The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It could have been any village in the mountains of Scona; the same red sandstone houses, the same grey mossy thatch, rutted muddy street, open doors, ubiquitous chickens and children. But this village was barely twelve miles from Shastel, and its people were downtrodden serfs of the Foundation rather than satisfied clients of the Loredan Bank. And although they weren’t showing a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the idea, they were on the point of throwing off their chains and joining the great war for freedom. Assuming, of course, that they knew what was good for them.

The harbinger of liberty in this instance was Sergeant Mohan Bar, a thirty-year man who’d served in a wide variety of armies, official and unofficial, before drifting into the Scona archers as a sergeant instructor. Organising successful revolutions was largely uncharted territory as far as he was concerned, and he wasn’t sure he was temperamentally suited to it. There was far too much diplomacy involved, and not enough giving and obeying orders; in fact, he had the uneasy feeling that what these downtrodden serfs on the verge of throwing off their chains wanted him to do was go away. That, however, wasn’t an option.

The villagers were holding yet another meeting, which Sergeant Bar was watching from the comfort of a bench outside the village’s anonymous and extremely scruffy inn. The mug of cider in his hand had been on the house (or at least he’d assumed so; as far as he could recall, the issue of payment hadn’t been addressed in his short conversation with the innkeeper), it was a pleasantly warm day for the time of year and there was nothing else he was supposed to be doing; a soldier on active service learns to recognise such quiet interludes and make the most of them while they last.

‘It’s very simple,’ one of the village worthies was saying. ‘They’re here, for sure the Foundation knows they’re here, whether we like it or not we’ll already have been convicted of treason just because they’re here; so what the hell, why don’t we do as he says? We haven’t got anything to lose by it. More to the point, we don’t exactly have a choice.’

The rest of the meeting grumbled, the way people do when facing an unpopular truth.

‘We can still explain,’ someone at the back replied. ‘Grab hold of these jokers, tie them up, send a message to the Foundation telling them what’s happened and asking for an escort to take them on as soon as possible. If we do that, then how can they possibly say we’ve acted treasonably?’

The first speaker shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s like it’s some sort of contagious disease; if you come in contact with the enemy, you’re assumed to be infected. As far as the Foundation’s concerned, we’re dead men. So, we fight or we go quietly and end up in a labour gang or dangling from a tree beside the road somewhere. Oh, yes, and just one thing you may have missed: you’re talking ever so bravely about arresting these men and tying them up. If you try it, I’ll be interested to see how far you get. In case you hadn’t noticed, they’re heavily armed soldiers, not a few kids you’ve caught scrumping apples.’

‘This is wonderful,’ someone else said. ‘Whatever we do, we’re going to get killed. Why don’t we all just get out of here up into the hills till all these lunatics have wiped each other out. Then we can come back down and steal their boots.’

Sergeant Bar smiled, finished his cider and went for a walk to stretch his legs. He couldn’t help thinking that he wasn’t getting the most out of what should have been a thoroughly desirable assignment – out of the camp, left to his own devices, no officers and no fighting, in a village where they had booze and (presumably, though he hadn’t seen any) women. Somehow, unfortunately, he couldn’t see it in that light.

He walked to the top of the hill that overlooked the village and stared out in the direction of Shastel. There was a taller hill between him and the Citadel, which was probably just as well for his peace of mind, but he had a good view of the only road in these parts, along which any intercepting force would have to come if it didn’t want to scramble through bogs and rocky outcrops. From sheer force of habit he planned a defence; his twelve archers, six on either side of the road in among those trees directly below where he was standing, the local levy (big joke!) blocking the road behind a barricade of carts and barrels, with a reserve force halfway up the slope behind those rocks, where they’d be out of sight and nicely placed for a quick uninterrupted sprint down onto the enemy’s rear to conclude the engagement. If he’d been fabricating a battlefield on the barrack-room floor, with rolled-up blankets for the hills, water bottles for the trees and a stretched-out sword-belt for the road, he couldn’t have designed anything much more favourable for a defence against superior numbers.

He frowned, and shuddered; bad luck, wishing a fight on himself and his men. If he had the sense he was born with, he’d be more concerned with his lines of retreat, the fastest way back to the inlet where their ship was waiting. Fortunately, that was pretty straightforward, too. Provided they had enough advance notice, they could double back round the edge of the far hill and down the path they’d come up in the first place long before the enemy even reached the village. Sergeant Bar shook his head. It’d be as well to post a sentry up here, and place another man in the village to watch for a signal. If he did that, there was nothing to worry about. Safe as houses.

Archers Venin and Bool weren’t overjoyed at their assignment; but once Bar had explained that he’d chosen them for the job because he didn’t like them very much and didn’t see why they should lay around villages relaxing when they could be sitting on hillsides, they saw the logic behind it and took their lookout positions. Bar went back to his bench outside the inn and checked on the progress of the meeting, which was still going round in the same dreary, reassuring circle. Bar yawned. He didn’t really know what he was supposed to do at this point; his mission was to organise the resistance in Shantein, issue the warlike partisans with twenty slightly sub-standard ash flatbows and a less than generous allocation of arrows, teach them the arts of archery and war, inspire them with courage and the will to win, and then come home. At a guess, he was somewhere in phase one and (he suspected) running a little behind schedule.

