Memory

Chapter Eleven

Charcoal, Monach thought: it's all these people think about. Show them a tree or a lump of wood, and they burn it to black, crumbly cinders. Even if it happens to be part of a house.

There was, of course, an alternative explanation. The question was, who could have been bothered to do this to a place like Falcata?

'Normally,' said the man he was talking to, a former sword-monk by the name of Mezentius, nominally a captain of infantry, 'the obvious answer would be us. But we didn't do it. Or did I sleep late that day?'

Monach shook his head. 'Not us,' he replied. 'Besides, there's not enough of us, it'd take a proper army to do this.'

Mezentius nodded. 'Won't stop them blaming us,' he replied. 'So, it's either the Amathy house or-' He frowned. 'That's not a nice thought,' he said. 'The raiders aren't supposed to have reached this far south, surely. They'd have to come across the bay to get here, for one thing.'

'Maybe they did,' Monach said.

'What, right past Torcea?'

'Maybe Torcea isn't there any more.'

Whoever had destroyed Falcata, they'd been thorough. Though the cracked stone was still hot, there were hardly any traces to show that anybody had ever lived there, or that the horrible mess that currently occupied the site had ever been habitable: no dead bodies, hardly anything in the way of human artefacts. The heat from the fire had been hot enough to melt the nails out of the walls. Mezentius reckoned that they must've herded the townspeople inside the walls and barred the gates before setting light to some very scientifically laid fires; it had burned out like a furnace, he said, total combustion, like they'd learned about in sixth-grade metallurgy.

'Which suggests it was the raiders,' Mezentius went on. 'Don't know if you saw Josequin after they'd finished with it, but it looked pretty much like this. And from what I've heard, it's by way of being their trademark. Apparently, it's what they do back home, where they come from; when they have wars or feuds or whatever, they barricade their enemies in their own houses and burn them to death. Probably,' he added, 'a religious thing.'

Monach made an effort and swept his mind clear. 'The problem is,' he said, 'we were planning on picking up supplies in Falcata. In case you hadn't noticed, we're practically out of food.'

After a short but passionate debate, they decided to head east, back the way they'd just come. If the raiders were really on the loose, there was no telling which direction they'd be headed in or where they were planning to strike next; but there was nothing out east large enough to interest them, only Dui and Tin Chirra, the charcoal burners' camps and the foundry. True, they'd run into Amathy house troops out that way, but the outfit they'd encountered were pussycats compared with the kind of people who could do this to a walled city ('Unless it was the Amathy house who did this, and not the raiders after all,' someone said. 'People reckon it was them who did Josequin.')

More to the point, there was a small but well-supplied outpost at Dui Chirra: too small to interest a city-devouring army, but big enough to have enough food to feed them. Ironic, Monach couldn't help thinking. When he'd wanted to go to Dui Chirra, they'd decided it was too dangerous, too well defended. Now he'd come to terms with not going there, that was where they were headed, the only alternative being starvation. Was there a precept of religion that said you only got what you wanted when you didn't want it any more? If not, there damn well ought to have been.

That night, when they were pitching camp, the pickets came in with a bewildered-looking old man who was, they reckoned, the last surviving resident of Falcata.

'Who was it?' Monach demanded, as they pushed the poor fool down into a chair. 'Who did it? Was it the raiders?'

The old man glared at him. 'Don't know what you're talking about,' he replied, for all the world as if Monach was accusing him of having razed the city single-handed.

'Falcata,' Monach said. 'The city. Who destroyed it?'

The old man looked at him as if he was mad. 'Destroyed?' he repeated.

Oh, Monach thought. 'Falcata-it's been burnt down.'

'Bloody hell.' The old man's face looked as though it had suddenly melted. 'What about-?'

'All dead.'

So; fat lot of use he was, and Monach hadn't the heart to have him thrown out, not after that. Some time later, the old man asked Monach who he was.

'Me?' Good question. 'Well, I'm sort of in charge.' He hadn't put that terribly well, but his mind was on other things.

'You mean you're the general?'

'I guess you could say that.'

'Oh. What's it for, then, your army? Who are you?'

Another good bloody question. 'It's a crusade,' Monach said. 'For religion. To save the Empire.'

'Oh. So what're you doing in these parts, then?'

Haven't been on the sharp end of so many good questions since fourth-grade finals. 'We felt this was where we needed to be,' Monach said awkwardly.

'What, to save the city?'

'Well, no.'

'Because you made a piss-poor job of it.'

Eventually they gave him some money and sent him away. Of course, there was nowhere he could spend it, and nothing he could buy with it. But it was the least they could do, in the circumstances.

The next day, everybody was on edge, as if they expected the Amathy house, and the regulars, and the raiders, by the hundreds of thousands, to jump out at them from behind every tree stump and drystone wall. As a result they made good time, in spite of the pitiful state of the road; nobody wanted to dawdle or stay in one place long enough to tie up a bootlace. Hardly the right attitude for an army of avenging angels: a loud noise or a sudden ambush by three field mice would have them all drawing and carving each other to pieces. But what could anybody expect from a thousand scared peasants led by a hundred over-trained academics? It'd be different, Monach couldn't help thinking, if only Xipho was here; because, when all was said and done, Xipho had always been the only one who really seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing, or why it was so important that they should do it. And where the hell was she, assuming she was still alive? (But if she'd been captured-by the government, the Amathy house, the raiders, someone else-they'd had the forethought to take the kid as well; Ciartan's son, of course, which put a further bewilderingly unfathomable perspective on it all. The day she'd gone missing, at least he'd had some idea what to do-find her, rescue her; or was he supposed to follow on and meet up at some prearranged rendezvous she'd told him about, on some occasion when he hadn't been listening properly? And Cordo-Cordo was still alive, in spite of the fact that he'd died, stabbed to death by Ciartan and left to burn in the Old Library.)

