent
him, but he saved the City; people were actually thinking
without me having to tell them to). Genseric stumbled in
from time to time to let us know roughly how far the enemy
had got. They were having a devil of a job; smashed pavises
all over the place, unsmashed pavises blundering into them
and getting stuck, then a direct hit on the blockage cleared
the bottleneck, only for it to re-form a dozen yards further
on. I kept asking, how are we doing for ammunition, are we
going to run out? And when they said, no, we’re fine, we
can keep this up for hours, I didn’t believe them. How could
it be possible, the rate we were getting through it? And
then someone would remind me, we saw to all that, we’ve
had thousands of men and women working round the clock
for weeks, we’ve got enough stone balls, honestly. Also, I
kept asking what time it was, and they said about five
minutes since you asked the last time. That made no sense.
I was sure we’d been in that horrible shuddering room for
days, maybe weeks, and here were people telling me it was
just minutes, lying to me, men I thought were my friends.
At some point, it dawned on me. I’d long since passed
the point where I was having good ideas or making any
sense, and it didn’t seem to matter. Other people were
coping. All those hours and days we’d spent, thinking out
drills, figuring out what we’d do about this and that, as and
when the time came. I remember saying, we need to
change shifts on the catapults, those boys must be fit to
drop. And someone looked at me like I was senile and said,
we’re changing shifts every quarter of an hour. Who told
you to do that? You did, they said, about three weeks ago.
We do actually listen, you know.
And I kept hearing this loud, booming voice, somewhere
up on the roof of the tower we were in, so that it echoed
down the stairwell, and not even the thump of the
trebuchet arms could drown it out. Lysimachus, of course,
cheering the men on—what I should’ve been doing, except
that’s not me, not one bit. For God’s sake make him shut
up, I said, he’s giving me a headache. Genseric pointed out
that he was doing a great job and the men were working
like lunatics for him, but if I really wanted him to stop, I
could send him a direct order. Then he changed the
subject.
I remember really, really needing to take a pee, but
being too busy.
And then the thumping and the shaking stopped. What
the hell’s going on, I shouted, and they told me: the enemy
had closed the range, too close now for artillery to be
effective. They’re here.
Then the tower really shook. I was sure we’d been hit, but
apparently not; walls, ceiling and floor still in one piece,
men getting up off the floor, still alive. Someone put his
head round the door. That, he explained, was the saps
under the gate thresholds giving way.
Everyone left the room in a hurry, except me. They were
needed on the wall, every pair of hands that could draw a
bowstring or throw a brick or hold a shield. Not me,
though. You stay here, they all said to me, where it’s safe.
So there I was, alone in the dark, because the only light
we’d had was one lantern, which someone had taken with
him. Don’t know how long I was there on my own. My head
was splitting, though I hadn’t been aware of it before. I
stood up and pissed against the wall, floods, which helped a
lot. I couldn’t think. I sat back down on the floor with my
back to the wall, suddenly, horribly aware that I’d done
everything I was capable of doing and was now completely
useless. And did I trust those brave, clever, brilliant people,
my friends, who’d just been proving how well they could do
and how far they’d come, to carry on the defence without
me? Like hell. I closed my eyes, not that it made much
difference. The noise was very loud, and I’d lost the ability
to analyse it or understand it, tell bowstrings from catapult
sliders or orders from yells of pain.
I’d never been useless before. I didn’t enjoy it.
“Are you all right?”
The last thing I’d expected to hear was a woman’s voice.
Made no sense, until I remembered there was one woman
up on the wall. “Sawdust?”
She hates being called that. “Why are you sitting in the
dark?”
“Some bugger stole my lamp.”
“Ah.”
“What’s happening?”
“They’ve reached the wall. The catapults aren’t doing
any good, so we’ve been stood down. I sent the men to get
spears and swords, but—”
Quite. Sawdust and me, useless on the wall among all
those rough men. I could see the logic. She, being a
woman, and I, being a coward, would be no use there.
Further, we’d be a danger to others, because we’d get in
trouble and some poor fool would have to save us, probably
get cut up or killed in the process. Have you noticed, by the
way, that women don’t fight? Even on those rare occasions
when they scrap with each other, it’s all slaps and
scratches, they don’t try to maim or kill. And as for soldier-
fighting, sharp weapons, blunt trauma, chops and cuts and
slices, butcher’s work; they don’t do that. It’s not in their
nature. This is frequently offered as proof that men are
better than women. Me, I think it means the exact opposite.
“How are we doing?” I said.
“I don’t know. It’s still dark.” She paused, realised that
she was making a report to the supreme commander.
“Basically, the archers are shooting at shapes and noises. I
think you’re right and those engines they’ve brought up are
worms, because they’re all jammed up together headed for
the gates. They may have siege towers, but they’d have to
be pretty tall, and I didn’t see any big black shapes against
the skyline. There were a lot of rumbling noises, like rocks
being tipped off carts.”
“I sent sappers to clear the stones out from our end,” I
said.
She nodded. “I think Artavasdus has got men standing
by at the top of the saps, in case they try and come through
that way.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“We used up all the fire jars,” she went on, “but we only
had a few. They worked quite well.”
“Get some more made,” I said. If we’re still alive in the
morning, I didn’t say. “How did you stop them from
breaking in the spoon?”
“Wire,” she said. “Pressed into the clay before it’s fired.”
Hadn’t thought of that either. It came as a shock to me,
that I hadn’t thought of everything, that I didn’t have to.
“Smart,” I said. She grinned, then went all serious again.
Still reporting. “General Nicephorus stopped the
trebuchets, because he couldn’t tell if we were hitting
anything or not. He says he’ll start them up again as soon
as it’s light. Colonel Artavasdus wanted to lead a sortie
round the back of the attackers, but the general thought
not, in case we needed the men inside.”
“Just as well I wasn’t there,” I said. “I’d probably have
gone for the sortie, and it’d probably have been a mistake.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that. “That’s about it,
really,” she said. “Oh, and Prefect Faustinus has ordered a
general curfew. Everyone not needed on duty stays home
till further notice. That’s everyone not fighting or working
in the masons’ or the armouries.”
I nodded. Very sensible. Good old Faustinus. A second
later, I was on my feet, blundering for the door, tripping
over Sawdust’s legs.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“All your bombardiers,” I said, “down at the harbour,
now. Don’t just sit there, move.”
She jumped up, bumped into me, bounced off. My head
was agony, as though my brain had swollen to three times
its normal size, and there was this awful throbbing.
“What?” she said.
I have a feeling I haven’t been lied to, I didn’t say.
Because he wouldn’t; not Ogus. Come to think of it, I can’t
ever remember him telling a lie, except to protect someone
else; well, me.
In which case, there was a fleet of trebuchet barges, and
it was on its way, and it must be very close, or else why
would Ogus throw away so many lives and so much fine
equipment on a futile attack, unless as a diversion? And,
right now, all my trained artillerymen were off shift and
resting, when they should be at their stations at the docks.
And the chain was down.
I’m woefully ignorant about sailing stuff, so we were
halfway across town before I realised. Ogus’s fleet wouldn’t
be sailing into the Bay until there was enough light for
them to see by. Without leading lights to steer by, they
wouldn’t know where to go, or where the rocks were.
I glanced up at the sky, which was starting to show blue,
just a little.
Sawdust’s bombardiers were mostly Blues, because
they’re traditionally strong in carpentry, masonry and allied
trades, but she had at least seventy-five Greens—
remarkable thought, if you’d spent all your life in the sure
and certain knowledge that the only connection members
of opposite Themes were ever likely to make would be
along the length of a knife. They reached the docks ahead
of me, goes without saying. I can’t help it. I have short legs.
I tried to remember how many men she had, all told, but
my head was jammed full of numbers, so I couldn’t. Enough
to man the capstans, turn the winches and raise the chain?