The morning drifted into noon and the combination of warm sun and tolerable cider lapped him gradually into sleep. He was snuggling his cheek into the crook of his elbow and dreaming comfortably when he heard his name and looked up.

‘Bool?’ he mumbled. ‘I thought I told you-’

‘They’re coming,’ Bool interrupted. ‘Forty men, just come into sight on the road.’

It took Bar a second or so to work out what Bool was talking about. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s all right. Signal Venin to get back here. I’ll get the men fell in and we’ll be on our way.’

Venin arrived, out of breath and dusty, and Bar jerked his head towards the far hill and gave the order to move out; at which point he noticed that the meeting had fallen silent and everybody was looking at him.

‘They’re coming, aren’t they?’ someone said.

Bar felt a little uncomfortable. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘And you’re leaving.’

Bar frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving.’

The man who’d been talking the closest approximation to sense jumped up and came over, blocking his way. He looked angry and scared. ‘You can’t just go,’ he said. ‘They’ll kill us all. We won’t stand a chance.’

Bar thought for a moment. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But it’s too late now. You should’ve done what I asked four hours ago, instead of sitting around gabbing.’

Four or five other villagers had joined the first speaker. ‘You can’t just walk out on us,’ one of them protested. ‘Now you’ve got us into this mess, you damn well get us out again.’

‘Forget it,’ another one replied. ‘Just suppose he did stick around, and just suppose he managed to give ’em a good hiding, though I can’t say I see it myself. Then he goes home, and tomorrow another lot comes down the road and we still get killed. I say we head up into the mountains while there’s time.’

‘What about their ship?’ someone else put in. ‘Why don’t we go to Scona? Hey, you, how many of us can get on your ship?’

Bar raised his hand for silence but didn’t get any; so he slapped the face of the man nearest to him, making him overbalance and topple over backwards. That worked just fine.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s going on any ship. Doesn’t matter to me what you do, fight, give in or run away. We’re leaving, so you’d better do what you think is right. Best of luck,’ he added, remembering the diplomatic aspect of his mission.

There was a moment’s silence; then the first speaker folded his arms. ‘We’ll fight,’ he said. ‘Tell us what you want us to do.’

‘Get out of my way,’ Bar replied. ‘I won’t ask you again.’

For some reason, that had the reverse effect to the one he’d intended; there was a ring of villagers round them now, all angry, scowling, shouting, waving their arms. Well now, said a small, wicked voice at the back of his mind, that’s phase one. What was phase two again? ‘All right,’ he heard himself say. ‘All right, we’re staying, now back off before my men get nervous and hurt somebody.’ The ring of angry people loosened up a little; they were looking at him, hanging on his every word. Even so, forty halberdiers against a dozen archers and these fools. It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘All right,’ he said again. ‘First things first, weapons. How many of you have got any?’ He waited. Nobody moved. ‘Right. Well, get anything sharp or heavy or pointed. Hurry, you’ve got two minutes. Go.’

At least that dispersed them. Bar turned to his platoon. ‘Now listen to me,’ he said. ‘This lot’s worse than useless, so mostly it’ll be up to us. The odds are crap, but we’ve got surprise and a good position. Venin, you remember where you were just now? All right, take five men with you, wait for my signal before you start shooting. Bool, follow on behind but take the trees on this side of the road. You’ll get three, maybe four shots each, and that’ll be it, your only chance to end this and get out in one piece, so for gods’ sakes concentrate, we’ve got to take down at least half of them in those first three volleys. You can do it easy, it’s well within your capabilities. Right. Go.’

They moved out without a word, leaving him standing on his own in the middle of the village. Wonderful, he said angrily to himself, now we’re in a war. Should’ve been more careful what you wished for. Still, you’ll never get a better position, so why the hell not?

He reviewed his remaining forces. There were twenty-six of them, comprising seven felling axes, one genuine Shastel military halberd, twelve hayforks – there had been no more formidable weapon in the world when he was thirteen years old and running away from one with a dozen freshly stolen onions down the front of his shirt – six mattocks and a spade. Put ’em together and what d’you get? A massacre, most likely. But we’ll see. ‘The axes, the halberd and you, the big man with the fork. You know where I had my sentry? A hundred yards beyond that and further down the slope there’s a pile of rocks. Can you get yourselves there quick without being seen from the road?’

One of the axes nodded. ‘No problem,’ he said.

Bar nodded. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘In that case, you’re in charge. Now, when I give the signal and only then, you get yourselves down the slope quick as you can and take the enemy in the rear. The signal will be three short blasts on this horn,’ he went on, patting the small copper bugle at his belt. ‘Stay awake and remember, don’t move a hair till you hear the signal and we ought to be all right.’

