The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

‘I’ll be careful, I promise,’ he’d said as he waved goodbye; but now he came to think of it, he couldn’t remember any of them saying, Now you will be careful, won’t you? Or Look after yourself, Uncle, or Please come home soon, Daddy. Little Niessa had waved, or at least she’d waggled her hand up and down; but Luha hadn’t, he’d just stood there as if he was watching some dreary ceremony in the Square, Heris had simply smiled wanly and his niece – had she even been there to see him off? He wasn’t sure she had been. That wasn’t right. It grieved him.

‘That’s the place, there,’ the sergeant said, and pointed. ‘Of course, that’s where they were six hours ago. Where they are now’s another matter entirely.’

Bardas hadn’t been there, either, but he hadn’t really expected him to be. It was infuriating that Bardas was here, living quietly in the Bank headquarters, making no fuss, being peaceful; but every time he’d suggested to Niessa that he should pay his brother a visit, she’d just looked at him and changed the subject. And now here he was, at the head of the nation’s army about to engage an enemy force that outnumbered him six to one in what might well prove to be the decisive battle of the war, and none of them seemed to care that they might very well never see him again; it was almost as if Heris had said, ‘Have a nice day at the office,’ without looking up from her mending, while the children got ready for the day’s lessons. Gorgas could imagine no more noble or desirable way to die than defending one’s home and family, but apathy on such a scale did tend to undercut the whole concept.

‘We’ll find them,’ he replied calmly, ‘don’t you worry about that. Though on balance I think I’d prefer it if they didn’t find us. Does that make any sense?’

The sergeant shrugged. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how we can fight them without letting them know we’re here.’

‘Ah,’ Gorgas said with a smile. ‘Now there’s an idea.’

Bol Affem, Junior Dean of the Faculty of Military Logistics and second-in-command of the vanguard of the faculty regiment, knew the meaning of fear, but only because he’d once had occasion to look it up in a dictionary. His father, Luha Affem, had died fighting corsairs in the Fleve delta when he was six. His grandfather had been the first man to be killed in the attack on the Jaun hill-fort, seventy years ago. Death in battle was so much a part of the traditions of the Affem family that Bol could conceive of no other way of dying; if he was afraid of anything, it was of ending his life in a bed, surrounded by doctors, in the middle of a perfectly good war.

Nevertheless, the landscape in front of him inspired a certain degree of unease. Not fear, which he knew to be a negative, worthless thing, but apprehension, a sharpening of the instincts and a quickening of the wits when faced with a potential challenge, a healthy and quite useful reaction to a subconscious recognition of danger.

He called a halt and, as the men grounded their halberds and began to climb out of their packs, he walked ahead to the edge of the bluff. There was no obvious way to proceed. If he led his column along the brow of the ridge, he’d be advertising his position for all to see, sacrificing any element of surprise he might still have, and so far he’d seen no sign of scouts or advance parties to suggest that the enemy knew he was here. But if he followed the road through this rocky combe, he could easily walk into a copybook ambush and allow himself to be bottled up, pinned down by the rebel archers. On balance, he decided a little self-advertisement wouldn’t do any harm; let the rebels know he was coming-he had the advantage of overwhelming force, which in turn would breed terror and despair. Let them see just how strong his army was.

He slipped off his own pack and sat down on it, unbuckling the front flap and pulling out his water bottle. It was a third empty already; not a problem, but a timely reminder that water might be a problem later on if he didn’t monitor the situation. He felt in his pocket for the map and studied it; a wavy blue line across the shoulders of the combe marked the course of some sort of waterway, but it could be anything from a brook to a full-sized river. He put the map away and glanced up at the sky, which was still cloudless and blue. Hot weather for marching at top speed, but even that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Let your army march a day before it fights, his great-grandfather had written in his Standard Commentary (still required reading in first-year Tactics); marching exercises the unfit body and regulates the ill-disciplined mind. A forced march was as good as a week’s training for men just out of the comfort of barracks.

He called to his sergeant; a good man, twenty years with the colours. ‘We’ll follow the ridge,’ he said, ‘then drop down into the valley and pick up the road on the flat. We’ll be crossing a river or stream of some sort, so take the opportunity to fill water bottles.’

The sergeant acknowledged the order in the appropriate manner and withdrew to a respectful distance. Affem allowed the men five more minutes, then gave the order to proceed.