No idea. Behind me, somewhere in the darkness, thousands
and thousands of men were fighting and dying in a battle—
arrow-wounds, bones crushed, flesh torn, bleeding external
and internal—and I was hurrying in the other direction,
because what they were doing wasn’t actually very
important. All that mattered now was a fine point of
engineering, the sort of thing better expressed in numbers
than words; how many men of physical capacity
x does it
take to operate a winch of specification
y to create a force
capable of lifting a mass
m? It should have been all right—
I’m an engineer, for crying out loud—but my head hurt and
I was scared and useless, and at some point during the last
hour I’d lost the ability to think. But that was all right,
because I had a shy little milkface girl to do my thinking for
me. If my brain hadn’t been trying to squeeze out through
my ears, I’d have laughed like a drain.
There was a crowd outside the docks: men, women, kids. I
thought, volunteers rushing down to help with raising the
chain, that’s good. Then I remembered: I hadn’t sent out
for volunteers.
I got closer, and saw Sawdust, with a load of her
bombardiers bunched up round her, yelling bloody murder
right in the face of some man I recognised but couldn’t
quite place. I’d never seen her so angry, didn’t think she
was capable of it. But she was howling at the top of her
voice; how can you be so stupid, how can you be so
unreasonable? And the man said, piss off, milkface. We
don’t want your sort round here.
I’m a coward, and I hate physical confrontations. A
moment later I’d somehow got through the densely packed
crowd, and someone was holding my arms behind my back,
to stop me killing the man Sawdust had been talking to.
And she was saying, it’s all right, it doesn’t matter, which is
what I usually say in these situations. What’s going on, I
asked her. Who are these people?
Actually, as I was asking the question I’d figured out part
of the answer. The man I’d wanted to kill, I now
remembered, was a ward manager for the Greens, and all
the people with him were Greens too. And they weren’t
here to help; I didn’t need to be told that.
“This man,” Sawdust said, making
man the deadliest
insult in the history of semantics, “thinks there’s a
Selroqois fleet on the way to evacuate you and your friends.
I’ve told him, he couldn’t be more wrong, but he won’t
listen.”
I wriggled my arms loose—there’s a knack to it, which
you eventually pick up when you’ve had your arms pinned
as often as I have. “You moron,” I said to him. “Yes, there’s
a fleet coming. No, it’s not Selroqois, it’s Sherden. That’s
what we raised the Necklace for. Or maybe you haven’t
been following the news.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “That’s all just bullshit, to distract us.
You knew the attack was coming, and you fixed it with your
Selroq pals to come and pick you up, soon as it starts
getting hot. Well, fuck you. We’re getting on those boats.
You can stay here with your Blue buddies and fry.”
I stared at him. I kid myself that I understand people,
that I can predict what stupid, pathetic thing they’re going
to do next. I think God sees me doing it, and decides to
teach me a lesson in humility. “That’s not true,” I said. “For
crying out loud, you halfwit, if I wanted ships to get into the
Bay, why the hell did we just bust our guts raising the
fucking chain?”
“Smokescreen,” he said, and I swear he believed it. And
faced with belief, what can you do? And we had so little
time.
I took a long step back. “I hold you directly responsible,”
I said, in a loud voice. “This is all going to be your fault.”
Because while we’d been talking, a lantern shadow had
fallen across my face, and there’s only one man in this city
tall enough to cast a shadow at that angle. “Lysimachus,” I
said.
“Here, boss.”
“Get these idiots out of my way.”
He has his faults, but he does what he’s told. He slid past
me like an eel, reached out with those long arms of his, one
hand on the top of the fool’s head, one round his chin; then
a movement so quick I didn’t really catch it, and a click, no
louder than that, and the Green ward manager fell to the
ground like a coat dropped on the floor. Then I saw metal
flash—the shadow had passed over me—and then there was
just Lysimachus, doing what he loves to do. That, for about
five seconds; he can get a lot done in five seconds. Then
Sawdust’s Blue bombardiers raised a horrible yell, realising
that it was suddenly all right to murder Greens. They were
wildly outnumbered, but they had weapons, and for months
they’d had to pretend that these people were their friends.
We had no trouble getting to the gates after that.
OceanofPDF.com
39
Of the people, by the people, for the people. I can’t
remember offhand where that quote comes from; it was
something to do with some bunch of wild-eyed idealists
overthrowing the tyrant so they could become tyrants
themselves. No good will have come of it, you can be sure.
The people; God help us.
You look—at least, I do, or I did—at the emperor and the
nobility, lording it over the people while they starve and
suffer, and you say to yourself, something’s got to be done
about all this. This can’t be right. The lions of the earth
must not destroy the worms any more. And then you do
something about it, and what do you discover? The people
turn out to be—well, people; a collective noun for all those
individual men and women, none of them perfect, some of
them downright vicious, most of them monumentally
stupid. As stupid as the emperor, the great hereditary
lords, the priestly hierarchs, the General Staff and the
Lords of the Admiralty, the merchant princes and the
organised crime barons. When push comes to shove, thick
as bricks, the lot of them. You wouldn’t trust any of them
with the helm of a ship, or the regimental welfare fund, or
your dog if you were going away for a few days, or anything
sharp.
I speak as a member of the people. I’ve done some
colossally stupid things in my time. I never asked to be
placed in a position of authority. Most of the time I’ve done
my best, and it’s never been good enough. Just dumb, I
guess.
In my time I’ve met three, maybe four genuinely smart
men and women. One of them was Ogus, my old pal, who
for some reason always had a high opinion of me. I think
that says it all, really.
OceanofPDF.com
40
Soon as Sawdust and I were inside, I called out,
“Lysimachus, get those Blues in here, right now.” I didn’t
expect him to obey, it’d be like whistling to a dog once it’s
on the scent of a deer, but obey he did, herding the
bombardiers inside the gate, none too gently, with the flat
of his sword. We got the gates closed and then the Green
mob outside nearly sprung them, by sheer weight of
numbers. But Lysimachus got the bars up, and the bars
held. That problem solved, for now.
I sent a man up to the top of the lookout tower. What am I
supposed to look out for, he said, it’s dark, I can’t see
squat.
I’d made sure there were plenty of lanterns in the winch-
houses. The levers were already in the slots in the capstan
barrels, secured by wedges. I’d already split up the
available manpower into two teams, me in one winch-
house, Sawdust in the other. This is going to work, I told
myself. I gave the order, and threw my weight against the
lever. We couldn’t budge it. Not an inch.
“We need more men,” some genius told me. “There’s just
not enough of us.”
Outside the gate, doing their best to stove it in with
benches from the nearest inn, were more men—the people,
on whose behalf I was fighting this desperately difficult
war. A few dozen of them, with their strong arms and broad
shoulders, would have those capstans turning in no time
flat. Beyond that impenetrable cordon, a whole city full of
the people, whose survival depended on the turning of
those capstans, but we couldn’t reach them or get a
message to them. I’d done my bit. I’d made and salvaged
the hardware, dealt with the things, devised and executed
the cunning tricks; what I hadn’t done, apparently, was
take the people along with me; neglected to win their
hearts and tiny, tiny minds. And so the capstans weren’t
turning, the chain wasn’t going to lift, it had all been a
complete waste of time, and I’d betrayed my friend, the last
of my people, all for fucking nothing. There’s an old saying,
isn’t there, about leading a horse to water. Well. You can
lead the people to water, but you can’t make them think.
Nobody, it seems, can do that.
Someone was yelling at me: sails, sails. For a moment, I
didn’t understand what he was talking about. What did
sails have to do with getting the capstans to turn? Then I
figured it out. Oh, I thought. Oh shit.
I left them to it, heroically straining every sinew against
the levers of capstans that wouldn’t bloody turn, and
wandered out into the soft red light of dawn. The newly
risen sun blazed on the water, exquisitely beautiful. I
couldn’t see anything. No, belay that. I could see the sails
of ships, hundreds of them, beating up the Bay with the
morning tide.