The assault party (my picked men. Oh, gods) set off briskly, leaving Bar with the eighteen remaining peasants. There were three boys no more than seventeen and four old men with grey hair or no hair at all (but he had the idea they were probably the pick of the bunch). The rest of them were that indeterminate age that only peasants ever attain, the stage in their life-cycle where childhood and courtship are over and there’s nothing left to do but work and die. They were tough, strong, determined men, and no match in a million years for trained armoured halberdiers. Oh, well. They were only there for decoration, bait to draw the halberdiers into enfilading fire from a dozen Scona archers shooting at between seventy-five yards and point-blank. With any luck, a canteen of hot soup taken off the fire just before the start of this action should still be palatably warm by the time his victorious forces came back again.

There wasn’t time to build a road-block or a barricade; a nuisance, that, because it meant his centre guard would be out in the open where the enemy could count them, maybe notice the absence of archers if they were bright enough. As he formed his line, pushing and shoving the plainly terrified farmers into some semblance of formation, he tried to figure out an escape route, but nothing obvious met the eye; just headlong down the road back to the village, or up the sides of the combe and hope nobody follows. Damn the cheapskates, they should have assigned an officer for this mission, not just sent out a sergeant.

In due course the halberdiers came into view; at first just a coloured smudge on the margin of the sky, then discernible human shapes, then identifiable people. Beside him, his makeshift platoon were standing still and quiet, staring at the oncoming enemy as if they were strange monsters walking up out of the sea onto the beach, something unnatural and inhuman. But to Bar they were just soldiers; after a while, all soldiers look the same, act the same. At this distance, you could be forgiven for mistaking them for people, but that would be foolish. When a man puts on a second skin of steel, hardened leather or padded cotton, he becomes something more and less than human, and the usual rules don’t apply. Slickly and competently, Bar braced his bow, checked the lie of the string between the nocks, drew an arrow from the quiver at his belt and fitted it carefully over the served point opposite the arrow-shelf. He took up a few pounds of pressure, checked the position of his feet, and scanned for a target. In the dead centre of the front rank there was a tall man, a whole head taller than the men on either side, an obvious choice for the first shot of the day. Bar squinted a little, trying to assess range, something he’d never found easy. The only way he’d ever made any sense of it was by practising at roving marks – walk through woods and fields, choose a mark, measure off fifty or a hundred paces, remember what a head or body-sized target looks like at that range, then experiment with elevation and windage (allowing for paradox) until you can hit the mark three shots out of four. If in doubt, shoot high, so that if you miss your target you stand some chance of hitting another further back in the column. All standard elementary stuff, the sort of thing he made his living teaching to other people. Shouldn’t be a problem.

When the tall man was about ninety yards distant, Bar raised the bow to an angle of forty-five degrees, pushed with his left hand, pulled with his right until the tip of his index finger brushed the corner of his lip while lowering the bow to what he estimated was just below the right elevation and looking down the arrow over the bodkinhead, directly at the target, then up with the aim an inch while pushing his left hand forward just a touch more until he could feel his shoulder blades pinch the skin over his spine, at which point his fingers knew to relax of their own accord, letting the arrow fly and the string come smartly forward to slap against the bracer on his left wrist. He held the loose position for half a second of follow-through, then reached for the next arrow as he looked to see what he’d done.

The tall man was still there, but there was a disturbance in the row behind as the column shifted a little to step round a fallen body; good enough for government work, as the engineers said. He had time for one more shot before giving the signal to the archers in the wood-

And down from the hillside in a flurry of mud and loosened stones came his assault squad, his sting in the tail, far too early. They slithered the last few yards, trying to slow down but only making things worse for themselves; the halberdiers saw them in plenty of time, halted and formed to receive them in flank and rear. Sheer impetus carried them into the line and sent them spilling out round the back of the column, so that they masked both sides of it, making it impossible for the archers in the wood to shoot without hitting them. Bar felt his mouth drop open – honest to gods, he simply hadn’t imagined such a thing could happen, not when he’d been at such pains to tell them to wait – and for a long time (in context) he couldn’t think of anything he could do. But it wasn’t long before the halberdiers had the better of it; the peasants fought for themselves, the way people do, but the halberdiers fought like soldiers, engaging the enemy facing the next man down the line on the right so as to get the best advantage from the design of their weapons, assuming as an article of faith that the next man in the line would do the same for them. Nothing is more disconcerting for the amateur fighter than being ignored by the man you think you’re fighting while being attacked by the man you thought was fighting your neighbour; and in a battle, few men live long enough to be disconcerted twice.

That cup of soup’s still warm, Bar said to himself. This would be a good time to go. It would be the logical thing to do, draw the attack onto his platoon of peasants, and the enemy would never even realise there were a dozen men in the wood. They could stay still and quiet and then discreetly withdraw, go back to the ship and away home in safety. Instead, he nocked, drew and loosed another arrow, this time reducing the elevation by a quarter of an inch. Second time lucky. He pulled the bugle round on its strap and blew once, the signal to the archers in the wood.