It was about an hour later, while Bol Affem was drawing up contingency plans in his mind in case it proved impossible to take up water at the river, that the enemy appeared. It was a disconcerting sight; they simply appeared on the ridge, walking up from the steep northern side of the combe and shuffling into a rather slovenly double line directly in front of him. There were no more than fifty of them, all archers, with no more than a dozen helmets and mailshirts between them. They looked more like a gang of unruly children in a village street waiting to pick on an enemy than a military unit. Bol Affem called a halt, and waited. This was so obviously the bait for some attempt at a trap that he wondered whether they really believed that a professional soldier would fall for it. Where was the rest of the trap, though? Waiting down on the slope, to take him in flank as he charged the road-block? Surely not, they’d have to charge up a steep rise, which would be suicide. There wasn’t anywhere else they could come from. If this was the rebels’ idea of an ambush, he’d be only too delighted to oblige them.

Then, while he stood and tried to puzzle it out, the archers took their bows off their shoulders, nocked arrows in an insultingly leisurely fashion, aimed carefully and started shooting. Seven men went down in the front rank, and another two in the second. The archers each nocked another arrow, took another deliberate aim and loosed; Affem could see them congratulating each other for good shots, commiserating on near misses.

There are no circumstances in all the vicissitudes of war, the elder Affem had written in a passage every boy on Shastel was required to know by heart, that can ever justify a trained soldier losing his temper. Bol Affem rubbed his face with the palm of his hand, admitting to himself that, for the first time he could remember since he was a little boy, he didn’t know what to do. It had to be a trap, but for the life of him he couldn’t see what the trap could possibly consist of. There could be no trap. It was…

An arrow hit the man standing one step back to his left, passing through the man’s right arm between the bicep and the bone. Affem watched him wince without crying out or moving; he knew better than to leave formation in the face of the enemy, as a good soldier should. Affem felt proud, but also ridiculous; what possible excuse was there for standing still, like the straw target-bosses at a fair, while the rebel archers praised and jeered at their neighbours’ technique, made helpful comments about footwork and follow-through. It was ludicrous…

‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘take the front three ranks and get rid of those hooligans.’

The men charged well. They kept exactly in step, so that the points of their levelled halberds made a precise straight line of steel. After a desultory shot or two (though two men went down and stayed down; inevitable at this range), the rebel line simply melted away, the archers scattering down both sides of the ridge, running as fast as they could go. Naturally, the sergeant didn’t pursue; he called a halt, turned about and brought the detachment back to rejoin the main column.

‘Well done, sergeant,’ Affem said. ‘Get the wounded seen to as quickly as possible, we’re wasting time here.’

Half an hour later, the same thing happened.

This time, the rebels only had time for one shot before the charge dispersed them; but four more halberdiers went down, three killed outright, one shot in the knee and unable to move. Bol Affem swore under his breath and pictured what he’d like to do to the cowards, as and when he had an opportunity.

Half an hour later, again. And again, forty minutes after that. And again; this time, as soon as the pursuit party broke off and turned, a dozen or so archers popped back over the ridge and shot at them, hitting two men in the back. The rest of the party turned and charged again; as the sergeant called them back from the pursuit, an archer materialised only a few yards away from him and shot him through the groin; he bled to death before the next attack, which was a mere fifteen minutes later. This time the archers didn’t even drop back down the slopes. They danced out of the way, daring the halberdiers to put distance between themselves and the main column; and, while the advance party were dithering about whether or not to pursue further, another party of archers jumped up quite unnoticed at the rear of the column, killed six men and faded away.

Proportion, Bol Affem thundered to himself. These losses are visible and insulting, but trivial in proportion to the size of the army. If we march faster, we’ll reach the village quicker, and either they’ll fight us properly there and we’ll tear them apart, or they can stand by and watch while we kill every living thing in the village. They’ll be sorry they started this by the time I’ve finished it.

Around the middle of the afternoon they did manage to catch one archer, who slipped and fell and didn’t get up again quickly enough; five minutes later, there was hardly enough flesh left on his bones to feed a couple of dogs. But Affem couldn’t help noticing that the number of rebels in the harrying parties was increasing, and where there’d been fifty-odd to begin with, there were now over seventy-five. Trying to increase the pace of the march turned out to be impractical; if he ordered quick march, the rebels stepped up the rate of their attacks to slow him down again. He’d confidently anticipated being off the ridge by nightfall, but it didn’t turn out that way, so he kept going in the dark – a miserable business on the crown of a steep-sided ridge, but he had no choice; the archers couldn’t see to shoot in the darkness, and besides, unless they reached the river by dawn, lack of water would be a serious problem. He ordered the men not to drink except at designated rests, and kept going.