When the attack eventually came, of course, they'd got over their jitters and weren't ready for it. They hadn't even realised how close they were to Dui Chirra, not until their counter-attack smashed a hole in the enemy front line and they burst out the other side, scampered up a slope in order to regroup, and found that they were looking straight down at the front gate. It proved to be a stroke of luck; whoever was commanding the enemy (they had no idea, of course, who they were fighting) was under the impression that the counter-attack was a concerted effort to get to the foundry compound at all costs. In consequence, their unknown opponent drew back on the wings, where Monach's people were on the point of running away, and made a dash for the gates; mistimed it, found himself caught between the counter-attack coming down the hill and the re-formed and newly motivated wings in hot pursuit of an enemy who'd suddenly and without provocation posted their unilateral declaration of defeat… After that, it was just a mess, which only ended when the enemy second in command opened the gates in order to lead a sortie just as his superior had managed to force Monach and the advance party back over the brow of the hill. As soon as he saw Monach's flank men brushing the sortie aside and streaming in through the gate, he must've lost it altogether; he ordered a ramshackle, last-hope charge which allowed the back end of Monach's little army to smash into his flank and rear. If fifty of his men managed to escape with him down the Falcata road, that was all.

'What happened?' someone asked, as Monach slumped against the inside of the gate and pulled off his helmet.

'I don't know,' Monach replied. 'We won, but buggered if I know how. Who were those people, anyway?'

'Government,' someone else replied. 'Too well kitted out for Amathy house, and if they'd been raiders we'd all be dead by now. My guess is, they were the garrison here.'

Brigadier Muno, then. Fine, Monach thought, it's always nice to know who you've been fighting. But wasn't Muno supposed to be some sort of tactical genius? Or was that his nephew, the one who'd died? 'Anybody know how we made out?'

'Not so bad,' someone told him. 'It looked worse than it was on the wings-our lads didn't get close enough to 'em to come to much harm. We may've lost a couple of dozen killed, same again injured, but it's no worse than that. For what it's worth,' the speaker added, 'we must've got a couple of hundred of them, maybe more.'

Big deal. 'Well,' Monach said, 'anyhow, we won. Let's just hope there's some food left. That's what we came for, after all.'

Men were starting to peep out at them from doorways and windows. It was years since Monach had been in a foundry, and that hadn't been anything like as big as this one. He looked round, suddenly wondering if the garrison's antics hadn't all been a ruse to lure him into the compound, where he'd be surrounded by five thousand heavily armed foundrymen. There did seem to be an awful lot of them 'Look up,' someone whispered at him. 'Someone's coming. Probably the foreman, manager, whatever he's called.'

Monach stopped slouching, stood up straight and tried to look like a ruthless conqueror. At least the man approaching looked to be marginally more scared than he was. 'Right,' he called out, when the man was a dozen or so yards away, 'who're you?'

'My name is Galand Dev,' the man replied. He was short, bald, looked like a giant who'd been squashed down to fit inside a dwarf. 'I'm the Imperial representative here. Who are you?'

It was a question Monach was rapidly coming to dread. 'My name doesn't matter,' he replied. 'I speak for the brothers of the Avenging Angels of Light.' He hoped that Mezentius and the others couldn't hear him; they'd have trouble keeping straight faces. 'We claim this post in the name of religion. Bring us all your food, now.'

'Food?' the man called Galand Dev repeated, as though he'd never heard the word before. 'You want food?'

'You heard me.' Monach was painfully aware of having said the wrong thing. 'I'm requisitioning your supplies on behalf of the Brotherhood.'

But Galand Dev was looking sideways at him. 'Fine,' he said. 'Is there anything else you want?'

It was obviously a trick question. Why, what else've you got? was almost certainly the wrong answer. But this was just a foundry; and what possible use could eleven hundred saints militant have for a heap of charcoal and a couple of large bells?

Then he remembered. Not bells. How could he have forgotten, for the gods' sakes?

'The food first,' he said, with the sweet calm that comes when you've suddenly remembered what you're supposed to be doing. 'Then the volcano tubes-Poldarn's Flutes, isn't that what you're calling them?'

Galand Dev nodded grimly. 'My orders are to defend them to the death,' he said, without much conviction.

Monach nodded. 'Then it was nice knowing you, if only for a short time. Who should I see about getting them loaded up, after you're dead?'

Galand Dev sighed. 'That's all right,' he said. 'I'll see to it. But don't imagine for one moment that you've won. By this time tomorrow, the whole Falcata garrison's going to be banging on the gates.'

Monach shook his head. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'Now, are you going to bring the food or do we have to come and fetch it?'

Poldarn's Flutes, he thought, as Galand Dev walked slowly away, flanked by Tacien and Runting (just to make sure); on balance, I think I'd rather have had bells. Nice irony: according to Xipho, though the gods only know how she knew, it's the most important top-secret project in the Empire; I've got them, and I don't actually want them. On the other hand, there's always trade.