It turned out to have been a lucky mistake. The mistimed attack had had the effect of halting the column seventy-five yards or so from the archers, a comfortable range for three aimed shots. The first volley took the halberdiers completely by surprise, and by a lucky chance the officer was one of the eight men who went down. The rest of the company were just about to break up and run for cover when the second volley hit them – seven down this time, making a total of seventeen out of forty, leaving twenty-three standing. Quite possibly, the Shastel Faculty of Military Mathematics has a formula for the critical percentage, the point at which the survivors give it up and run. In Bar’s experience, it was somewhere around the one-third mark, which meant this lot ought to break now. But they didn’t. Instead they came on at the run.

Hell, Bar thought. There wasn’t a third volley – they’d have been shooting towards the standing line, with the risk of overshots hitting their own side, and they weren’t to know that as far as Bar was concerned it would have been a justifiable risk. He had time for a snatched shot (clean miss; pulled left) before the halberdiers were on top of his line, which broke and melted away, leaving him standing. But not for long.

After the halberdiers had burnt the village and rounded up the male survivors, they fished Bar’s body out of the mud – he was seven-eighths dead, with two puncture wounds in his stomach and a cracked skull – cut off his head and stuck it on a pole, and dropped the trunk down the well. Their bad grace was understandable; twenty-one dead out of forty, and only one dead Scona archer to show for it. The rest of Bar’s command had reached their ship and were well away before the halberdiers even came looking for them.

Apart from being the first real engagement of the war, the battle of Shantein was important as the first major victory of the Redemptionists over the opposing factions. It had long been a plank in the Redemptionist platform that the Scona archers were not invincible and that traditional halberdier tactics would always prevail if properly and faithfully applied. The timing was impeccable, since it coincided with elections to five crucial faculty appointments, all of which went to Redemptionists. This in turn altered the balance of power in three sub-committees, causing a snowball effect that brought the faction an extra seat on the Appropriations and Establishments Committee, seriously shifting the voting patterns in Chapter. By clever manipulation of the agenda, the faction leaders were able to reschedule a delicately poised research funding vote they were expected to lose so that it came after a Redemptionist motion to bring back the Scona archer’s head from Shantein and mount it on the main watchtower of the Citadel. The faction won both votes by a surprisingly comfortable margin, and the head of Sergeant Mohan Bar was duly and ceremoniously put in its appointed place, its empty eyes looking out over the straits towards home, where it stayed for some time until it was removed as an eyesore following complaints from the Dean of the Faculty of Military Geography, whose window looked out over the tower platform.

As for the surviving villagers, they were kept in an open-air stockade for a fortnight, during which time four men died of wounds or fever, then they were marched back home and turned loose, with a substantial figure for damages and indemnities being added to their total mortgage debt. No further rebellions among the hectemores of Shastel are recorded.

On Scona, where they used a somewhat different basis for their accounting, the Shantein incident was regarded as a qualified success. The mathematics, it was held, spoke for themselves – twenty-odd halberdiers killed for the loss of one archer, a respectable return on capital. Factor in the confusion caused by the botched attack and the desertion of the peasant line, and the net result was a substantial victory of bow over halberd, giving grounds for genuine optimism.

‘The fact remains,’ Gorgas argued in committee, ‘we were let down by lack of support for the archers, and that’s a problem that isn’t going to go away. They’re bound to learn something from their mistake, we can’t expect them to go on charging down the archers’ throats like that.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ someone asked. Gorgas took a sip of water and dried his lips with a linen handkerchief.

‘Mercenaries,’ he said. ‘A minimum one hundred heavy infantry. Professional soldiers, the type who know that when things go wrong, their best chance of survival is standing firm and staying cool, not running away. Half a dozen pikemen at Shantein would have turned the battle for us; the centre would have held, the hectemores wouldn’t have run, the halberdiers would have ended up withdrawing under fire, we’d have half of Shastel territory up in arms for us by now. Carry that through to a major battle here on Scona, and you can work out the implications for yourselves.’

There was a brief silence, as the committee waited for Niessa to speak.

‘I can see your point,’ she said, looking up from the tablets she was keeping notes on. ‘Now let’s work it through. Last point first: substantial hectemore uprisings. Well, the fact of the matter is, we simply couldn’t have afforded to arm and supply more than a token number of rebels, which is precisely why that mission was specified the way it was. I didn’t want a mass defection; I wanted a few pockets of rebellion, enough to be a nuisance and a worry, no more. Anything bigger than that would have looked like a mortal threat to the very survival of the Foundation, and any chance of a settlement would have gone out the window for ever. And that’s aside from the question of the cost and the drain on our resources that a big rebellion would’ve been, and that’d have done us more harm than a major defeat in the field. So,’ she continued acidly, ‘we came close to a disaster there, but luckily we just fell clear. We’ve learnt our lesson, no more troublemaking in Shastel territory. You’ve got to stop thinking like a soldier, Gorgas. We aren’t soldiers, we’re bankers; what we understand is profit and loss and return on investments. On that basis, we’re well out of it.’

There was a rumble of approval from round the table. Gorgas looked as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t.