Well, I thought, we nearly did it. We nearly saved the
City, we nearly kept all these tiresome people from being
slaughtered, we nearly prevailed against insuperable odds.
We built the winches, we hooked up the chain, we actually
got it lifted and in position; just not at the right time. Great
hardware, but the people let us down. Pity about that.
Never mind, I reassured myself. Ogus, my pal, had given
explicit orders that I wasn’t to be harmed, on pain of death.
All I’d have to do was walk up to the first enemy officer who
set foot on the quay and tell him who I was, and a fast
dinghy would carry me safely out of harm’s way. I’d known
that, ever since that first meeting, and don’t for one
moment imagine that it hadn’t factored heavily in my
decision-making. There’s some freak cult somewhere that
believes that the king of the gods sent his eldest son down
to earth to die for the sins of the people; they arrested him
and strung him up and stretched his neck for him, and he
died; and on the third day he rose again from the dead, and
that was supposed to prove something, though I’m not sure
what. The hell with that. The eldest son knew perfectly well
that he’d rise again, unlike his temporarily fellow mortals,
so it really didn’t matter, just a brief inconvenience. I
assume that’s why the cult never caught on, because any
fool can see the gaping hole in the logic. Anyhow; that was
me. Everyone else is mortal, but I can’t be touched. Screw
it. Eventually, no matter how hard you wriggle and squirm,
there comes a time when you’ve got to admit that you’re
beat and the game is over.
“Lysimachus,” I said.
“Boss?”
“Stay here,” I said. “I expressly forbid you to set foot on
the quay as long as I’m alive. Stay back here and organise
the defence.”
He looked at me. He was in agony. For some utterly
incomprehensible reason, that vicious bastard loved me, or
what in his poor addled mind I stood for.
“Please,” I said.
There were tears in his eyes. “Sure,” he said. I turned
my back on him and walked away.
There was nobody on the Quay. Everybody was in the
winch-houses, straining at the capstans. I had the place to
myself. Ideal. There’d be nobody to see me walk up to the
enemy soldiers, raise my hands above my head and call out,
“Don’t hurt me, I’m Orhan, Ogus’s friend.” Everybody
would assume that I’d died fighting, in a final act of heroic
stupidity. How little they know me. I may be dumb, but not
that dumb.
Ashamed? A little, though the failure wasn’t really my
fault. I’d done my best. It was nearly good enough. Mostly,
though, I just felt very, very tired.
I watched the ships grow, from little white flecks of sail
into recognisable shapes. They were Imperial warships;
clearly, Ogus had managed to capture one of the fleets,
along with all those armies and all that gear. I counted the
ships and did some mental arithmetic, number of marines
per ship. At least ten thousand men. Even if every man in
the City capable of bearing arms hadn’t been tied up
defending the wall against Ogus’s horribly bloody
diversion, we’d never have stood a chance—not against ten
thousand soldiers arriving suddenly at the docks, with the
whole City wide open in front of them. I imagine we’d have
held the docks gate for an hour or so; Lysimachus would’ve
loved that, his moment of apotheosis. Nico would almost
certainly have fought and died at his side, for the honour of
his noble family; he’d have felt justified, redeemed. I really
wish I could’ve made that possible, it would’ve meant so
much to him. Screw them both. If there’s one truth in this
life, it’s that you simply can’t win. The most you can
achieve is to make a nuisance of yourself, for a very short
time.
I stood on the quay and watched the ships come in,
going through in my mind the list of people I was going to
do my best to save. Aichma, and Sawdust, and Artavasdus
if he’d allow me, and Arrasc and Bronellus, though at that
precise moment I wasn’t too kindly inclined toward the
Themes; mustn’t forget poor Faustinus, who’d always done
his best to be my friend, though his best, like mine, really
wasn’t worth dogshit. I thought some more, but those were
all the names I could come up with. Probably I’d forgotten
someone, like I always do, and I’d kick myself later, when
they were dead. What I should’ve done, of course, was
write a list. Too late for that now. Ah well.
The front rank of ships, twelve of them, had passed the
line where the chain would have been, if we’d managed to
raise the bloody thing. Even if there was some miracle and
the stupid thing suddenly came soaring up out of the water
like an angry dragon, there were enough marines on those
twelve ships to clear out the winch-houses and slaughter
everyone inside them. It was over. God forgive me, I felt
relieved.
The rumble of anchor chains. Splashes as boats hit the
water. I fixed my eyes on the nearest boat, which would be
the first one to land. Of course, the oarsmen had their
backs to me. I rehearsed my speech; please, don’t hurt me,
my name is Orhan, I’m Ogus’s friend. I said it to myself
under my breath, over and over again.
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41
You’ll probably have guessed by now that large parts of this
narrative are unreliable. You’ll have figured out that I come
across as rather too heroic, too eloquent, too self-assured,
too much in command of the situation to be credible,
knowing what you’ve learned of my character. It’s probably
struck you as improbable that I should’ve always been
ready with the smart idea, the right words.
The hell with it. This is my story, and if I choose to make
myself look as good as I think I can get away with, why not?
In a hundred years, or a thousand, who’s going to know any
different? I did my best, and nobody gave me much credit
for it at the time. I’ve been to all the trouble and effort of
making a record, so that the deeds and sufferings etcetera.
The labourer is worthy of his hire.
But even I’m not so brazen as to try and kid you into
thinking any better of me at that particular moment, when
the ships crossed the invisible line and I knew I’d failed, it
had all been a waste of time, all the people in the City were
going to be killed and all my clever devices had nearly
worked, but not nearly enough. Consider me on the quay,
alone, waiting to betray my people in return for my own
worthless skin—and please, whatever you do, don’t you
dare feel sorry for me.
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The boat drew up next to the stone steps. A man in a red
cloak and a shiny helmet clambered out. I stared at him. He
was a blueskin.
He looked round, then walked up to me. “Where is
everybody?” he said. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Orhan,” I said. “Who are you?”
He sighed. “Get me whoever’s in charge,” he said.
“That would be me.”
A look of deep contempt from a tired, busy man. “I want
to talk to the man in charge,” he said, slowly. “Do you
understand?”
“I’m Orhan,” I said. “Colonel of the Imperial Regiment of
Engineers. Who the hell are you?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. I guess he’d
remembered; now he came to think of it, yes, the
commander of the Engineers was some milkface, and
what’s the world coming to? “Admiral Auxinus, Sixth Fleet.
Oh, for God’s sake, man, pull yourself together. What’s the
matter with you?”
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43
Floods of tears, God help me. I gave him my report,
phrased in proper military language, with tears gushing out
of my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. Eventually I ran
out of things to say and just stood there.
He stared at me. “You’ve got the Great Seal,” he said.
I fished about in my sleeve, pulled it out and reached out
my hand to give it to him. He sort of shied away, as if it
smelled bad.
“Dear God,” he said. Then I guess he remembered that
he was an admiral in the Imperial navy. “The City is under
attack,” he said.
I nodded.
“Right now. There are enemy forces trying to break in.”
Another nod. I could see him struggling to make up his
mind whether to believe me or not. “I’ve got nine thousand
marines on my ships,” he said. Slight pause. Then, “Do you
want them, or don’t you?”
Me? Then I remembered. I was in command. “Yes,” I
said.
“Right.” Immediately he transformed, the way gods do in
legends; instead of a weary middle-aged man in a red
cloak, he was a pillar of fire or a whirlwind. He shouted,
and junior staff officers materialised at his elbow. He
barked orders; they turned and ran. Behind him, I could
see ships drawing up at the quays. Suddenly and
unexpectedly, a grown-up was in charge. I turned to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Strange. “You don’t need me,” I said.
