Evil for Evil

23

And again.

As his fingers took the strain of the bowstring, he realized from the pain that something was wrong with them. He glanced down and saw that the skin on either side of the middle joints of his first two fingers had been blistered and rasped away. He pushed the bow away from him with his left arm, hauled the string back with his right until his thumb knuckle brushed the corner of his mouth. The bow was fighting him now, like a panicked animal on a tether. Down the shaft, on the point of the arrowhead, he saw his target (impossible to think of it as a living thing, let alone a human being. His instructor had told him that, years ago: shoot at a deer and you'll miss; shoot at the sweet spot behind the shoulder, size of a man's hand, and you'll have no problem). As the string began to pull through his fingers, he raised his left arm a little for elevation and windage. At just the right moment, the arrow broke free, lifted as the air took the vanes of the fletchings, peaked and swooped like a hawk. He watched it into the target, heard the strike. A straightforward heart-and-lungs placement; he was still moving, but already dead. Valens pinched the nock of another arrow between thumb and forefinger and drew it from the quiver. And again.

Only three arrows left in the quiver now. A minute or so since he'd refilled it, frantically scrabbling arrows out of the open barrel while keeping his eye fixed on the next target. Good archers only count the misses; he'd missed four times today. The stupid, stupid thing was that he liked archery, it was one of the few things he actually enjoyed doing (and so, of course, never had time for). Every stage of it soothed and pleased him; the smooth softness of putting the doeskin glove on his right hand, the expression of strength in the draw, the instinctive precision of the aim, the complete concentration, the fine judgment of tremendous forces poised in a moment of stillness, the visceral joy of the loose, the beauty of the arrow's parabola, the solid pride of a well-placed hit. Using this precious, delightful skill to kill people was obscene. Using it to defend himself and his people from extinction was simply ridiculous, like dancing or flirting for your life.

And again. A Mezentine had managed to scramble up the side of one of the iron plates; he'd lost his momentum and was hanging from the top edge by his fingertips, his feet scrabbling wildly for an impossible foothold on the smooth, flat surface. Valens watched him for a moment; he was trying so hard, he'd done so well to get that far when all the others had failed; he wanted him to succeed, simply out of admiration for his courage and agility. The Mezentine got the sole of his foot flat on the plate and boosted himself up, an astonishing effort; he'd got his upper body up onto the edge and was using his weight to balance. He'd made it; so Valens shot him. He slithered back down the way he'd come and pitched in a slovenly heap of limbs on the ground. The cartwheel rolled over his head, crushing it into a mash.

As Valens nocked the next arrow, he spared a moment to glance into the barrel. Empty.

He hesitated. Vaatzes' wonderful strategy of moving fortresses was posited on the assumption that the arrows wouldn't run out. But they'd been shooting for two days and a night, and their splendid supply of ammunition was strewn out behind them like litter on the road; no chance to go back and pull arrows out of the dead. Two more shots and that was that.

Where the hell were all these Mezentines coming from? It was like rooks or pigeons over decoys, on a really good day, when they never stop coming in. He'd had days like that; they seemed to materialize in midair, as if they generated spontaneously somewhere in the distance. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Vaatzes had been thinking in terms of occasional running battles with maybe two or three squadrons at a time, not a whole division, or two divisions; hundreds, not thousands. He realized he was drawing and aiming at a Mezentine riding parallel to his wagon. Only two shots left; he made his arms relax.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the cart that had been there all morning had disappeared, at some point, when he wasn't watching. Another one; he'd tried to keep a count at first but he'd lost track. A dozen, maybe, that the enemy had managed to stop and overwhelm (a dozen that he could see from where he was). The losses hadn't registered with him any more than the kills had done. Quite simply, he was worn out, like the deer that stops because it can't run anymore.

Well: if they were out of arrows, two shots wouldn't make any difference one way or another. He nocked, found a target and loosed. At ten yards, you'd be hard put to it to miss. One left, and then the Mezentines could swarm all over the carts like flies on cowshit for all he could do about it. Relieved of duty on grounds of exhaustion.

He scanned for a target. A Mezentine captain, standing up in his stirrups and shouting orders; a sitter, too easy if this was pleasure rather than business. Since it was the last shot, he allowed himself a little indulgence, and shot him through his open mouth.

And that was that. He unstrung his bow before putting it down, since keeping a bow strung when not in use ruins it. He'd die and be discarded as perishable and useless, but the bow was a very good one, valuable. It'd bring the looters a good price and serve its next owner well, if properly looked after. Then, wearily (let's go through the motions and get it over with), he dragged his sword out of the scabbard. It was the hanger he'd been given by the grateful trader, in commemoration of that skirmish whose name he'd forgotten. If there was any poetic justice in the world, he'd bear it to victory through extraordinary feats of courage and slaughter. Unlikely.

He stood up, wavered a little until he found his balance, and looked around. He wasn't the only one who'd run out of arrows. The carts all around him were heaving with Mezentines, like maggots in spoiled meat. Without the arrows to keep them off, they were having no trouble blocking and stopping the wagons, pulling down the drivers and fighters. He turned his head, and realized with a spurt of cold terror that the cart had stopped and he was alone on it-a moment ago there'd been a driver and two other archers, but either they'd been killed or they'd jumped down and run away. He felt disappointed. Somehow he'd never imagined himself dying alone, among strangers.