‘Next point,’ Niessa went on briskly. ‘I’m afraid this mercenaries business is pure fantasy. Now, I’m not even going to discuss the practicalities – recruiting men we could actually trust, getting them here and so on – because none of it’s relevant. We can’t hire mercenaries for the simple reason that we can’t afford to; which brings me neatly on to the main point we’ve got to cover today, which is budgets. The plain fact of the matter is that unless we stop spending like farmers at a fair and cut a third off these projections, we’ll be bankrupt in a matter of months. And that,’ she added, ‘isn’t up for discussion, it’s plain truth, and we’ve got to deal with it.’

‘Go on,’ said a man at the end of the table.

‘I’ve cancelled the following projects,’ Niessa said. ‘Forca, I’m sorry but your grain depots are going to have to wait. Gorgas, the commerce raiders. Lehin, the curtain walls across Novice point. Thanis, we’ll have to postpone repayment on the unsecured loan stock; let’s just cross our fingers and pray it doesn’t start a run on the rest of our securities. If we cut those, and if we all make sure we’ve trimmed all waste right back to the bone in our respective departments, we’ve at least got a chance of seeing it through to the end of the quarter without bleeding ourselves dry. Obviously there’s not going to be a dividend for the foreseeable future, which means a lot of our securities are going to be sold off cheap on the foreign exchanges; I’ve got no option but to buy in at least a major percentage, just to keep confidence in the markets from caving in. With deferred payment options and using nominees I can put off settlement to next quarter, but it means we’ll be looking for a further ten per cent cutback then, so you’d better start planning ahead for that.’

‘Easy,’ Gorgas muttered. ‘To begin with, there’s the wages of all the men who’re going to get killed because of this quarter’s cuts. All it’d take is one massacre and we could be back in the black.’ He leant forward across the table, his weight braced on the palms of his hands. ‘Niessa, don’t you understand anything about this war? Or are you just ignoring it, hoping it’ll go away? I invite you to think of it in these terms. Each major defeat makes us weaker. The weaker we get, the harder it’ll be for us to keep trading; which means reduced revenues, further cuts, further weakness. We can’t run this war according to best counting-house practice, Niessa; those rules don’t work here.’

‘Nonsense,’ Niessa replied. ‘Everything we do is war in some form or another. We’re at war with every major bank in the world. It so happens that this war is in three dimensions rather than the usual two.’

Ironically, the first ship to reach Shastel from the Island was the privateer Reprisal. A few days later, she was joined by five others, the Butterfly, True Virtue, Meriz’ Chance, Return and Equal Measure. The crews were the usual mix of Islander underclass and foreign miscellany, and the first thing they did was take their melodramatic privateer thirst to the usually quiet and sombre inns of Shastel Quay.

One exception was the midshipman of the Return. He walked up the hill from the Quay as far as the middle gate, turned left, climbed the hundred and fifteen steps of the Cloister Stairs and stopped to ask the way to the Faculty of Applied Philosophy. The research fellow who pointed him in the right direction was puzzled by the unlikely combination of scruffy third-hand cuir-bouilli armour, neat short white hair and cultured Perimadeian accent, but really didn’t want to get involved, and so made no comment. The stranger, who had somehow made it up the steepest stairway on Shastel without getting out of breath, thanked her politely and walked briskly away, leaving the research fellow to her speculations.

At the faculty gate, the Perimadeian stopped again and asked the porter where he might find Doctor Gannadius.

‘Depends,’ the porter replied. Like most Shastel porters he was a retired sergeant-at-arms, fully capable of recognising a pirate when he saw one; and the halberd leaning against the corner of the front office of the lodge was definitely not just a war souvenir. ‘You tell me what you want with him first. Then we’ll see.’

The Perimadeian smiled. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘I’m his cousin. And of course,’ he went on, before the porter had a chance to speak, ‘you can’t just take my word for that; so I suggest that I stay here where you can keep an eye on me while you send your boy to ask the good Doctor if he can spare a minute or so for Olybras Morosin.’

The boy was duly despatched. He came back a few minutes later, trying to keep up with Doctor Gannadius, who was exhibiting a turn of speed that was quite possibly unique in the Faculty’s history.

‘Olybras?’ he panted, leaning on the pillar of the lodge gateway. ‘Is that you under all that leather?’

‘Hello, Theudas,’ the stranger replied. ‘You’ve put on weight, haven’t you? Mind you, it’s been thirty years.’

‘I-’ Gannadius stopped, took a deep breath. ‘You’re alive, then?’ he said.

‘Apparently. And so, it seems, are you. I always said that if we lived long enough, eventually we’d find something we had in common. For pity’s sake, Theudas,’ he went on, scowling, ‘either invite me inside or tell me to go away, before your porter stares me to death.’

‘I – Oh, come in. Follow me.’ Gannadius nodded to the porter, who nodded back and retreated into the lodge like a watchdog who’s been forbidden to bite a dinner guest. ‘This way. Olybras, it’s – well, it’s good to see you.’

‘Really?’ Olybras shrugged. ‘There’d no accounting for tastes, I suppose. I don’t remember us ever liking each other terribly much in the past.’

A flicker of annoyance moved the corner of Gannadius’ mouth. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But this morning I really believed that I had no family at all left in the whole world, and now, right out the blue, I’ve got one again.’