“You’re in command here,” he roared at me. “Isn’t that
what you just told me?” You stupid little monkey, he
thought but didn’t add.
Ah, I thought. “You’re the senior officer,” I said. “They’re
your men.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” He was a feather’s breadth
away from losing his temper. “Don’t you understand the
chain of command?”
Too much for one day. “No,” I said. “I build bridges.”
I walked away. He yelled at me. I kept going.
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44
It was, they tell me, a close-run thing. Auxinus’s marines
turned the tide and saved the day, but not before the enemy
undermined a fifty-yard section of the north Wall, broke
through into Foregate and seized control of nearly a
quarter of Old Town. The Greens just managed to keep
them out of Haymarket, but the Blues broke and ran; the
Greens were outflanked and would have been wiped out to
the last man if Auxinus hadn’t counter-attacked just in time
and driven the enemy into the Hippodrome. Once they
were kettled up there, he had his men jam the gates shut
from the outside, then set fire to the whole complex. They’d
been saying for years, the Hippodrome is a death trap, a
disaster waiting to happen; all those wooden benches and
beams and floors, canvas awnings, jerry-built stands only
held up by bent nails, frayed ropes and force of habit. In
the event, more enemy soldiers were trampled to death
than burned alive. A couple of hundred survived and tried
to surrender, but were massacred by the Greens before
Auxinus’s men could stop them.
Needless to say, I kept well away from the fighting,
though Auxinus insisted that I show my face. He needed me
to tell Nico who he was; orderly transfer of command, he
called it, and I can see his point. Nico was pleased to see
him; that’s a slight understatement. The look of joy on
Nico’s face, as though he’d been carried up to heaven in a
fiery chariot and dumped down at the right hand of God; a
real soldier, finally. I left them to it and sneaked away, out
through Bell Yard, down the alleys, then a short dash
across Lower Foregate in the direction of Poor Town. And it
was there that the stupid arrow hit me.
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45
Sheer bad luck, was the general verdict. Probably a stray
shot from the scrimmage on the wall by the North Gate
tower, where we’d nearly finished mopping up the last of
the enemy raiding party. But it hit me in the guts and went
right through into my stomach. There’s a medical word for
it, which means blood poisoning. People have been known
to survive and recover, they assure me, and while there’s
life there’s hope.
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46
By the time I came round, the assault was over. Auxinus
had me woken up. He needed the Seal, and a signature on
a bit of paper, to confirm his authority. They had to lift my
hand by the wrist and guide it across the paper.
It hurts. To take my mind off it hurting, I’ve spent the
last couple of days dictating this. People have been trying
to get in and see me, but I’ve got Lysimachus on the door,
keeping them away. I don’t want to see any of them, not
knowing it’ll be for the last time. Not Aichma—she made a
scene, hysterical, demanding to see me. Lysimachus
slapped her face and threw her out. I’m a coward. Dying is
bad enough. I can’t face stuff like that.
A letter came for me, and a present; from Ogus. I guess
he hadn’t heard about me getting shot. We’ve actually
managed to keep it a secret, so far at least, which is a
miracle in this man’s town.
The present was a book, in a rather unusual binding. At
first I thought it was just ordinary leather but with the hair
still on. But the hair—about a quarter-inch long, thick and
stubbly—was golden yellow. I stared at it, once I’d figured
out what it was; a human scalp, with the hair shaved. The
book, incidentally, was Planginus’s
Manual of Siegecraft,
which I’ve always wanted to read, but copies are rare as
hens’ teeth.
Ogus to Orhan, greetings.
Thanks for the warning. You were quite right about
the plot to murder me. You saved my life. Here’s a
little token of my gratitude, to remember my wife by.
You’ll have gathered by now that your Sixth Fleet
managed to smash through our blockade and sink the
assault barges. Annoying, but makes no difference in
the long run. Yes, I know; in the short term, you’ll be
able to bring in food from outside, mercenaries to
help man the walls, tribute from the few bits of the
empire that haven’t fallen yet. Quite possibly you may
be able to keep going for a year or two. If you think
prolonging the agony is a good thing, please accept
my congratulations.
You’re my oldest friend, and you saved my life. But
you can be a real pain in the arse sometimes.
Look after yourself.
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47
This story is ending abruptly. So is my life, so you’ll have to
forgive me if I can’t tie up the loose ends, tell you what
became of who, say a proper goodbye to the men and
women whose adventures you’ve been following. Sorry, but
I can’t help you. If by some miracle the City survives,
maybe so will the official records, and you can look up the
registers of marriages and deaths. Otherwise, what the
hell. The most someone like me can do is strike a light in
the darkness. As soon as it burns my hand, I have to let go.
Besides, I’m not really a historian, only an engineer.
The poor, long-suffering clerk is sick to death of the
sound of my voice, so I’ll keep it short. These are the
unsatisfactory histories of Orhan son of Siyyah Doctus Felix
Praeclarissimus, written down so that the deeds and
sufferings of great men may never be forgotten; which is
why, Ogus, I’m sending them to you. After all, once you’ve
finished the job, there won’t be any Robur left to read
them, or make copies. Once the worms have inherited the
earth, they may like to be reminded of the last dying
whimper of the lions. And besides, after all the trouble I’ve
caused you, I guess I owe you a keepsake. I’m sorry to say,
this is all I’ve got left. I apologise for getting in your way,
hindering you, being a nuisance. Not a friendly way to
behave, and I am, though you may find it hard to believe,
your friend. I’m sorry for getting myself killed. It was
careless of me.
I think that more or less covers everything.
OceanofPDF.com
Translator’s Note
The authenticity and authorship of the
Commentaries has
been fiercely debated for over a thousand years, and there
is no point in rehearsing the convoluted and inconclusive
arguments of the opposing academic factions. Almost
anything is possible. It could be a contemporary record
written by the man who conducted the defence of the City.
It could equally plausibly be a Restoration forgery,
designed to further the agenda of the Foundation and give
legitimacy to the counter-revolutionary coalition. It could
even be, as Kember so ingeniously suggests, a
metaphysical and alchemical allegory, with no foundation
whatsoever in historical fact.
There are many serious problems with the text as it
stands: the notorious inconsistencies; the distinct
possibility that substantial and significant parts of the book
are missing; above all, the problem of the narrator.
Recently, scholars have attempted to establish a link
between the Orhan of the
Commentaries with a military
engineer, Orianus Peregrinus, attested from a badly worn
inscription from Nobe Bhaskoe, which they would like to
see as the “bridge in the middle of nowhere”. However, it
seems increasingly likely that the Nobe Bhaskoe inscription
will be proved, on epigraphical grounds, to date from the
mid-seventh century, a hundred and fifty years earlier than
the events purportedly described in the
Commentaries; in
which case, there is no external evidence that any part of
Orhan’s version of events is true, or that he ever existed.
Regrettably, therefore, we have no option but to let the
narrator speak for himself. It is enormously frustrating that
our only witness to such momentous events should be so
unsatisfactory; unreliable, self-serving and barely literate.
But, bearing in mind the almost miraculous survival of the
manuscript (saved first from the sack of Perimadeia and
then the destruction of the Library of Mezentia; presumed
lost for six hundred years and eventually rediscovered
during the confiscation of the met’Oc family library, among
a pile of discarded manuscripts scheduled to be cut up and
used for bookbindings), we must be grateful for what little
we have.
OceanofPDF.com
BY K. J. PARKER
The Fencer Trilogy
Colours in the Steel
The Belly of the Bow
The Proof House
The Scavenger Trilogy
Shadow
Pattern
Memory
The Engineer Trilogy
Devices and Desires
Evil for Evil
The Escapement
The Company
The Folding Knife
The Hammer
Sharps
The Two of Swords: Volume 1
The Two of Swords: Volume 2
The Two of Swords: Volume 3
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
BY TOM HOLT
Expecting Someone Taller
Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?