If only I knew what it is we do want.

If only Xipho was here.

Gradually the foundrymen came out, wary as cats in long grass, uncertain whether they'd been captured, conquered, liberated or simply transferred to new owners along with the plant, goodwill and stock-in-hand. Monach didn't have a clue what to tell them. He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he wasn't really suited to leadership.

(If Xipho was here, she'd recruit them; if Elaos was still alive, he'd explain it all so that they understood exactly why the battle and occupation had been necessary; if Cordo was here, he'd terrify them into unquestioning obedience; Gain, on the other hand, would probably sell them something. And Ciartan? He'd either kill every one of them, or find a secret hole in the perimeter fence and sneak out-)

Instead, they'd got him, the Earwig, the born follower. He climbed up on a mounting block next to the door of one of the big sheds and cleared his throat. They looked up at him, like the assembled novices at Commemoration of Benefactors. He could feel his stomach tightening into a small, hard knot.

'First,' he said, 'there's no need for you to worry. Just do as you're told, and everything'll be fine.'

Judging by the expressions on their faces, they weren't impressed. He cleared his throat again, and tried once more. 'This facility is now under the control of the Avenging Angels of Light. If any one of you has a problem with that, keep it to yourself. This is a nice, straightforward military occupation. All you've got to do is carry on with your work and keep out from under our feet. In case anybody's expecting the army to come back and throw us out, that won't be happening in a hurry. Last I saw of them, they were making very good time down the Falcata road-and don't kid yourselves that the Falcata garrison'll be along in a day or so, because they won't, you've got my word on that.'

They were looking at him as though he was drunk or raving mad, but he ignored that. 'You can have one hour to get used to the idea that you're working for us now, and then I want to see you all back at your posts, doing whatever it is you do. Talking of which, who's the foreman around here?'

A man in the front row slowly raised his hand. He didn't look like a foreman; in fact, it was hard to say what he did look like. Somewhere, Monach decided, between a very scrawny sword-monk and a half-dead crane-fly. 'Name,' Monach called out.

'I'm called Spenno,' the crane-fly answered, 'I'm in charge of the project-well, me and Galand Dev.'

'Fine,' Monach said. 'You stay. The rest of you, go away.'

In spite of his bizarre appearance, Spenno immediately endeared himself to Monach by not asking who the Avenging Angels of Light were, or what they thought they were avenging, or what they were doing there. Instead, he offered him a tour of the foundry. 'It's a complicated place, this,' he explained, 'and there's a lot of places where it's a bad idea to be at certain times. Like, you don't want to be downwind of the furnace when there's a fire in. The furnace,' he added, pointing at one of the sheds, 'is over here. You know anything about foundry work?'

'A bit,' Monach replied. 'We studied it at-when I was at school, but only really in passing.'

Spenno looked at him and blinked a couple of times. 'Deymeson,' he said. 'Sword-monk. Yes?'

Monach nodded. 'How'd you guess?'

Spenno had an unexpectedly warm smile. 'Takes one to know one. Been thirty years since I graduated, but you buggers always look the same. Spenno Perfirius, but my name-in-religion was Foy… Course, there won't be any more sword-monks now Deymeson's gone. And that's no great loss,' he added. 'Don't suppose there's all that many who'll be sorry to see the back of them. It was a good life, though, apart from all that getting woken up in the small hours to go practising pulling a sword out of its sheath and then putting it back again. Reckon I'd be there yet, only they didn't want me and my dad was having trouble finding the fees. Good at sciences and Expediencies, they said, but there's more religion in an old rusty nail than in the whole of my body. Weren't far off, at that. Never could see the point of religion, to tell you the truth.'

Nor me, Monach thought; but I always supposed that was because there was something wrong with me. 'A lot of us are from Deymeson,' he said. 'Maybe even one or two of the old-timers are from your year-you might find there's someone you know.'

'Unlikely,' Spenno replied. 'I didn't make friends back then. Seemed daft, when you were all going to be fighting each other come the end of the year. No, it's the other way about that's more likely. I mean, you might run into an old classmate or two while you're here. There's two more besides me working right here in the foundry.'

Monach looked up sharply. 'Is that right?' he said.

But Spenno was frowning. 'I say that,' he replied. 'But neither of them's here right now, come to think of it. One of them was took away by the soldiers, and the other one slung his hook. Course, neither of 'em said who he was. But it's like I said, you can spot one of us a mile off in a snowstorm. You can see their circles.'

'You don't happen to know their names?' Monach asked, trying to sound casual. 'Their real names, I mean.'

For some reason, Spenno found that amusing. 'I recognised one of them, for sure; I knew him straight off, soon as I set eyes on him, that's why I hired the bugger. And they said I couldn't do religion,' he added, grinning. 'But I knew him, just like I'd known him all my life. Scared the shit out of me to start with, but then I thought, why not? Where the hell else would you expect him to be, but working in a foundry? And then of course the government man rolls up and tells us we're going to be making Poldarn's Flutes. Laugh? I nearly wet myself.'

It was like that moment when the egg cracks from the inside, as the egg-tooth breaks through the shell. 'Ciartan,' Monach said. 'One of them's called Ciartan, right?'