There was a hand on the top edge of the iron plate; four fingers, like worms or grubs. The instinct that moved him to slash at them was disgust, something like a fear of spiders or slugs. He chopped the fingers off, and felt his blade jar on the iron plate. There goes the cutting edge, he thought; oh well. Next came a head and shoulders. He saw a pair of wide-open eyes staring at him in horror; he misjudged the swing a little and sliced off just the scalp, like taking the top off a boiled egg. Enough to make whoever it was lose his grip on the iron plate, at any rate. As good as a kill, in context. While he was doing that, another one had his upper body and one knee on the top of the plate. That one he hit in the face, cutting into the bridge of the nose, and the cheeks on either side. The next one was over and into the cart before he'd finished with the last one, but he just had time for a short jab before the Mezentine found his balance. Sloppy; the point went in through the hollow between collarbone and shoulder, and it was lucky he had the presence of mind to follow up with a kick in the groin, which doubled the Mezentine up and made him stagger, trip against the edge of the plate and fall backward off the cart. The next one hit him on the knee before he was even ready.

He wasn't aware of falling, or moving at all, but he was kneeling, and a Mezentine was standing over him, swinging a sword with both hands. He gave up, then noticed the opening and remembered he was still holding the hanger. His fencing instructor would have said it served the Mezentine right for taking too long over his stroke (you don't need to cut hard, just hard enough). The stab in the pit of the stomach was really just a prod, rushed and halfhearted, but it got the job done; a pass, but no medal.

Valens remembered that he'd been hit; then he remembered that it didn't matter, because he was wearing his leg armor. He stood up and looked down at his knee. The cop was creased but not cut through, not bent enough to jam the hinge. A Mezentine reared up in front of him but he killed him easily; so much so that, a moment later, he couldn't remember a thing about him, what it had taken to dispose of him or how he'd fallen.

He looked again. Another hand was tightening its grip on the edge of the plate. Then he thought: there's no point to this. Let them have the stupid cart; time to leave. He glanced over his shoulder, to where the other cart had been but was no longer. If there was nothing left to fight for, why fight?

The jump down was further than he'd remembered. He landed awkwardly, yelped stupidly as his ankle buckled under him; painful, but it still worked in spite of his clumsiness. The Mezentine on the cart was looking down at him, apparently unaware how lucky he was that he still had all his fingers. Valens grinned at him and ran.

Not very far; too cluttered. He could see no moving carts, just still ones crawling with the enemy. There were dead people everywhere he wanted to put his feet (so much mess; how would anybody ever get it all cleared up?). He stumbled and hopped, trying to get across the track and up the steep slope on the other side, where horses couldn't follow him. The enemy didn't seem to notice him; since he wasn't a cart, he wasn't important. No other Vadani running away; apparently they'd all held their ground and died where they stood. Well, good for them. A Mezentine on a cart tried to reach out and swipe at him, but his cut fell a good six inches short; an afterthought, not a serious attempt on his life. He ignored it and kept going, not stopping until he'd pawed and crawled halfway up the slope; at which point he suddenly discovered that he was too exhausted to go any further.

From where he was he had a splendid view, as from a grandstand; best seat in the house, fitting for a Duke. He could see maybe two dozen carts, stationary, some with horses still in the shafts, some empty, some garnished with bodies, two overturned. If there were any Vadani still alive down there he couldn't see them, and where had all those Mezentines got to, the unlimited supply of targets there'd been a moment or so ago? Four, five dozen, no more; they were standing up on the carts, or slowly, wearily climbing down, like farmhands getting off the haywains at the end of a very long day. They looked tired and wretched; he remembered that feeling, the miserable emptiness after another routine victory, another difficult hunt with nothing edible to show for it. Nobody was bothering to look up. They plodded as though every muscle and joint in their bodies ached. He almost felt sorry for them.

Fifty yards away, directly below him, an officer was shouting: fall in, regroup, form into columns. They obeyed sullenly, clearly wishing he'd shut up, or at least stop yelling at them when they were tired out. The officer started counting heads, then gave up. They were having trouble catching some of the horses; he knew that too-tired-to-play-games feeling, when you'd rather lose the horse than take another step.

It was a very strange feeling, to still be alive after the defeat. It wasn't a possibility he'd considered; naturally he'd assumed that if they lost, he'd be killed in the fighting. The thought of being left over at the end had never occurred to him. Now even the enemy were turning their backs on him; he wasn't valuable enough to them to be worth climbing a bit of a slope for.

Somehow, he figured that the esteem of the Perpetual Republic was something he could learn to live without. Other things-other people-might be harder to dispense with. Just suppose he was the only survivor (the only coward who ran away). The last Vadani duke. The last Vadani.

That wasn't a concept he was prepared to hold still for. He scrambled to his feet-one of the Mezentines saw or heard him, looked up, shouted, pointed, but his friends didn't seem interested-and scuttled along the side of the slope, using his hands as much as his feet, grabbing at tufts of heather and couch grass to stop himself from sliding and losing his balance. From the top of the slope, he'd have a better view.

Noise below him; thudding and voices, shouts. He paused, nearly lost his foothold, took a moment to steady himself before looking down. By then, the picture had changed. The road was flooded with horsemen; not Mezentines, because the few of them still on their feet were trying to scramble back onto the carts, out of the reach of the swords and lances. His old friend the Mezentine officer was yelling again, urgent, angry and terrified. His voice stopped dead in midsentence. From where Valens stood it was just a confused scuffle. He was a good hundred yards up; all he could see was horses, the tops of heads, too much movement to make sense of. No good at all. The shale under his foot gave way and he let himself slither on his back, until a chunk of rock against the sole of his boot stole his momentum. He jumped up, overbalanced, caught himself and looked down.