‘Quite so,’ Olybras replied. ‘A pity it has to be you, but on balance it’s a good thing. By the way, how come the funny name? Last time I saw you, you were still just plain old Theudas Morosin. Presumably it’s some sort of magic thing.’

‘It’s not magic,’ Gannadius started petulantly; then he took another deep breath and moderated his tone of voice. ‘It’s – it was traditional in my Order that when you reached a certain status, you assumed one of the traditional names. Gannadius was the second Patriarch of the City, and since I’d always admired-’

‘I get you,’ Olybras interrupted. ‘Swank, in other words. Putting on airs. Well, jolly good luck. I know that sort of thing always meant a great deal to you. It’s nice to know you nearly made it to the top of the greasy pole before the whole thing ceased to have any vestige of meaning.’

Gannadius stopped and glowered at him, to no apparent effect. ‘And what about you, Olybras?’ he asked sweetly. ‘Doing all right for yourself, I see?’

Olybras laughed and shook his head. ‘Obviously not,’ he said. ‘The best I can say for myself is that I gracefully reclined on hard times rather than falling on them. This time last year I still had my own ship, even if it was just a floating coal scuttle. But it simply fell apart one day, died of old age and malice, and now here I am, chief beetle-crusher on an Island privateer, at my age. My only consolation is, I never had any talents to fritter or promise to unfulfil.’

Gannadius pushed open the door to his lodgings and led the way in. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the life seems to agree with you. You look revoltingly fit and healthy.’

‘Oh, I am,’ Olybras said. ‘It’s one of the few benefits of having to work for a living. Plenty of exercise, only just enough food, and lots and lots and lots of bracing sea air.’ He looked around, chose the most comfortable chair and sat in it. ‘Have you got anything to drink?’

‘Wine or cider,’ Gannadius said.

‘Oh, wine, with a bit of honey and cinnamon if there’s any going. We acquired a barrel of that fortified Jairec stuff last month, and we’re still only halfway through it. It makes your teeth hurt for days afterwards.’

Gannadius sighed and grated his last half-inch of cinnamon. ‘So that’s what you do, is it? Acquire things?’

‘Go on,’ Olybras said, ‘you can use it if you like. The P word. I don’t mind.’

‘I suppose piracy is an honourable profession, in its way. It all depends on who you rob.’

Olybras shook his head. ‘Anybody who can’t get out of the way quick enough,’ he replied sadly. ‘Remember when we used to play pirates, Theudas? I seem to remember you always insisted on being the pirate captain, and I was the hapless merchant. Of course, you were bigger than me then. You had a mean left hook in those days.’

Gannadius winced a little. ‘True,’ he said. ‘But you never showed any early aptitude for speculative philosophy, so the irony isn’t quite symmetrical. Still, you were always the bookish one back then. Poetry, wasn’t it, and metrical romances?’

Olybras smiled. ‘Tales of adventure and heroism on the high seas,’ he said. ‘Anything not directly concerned with the tanning industry. Just my horrible luck to end up wearing the foul stuff. Father would be proud to see me today, I guess.’ He slouched back into the chair and sipped his wine. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘whatever became of the yard? I lost touch.’

‘Cousin Pallas took it over from your father,’ Gannadius said, rather severely. ‘And when he died-’

‘Pallas died?’ Olybras frowned. ‘Well, of course he did. But I’d assumed he died when the City fell. Somehow that doesn’t hurt so much. When did he die?’

‘Oh, twelve years ago now,’ Gannadius said. ‘One of the chemicals disagreed with him, and in the end it poisoned him.’

Olybras shook his head. ‘He was like me,’ he said, ‘he never wanted anything to do with the business. He should have cleared out, like I did. Like we did,’ he added. ‘Let’s not forget that, Theudas. All right, you didn’t run away to sea, you ran away and turned respectable instead. None of us stuck around though, except poor old Pallas. Sorry, you were saying.’

‘After he died,’ Gannadius continued, ‘his daughter took it over. You never knew Pallas had a daughter, did you?’

Olybras put down his cup. ‘Actually, I did,’ he said. ‘Asbeli, I seem to remember. But I never met her. Presumably she-’

‘As far as I know,’ Gannadius said. ‘Like I said, until today I thought I was the last one left. I somehow assumed you’d come to a bad end somewhere along the line, after we hadn’t heard anything for such a long time.’

‘There was no reason for me to stay in touch,’ Olybras muttered. ‘For a while, in fact, I had something which could have passed for a life of my own. Things looked as if they were starting to go well. I had a wife. In fact,’ he added, ‘I had two, but the second one was purely a matter of convenience, for when I made the Moa run. Everybody has a second wife in Moa, it’s how their society’s organised. And anyway, she died a few years ago. But I had a real wife in Perimadeia. And a son.’

Gannadius looked up. ‘You’ve got a son?’ he said. ‘Congratulations. ’

‘Ah.’ Olybras looked at him. ‘That’s a moot point. In fact, that’s what I came here to ask you.’