Spenno shrugged. 'No idea,' he said. 'I said I knew who he was, not his name. Names don't matter worth spit, you can put them on and pull them off like hats. Like the other one,' he added. 'He didn't say his right name either. But he knew his stuff, and I could tell he used to be a monk, so I gave him a job. Why not? After all, it's not like we're all still trying to cut each other's heads off once a year. And any bloody fool can learn how to dig clay.'

'Ciartan was here,' Monach said, mostly to himself. 'But now he's gone. Do you know where he went to? When did he leave?'

Spenno shook his head slowly. 'Deserted,' he replied. 'So chances are he'll have headed straight for Falcata; it's the one place round here you've got to go to before you can go anywhere else. And besides, he'll have had his reasons for going to Falcata, same as why he went to Josequin.'

Falcata, burned to the ground, just as Josequin was. When the god in the cart had visited Cric, he'd said, I have business in Josequin, and a few days later it had been wiped off the face of the earth by the raiders. But how could Spenno have heard about what had happened to Falcata? Or wasn't that what he'd meant?

'You haven't seen a woman from our lot?' he asked. 'About my age, tall and bony, calling herself Copis or Xipho Dorunoxy?'

'Can't say I have,' Spenno answered slowly. 'And any woman'd stick out here like a bare bum at a prayer meeting. But I know who she is-she's that woman going round with the Mad Monk.' He looked at Monach and grinned broadly. 'That'll be you, I take it. I must be getting old, or I've been breathing in too many fumes. So that's what you're here for. When I heard there was a bunch of our lot roaming around like a load of hooligans I couldn't figure out what on earth they could be after. Should've been able to figure that one out. But you're too early,' he went on, before Monach could interrupt. 'We poured the first one the day after your mate skipped out on us, but it's nowhere near done yet. It came out all right and it's cooled without cracking, far as I can tell; but next it's got to have all the scale and shit chipped off the outside, and then we got to turn out the bore on the lathe and saw off the sprue. It'll be ten days at the earliest, so I hope you're not in any hurry; and what your army's going to eat while you're waiting I haven't a clue, unless you send 'em all out in the woods looking for truffles. Still, that's your problem. Meanwhile, we'll be pouring another six tonight. I wanted to wait and see how the first one came out, but Galand Dev said no, if it's fucked up somehow we can just break 'em up again and melt them down. How he ever got to be a master engineer beats me.'

That had answered Monach's original question, before he'd even got around to asking it. But he wasn't really interested in Poldarn's Flutes any more. Ciartan had been here; so obviously Xipho had known, and that was why they'd been headed this way. In which case, why would she have gone off like that (unless she'd wanted to get here first; but she hadn't been here, assuming Spenno was telling the truth). And there'd been two of them 'The other one,' he said. 'You said there were two-'

'That's right. And soldiers came and fetched the other one away. There was an accident.' Spenno shook his head, a sort of I-told-them-but-they-wouldn't-listen gesture that, Monach guessed, came very easily to him. 'That one got burned up, the other one saved his life. Anyhow, while he was laid up getting over the burns, soldiers showed up and took him on.'

A thought occured to Monach. 'When you say soldiers,' he said, 'are you sure they were regulars and not Amathy house or something like that?'

'No idea. Assumed they were regulars, or why'd old Muno let them take the man away? Must've had some kind of warrant or whatever they call it. I didn't see them myself, though, you'd have to ask Muno or his staff. But, of course, you can't do that, can you?'

They were standing outside yet another shed, outwardly no different from the dozen or so they'd already visited; except that someone or something inside it was making the most appalling noise Monach had ever heard in his life. 'Engine shed,' Spenno told him, raising his voice over the screaming, graunching, whining, squealing and juddering.

'Right now, this is the place where it's all happening. Want a look?'

Before Monach could think of a way of refusing politely, Spenno had opened the door.

The roof was high, with open skylights all the way down one side. In the middle was an enormous brown tube, ten feet long, slightly tapered, and two feet thick at the thinner end, supported at each end by an 'H' of thick oak posts that raised it three feet or so off the ground. Monach saw that the tube was in fact rotating slowly, and the unspeakable noise was caused by a short, thick steel flat-drill, which a man in a leather apron was driving into it by means of a turnscrew. At his feet, the beaten clay floor was littered with what looked like golden snowflakes-thin, flat fragments of swarf, roughly the shape of a butterfly's wing, which tumbled slowly out of the hole in the front end of the tube as the drill cut into it. At the back end of the tube, he saw a thick leather drive-belt looped round a cartwheel-sized flywheel; another belt whose end disappeared into a slit in the wall fed a smaller gearwheel that drove it. Another cradle of oak posts about halfway down the tube's length supported a T-shaped iron rest on which another man was leaning a foot-long chisel; as the tube turned, the edge of the chisel scraped more snowflakes off the dull, pitted brown skin of the tube, leaving behind a smooth, shiny golden surface. In the corner of the shed was propped a three-legged crane fitted with pulleys and chains. A bored-looking man was sweeping up the swarf with a birch-twig broom, though it was pretty obvious that he was fighting a losing battle.

'There it is,' Spenno said. 'That's the first one we poured. They've been at it for a day, a night and the next morning so far, they're on their third cutting head for the drill, and last time I looked they were nine inches in.'