He'd missed it; all over, while he'd been fooling about in the dirt. No Mezentines to be seen; not live ones, anyway. Most of the Vadani had gone as well; he caught sight of a dozen or so disappearing over the lip of the slight rise that cut off his view. More shouting from that direction; the counterattack was still going on, but moving at a rate he couldn't catch up with. He struggled down the rest of the slope to the road. A cavalry trooper, dismounted, looked up sharply as he slid and crashed into view; stared at him for a moment as though he had two heads.

"What the hell's going on?" Valens shouted. "Yes, it's me," he added, as the trooper's mouth fell open. "What's happening?"

But the trooper didn't seem able to speak, even backed away a step or two, as if facing a ghost. For crying out loud, Valens thought. "Who's in command? I need to talk to him, now."

The trooper lifted his arm and pointed, back down the road, to where the noise was coming from. Another man stepped up beside him. He didn't seem able to speak, either. What was wrong with them?

"Fine," he snapped, "I'll go and look for myself."

There were horses standing nearby, but he'd seen the Mezentines try to catch them and fail; he really wasn't in the mood for recalcitrant animals. His knee was starting to ache where it had been clouted by the Mezentine, and the bottom edge of the greave was galling his instep. On the other hand, he thought, I could sit down on this rock and wait for whoever's in charge to come to me.

He wasn't kept waiting long. Over the lip came a column of riders; dusty, bloody but unmistakably Vadani. They rode with the same utter weariness as the victorious Mezentines had done, not so long ago. He recognized the officer riding at the front, though offhand he couldn't remember his name.

"What happened?" he asked again.

This time he got a reply. "I think we got them all," the officer said. "Near as makes no odds." He stopped his horse and flopped out of the saddle, landing heavily and wincing at the stiffness in his knees. "Strangest thing. Who'd have thought mercenaries would've held their ground like that?"

For a moment, Valens couldn't make any sense of what he'd just heard. "You mean we won?"

The officer's turn to look blank. "Well, yes," he said. "It took us a while and it got a bit grisly at the end, when we thought they were going to run for it but they didn't. But I don't think there was ever any doubt about it, not since that Eremian lunatic lost his rag and started laying into them."

"What Eremian?"

The officer shrugged. "I don't actually know his name." Someone next to him leaned down from the saddle and muttered something. "That's right," the officer said, "Jarnac Ducas. Great big bloke, never talks about anything except hunting." At that point it must have occurred to him that Valens had missed something important; he stood a little straighter and became a trifle more soldierly. "It was when the Mezentines stopped Duke Orsea's coach," he went on. "At least, they blocked it and cut the reins, but they didn't try and board it. But then this Ducas turns up-defending his duke, I guess, he seems that sort of man. Anyway, he went at it like you wouldn't believe. He'd got hold of one of those poleaxe things; not much finesse about it, but a lot of energy. I saw it myself; hell of a thing. He was pretty much cut to ribbons by the time they brought him down, and by then the tide had more or less turned. Colonel Brennianus rallied best part of a squadron of the household division, and we sort of snowballed from there. He didn't make it, unfortunately; neither did the Eremian. Otherwise, we came out of it pretty well. It was only here, in the middle, that things got out of hand."

Orsea: something he'd forgotten, which he was sure he'd never forget. "Duke Orsea's party," Valens said quickly. "Are they all right?"

"Thanks to that Ducas fellow, not a scratch. Well, the Duke himself got a tap on the head quite early on; got cut off trying to lead from the front, I imagine. Then Ducas went in after him, and that's when it got going."

The clot that had formed in Valens' throat eased a little, and he breathed in deeply. "What about General Mezentius? And the Cure Hardy?"

(He'd tried to say, and my wife, but for some reason he felt embarrassed about using the word, as though it was somehow an admission of weakness.)

The officer didn't answer. After two, maybe three seconds, Valens asked, "All of them?"

"I can't say for sure," the officer replied. "But I saw them stop and board the coach; and Mezentius was riding with them at the time. That was two days ago, and nobody's told me…"

"It's all right," Valens heard himself say, as a gate closed in his mind, shutting some things out and some things in. "You've done well." (Was that really him speaking? It seemed so improbable, somehow.) "For a while there, I thought we'd had it." I ran away, was what he wanted to say. "Just my luck to have missed the good bit." He took a deep breath. "We need to get moving again," he said. "What about horses for the carts?" And after that he was back to business, the kind of thing he was competent to deal with. Others joined him, clotting around him like blood in a wound. He could feel the Vadani beginning to heal about him. Soon he was giving orders, pulling out of his mind the important details that other people tended to overlook but which he always remembered. They were giving him back his place in the machine-the axle, spindle, driveshaft, from which the other components drew their power. He had no trouble performing the function, but he felt like an imposter-the man who turned and ran, masquerading as the Duke. If only he'd known, he kept telling himself; if he'd known the battle was going their way and his bit of it was an unimportant aberration, he would never have even considered running; he'd have held his place on the deserted cart, kept fighting, almost certainly been killed. Instead, while he was crouched down halfway up the hillside, an Eremian and a cavalry colonel whose name was only vaguely familiar to him had checked the enemy advance, driven them back, wiped them out and died in the process. Stupid guilt, irrational, pointless and far too strong to beat.