‘Ask me?’ Gannadius raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you might be able to tell me if I’ve still got a son,’ he said, standing up and helping himself to more wine. ‘No more cinnamon? Oh, well, never mind. I’ll bring you some up from the ship a bit later on, we’ve got five cases of the stuff. No, I had a son all right, though I wasn’t any sort of father to him. I left him and his mother to get on with it when I lost the White Rose – that was my fourth ship, or was it my fifth? Anyway, when she went down I somehow never got around to going home, and I heard a bit later that Methli’d found someone else, which was her good luck. And Theudas – did I happen to mention I named my son Theudas, Theudas? – he would only have been, what, four years old at the time. They were better off. Anyway, I naturally assumed they’d shared in the common misfortune when the City was destroyed, and I made myself deal with it accordingly.’

Olybras stopped talking for a moment and sat still, rocking the wine round in the bottom of his cup. Gannadius waited until he was ready to continue.

‘And then,’ Olybras went on, ‘this job came up; this business between Shastel and Scona. I’d gone to the meeting about it, and afterwards I heard a lot of City voices coming from a wine shop and went in to investigate. I don’t know if there’s enough of us here, but we’ve got a fair number of people from Home on the Island and we like to make a bit of show of sticking together, that sort of thing – anyway, the point is, when you hear City voices, you go over and introduce yourself, just in case they’ve got any news about anyone you want to know about. I got talking with a man who knew some people who’d known some people I knew, and after we’d been chatting aimlessly for half an hour or so I suddenly realised from what he was saying that the Doctor Gannadius of Shastel he’d mentioned a few times as an example of one of us who’d fallen on his feet was really my cousin Theudas Morosin hiding behind a silly name. Obviously I found that nugget of information mildly intriguing, and I started paying a bit more attention; just as well, because that was when it started to get interesting. You see, talking about you led on to talking about the people you worked for briefly when you first came to the Island, and there was another City name: Athli Zeuxis. That led us on to the Loredans; and then this man let fly with the thunderbolt. “What did you say your name was again?” he said, so I told him; and he thought about it and said, “And you reckon you had a cousin, Theudas Morosin?” and I said yes, that’s right. “Well,” he said, “that’s odd, because I heard that name recently, Theudas Morosin; but it wasn’t a man our age, it was a kid, maybe around twelve, thirteen years old.” Well, I stayed calm and tried not to let myself go all to pieces. “What about Methli Morosin?” I asked, but he hadn’t heard of anyone by that name, just a boy. Well, to cut a long story short, I asked for details and he said this boy lived on Scona and was apprenticed to one of the Loredan brothers; the crazy one, he said, the one who lives out in the wilderness and makes furniture or something of the sort. It was common knowledge up that end of Scona, he said; what with him being a stranger and the Boss’s brother.’

‘You mean Bardas Loredan,’ Gannadius said in a small, apprehensive voice.

‘That’s it,’ Olybras replied. ‘And then I heard some story about Bardas Loredan having taken the boy with him when he got out of the City at the end; I tried to follow it, but I didn’t have much luck, I was too busy stopping myself from falling off the settle.’

‘Bardas Loredan’s apprentice is your son?’ Gannadius interrupted.

‘That’s right. And presumably your cousin, once removed. Or should that be second cousin? Gods know. Anyway, once I’d got as much out of this fool as I could, I went round the docks asking after a berth on anything that was going to Scona. And that’s when the horrible irony of it hit me: because of the war and this big charter deal with Shastel being talked about all over the place, of course nobody was going anywhere near Scona under any circumstances. I nearly burst into tears, I’m telling you; it was unbelievable. But I pulled myself together and kept ferreting away, until I heard a rumour that the colonel and his apprentice had been sent away by the family and weren’t even on Scona any more.’

Gannadius nodded. ‘That rumour’s almost certainly true,’ he said. ‘In case you’re wondering why I sound so sure, Bardas Loredan’s a friend of a friend – Patriarch Alexius, as a matter of fact. Apparently they met up during the war.’

‘That’s what I heard,’ Olybras said. ‘But beyond that, nobody knew anything; like where he went or whether there was a boy with him. And, like I just told you, there was no chance of getting through to Scona, so I made up my mind to try the next best thing and came here. And now I’m asking you: do you know anything about where Bardas Loredan’s gone? And if you don’t, what about this magic of yours, is it any good for doing useful work, like finding people? I’ve heard stories that suggest it just might be.’ He put his cup down on the table and leant forward. ‘And before you say it, yes, I know there’s no such thing as magic, just applied philosophy. Which is why I want you to apply your philosophy and find my son. Your cousin. Or is that too much to ask, for family, when you’re already doing as much for strangers?’

‘How did you-?’ Gannadius started to say; then he leant back in his chair, feeling ill. ‘Damn you, cousin,’ he said, ‘you’re not another one, are you?’