Monach thought about that for a moment. 'It's going to be a long job, then.'

'You could say that, yes. We got a dozen mules on the treadmill on the other side of the wall there, in the mill shed; we daren't lay on any more, in case the lathe bed couldn't handle the torque. Got to keep it absolutely dead straight, see, or the hole up the middle's going to get skewed, and the whole thing'll only be fit for scrap.'

'I see,' Monach said, playing fast and loose with the truth. 'And when you've finished in here, it'll be ready?'

'Not likely.' Spenno laughed, though Monach couldn't hear him over the scream of the cutter. 'Next we've got to saw off the sprue-that's the rough old lump sticking out the arse end, where the hot metal was poured in. That's a week's work, running three shifts a day.'

'Right,' Monach said. 'And then it'll be ready?'

'Once the touch-hole's been drilled and the muzzle's been crowned, yes. Leastways, the tube itself'll be ready for testing. But it'll need a wooden carriage to hold it up-we can't just lay it on the ground and set it off; and we can't figure out the measurements for the carriage till we've done boring out the hole down the tube, because until we've fetched out all that waste metal, we won't have any idea how much the bloody thing's going to weigh. No point building a complicated carriage if we make it too flimsy and it just crumples up soon as we put the tube on it. Mind you, we could get everything right, and then at the last minute we could find there's wormholes or pockets in the tube, where there's been air bubbles that got caught while it was cooling. Something like that, and the whole thing'd be useless.'

Fine, Monach thought; any ideas he might have had about loading a dozen or so Poldarn's Flutes onto the backs of a team of mules and putting twenty miles or so between his little army and Dui Chirra before Muno came back with overwhelming reinforcements wilted on the vine and died. Obviously, Muno and the government in Torcea had been terrified about someone stealing the tubes; wasted anxiety. Even when it was eventually finished, assuming it survived that long and passed its test without blowing up, how in the names of all the gods could anybody hope to steal something that big?

(In which case, either Xipho had screwed up in her planning for once, or else her disappearance wasn't part of some ingenious plan for robbing the foundry and making a lightning-quick getaway into the depths of the forest.)

'Some machine you've got there,' he said. 'Did you build it, or did you have it shipped in from Torcea?'

Spenno was contriving to look proud and offended at the same time. 'They haven't got anything like this in Torcea, not as far as I know. Don't suppose there's another like it in the world. Anyhow, that's it, more or less. Now, are you planning on taking the tube with you when you go? Or was it something else you were after?' Monach looked at him; it was like looking in a steamed-up mirror. 'Something that's nothing to do with the tubes?'

Monach nodded slightly. 'Actually,' he said, 'we only came here to get food.'

'Is that so? But I thought you said earlier that you came on past Falcata. Why didn't you take on supplies there?'

For a moment, Monach was sure that Spenno already knew, about Falcata and what had happened there. But how could he possibly know? 'Too well guarded,' he said. 'We didn't fancy tangling with the garrison.'

'Fair enough,' Spenno replied. 'I can see the sense in that. Still, it's a pity you didn't come along just that bit earlier, you'd have been in time to see these two others I've been telling you about, from the old place. And you reckon he was from your year? Talk about coincidences. Anyhow,' Spenno said suddenly, 'that's pretty much it-you've seen it all now, what we got here. Now it's my turn to ask you a few questions, I guess. Like, exactly what is it you and your lot are after? Why're you Angels, and what is it you're avenging?'

Monach sighed. 'That's just a name I thought up,' he said. 'Basically, most of us, we were at what you might call a loose end when Deymeson got destroyed, so we thought we might as well go into business on our own account, if you follow me. A free company, I believe the term is.'

'Ah. Like the Amathy house.'

'You could say that. Except we aren't mercenary soldiers, we only fight when we're attacked. We just-sort of wander about, looking after ourselves.'

'Oh. That's not what I'd heard.' Spenno shrugged. 'Not that I care. I mean, you or the government, who gives a damn, there's only ever predators and quarry. Not even sure which one you are, at that.'

After he'd thought about it for most of the rest of the day, Monach came to the conclusion that that was probably meant to be a compliment. Of a sort.

The dream had been going on for some time before he managed to figure out who he was, and who he was meant to be in the dream.

There was a crow. It was perched on his shoulder, and its wings were on fire-he could hardly breathe for the disgusting smell of burning feathers. He only had himself to blame for that, since he'd been the one who'd swatted the crow out of the air with the hearth-rake and held it down in the fire, while it had screamed at him and glared murderously at him. Now it didn't seem to feel the pain from the burning; it was his decoy, to draw in the other crows so that he could throw stones and kill them. Its name was either Elaos or Gain or Cordo or Xipho, but he couldn't remember which.