Apart from the fact that they were alive and had won a stunning victory, everything was about as bad as it could be. Horses: half of the wagon teams had been run off or killed, and the mounts of dead cavalrymen-plenty of those-weren't trained to drive, needless to say. More than a quarter of the carts themselves were damaged to the point where they couldn't move. This problem was, to some extent, mitigated by the number of dead civilians, who wouldn't be needing transport anymore. On that score, the best that could be said was that there were still plenty of them left; sobbing, shrieking, refusing to obey orders, demanding to speak to someone in authority, rushing about searching for lost relatives, fussing about the burial of their dead, needing to be fed and watered and listened to. Valens could probably have coped with them better if they'd been angry with him, or blamed him. Instead, they took to cheering him whenever he broke cover; women grabbed at him as he scurried past, blessing him for saving them. They were firmly convinced that he'd led the counterattack and wiped out the Mezentines. He overheard men swearing blind that they'd seen him at the front of the cavalry charge, in shining armor, sword in hand, swiping off heads like a boy with a stick topping nettles. He wanted to feel proud, honored, choked with emotion; instead, he found it irritating and desperately inconvenient. He gave them permission to bury their dead, mostly to give them something to do and keep them from getting under his feet. The column was stuck, after all. Food was running out (they should have reached the first of the supply dumps by now), there was plenty of water in the river down in the valley but a shortage of casks and barrels to carry and keep it in. Just when he needed him, Mezentius was thoughtlessly, selfishly dead, and the civilians had taken an instant dislike to Major Tullio, the officer who'd led the vital counterattack and done most of the work since. For some reason they blamed him for the deaths and losses, saying he'd hung back, waited too long, stood by while women and children were butchered. A whole long day of that sort of thing; and then the other column arrived.

If Valens had spared them a thought since the battle, it was only a vaguely guilty relief that they hadn't been there to be slaughtered with the rest. The first he knew about their return was when some young fool whose face he vaguely remembered from somewhere came charging up to him while he was busy with a map, and told him his name was Captain Nennius, and he needed seven tons of flour as a matter of urgency.

When Nennius had recovered sufficiently from Valens' reaction to explain himself coherently, they managed to sort out everything that needed to be done straightaway, and Nennius went away to let his people know they'd found the Duke, but there wasn't going to be any food. They rode in with their carts loaded down with dead people, which didn't really improve the situation. Valens did his best to make Nennius into a substitute hero, but since he hadn't actually fought anybody or mended any carts with his own hands, it didn't work terribly well. There weren't nearly enough picks, mattocks, buckets, spades and shovels for the burial details, the ground was rock hard, and soldiers kept drifting away to help with grave-digging when they should've been doing something useful. And as if that wasn't enough…

He knew Miel Ducas, vaguely; they were distant cousins, after all, and he'd met him during the peace negotiations to end the Eremian-Vadani war. Back then, as he remembered, the Ducas had been tall, handsome, bouncy and insufferable. Now he was just tall, and a nuisance Valens could have done without. He fended him off for a while with commiserations on the death of his cousin. That didn't work too well, since it was the first the Ducas had heard of it.

"Jarnac?"

"Yes. He died very bravely. In fact, if it hadn't been for him, I don't-"

"Jarnac's dead?"

"Yes."

The Ducas frowned, as if he'd just been told that his cousin had been elected king of the elves. Then he shook himself like a dog and said, "I need to talk to you about this man Daurenja."

Talk about changing the subject. "What about him? I haven't seen him for days, not since we left the city."

The Ducas explained, and when he'd finished, the headache that Valens had been warding off all day was suddenly there, fully formed and perfect as a hen's egg in a nest of straw. "He's with your lot now, then?" he said.

"Yes. Captain Nennius has placed him under informal arrest, whatever that means."

Precisely nothing. Valens suspected it was something the young officer had made up on the spur of the moment, to keep the Ducas quiet. Officer-level thinking; he was impressed. "I'm not quite sure what you want me to do," Valens said. "I'd have thought it's a matter for Duke Orsea rather than me."

"That's what Nennius said," the Ducas replied. "Though, properly speaking, under Eremian law the proper court of first instance would be the district assize for the place where the crimes were committed. Meaning me," he added mournfully. "Orsea would only be involved if Daurenja was convicted and lodged an appeal. But there's a problem with that, since I'm the chief witness. I'm the only outside party who heard the confession, you see."

As well as the headache, Valens had a sort of prickly feeling at the nape of his neck, something halfway between a tickle and an itch. Eremians, he thought.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to sort it out yourselves," he said, "and then there'd have to be extradition proceedings, if Daurenja decided he doesn't want to come quietly; I can't just hand him over to you neatly wrapped in straw and twine. More to the point, right now he's my chief engineer, until that bloody Mezentine turns up again. You say he was the one who fixed all those broken carts?"

"Yes, but he's a murderer. And a rapist, and I don't know what else. You can't just let him prowl around as though nothing's happened. You've got to do something about it."

There; that was all it took, to turn Valens the model duke into a tyrant who didn't give a damn about justice. "Come to think of it," Valens said quietly, "I seem to remember you're a bit of a fugitive from justice yourself. Weren't you under arrest for treason when Civitas Eremiae fell?"