Olybras laughed. ‘I suppose it must run in the family.’ He shook his head. ‘I have a slight ability, nothing more; I used to think it was just occasional bursts of good luck, except that didn’t fit in with the general pattern of my life. After all, it didn’t make sense; most of the time my luck is reliably lousy. I can predict with a fair degree of certainty that when I come to a crossroads in my life where things could go either way, good or bad, they’ll go bad. Except that just occasionally, I could see the crossroads, or turning-point, whatever you care to call it, I could actually see it coming, like a dream, and then if I was quick and extremely careful, I could get hold of my luck and bend it, the way you can bend steel when it’s red hot. If I got it wrong, of course, it’d snap instead. I’d try and bend it my way, but something would go wrong and I’d have made everything worse. But this dream-vision thing only happens once in a blue moon, and there doesn’t seem to be any proportion to it; it can be something really important, like a bad storm or a pirate attack, or something really trivial, like losing an anchor. I really didn’t give it much thought until I got talking one day with my ship’s cook on the White Rose. He was a City man – fascinating life he’d led, I’ll tell you about it one day when we’ve got time – and he’d been a student at the Academy for a couple of years, till he got into trouble and dropped out. He explained the basics of the Principle to me and I found out the rest for myself. But he was the one who taught me how to eavesdrop on the voices I hear in my sleep sometimes.’

Gannadius blinked. ‘You hear voices in your sleep?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Olybras replied casually. ‘It’s like you’re in a house with thin walls, and you can hear there’s a conversation going on in the next room, but unless you really concentrate you can’t make out the words. As far as I can gather, what I’m hearing is the people who can really do magic, eavesdropping if you like, except that I can’t do it on purpose, it just happens sometimes. And that’s how I know you’re being used by the Shastel wizards to play some kind of war with the Scona wizards; Niessa, Alexius and the Auzeil girl-’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Gannadius demanded. ‘I don’t-’

‘Oh, of course.’ Olybras chuckled. ‘Most of it you wouldn’t know anything about. I imagine you catch yourself nodding off in the middle of a conversation and waking up a minute or so later with a bit of a headache. Well, for your information there’s a really first-rate war going on inside your head; even the snippets I see and hear are little short of spectacular sometimes. Actual fighting; men with bows and halberds, ships, siege engines – cavalry too, sometimes, which I find a bit odd since neither side’s got any. Maybe it’s all a whatsisname, a metaphor.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Gannadius said, disgustedly. ‘Am I really the only person around here who can’t see what’s going on inside my head?’

– And he fell forwards into mud; nasty, thick mud under a thin layer of leaf-mould. He felt his legs sink in, right up to the knees, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to free them but he tried anyway. All he succeeded in doing was to pull his foot out of his boot. The feel of the mud on his bare foot was disgusting.

‘Hang on,’ someone said behind him (he was too firmly stuck to be able to look round and see who it was). ‘Don’t thrash about, you’ll just make it worse.’

Someone grabbed him under the arms and lifted; someone very strong, much stronger than he was. He angled his other foot so as not to lose that boot as well.

‘There you are,’ said the voice. He could turn his head now; he was looking at a young man, no more than eighteen, but enormously tall and broad across the shoulders, with a broad, stupid-looking face, wispy white-blond hair already beginning to recede, a small, flat nose, pale blue eyes. ‘You really should look where you’re going,’ he said. ‘Come on, it’s time we weren’t here.’

Gannadius opened his mouth to demand an explanation, but his voice didn’t work. The giant had started lumbering off through the undergrowth – he hadn’t noticed it before, but they were in a dense forest overgrown with brambles and squelching wet underfoot – and he had to hurry to keep up. By following the giant exactly and walking where he’d trampled a path, he was able to pick his way through the tangle.

‘I don’t like the look of this,’ the giant said; and a moment later, men appeared out of the mess of briars and bracken, stumbling and struggling, wallowing in the mud and ripping their coats and trousers on the thorns. It would’ve been hilariously funny to watch, but for the fact that in spite of their difficulties they were clearly set on killing him and the giant, and unlike the two of them, they were in armour and carried weapons.

‘Damn,’ the giant said, ducking under a wildly swishing halberd. He straightened up, took the halberd away from the man who’d been using it and smashed him in the face with the butt end of the shaft. Another attacker was struggling towards him, his boots so loaded with mud that he could only just waddle. He was holding a big pole-axe, but as he swung it, he caught the head in a clump of briars, and before he could get it free the giant stabbed him in the stomach with his newly acquired halberd; he wobbled, let go of the pole-axe and waved his arms frantically for balance, then collapsed backwards, his feet now firmly stuck, just as Gannadius’ had been, and lay helplessly on his back in the slimy mud, dying. ‘Come on,’ the giant said, leaning back and grabbing Gannadius’ wrist while fending off a blow from a bill-hook with the halberd, gripped one-handed near the socket. ‘Gods damn it, if you weren’t my-’

– And sat up in his chair, suddenly awake, with a murderous pounding in his temples.

‘Well,’ Olybras said, ‘that was fascinating. Not to mention pleasing too, of course; he’s obviously a brave, good-hearted lad and he can look after himself, though of course I’d much rather he stayed out of situations like that altogether. But do you think possibly that next time you could try for something a little bit earlier? Say by about six years?’

Gannadius looked at him. The light from the window behind him hurt terribly, but he ignored it. ‘You knew who that was?’ he said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Olybras replied. ‘I don’t know how, mind, but I recognised him at once. That was my son.’