Anyhow, the crows kept on coming, high over his left shoulder, coming from wherever it was they were holding, crossing the hedge, banking on the glide, swooping low and beating upwind, only a foot or so off the ground, wing-tips curled upwards, silent. Each time he waited till he could make out the beak and the eye, to be sure he was in range; then, as soon as his circle was compromised, quickly to his feet, throwing his arm back as he moved, and as soon as he was above the top edge of the hide he let go, hurling the flint so hard that it jarred his elbow and shoulder. So far he hadn't missed; some of them sank unwillingly to the ground in a flurry of ineffectual wing-beats, others dropped straight down, beak first, dead in the air. He'd killed so many that they were landing on top of each other, the stone-dead dropping on the backs of the dying, like the slaughtered monks when the raiders burned Deymeson And then he realised that he'd only been seeing a small part of the picture; because in the background behind him was a mountain, a volcano, and the black ash and shit it was hurling high up into the air was crows and more crows, every convulsion and spasm at the ruptured peak throwing out another flock; and the slopes and foothills of the volcano were already black with thousands upon thousands of dead crows, which presumably he'd killed too, though he couldn't remember it offhand. But it didn't matter, because any moment now the furnace deep in the volcano's roots would be hot enough for the pour, and the red-golden lava would cascade down into the valley and cover everything-and he had nobody to blame but himself, because who in his right mind would build his farm in the bottom of a mould?

But he still wasn't seeing the whole picture; because when he turned his head and looked down, he saw that the black fluttering wings drifting out of the air and landing at his feet were the swarf from a great drill that was boring into the mountain top, as Spenno and Father Tutor and the rest of the Order turned out the bore of Poldarn's Flute; and the crow on his shoulder was saying, It all makes perfect sense, but you're too bloody dim to see it.

'Don't be so annoying,' he told the crow. 'Besides, if you were half as smart as you seem to think you are, you'd have noticed that you're perched on the wrong shoulder. This isn't even my dream, for pity's sake. You're going to be in so much trouble when they find out you've given the wrong dream to the wrong guy.'

The crow squawked angrily, opened its burning wings and flapped laboriously up into the wind, battling for height until it was able to turn. As it slowly sailed away, he could just hear it saying, Told him but he wouldn't listen, they never do, and he realised it'd been Spenno all along. He watched the bird until it was just a black dot in the sky; it dragged itself through the air until it was right over the glowing orange scar in the mountain, but a spurt of yellow flame licked it out of the sky like a lizard catching a fly with its tongue, and it fell, burning, onto the hearth.

My dream after all, then, the Earwig realised. I wish I knew where Xipho'd got to, though. It'd all make perfect sense if only she was here. But he knew where she had to be; somewhere down in the valley, driving her cart down the Falcata road (Falcata burning, burnt to charcoal by the fiery garbage from the volcano) and across the Bay straight towards Torcea The black feathery swarf from the great drill was up to his ankles as he stood up and threw his stone, hard and fast and straight as a stone ball shot from the lips of Poldarn's Flute. All right, he wanted to scream, I get the point already. But of course all this wasn't for his benefit, because he was only the Earwig, born follower, eternal subordinate, assistant sidekick. They were putting on the show for someone else. Went without saying.

(Falcata burning; thousands and thousands of houses, doors jammed and wedged shut, and inside were thousands and thousands and thousands of people screaming and fighting to get out, until finally the smoke and the falling rafters and the burning thatch swatted them down like a hearth-rake and pinned them to the hearth until they stopped moving-)

And Spenno was sitting on his shoulder, the book open on his knees, pointing and saying, Ciartan was here, but you just missed him; and at that moment, it suddenly occurred to him what Ciartan was calling himself these days; except that it wasn't possible, because 'Bloody hell, Chief,' Mezentius was saying, 'what was all that about?'

He opened his eyes. 'Sorry,' he mumbled. 'What?'

'You were having a bad dream or something,' someone else said. 'Screaming and yelling like someone was killing a pig with a blunt knife. We've been trying to wake you up, but you wouldn't open your eyes.'

'Oh,' Monach said. The dream was slipping past him, but it was too late to pull it back. 'What time is it?'

'Hour or so after sunup,' Mezentius said. 'We let you lie in-thought we were doing you a favour.'

'Oh.' Monach sighed and swung his legs off the bed. 'Anything been happening since I've been asleep?'

'Not much,' said someone else. 'They're still doing whatever it is they're doing that makes that horrible noise, over in that big shed across the yard. And around midnight, they were up to something over where they've got that enormous oven contraption; they had one hell of a fire brewed up, and that nutcase foreman was cursing and swearing like they'd put hot coals down his trousers. But they reckon that's normal and everything was going just fine.' He shook his head. 'They're a bloody funny lot, if you ask me.'

Monach nodded. 'The foreman told me that they were going to cast another six of the tubes last night, so I guess that's what they were doing. Best leave them to it, they seem to know what they're doing.'

'Fine,' interrupted Runting, the quartermaster. 'Bloody good luck to them, since presumably it's us they're working for now. Talking of which, what in God's name do we want with half a dozen tubular bells? I suppose we could sell them and buy food, if anybody knows who'd be likely to want to buy them-'

'Runting, they're not bells, they're weapons,' someone told him. 'It's some top secret thing the government's cooking up to fight the raiders with. It's what we're here for, for the gods' sakes. Don't you ever bother coming to staff meetings?'

'How can you fight the raiders with bells? You planning to ring them to death, or what?'

Monach pushed past them into the fresh, wet air. Even with Falcata in ashes, how long was it going to take for Colonel Muno to raise enough men to come back and kill them all? He'd only come here because they hadn't got any food left, the Flutes hadn't even crossed his mind. Now they had the food (only enough for a day or so), the Flutes weren't ready to take even if he was minded to burden himself with them, Xipho hadn't even been here and it wouldn't be terribly smart to still be here when Muno got back. Time to go. Absolutely no reason to stay.