Clearly the Ducas hadn't been expecting that. Long pause, then, "Strictly speaking, yes. But that was-"

"In which case," Valens said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to place you under informal arrest," wonderful phrase, that; he'd have to promote Nennius to full colonel for it, "until things have calmed down a bit and I've got the time and the energy to be bothered with the fine points of Eremian jurisprudence. Talking of which: if you're an indicted traitor, would that debar you from sitting in judgment on Daurenja? I don't know how you used to do things in Eremia, but I imagine a clever lawyer could have some fun with it. I guess we'd have to try you for treason first." He smiled savagely. "I know," he went on. "Why don't you go and talk it over with Orsea, right now? I'm sure he'd be delighted to see you after all this time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a war to fight."

He started to walk away; then the Ducas said: "Fine. You could join us. Maybe you'd care to explain to Orsea why you were writing letters to his wife."

No, I mustn't, Valens thought; and then, Well, why not? He turned round, using the pivoting motion to back up the punch. He caught the Ducas unprepared on the point of the chin; he staggered and sat down in the dirt, looking completely bewildered.

That should have been that, except that a couple of soldiers who'd seen their duke forced to defend himself against the Eremian (it had to have been self-defense, because Valens would never hit someone unprovoked) ran up looking concerned. "He's under arrest," Valens snapped. "Stick him in one of the empty carts until I can be bothered to deal with him, and make sure he doesn't get away. He's got a history of breaking arrest."

It was because of the Ducas that she came.

Orsea came first; that night, when he'd finished the day's work and finally managed to get rid of everybody. He'd closed the tent flaps, thrown a scoop of charcoal on the brazier and taken off his shirt; and suddenly, there was Orsea's stupid face at the opening, letting the cold air in.

"I need to talk to you," he said. "About Miel Ducas." Valens shivered. It was cold, and he was tired. "Who? Oh yes, I remember. I think I've done you a favor."

"I'm sorry?"

Valens sighed. "Come in, if you're coming." Orsea had to stoop to get in the tent; unfair, that someone so useless should be taller than him. "What I meant was, I've caught your traitor for you. He's yours. Do what you like with him."

Orsea looked at him. "I don't think it's quite as simple as that," he said. "Bearing in mind what it was he actually did."

"It was some business with a letter, wasn't it?"

It had been too easy; the temptation too great. Orsea gazed at him with the sullen resentment of the man who's been hit and knows he can't hit back. "Miel Ducas hasn't done you any harm," he said quietly. "You might as well let him go."

"Does that constitute an acquittal?" Valens replied. He had no idea what he was fighting with Orsea about, but the urge to fight him was irresistible; he was so weak, so easy to hurt. "If so, I'll release him into your custody. Would that suit you?"

Orsea, of course, said nothing.

"Fine," Valens snapped. "Or maybe I'll keep him. I gather he's a useful man. They say he made a pretty good job of defending Civitas Eremiae, before you had him jailed."

Orsea sighed wearily. "Look," he said, "I don't know what I've done to upset you. I know I haven't been much use to anybody since-well, since I came here. But there's no point taking it out on someone else. Obviously, what Miel did doesn't really matter anymore, except to me."

"I see. So you're dropping the charges?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"I can turn him loose, then. Not a stain on his character."

"Yes."

Valens nodded briskly. "I'll do that, then," he said. "Provided he lays off my engineer. For all I know, this Daurenja's a murderer and a rapist, and probably a cannibal and a demon-worshipper and all sorts of other interesting things, but he's also the sort of man who can fix busted carts; and I happen to be fighting a war. Nasty business needs nasty people. The pure in heart only fuck things up and get people killed." He smiled pleasantly. "I'm sure you know that better than anybody."

"Yes," Orsea said. "I'd sort of arrived at that conclusion for myself."

"Splendid. In that case, there's the deal. Your Ducas can go free provided he leaves me and my officers in peace. I'll give him a horse and a feed-sack full of money, and he can go off into the wide world to seek his fortune. Agreed?"

Orsea breathed out slowly; the man who'd rather get beaten up than fight, because victory would make things worse for him than defeat. "Knowing Miel, I don't think he'll agree to that."

"It's not up to him," Valens snapped. "In fact, what your friend the Ducas thinks about anything is probably the most unimportant thing in the world right now. Anyway," he added, trying to restrain his temper, "what the hell do you care about what Daurenja may have done?"

"Actually, quite a lot. You may have forgotten, but he saved my wife's life, when the Mezentines ambushed your hunting party."

Rather like being stabbed by a small child with a sharp knife. Suddenly Valens didn't know what to say.

"I know," Orsea went on. "Being under an obligation to someone like that; it throws everything out of true. It's a bit like owing your life to a man who's been trying to seduce your wife. It beats me, I must admit. What would you do, in a situation like that?"

If you were half a man, Valens thought; if you were only very slightly less pathetic, I'd take her away from you tomorrow, even if it meant hiring murderers to cut your throat in the dark. I know: what about Daurenja? He would seem to have a knack for that sort of thing. Instead, he said: "That's an interesting one. I think what I'd do, if I was in your shoes, would be to get out of this tent while you're still capable of walking. Do you think you could manage that, or shall I get someone to help you?"

Orsea smiled blandly at him, and he thought: sore losers are bad enough, but a sore winner's insufferable. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive him for that; for being completely at my mercy, and in the right. "So what about Miel Ducas?" Orsea said. "Are you going to let him go?"

"Only on the conditions stated," Valens replied. "Otherwise he can stay where he is until the Mezentines come and slaughter the lot of us."