Flying Dutch
Ye Gods!
Overtime
Here Comes the Sun
Grailblazers
Faust Among Equals
Odds and Gods
Djinn Rummy
My Hero
Paint Your Dragon
Open Sesame
Wish You Were Here
Only Human
Snow White and the Seven Samurai
Valhalla
Nothing But Blue Skies
Falling Sideways
Little People
The Portable Door
In Your Dreams
Earth, Air, Fire and Custard
You Don’t Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps
Someone Like Me
Barking
The Better Mousetrap
May Contain Traces of Magic
Blonde Bombshell
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages
Doughnut
When It’s A Jar
The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice
The Good, the Bad and the Smug
The Management Style of the Supreme Beings
Dead Funny: Omnibus 1
Mightier Than the Sword: Omnibus 2
The Divine Comedies: Omnibus 3
For Two Nights Only: Omnibus 4
Tall Stories: Omnibus 5
Saints and Sinners: Omnibus 6
Fishy Wishes: Omnibus 7
The Walled Orchard
Alexander at the World’s End
Olympiad
A Song for Nero
Meadowland
I, Margaret
Lucia in Wartime
Lucia Triumphant
OceanofPDF.com
extras
OceanofPDF.com
meet the author
K. J. PARKER is a pseudonym for Tom Holt. He was born in
London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient
Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small,
temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines. These
interests led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a
solicitor and immigrate to Somerset, where he specialised
in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in
1995. He lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife and
daughter.
For a comprehensive guide to the unreliable world of K. J.
Parker, go to http://parkerland.wikia.com.
Find out more about K. J. Parker and other Orbit authors by
registering for the free monthly newsletter at:
www.orbitbooks.net.
OceanofPDF.com
if you enjoyed
SIXTEEN WAYS TO DEFEND A
WALLED CITY
look out for
THE TWO OF SWORDS:
VOLUME ONE
by
K. J. Parker
“Why are we fighting this war? Because evil must be
resisted, and sooner or later there comes a time when men
of principle have to make a stand. But at this stage in the
proceedings,” he added, with a slightly lopsided grin,
“mostly from force of habit.”
A soldier with a gift for archery. A woman who kills without
a second thought. Two brothers, both unbeatable generals,
now fighting for opposing armies. No one in the vast and
once glorious United Empire remains untouched by the rift
between East and West, and the war has been fought for as
long as anyone can remember. Some still survive who know
how it was started, but no one knows how it will end.
Except, perhaps, the Two of Swords.
World Fantasy Award–winning author K. J. Parker delivers
the first volume of his most ambitious work yet—the story
of a war on a grand scale, told through the eyes of soldiers,
politicians, victims, and heroes.
OceanofPDF.com
1
The Crown Prince
The draw in Rhus is to the corner of the mouth; it says so in
the Book, it’s the law. In Overend, they draw to the ear; in
the South, it’s the middle of the lower lip—hence the
expression, “archer’s kiss.” Why Imperial law recognises
three different optimum draws, given that the bow and the
arrow are supposedly standardised throughout the empire,
nobody knows. In Rhus, of course, they’ll tell you that the
corner of the mouth is the only possible draw if you actually
want to hit anything. Drawing to the ear messes up your
sightline down the arrow, and the Southerners do the kiss
because they’re too feeble to draw a hundred pounds that
extra inch.
Teucer had a lovely draw, everybody said so. Old men
stood him drinks because it was so perfect, and the captain
made him stand in front of the beginners and do it over and
over again. His loose wasn’t quite so good—he had a
tendency to snatch, letting go of the string rather than
allowing it to slide from his fingers—which cost him
valuable points in matches. Today, however, for some
reason he wished he could isolate, preserve in vinegar and
bottle, he was loosing exactly right. The arrow left the
string without any conscious action on his part—a thought,
maybe:
round about now would be a good time, and then
the arrow was in the air, bounding off to join its friends in
the dead centre of the target, like a happy dog. The marker
at the far end of the butts held up a yellow flag: a small
one. Eight shots into the string, Teucer suddenly realised
he’d shot eight inner golds, and was just two away from a
possible.
He froze. In the long and glorious history of the
Merebarton butts, only two possibles had ever been shot:
one by a legendary figure called Old Shan, who may or may
not have existed some time a hundred years ago, and one
by Teucer’s great-uncle Ree, who’d been a regular and
served with Calojan. Nobody had had the heart to pull the
arrows out of that target; it had stayed on the far right of
the butts for twenty years, until the straw was completely
rotten, and the rusty heads had fallen out into the nettles.
Every good archer had shot a fifty. One or two in the village
had shot fifty with eight or fifty with nine. A possible—fifty
with ten, ten shots in the inner circle of the gold—was
something completely different.
People were looking at him, and then at his target, and
the line had gone quiet. A possible at one hundred yards is
—well, possible; but extremely unlikely, because there’s
only just enough space in the inner ring for ten
arrowheads. Usually what happens is that you drop in
seven, maybe eight, and then the next one touches the
stem of an arrow already in place on its way in and gets
deflected; a quarter-inch into the outer gold if you’re lucky,
all the way out of the target and into the nettles if you’re
not. In a match, with beer or a chicken riding on it, the
latter possibility tends to persuade the realistic competitor
to shade his next shot just a little, to drop it safely into the
outer gold and avoid the risk of a match-losing score-
nought. Nobody in history anywhere had ever shot a
possible in a match. But this was practice, nothing to play
for except eternal glory, the chance for his name to be
remembered a hundred years after his death; he had no
option but to try for it. He squinted against the evening
light, trying to figure out the lie of his eight shots, but the
target was a hundred yards away: all he could see of the
arrows was the yellow blaze of the fletchings. He
considered calling hold, stopping the shoot while he walked
up the range and took a closer look. That was allowed, even
in a match, but to do so would be to acknowledge that he
was trying for a possible, so that when he failed—
A voice in his head, which he’d never heard before, said
quite clearly,
go and look. No, I can’t, he thought, and the
voice didn’t argue. Quite. Only an idiot argues with himself.
Go and look. He took a deep breath and said, “Hold.”
It came out loud, high and squeaky, but nobody laughed;
instead, they laid their bows down on the grass and took a
step back. Dead silence. Men he’d known all his life. Then,
as he took his first stride up the range, someone whose
voice he couldn’t identify said, “Go on, Teuce.” It was said
like a prayer, as though addressed to a god—please send
rain, please let my father get well. They
believed in him. It
made his stomach turn and his face go cold. He walked up
the range as if to the gallows.
When he got there: not good. The marker (Pilad’s uncle
Sen; a quiet man, but they’d always got on well) gave him a
look that said
sorry, son, then turned away. Six arrows were
grouped tight in the exact centre of the inner gold, one so
close to the others that the shaft was actually flexed; God
only knew how it had gone in true. The seventh was out
centre-right, just cutting the line. The eighth was in clean,
but high left. That meant he had to shoot two arrows into
the bottom centre, into a half-moon about the size of his
thumb, from a hundred yards away. He stared at it. Can’t
be done. It was, no pun intended, impossible.
Pilad’s uncle Sen gave him a wan smile and said, “Good
luck.” He nodded, turned away and started back down the
range.
Sen’s nephew Pilad was his best friend, something he’d
never quite been able to understand. Pilad was, beyond
question, the glory of Merebarton. Not yet nineteen (he
was three weeks older than Teucer) he was already the
best stockman, the best reaper and mower, champion
ploughman, best thatcher and hedge-layer; six feet tall,
black-haired and brown-eyed, the only possible topic of
conversation when three girls met, undisputed champion
horse-breaker and second-best archer. And now consider
Teucer, his best friend; shorter, ordinary-looking, awkward
with girls, a good worker but a bit slow, you’d have trouble
remembering him ten minutes after you’d met him, and the
only man living to have shot a hundred-yard possible on
Merebarton range—
He stopped, halfway between butts and firing point, and
laughed. The hell with it, he thought.