Had Ciartan really been here? When Spenno had mentioned another sword-monk, he'd assumed without thinking that it had to be Ciartan; now he couldn't even remember what it was Spenno had said that had prompted the assumption. But if he had He went to see Galand Dev.

'Paperwork,' he said. 'I'm assuming Colonel Muno was typical army when it came to filing and keeping copies of letters, all that shit?'

Galand Dev seemed more than a little offended by such an unashamedly blasphemous attitude, but he managed to answer the question without actually bursting apart. 'He didn't use sealed orders to light fires or wipe his bum, if that's what you mean,' he said. 'I imagine you'll find all his papers in the drawing office. I doubt very much he'd have taken them with him into battle.'

'Fine,' Monach said. 'In that case, you can come along with me and help me find what I'm looking for.'

Galand Dev sighed. 'There's nothing in international law that says a prisoner of war's got to help his captors rifle through official government archives,' he said. 'In fact, it'd probably be treason.'

Monach smiled pleasantly. 'Fuck international law,' he said. 'Do as you're told, or I'll have you hung. Coming?'

Galand Dev nodded. 'If you insist,' he said, as they crossed the yard to the drawing office. 'What exactly are you looking for, anyway?'

'A while back,' Monach replied, 'one of your workers-I don't know his name, but he was involved in a nasty accident and got badly burned; anyhow, while he was recovering from that, some soldiers turned up and arrested him.'

'I know who you mean.'

'Excellent. Now,' Monach continued, 'I'm assuming that Colonel Muno wouldn't have released the man to these soldiers without a proper warrant, or some kind of paperwork at the very least. Do you think you could find it for me?'

Muno's files were every bit as meticulously kept as Monach had expected them to be, and it wasn't long before Galand Dev turned up what he wanted. The paper was still rolled up in its neat brass message-tube, the two halves of the broken seal still in place on either side of the cap. Monach twisted the cap off and teased the paper out with his fingers.

He recognised the form of words. In fact, its very familiarity struck him as disturbing even before he got to the signature at the bottom, which of course he recognisedTo Brigadier Muno, commanding the volcano-tube project at Dui Chirra foundry, greetings. You are hereby required to hand over to the bearers hereof the person more particularly described in the schedule hereto, and to afford immediately and without delay to the said bearers all aid and assistance that they may request in the furtherance of these presents.

Schedule: the adult male, identity unknown, currently employed at Dui Chirra foundry in the capacity of blacksmith and general labourer, formerly a monk of the Order of Poverty and Education established at Deymeson. To be handed over under restraint, dead or alive. This warrant to supersede all powers, orders, facilities and immunities whatsoever.

As witness my hand the day and year hereinbefore written: Cleapho Imperial Chaplain In Ordinary

'There you are, then,' Galand Dev was saying. 'Everything perfectly in order.' Monach hadn't noticed, but he'd been standing on tiptoe to read the warrant over his shoulder. 'The gods only know what that joker'd got himself into,' he went on. 'Must've been something pretty drastic if the chaplain's office was involved. Some sort of treason, anyhow, if it came under ecclesiastical jurisdiction.' He stopped; Monach could almost hear the gears grinding inside his head, as it suddenly occurred to him to wonder why the Mad Monk was concerning himself with the validity of an Imperial warrant. 'Friend of yours, or something?' he asked, trying to sound guileless and failing dismally.

'I want to know what happened,' Monach said slowly, 'on the day when this arrived.'

'Sorry.' Galand Dev was having to make an effort not to smirk. 'But it'd have been handled by Muno and his staff; and, of course, they aren't here for you to ask.'

'Nor they are,' Monach said, dangerously pleasant. 'But someone must've seen them come and go, apart from Muno's soldiers. Don't you think?'

'I suppose so. But-'

'Fine. Find them, I've got some questions. You've got till mid-afternoon, so you'd better get a move on. Understood?'

Galand Dev may not have been the most perceptive man in the Empire, but he wasn't blind and deaf. 'Of course,' he said hurriedly. 'I'll get someone on it-I'll see to it myself,' he corrected himself quickly, 'right away.'

'Thanks.' Monach rolled up the paper, slid it back into the tube and stowed the tube in his coat pocket. 'I won't detain you any longer. Thank you for your time.'

If Monach derived any amusement from the sight of Galand Dev scuttling away like a stranded crab, he didn't stop to savour it. Just like the old story about the philosopher and the child's riddle, he thought; the more-I think about it, the harder it gets. Cleapho, of all people; nominally the third most important man in the Empire, in practice the second (particularly now that Muno Silsny was dead and no new commander-in-chief had been appointed to replace him). Cleapho, defender of the faith, ex officio leader of what was left of the Deymeson order. Of course, Monach had never set eyes on him, Cleapho practically never left Torcea Monach frowned, remembering something that Xipho had told him, about the time she'd spent going round the Bohec valley in a cart with Ciartan; how they'd run into Cleapho himself at some inn in Sansory, and Cleapho had taken Ciartan off for a private meeting, and there'd been a fight, government soldiers Far away at the back of his mind, a little voice Monach hadn't heard for some time was asking an inconvenient question, and it wouldn't shut up. It was asking: if Cleapho was really up to something, some dark plot involving Ciartan of all people, then how come the government soldiers had found out about it, and come hurrying to the scene to arrest the conspirators? For one thing, nobody outside the palace itself had the authority to arrest the Chaplain in Ordinary, certainly nobody who could be fetched by an informer in Sansory at half an hour's notice. And if a plot had been discovered, with strong enough evidence to warrant arresting the chaplain, how come he hadn't been seized and executed the moment he set foot back in Torcea?