"I see." Orsea turned to leave. "Thank you so much for your time."

"My pleasure. Please give my regards to your wife."

Which was, he reflected later, as he lay in the dark staring up, a bit like killing yourself to frame your enemy for murdering you; a sort of bleak satisfaction; looked at objectively, though, not terribly clever.

The right thing to do. He could see it clearly in his mind; it was practically blinding him as it glowed in the dark. Arrest Daurenja, let Ducas go, apologize to Orsea, never see or write to her again. The virtues and immediate reward of always doing the right thing, as exemplified by Orsea Orseoli, Duke of the Eremians, that nearly extinct nation.

(My father would have Daurenja in here like a rat up a conduit; he'd give him his own knife for the job, probably sharpen it himself, so as to be sure it was done properly. My father would have lost this war by now; except that he'd never have let himself get involved in it.)

He yawned. He felt tired, but in no way able to sleep. Let's just be grateful we've got the Mezentines, he thought. If I can play for time just a little bit longer, they'll exterminate us all and I won't have to do anything, right or wrong.

He turned over onto his side, and it occurred to him to remember that his wife was dead; killed by the Mezentines, because he'd been too stubborn and too proud to take her advice (which would have resulted in the deaths of about a fifth of his people; slightly more than the Mezentines had killed in the battle, but there was still plenty of time and scope to make up the difference). He knew he should be appalled by how little he cared about that. He thought: she couldn't possibly love me now, love what I've become because of all this. I've lost her as conclusively as though she'd been the one killed out there on the road, instead of that poor, overeducated savage woman, who only wanted what was best for all of us.

(Wonderful epitaph for a wasted life, but a little bit too long to fit on a tombstone.)

Well: her death had made one significant difference. With her dead, the alliance with the Cure Hardy was certainly gone for good; with it, the chance of escaping across the desert. No allies, no place to go; like Orsea, she'd been unbearable, hard done by and right. And, like Orsea, he'd destroyed his people. The realization hit him like an arrow; not just routine early-hours-of-the-morning depression, but a straight, clear look at the truth. They were finished. The clever idea hadn't worked, and they were screwed. And his biggest mistake: turning back on the hillside, instead of carrying on running away. It had been an easy mistake to make: looking at heaps of the slaughtered enemy, his own forces in possession of the field, and mistaking it for victory.

He flipped over onto his back and stretched out his arms. His father used to have a saying-something he'd heard somewhere, it was too clever for him to have made it up himself: giving up is a privilege only granted to the weak. Sometimes he assumed it was just garbage, like most of the old fool's pet maxims. At other times, like this one, it was the only truth that mattered. Ah, but he had so many things to give up on, spoiled for choice, wallowing in opportunities. I could give up on myself, he thought; then he realized, I've already done that. But I won't give up on the Vadani, and I won't give up on her. (Another thing the old man had said: screw doing your very best; succeed…)

He was still awake when the first spikes of light poked through the seams of the tent flap. He yawned, stretched and covered his face with both hands, running the tips of his fingers down the length of his nose. Another long day to look forward to.

"Are you awake?"

He started, lost his balance and slid off the bed onto his knee. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, "I didn't mean to-"

"That's all right," he mumbled, "that's fine. What are you doing here?"

He scrambled into a sitting position, his back to the bed, and looked up at her. She was wrapped in an old blanket, so all he could see was her head and her feet. "I wanted to talk to you," she said. "If it's not a good time…"

"No, it's fine." Without turning his back on her, he slithered up against the bed until he was sitting on it. "There's a chair behind you. Sit down."

She already had. "I hope it's all right," she said. "Only…"

"Orsea sent you."

He didn't know why he'd said it, because obviously he'd done no such thing. "No, of course not," she said. "But he came back to our tent last night looking like death on legs. He wouldn't tell me where he'd been until I lost my temper with him." She was looking straight at him. "What did you say to him? He's practically suicidal."

Valens sighed. "I was as unpleasant to him as I could possibly be. False modesty aside, when it comes to being thoroughly obnoxious, I'm pretty much the state of the art. Oh, and I hit him. No, I tell a lie. It was the other one I hit, that Ducas fellow. They're pretty much interchangeable, anyhow."

"That's not true." Her voice was very calm. "Orsea said it was Miel you fell out over."

Valens laughed. "You could say that," he replied. "But it was just an excuse, as far as I was concerned. You don't need me to tell you why your husband and I don't get on well."

She nodded precisely; a small, sharp movement. "It was Miel I wanted to talk to you about."

"Really?" He shrugged. "Fire away."

"I want you to let him go."

"Fine. He can go."

"Without that ridiculous condition you wanted Orsea to agree to."

"Sure." He made a vague gesture of submission. "He's free to go and do whatever he likes. Hold on a moment and I'll put it in writing." He leaned across and drew the writing desk toward himself. "You can take it with you if you like."

"You're giving in, then? You've changed your mind?"

"Yes. What does it look like?"

"Why?"

He gave her a what-a-stupid-question smile. "Because you asked me to, of course."

She frowned. "Would you do anything I asked you to?"

"Yes." He said it without thinking. "Yes," he repeated firmly, "I'm pretty sure I would."

"If I asked you to leave me alone and never talk or write to me again?"

"Definitely." He looked at her. "Are you? Asking me that, I mean."

"No."

"Good." He looked past her. "So why are you so concerned about the Ducas' welfare?"