Pilad was shooting second detail, so he was standing
behind the line, in with a bunch of other fellows. As Teucer
walked up, he noticed that Pilad was looking away,
standing behind someone’s shoulder, trying to make
himself inconspicuous. Teucer reached the line, turned and
faced the target; like the time he’d had to go and bring in
the old white bull, and it had stood there glaring at him
with mad eyes, daring him to take one more step. Even now
he had no idea where the courage had come from that day;
he’d opened the gate and gone in, a long stride directly
towards certain death; on that day, the bull had come
quietly, gentle as a lamb while he put the halter on, walking
to heel like a good dog. Maybe, Teucer thought, when I was
born Skyfather allotted me a certain number of good
moments, five or six, maybe, to last me my whole life. If so,
let this be one of them.
Someone handed him his bow. His fingers closed round
it, and the feel of it was like coming home. He reached for
the ninth arrow, stuck point first into the ground. He wasn’t
aware of nocking it, but it got on to the string somehow.Just look at the target: that voice again, and he didn’t yet
know it well enough to decide whether or not it could be
trusted. He drew, and he was looking straight down the
arrow at a white circle on a black background. Just look at
the target. He held on it for three heartbeats, and then the
arrow left him.
Dead silence, for the impossibly long time it took for the
arrow to get there. Pilad’s uncle Sen walked to the target
with his armful of flags, picked one out and lifted it. Behind
Teucer, someone let out a yell they must’ve heard back in
the village.
Well, he thought, that’s forty-five with nine; good score,
enough to win most matches. And still one shot in hand.
Let’s see what we can do.
The draw. He had a lovely draw. This time, he made
himself enjoy it. To draw a hundred-pound bow, you first
use and then abuse nearly every muscle and every joint in
your body. There’s a turning point, a hinge, where the force
of the arms alone is supplemented by the back and the
legs. He felt the tip of his middle finger brush against his
lip, travel the length of it, until it found the far corner. Just
look at the target. It doesn’t matter, he told himself.
It
matters, said the voice.
But that’s all right. That helps.
He’d never thought of it like that before. It matters. And
that helps. Yes, he thought, it helps, and the arrow flew.
It lifted, the way an arrow does, swimming in the slight
headwind he presumed he’d allowed for, though he had no
memory of doing so. It lifted, reaching the apex of its flight,
and he thought: however long I live, let a part of me always
be in this moment, this split second when I could’ve shot a
hundred-yard possible; this moment at which it’s still on, it
hasn’t missed yet, the chance, the
possibility is still alive,
so that when I’m sixty-six and half blind and a nuisance to
my family, I’ll still have this, the one thing that could’ve
made me great—
Uncle Sen walked to the target. He wasn’t carrying his
flags. He stood for a moment, the only thing that existed in
the whole world. Then he raised both his arms and shouted.Oh, Teucer thought; and then something hit him in the
back and sent him flat on his face in the grass, and for a
moment he couldn’t breathe, and it
hurt. He was thinking:
who’d want to do that to me; they’re supposed to be my
friends. And then he was grabbed by his arms and yanked
upright, and everybody was shouting in his face, and
Pilad’s grin was so close to his eyes he couldn’t see it
clearly; and he thought: I did it.
He didn’t actually want to go and look, just in case there
had been a mistake, but they gave him no choice; he was
scooped up and planted on two bony shoulders, so that he
had to claw at heads with his fingers to keep from falling
off. At the butts they slid him off on to his knees, so that
when he saw the target he was in an attitude of worship,
like in Temple. Fair enough. Arrows nine and ten were both
in, clean, not even touching the line. They looked like a
bunch of daffodils, or seedlings badly in need of thinning. A
possible. The only man living. And then he thought: they
won’t let me pull my arrows out, and they’re my match set,
and I can’t afford to buy another one—
And Pilad, who’d been one of the bony shoulders, gave
him another murderous slap on the back and said, “Nicely,
Teuce, nicely,” and with a deep feeling of shame and
remorse he realised that Pilad meant it; no resentment, no
envy, sheer joy in his friend’s extraordinary achievement.
(But if Pilad had been the shooter, how would he be feeling
now? Don’t answer that.) He felt as if he’d just betrayed his
friend, stolen from him or told lies about him behind his
back. He wanted to say he was sorry, but it would be too
complicated to explain.
They let him go eventually. Pilad and Nical walked with
him as far as the top of the lane. He explained that he
wanted to check on the lambs, so he’d take a short cut
across the top meadow. It’s possible that they believed him.
He walked the rest of the way following the line of the
hedge, as though he didn’t want to be seen.
It was nearly dark when he got home; there was a thin
line of bright yellow light under the door and he could
smell roast chicken. He grinned, and lifted the latch.
“Dad, Mum, you’re not going to believe—” He stopped.
They were sitting at the table, but it wasn’t laid for dinner.
In the middle of it lay a length of folded yellow cloth. It
looked a bit like a scarf.
“This came for you,” his father said.
He said it like someone had died. It was just some cloth.
Oh, he thought. He took a step forward, picked it up and
unfolded it. Not a scarf; a sash.
His mother had been crying. His father looked as though
he’d woken up to find all the stock dead, and the wheat
burned to the ground and the thatch blown off.
“I shot a possible,” he said, but he knew it didn’t matter.
His father frowned, as though he didn’t understand the
words. “That’s good,” he said, looking away; not at Teucer,
not at the sash. “Well?” his father said suddenly. “Tell me
about it.”
“Later,” Teucer said. He was looking at the sash. “When
did this come?”
“Just after you went out. Two men, soldiers. Guess
they’re going round all the farms.”
Well, of course. If they were raising the levy, they
wouldn’t make a special journey just for him. “Did they say
when?”
“You got to be at the Long Ash cross, first light, day after
tomorrow,” his father said. “Kit and three days’ rations.
They’re raising the whole hundred. That’s all they’d say.”
It went without saying they had records; the census,
conducted by the Brothers every five years. They’d know
his father was exactly one year overage for call-up, just as
they’d known he had a son, nineteen, eligible. It would all
be written down somewhere in a book; a sort of
immortality, if you cared to look at it that way. Somewhere
in the city, the provincial capital, strangers knew their
names, knew that they existed, just as people a hundred
years hence would know about Teucer from Merebarton,
who’d once shot ten with ten at a hundred yards.
He wasn’t the least bit hungry now. “What’s for dinner?”
he said.
OceanofPDF.com
if you enjoyed
SIXTEEN WAYS TO DEFEND A
WALLED CITY
look out for
THE WOLF
Under a Northern Sky: Book One
by
Leo Carew
In Leo Carew’s thrilling and savagely visceral debut epic
fantasy, The Wolf
, violence and death come to the land
under the Northern Sky when two fierce races break their
age-old fragile peace and begin an all-out war.
Beyond the Black River, among the forests and mountains
of the north, lives an ancient race of people. Their lives are
measured in centuries, not decades; they revel in
wilderness and resilience, and they scorn wealth and
comfort.
By contrast, those in the south live in the moment, their
lives more fleeting. They crave wealth and power; their
ambition is limitless, and their cunning unmatched.
When the armies of the south flood across the Black River,
the fragile peace between the two races is shattered. On a
lightning-struck battlefield, the two sides will fight—for
their people, for their land, for their very survival.
OceanofPDF.com
1
Broken Clockwork
The rain had not stopped for days. The road was under six
inches of brown water. Everything was underwater. Roper’s
horse stumbled and collapsed onto its knees; it was all he
could do to stay in the saddle.
“Up,” said Kynortas. “You must be twice the man you
expect your legionaries to be.”
Roper dismounted to allow his horse to rise before
swinging himself back into his saddle. The legionaries
behind had not noticed; they marched on, heads dipped
against the rain.