And how come-damn that little voice, why couldn't it keep its nasty suspicions to itself?-how come Xipho had recognised Chaplain Cleapho? Because she'd lived for a while in Torcea, she'd said, and had seen him preach at the Great Temple. Except-Monach was fairly certain of this but he could be getting confused-hadn't her time in Torcea all been part of the lie she told Ciartan, to cover up the fact that she was an agent of the Order? In which case, she'd never been to Torcea at all, and couldn't have seen Cleapho there Assuming she was telling the truth when she'd told him she'd been lying (Or perhaps she had been to Torcea at some point in her service, the same way he'd been to all sorts of places; in which case, she'd only lied about how she'd come to be in the capital and what she'd done while she was there. If only he could remember; if only Xipho was here.)

But if Xipho had lied to him-and if Ciartan had been here; and now Monach was here and they weren't, they'd skipped out on him and left him in possession of a deadly secret but useless unfinished weapon, and the most strategically important facility in the Empire Which should have been the most heavily guarded facility in the Empire, if it was really so confoundedly important. But, instead, it had been left in the care of Brigadier Muno and a couple of hundred infantry, a force so slight and negligible that the Earwig had been able to put them to flight practically by accident. As if someone had set up the Poldarn's Flute project and then left it lying about, where the first passing bandit chief or Mad Monk who happened to be in the area couldn't help acquiring it. As if they'd wanted him to have it.

(But in that case, wouldn't the weapon itself, the Flute, have been finished, ready and waiting for him to collect? Or maybe that was the bit of the plan that'd gone wrong, thanks to Spenno and Galand Dev scratching each other's eyes out over the right way to build a drop-bottom cupola furnace?)

The more I think about it, the harder it gets; except, why would Xipho lie to me?

Not that Monach gave a flying fuck about them, but he hunted down Spenno in his lair and asked after the six newly cast tubes.

'No idea,' Spenno replied, looking up and marking his place in his book with a small piece of rag. 'They won't be cool enough to break out of the moulds until this time tomorrow, and until then there's no way of knowing. Could be absolutely fine, could be cracked to buggery and riddled with air pockets. You need patience if you work in a foundry.'

'Fine,' Monach grunted. 'So what about the other one? How's the drilling coming along?'

'Ah,' Spenno said. 'Now there things are looking a bit more hopeful. They're over two-thirds of the way down, and so far it all seems to be working out. Course, we won't actually know till we load the thing up with Morevich powder and set fire to it. Then, if it blows up and kills us all, we can probably interpret that as meaning we've still got a few bugs to iron out.'

Monach nodded slowly. 'It's behind schedule, isn't it?' he asked.

Spenno laughed. 'You could say that. According to old Muno, we should've had a dozen Flutes all polished up and ready to ship by now. Which might've been possible, if I hadn't had to fight that arsehole Galand Dev every bloody step of the way.' He frowned. 'Not that that's any of your concern, is it?' he asked. 'I mean, why would you be worried about what the Torcea government wants?'

Not knowing the answer himself, Monach ignored the question. 'I just found out that the order to arrest that sword-monk came from Chaplain Cleapho. Did you know that?'

Spenno shrugged. 'News to me,' he said. 'Talking of which, surely he's one of us. What does he think of your holy war?'

'I don't suppose he even knows we exist,' Monach replied, uncomfortably aware that he was probably lying. 'So what'd it take to pack up the unfinished Flutes and that lathe contraption of yours, and set them up somewhere else?'

Spenno smiled, revealing missing teeth. 'A miracle,' he said. 'Which is your department, not mine. Like I told you, Father Tutor always reckoned I sucked at religion.'

'What if I made that a direct order?' Monach ventured.

'Then I guess I'd be in even more trouble than I am already,' Spenno answered, yawning. 'But it's like they say: when you're drowning, getting spat on isn't such a big deal.'

Which was about as much Spenno as Monach could take for one day, particularly on an empty stomach. Which reminded him: he had over a thousand people on his hands still, and enough food to feed them for maybe three days. Small administrative details like that.

(Cleapho, he thought, for crying out loud. And Cordo, unaccountably returned from the dead. And Ciartan had been here; but Cleapho had sent orders to arrest the Dui Chirra blacksmith, and they'd taken the other man instead. And where had Xipho got to, when she was most desperately needed?)

Eventually they found Monach in the grain shed, counting the sacks of flour for the fifth time and still not managing to come up with a more reassuring total. There was good news, Mezentius told him, and bad news: which did he want first?

Well, the good news was that the monthly supply train was coming up the west road. It'd been held up, apparently, by the stinking horrible weather-bridges washed away, fords impassable, roads that swallowed carts whole, the usual stuff-but it was definitely on its way and should arrive the day after next.

The bad news, on the other hand, was that there was an Imperial army coming up the east road, which ought to get here at roughly the same time as the supply train. It could quite easily be a dead heat; in which case, Brigadier Muno and his seven thousand men would be able to celebrate their recapture of Dui Chirra with a hearty breakfast.