She shrugged. "I've known him for a long time; all my life, really. If my father hadn't died so suddenly, I'd almost certainly have married Miel Ducas instead of Orsea."

"I see. Would you have liked that?"

She nodded. "It'd have been very comfortable," she said. "A bit like leaving home and moving into the house next door. I don't love him, of course."

"No," Valens said, "I don't suppose you do. So, if not him…"

"Orsea." She looked down at her feet. "You know that."

"Yes. Just Orsea?"

"No. But enough."

"How much is enough?"

"As much as it takes."

Valens nodded. "All right," he said. "Though I must confess, it beats me how anybody could love someone like him; not excluding his mother, his old nurse and his dog. He's an idiot."

"No." There wasn't any anger in her voice. "He isn't, actually."

"Oh really." Valens jumped up. "Here's a man who wakes up one morning. What'm I going to do today? he says. Here's an idea: why not invade the Perpetual Republic for no perceptible reason and start a war that fucks up the entire world?" He waved his hands, an exaggerated gesture. "If you say he's not an idiot, he's not one. Now all we've got to do is call in all the dictionaries in the world and change the definition of idiot to mean somebody with a fucking clue."

Now she was standing up as well. Her front foot was pointed toward the tent doorway, implying that she was about to leave. "Does that mean you've changed your mind about Miel Ducas?"

"No, of course not," he snapped. "And sit down, for crying out loud. I'm sorry," he added quietly. "All that was just showing off."

"I know." She sat down. "And you know you're wrong about Orsea. He's not stupid, just weak; and unbelievably unlucky. Though I've always tended to assume the two go together somehow."

Valens leaned forward, cupped his chin in his hands. "I think he makes his own bad luck."

"No." She was correcting him, like a teacher. "Not all the time. Besides, all his mistakes and his errors of judgment stem from one piece of really bad luck that simply wasn't his fault."

"Really? What was that?"

She smiled weakly. "Marrying me." She shifted her head slightly, asking him not to interrupt. "If he hadn't married me, he wouldn't have become the duke. It's only because of me that he's been in a position to make the mistakes. If he'd married anybody else in the world, he'd have gone through life perfectly happy as a minor nobleman, getting things more or less right, and there'd never have been a war or anything. Besides," she added, "I should never have married him; only I didn't know him well enough at the time to realize what a mistake I was making."

Valens frowned. "I thought you said-"

"I love him? Yes, I do. Practically at first sight. But he's never really loved me; or at least, he loves me because I'm there, if you see what I mean. Because I'm his wife, and he knows that loving your wife is the right thing to do." She grinned. "What I mean is, if he was married to someone else, he wouldn't leave her and run off with me. He wouldn't-what's the quotation? You're the one who knows these things. He wouldn't count the world well lost for my sake."

Valens looked at her. "Actually," he said, "I don't know quotations. I have to look them up."

"Oh. I assumed…" She shrugged. "Anyway, you see what I mean. If it was a choice between me and doing the right thing, I wouldn't stand a chance."

"I see." He frowned. "And that's your definition of true love?"

"I suppose so. Like, for example…" She was looking over his shoulder. "Like doing something really bad and terrible, because you realize you simply don't have a choice: leaving your husband, for instance. Or starting a war. Sorry," she added. "Did I just make a joke or something?"

Valens shook his head. "I was just reminded of something I read recently. Actually it was that bloody stupid deposition the Ducas made me look at; you heard about that? It's something that Daurenja's supposed to have said, in his confession. He said: love has always been my undoing."

She looked at him. "He's supposed to be a murderer, isn't he?"

"I'm sure he is," Valens replied. "And a very useful engineer. I'm just picturing him standing up in court and saying: I did something really bad and terrible, but I realized I simply didn't have a choice. So: fine, I say, case dismissed. Is that how it should be?"

"I don't know," she replied. "I've never done anything like that."

He breathed out slowly. "Really?" he said. "What about writing to me? Wasn't that bad enough, considering how it ended?"

"No." Her eyes were cold and bright. "I can't be blamed because somebody turned me into a weapon." She studied him for a moment, then said: "You can't blame me for the war."

Valens winced, as though she'd hit him. "Well, no," he said. "Personally, I tend to think the Mezentines-"

"You know what I mean."

"So I should just have sat quietly at home and let them kill you?" He shook his head, as though conceding that he was deliberately dodging the point. "That's what Orsea would have done, of course."

"Yes," she said. "Because Orsea would never be in love with someone else's wife."

He shook his head again. "Come on," he said, "you can do better than that. What did you say just now? The world well lost for love? Actually," he added, "I do know that one. Pasier, the fifth Eclogue. But only because they made me read it when I was a kid."

"You don't like Pasier?"

"Too soppy. His heroines sit around waiting to be rescued, you can practically see them tapping their feet impatiently, wondering where the hero's got to. And then the hero dies tragically, and they're all upset and miserable. Anybody with half a brain could've seen it'd all end in tears; and all the heroine need have done was pack a few things in a bag, wait till dark and slip out through the back door, instead of making some poor fool of a hero come and fetch her. Besides, how could a hero give a damn about somebody so completely insipid?"

She looked at him. "You don't like Pasier."

"No. I think his heroines are bitches and his heroes deserve everything they get. Which explains," he added, "why I don't go in much for self-pity, either. I have no sympathy for stupid people."