“What effect will the rain have?” asked Kynortas.
“It will shorten the battle,” Roper hazarded. “Formations
are easily broken and men die faster when their footing is
unsure.”
“A fair assessment,” Kynortas judged. “Men also fight
less fiercely in the rain. It will favour the Sutherners; the
legions are more skilled and will struggle to assert their
dominance in rain.”
Roper drank the words in. “How does that change our
battle plan, lord?”
“We have no battle plan,” said Kynortas. “We do not
know what we will face. The scouts report that the
Sutherners have found a strong position to defend, so we
know we must attack; that is all. But,” he went on, “we
must be careful with the legions. They take hundreds of
years to develop and because they will not run, they can be
destroyed in a single battle. Remember this above all: the
legions are irreplaceable. Preserve the legions, Roper.”
Marching at Kynortas’s back were close to ninety
thousand soldiers: the full strength of the Black Kingdom.
The column, lined with countless banners that hung sodden
and limp, stretched miles back down the road and far out of
sight. Even now they marched in step, causing waves to
pulse through the flood water. There had never been a call-
up so vast in Roper’s nineteen years. No man liked
summoning all the legions beneath a single banner; the
propensity for catastrophe was too great. As Kynortas had
said, the legions were irreplaceable. Losing them was the
collective fear of every echelon of their nation.
On this occasion, there had been no choice. Their
enemies had gathered an enormous army that threatened
to capsize the balance of power in Albion. The force, a
composite of Saxon and Frankish soldiers, with
mercenaries from Samnia and Iberia, was so big that
nobody knew how many men their enemies commanded.
But it numbered many more than the legionaries under
Kynortas.
“Why do we not do as the Sutherners do, lord?” asked
Roper. “Unify all our peoples under a single banner?”
Kynortas did not countenance the idea. “Can you
imagine any king surrendering control of his forces to
another? Can you imagine a dozen kings all agreeing to
back the same man?” He shook his head dismissively.
“Perhaps one man in a million could unify the Anakim.
Perhaps. But I am not the man to do it, and neither will I
surrender the legions to any foreign sovereignty.”
Roper could not imagine a lord greater than Kynortas. As
strong in face and limb as were his faith and convictions.
Straight-backed and stern, with a thunderous brow and a
face as yet unscarred by conflict. His men regarded him;
his enemies despised and respected him in equal measure.
He knew how to court an ally, cow an enemy and read a
battlefield like a poem. He was a tall man, though Roper
almost equalled him in that regard already. Theirs was
reckoned a strong house, with Roper a promising prospect
as Kynortas’s heir, his two younger brothers indemnifying
the lineage.
At the head of the mighty column, the Black Lord and his
young heir crested a hill to reveal a great flood plain.
Across almost a mile of wind-rippled water lay a ridge of
extraordinary length. Whether a natural formation or some
ancient battle-works thrown up in this scarred land was not
clear, but it stretched almost from horizon to horizon. Its
northern flank was guarded by a great forest and on it was
arrayed the Suthern horde. Thousands lined the ridge. Tens
of thousands; protected by the mangled and rain-slicked
slope. Their banners were as wilted as those of the legions
but Roper could make out halberdiers, longbowmen,
swordsmen and some who shone greyly on the wet day and
must surely be men-at-arms. At the southern edge of the
ridge, a vast mass of cavalry sat malevolently.
It was to be Roper’s first battle. He had never seen one
before. He had heard them, rumbling and crashing from
afar like a heaving ocean beating against an iron-bound
coast. He had seen the warriors return, most weary and
bereft, a special few energised and inspired; all filthy and
battered. He had seen the wounded treated; watched as
surgeons trepanned the skulls of unconscious men or
extracted slivers of steel from their forearms, thrown off by
the clash of blades. His father had discussed it often,
indeed talked of little else to his heir. Roper had studied it;
had trained for it from the age of six. His life had so far
revolved around this sacred clash and yet he felt utterly
unprepared for what he saw before him.
Laying eyes on the enemy, the Black Lord and his son
spurred out of the column’s path. Kynortas snapped his
fingers and an aide trotted to his side. “Deploy our army in
battle formation, as close as possible to where the flooding
begins.” Kynortas rattled off a list of where each legion
should be placed in the line, concluding with the
observation that all their cavalry would be on the right,
“save for those from Houses Oris and Alba, who take the
left.”
“That’s a lot of orders, lord,” said the aide.
“Delegate.” The aide complied. “Uvoren!”
A mounted officer detached himself from the column and
rode to join Kynortas. “My lord?” His high ponytail,
threaded through a hole in the back of his helmet,
identified him as a Sacred Guardsman. A silver eye was
inlaid into his right shoulder-plate, his helmet covered his
eyes and he grinned roguishly at his master.
“You know Uvoren, Roper,” Kynortas introduced them.
Roper had heard of Uvoren; there was no boy in the Black
Kingdom who had not. The Captain of the Sacred Guard: a
role every aspiring warrior dreamed of playing. There could
be no higher endorsement of your martial capability than
appointment to such an office. Over his back was slung his
famous war hammer: Marrow-Hunter. It was said that
Uvoren had had Marrow-Hunter’s gorgeous rippled-steel
head forged from the combined swords of four Suthern
earls, each put down by the captain himself. When hope
had seemed a distant memory at the Siege of
Lundenceaster—the greatest of Albion’s settlements, far to
the south—it had been Marrow-Hunter which had at last
cleared a foothold on the wall. At the Battle of Eoferwic, its
great blunt head had broken the back of King Offa’s horse
and then smashed the downed king’s head like a rotten
egg, crumpling his gilt helmet.
Yes, Roper had heard of Uvoren. Playing in the academy
far in the north, Roper had always pretended to be Uvoren
the Mighty. The little stick he wielded had not been a sword
but a war hammer.
Now, he nodded silently at the captain, who beamed
back at him. “Of course he does.”
“Captain of the Sacred Guard and model of humility,”
said Kynortas acidly. “Uvoren: parley. Roper will accompany
us.”
“You’ll enjoy this, young lord,” said Uvoren, curbing his
horse next to Roper and gripping his shoulder. Roper did
not respond beyond staring wide-eyed at the guardsman.
“Your father’s good fun when treating with the enemy.”
The three of them rode together down onto the flood
plain, accompanied by another Sacred Guardsman bearing
a white flag. “Carrying a white flag comes naturally to you,
Gray,” Uvoren called to the guardsman. Gray’s reaction was
merely to stare unsmiling at his captain. Uvoren laughed.
“Stay calm, Gray. And learn to laugh.” Roper looked to
Kynortas to see what to make of this, but the Black Lord
had ignored the exchange.
They splashed into the flood waters which proved to be
no more than a foot deep. Beyond the water, atop the ridge,
a group of horsemen detached themselves from the
Suthern army and rode out to them. To Roper, there
seemed a significant disparity in power between the two
groups. He, his father, Uvoren and “Gray” numbered four;
riding against them were close to thirty. Three unhelmeted
lords led the party, accompanied by two dozen knights in
gleaming plate armour, visors down and horses billowing in
embroidered caparisons.
“Will this be your first battle, little lord?” Uvoren asked
of Roper.
“The first one,” confirmed Roper. Being taller than most
already, he was hardly little but the term did not feel
strange from a man as elevated as Uvoren.
“There is nothing like it. Here is where you will discover
what you were born for.”
“You loved your first one?” asked Roper. He was not
accustomed to struggling with words, but stuttered slightly
when addressing Uvoren.
“Oh yes,” responded the captain, beaming again. “That
was before I was even a legionary and I bagged my first
earl! Fighting these Sutherners is not hard; look here.”
They were drawing close to the group of horsemen.
Roper had never beheld a Sutherner before and their
appearance shocked him. They looked like him, just
smaller. Though all were tall among Anakim, not one of
Roper, Gray, Uvoren or Kynortas stood below seven feet in
height; even on horseback they towered above their
enemies, who were on an altogether smaller scale. The
disparity in power vanished.
Now Roper came to inspect them more closely, there was
something different about the faces of these Sutherners as
well. They were somehow child-like. Their eyes were
expressive and their emotions and characters stood out on
their faces with a clarity that made them almost endearing.
Their features were softer and less robust. By comparison,
Kynortas’s countenance might have been carved from oak.
These Suthern faces put Roper in mind of something
domesticated, like a dog. Something far from the wild.
Kynortas raised a hand in greeting. “Who commands
here?” Though he spoke good Saxon, he delivered these
words in the Anakim tongue. The knights shivered slightly
as the speech of the Black Kingdom washed over them.
“I command here,” said a man in the centre of the group
in a halting, accented version of the same language. He
rode towards Kynortas, seemingly indifferent to his size.
“You must be the Black Lord.” He sat straight in his saddle,
wearing a suit of plate armour so bright that Roper could
make out his own reflection in the breastplate. He had a
dark beard and a mane of curly hair. His face, what could
be seen of it, was reddened by drink. “I am Earl William of
Lundenceaster. I lead this army.” He gestured to his left.
“This is the Lord Cedric of Northwic and this,” he gestured
to his right, “is Bellamus.”
“You have a title, Bellamus?” demanded Kynortas.
William of Lundenceaster answered for him. “Bellamus is
an upstart without any sort of rank to his name.
Nevertheless, he commands our Right.” Earl William
regularly substituted Anakim words that he did not know
with the Saxon equivalent, knowing that Kynortas
understood anyway.
Kynortas looked intrigued at the earl’s words and
Bellamus raised a hand in acknowledgement. He was good-
looking, this upstart, with a touch of grey at the temples of
his dark, wavy hair and he appeared prosperous. He alone
of the Sutherners present was not dressed in plate armour
but instead wore a thick jerkin of quilted leather, with gold
hung at his neck and wrists. His high boots were of the
finest quality, so new that they looked as if they might rub.
He wore a rich red-dyed tunic beneath the jerkin and sat on
a bearskin draped over his horse. He also had the two
outermost fingers missing from his left hand. Next to the
austere, armour-plated lords, it was the upstart who stood
out.
The Black Lord looked back at Earl William.
“You have invaded our lands,” said Kynortas, his voice
harsh. “You crossed the Abus which has been a peaceful
border for years. You have burned, you have plundered and
you have raped.” Kynortas advanced his horse, bearing
down on Earl William. His huge physical presence was
more than matched by his implacable bearing. “Leave now,
un-harried, or I will unleash the Black Legions. If I am
forced to use my soldiers, there will be no mercy for any of
you.” He cast an eye over the ridge behind the Suthern
generals. “In addition, I doubt you can bring an army like
this here and have left anything to defend your homelands.
You have violated our peace and once I have decimated
your army here, I will advance to Lundenceaster and strip
it to the bone by way of reparations. The violence,” he
leaned forward, “will be extreme.”
Uvoren laughed loudly.
“We could withdraw,” suggested Earl William, who had
not flinched as Kynortas advanced. “But we’re very
comfortable here. We are well supplied; we have a strong
position. And the reason you even offer us the chance of
withdrawal is that you do not want to lose soldiers. You
value them too highly and they are too dearly replaced. You
do not want to attack us.” Earl William had a slight squint.
He gazed frankly at Kynortas, who waited for the offer that
was about to be broached. “Gold,” said the earl softly. “For
the lives of your legionaries. Thirty chests would make our
time worthwhile. That and the meagre plunder we have
already taken from your eastern lands.”
Kynortas did not respond. He just stared at Earl William
and allowed the silence to stretch.
Roper watched. Thirty chests was an absurd figure to
propose. The Black Kingdom’s wealth was not based on
gold; it was based on harder metals, beyond the
manipulation of the Sutherners. They could not provide
thirty chests of gold, as Earl William would surely have
known; not if they scoured the country from meanest hovel
to most magnificent castle. The earl had also been
provocative in his demand of the tribute, though not
obviously so. All of which led Roper to one conclusion; he
did not want his offer to be accepted, but was trying to
pretend that he did. The Sutherners had some kind of plan
and had already decided how they wanted these
negotiations to play out. Roper suspected Earl William was
trying to goad Kynortas into a rash attack, where the
legionaries could be killed trying to scale the mud-slicked
ridge.
Kynortas himself—wiser, battle-hardened and more
experienced—had no such suspicions. Foolish, ignorant
Sutherners. “We have no value for metal of such limited
use,” said Kynortas at last. “We do not have thirty chests to
satisfy your greed for things that are soft and impotent; nor
would we supply you with them if we did.”
Kynortas suddenly jerked forward, leaning out of his
saddle in a great creaking of leather harnesses, and seized
the top of Earl William’s breastplate. Earl William’s face
reddened still further and he leaned backwards
desperately, trying to pull his horse out of Kynortas’s reach,
but the Black Lord had him fast. The Sutherner was
panicking, terror transparent on his face as Kynortas’s
alien hand touched his flesh. With a mighty wrench and a
screech of yielding metal, Kynortas tore the shining
breastplate clean off, causing Earl William to spring back
like a willow-board. Beneath his armour was revealed
leather padding, soaked in sweat, and Kynortas snorted as
he flung the breastplate aside. It had all happened so fast,
Earl William’s knightly bodyguard had had no time to do
anything more than look shocked. Earl William himself
quivered, thunderstruck.
“Worthless,” said Kynortas, sitting back in his saddle.
“And beneath, a feeble sack of bones. You cannot fight my
legions. They will cut through your plate like carving a
ham.” He smiled bleakly at Earl William, who had drawn
his right arm across his vulnerable chest as though
violated. The upstart Bellamus was looking across at his
general with eyes crinkled in amusement. The two were
evidently not friends. “Your last chance, Earl William.
Withdraw, or I will release the legions.”
“You use your precious bloody soldiers, then,” boomed
Earl William, his voice quivering with rage. “Watch them
flounder and die in the filth!” He dragged his horse away
from the encounter as though he could not bear to be in
Kynortas’s presence a moment longer. The Black Lord
stood his ground and watched the retinue file away until it
was just Bellamus staring back at him. The smaller man
broke the silence first.
“Being blessed with bone-armour, I cannot imagine you
know how it felt for Earl William to have his defences taken
so contemptuously from him. Before this battle is over, I
will show you how that feels.” His Anakim was flawless; he
might have passed for a subject of the Hindrunn had his
stature been less mean. He had spoken mildly and nodded
at the four Anakim before clicking his tongue to coax his
horse away and back up to the ridge. He rode slowly,
raising an arm in retrospective salute.
“Do negotiations always end like that?” asked Roper as
the four of them turned back to their own forces, still
assembling on the plain.
“Always,” said Kynortas. “Nobody negotiates in
negotiations. It’s an exercise in intimidation.”
Uvoren snorted. “Your father treats negotiations as an
exercise in intimidation, Roper,” he corrected. “Everyone
else goes into it genuinely hoping to avoid battle.” Uvoren
and Gray laughed.
“They didn’t want to negotiate anyway,” said Roper.
Kynortas cast a glance in his direction. “What makes you
say so?”
“The way he phrased the offer; the fact that he’d have
known it was beyond our means anyway. He was goading
us into attack.”
Kynortas brooded on this. “Perhaps. So they’re over-
confident.”
Roper stayed silent. Who could be over-confident going
into battle against the Black Legions? There must be a
reason for their belief. They must have a plan. But Roper
did not know the way of these Sutherners. Perhaps their
numbers gave them confidence. Perhaps they were just a
confident race. Roper did not know and so stayed quiet.
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