What was she thinking? The writer of the letters whose words he knew by heart had told him everything about herself. He had explored her mind like a scholar, like a pilgrim. The girl he'd spoken to once when he was seventeen was so well known to him that he could have told you without having to think what she would be likely to do or say in any possible circumstance. The woman sitting in front of him was different. He hardly knew her.

"You're wrong," she said. "It's from the seventh Eclogue, and the line is the world well lost for her sake. Your version couldn't possibly be right, it wouldn't scan. Whatever you think about Pasier's heroes and heroines, his scansion's always impeccable."

He scowled. "Agreed. He obeys all the rules. I think that's why he's a bit dull for my liking. He always does the right thing; makes him sort of predictable. Same with his characters; they always do the right thing. It means you can always figure out well in advance what's going to happen in the end. They always die horribly, but with their honor intact, leaving the world a better place. Which is pretty much true to life, if you think about it. I mean, the world can't help but be a better place if there's one less dick-headed idealist cluttering it up."

She took a deep breath. "I know I haven't said this before," she said, "but what you did-saving Orsea and me when the city fell-it was the most wonderful-"

"Mistake," he interrupted. "Stupidest thing I ever did. It was a Pasier moment; exactly the sort of thing one of his boneheads in shining armor would've done. Probably, subconsciously, that's what I was thinking of when I made the decision. Self-image, I think that's the expression I'm looking for. I got this mental picture of myself as a romance hero, and it appealed to me. The world well lost for love. No, I should've stayed at home and read a good book."

"But you didn't."

"No. I didn't have that option. And if I could've foreseen what was going to happen… If I'd had a vision of this moment, so I could've seen exactly what a complete and utter fuck-up I was going to make, with dead civilians heaped up like cords for the winter log-pile and basically no chance at all of getting out of this in one piece, I'd still have done it. I'd do it again tomorrow." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Would you care to hazard a guess why? And you sit there, cold as last night's roast mutton, and tell me you love Orsea, final, nonnegotiable."

"I do."

"Well, fine." Valens jumped up and turned his back on her. "That's your privilege. I take it you're like me, don't suffer fools gladly. And since we're both agreed that I'm the biggest idiot still living, I quite understand your choice. Orsea may be a clown and a source of trouble and sorrow for everybody in the known world, but he's a harmless genius compared to me. You haven't got a spare copy of Pasier with you, by any chance? I feel in the mood for reading him again, but I left my copy back in the city, along with everything else I used to own."

"I'm sorry." He couldn't see the expression on her face, and her tone of voice was flat, almost dead. "You were the only real friend I ever had. I used to live for your letters. I think you're the only person I've ever known who's tried to understand me."

"But you love Orsea."

"Yes."

"There you are, then. Tell you what, why not get him to write to you? Dear Veatriz: how are you? The weather has been nice again today, though tomorrow it might rain. He could probably manage that, if he stuck at it for a while."

"I really am very sorry," she said, and, for the first time since his father died, Valens allowed himself to admit defeat; to recognize it, as if it was some foreign government whose existence he could no longer credibly ignore. "It's all right," he said. "Funny, really. I used to think you brought out the best in me, and now it turns out you have the opposite effect. Shows how much I really know you. After all, it's different in letters: you can be who you wish you were, instead of who you actually are."

"That's not true," she said. "I know who you really are. It's-well, it's a waste, really."

"Did you know my wife's dead?" he asked suddenly, almost spitting the information out. "The Mezentines killed her. I really wish I could feel heartbroken about it, or sorry, or even angry. Instead-you know how I feel? Like when I was a kid, and my father had arranged a big hunt, and then it pissed down with rain and we couldn't go out. But when he died, I felt so bad about that. He loved it so much, and I hated it. I started going out with the hounds again to punish myself, I guess. Now, when I go out, it's the only time I feel at peace with myself. Even reading your letters never made me feel that way. You know what I used to do? As soon as I got a letter from you, I'd cancel all my appointments, I'd read it over and over again-taking notes, for crying out loud-and then I'd spend a whole day, two or three sometimes, writing the reply. You can't begin to imagine how hard I worked, how I concentrated; there'd be books heaped up everywhere so I could chase up obscure facts and apposite quotations. First I'd write a general outline, in note form, with headings; then a separate sheet of paper for each heading, little diagrams to help me figure out the structure. Then I'd copy out a first draft, leaving plenty of space between the lines so I could write bits in over the top; then a second and third draft, often a fourth. If I'd have worked a tenth as hard on politics, I'd have conquered the Mezentines by now and be getting ready to invade the Cure Hardy." He laughed. "Bet you thought I just scribbled down the first thing that came into my head. I wrote them so that's what you'd think-like we were talking, and everything came spontaneously from my vast erudition and sparkling, quicksilver mind. I spent a whole day on one sentence once. I couldn't decide whether it'd sound more natural and impromptu if the relative clause came at the beginning or the end. Actually, it was a bloody masterpiece of precision engineering, though I do say so myself. And the irony is, you never realized. If you'd realized, it'd have meant I'd failed."

He stopped talking and turned round sharply; he'd heard the tent flap rustle. A sergeant was hovering in the doorway, looking worried and trying to apologize for interrupting.

"It's all right," she said, "I was just going."

He couldn't bear to see her go, so he looked down at the ground until he saw her shadow pass out into the light and break up. Then he turned on the sergeant like a boar rounding on the pack.

"What the fuck do you want?" he said.

The sergeant looked terrified. "It's Vaatzes, sir," he said. "That Mezentine. He's come back."