Dawn broke, and still the end of the ridge wasn’t in sight. But as soon as there was light to shoot by, the archers were back; still slouching and unsoldierly, loosing their arrows like men shooting for a goose at a wedding, running like terrified children as soon as he sent his men forward; at the last count he’d lost eighty-two killed and twenty-six too badly injured to walk, including thirty-one sergeants. The army was becoming unmanageable, with no one to order the lines or relay the words of command.

Just before midday, having covered no more than two miles since dawn, he caught sight of a rocky outcrop just under the ridge and led the army down to it. There was just enough cover, providing everyone crouched low and kept perfectly still. It was a hot day, but nobody was prepared to shed helmets or breastplates. The last of the water ran out in the middle of the afternoon. The archers killed another sixteen men and wounded twenty-one more, mostly shot through arms and legs that wouldn’t quite fit behind the rocks. It was heartbreaking to see men huddled up with an arm or a leg exposed, while a half-dozen archers honed their skills and wagered on who would be the first to hit the small, difficult target. Two halberdiers finally lost control and ran out, brandishing their halberds and yelling bloody murder. The second one managed to get ten yards.

That night the archers brought up lanterns, but the light wasn’t good enough; they gave up and went away, allowing the army to continue. Just after midnight the ground began to slope sharply downhill, and just before dawn they reached the flat and the river. At first light they were still filling water bottles; the archers had been waiting for them behind rocks and trees, and shot down twenty-one before they could be chased off.

Somehow Bol Affem had assumed that, once he reached the flat, his problems would be over. Of course, this wasn’t the case. The only difference was that instead of jumping up unexpectedly, the archers trailed the army in full view, like wild, mad dogs that follow you down a village street. They came no closer than ninety yards, but there were nearly two hundred of them now, and by noon they’d picked off another twenty men and slowed the march to a crawl. By this point, the army were exhausted, having marched two nights and crouched half a day in the hot sun. Thanks to strict rationing there was enough water; but Affem had banked on reaching the village a whole day earlier, and food was running low. Just before evening, he was shot in the calf of his left leg. The arrow passed through cleanly and without cutting a vein, and he was able to hobble, using his halberd as a crutch, but by midnight he had to lean on a man’s shoulder. Nevertheless, he made himself continue, because he knew that at dawn they would reach the village.

And so they did. It was easy enough to find; for the last hour of darkness, they had a bright orange glow to guide them. The fire was pretty much burnt out by dawn, when the archers attacked again. When Affem finally limped down what had been the village street, swinging between two men with his wounded leg dragging behind him, there was nothing but ash and charred timbers. The well was blocked with the bodies of dead halberdiers, men killed on the first day. There was no food, and no cover. Nothing for it, therefore, but to press on to the next village, which was only four miles away.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Gorgas said, his mouth full of cheese, ‘But I’m exhausted. This not fighting certainly takes it out of you.’

Behind him in the distance, a pillar of smoke rose in the still air. He made a point of not looking at it; that was the village of Lambye, burning, and he’d given the order to burn it. The thought that he’d set his men to burn down one of his own villages made him angry, for all that he knew it was the way to win the war. Nevertheless, the act disgusted him. And what Niessa was going to say when she found out, he shuddered to think.

‘How much further is it to the river?’ the sergeant asked. Gorgas glanced down at the map spread across his knees and brushed away a few crumbs that had fallen in the folds.

‘At the rate they’re going, four hours,’ he replied, ‘give or take an hour. I’ll say this for them, they’ve got a hell of a lot more staying power than I’d have given them credit for.’

‘Training,’ the sergeant said. ‘Discipline. It’s what sets your professional soldiers aside from your bandits and hooligans.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Gorgas said, cutting himself another slice of cheese. ‘For a start, it gets them killed.’

They saw the smoke rising from the second village almost as soon as they left the first.

‘That’s it, then,’ said the colour-sergeant, stopping and shading his eyes. ‘It’s going to be like this all the way. No food and no cover. We don’t stand a chance.’

‘Then why don’t we charge them?’ growled the young soldier to his left. ‘Go out there and get the bastards? Got nothing to lose by it, have we? If we all charged, the whole lot of us-’

Nobody was listening, and he gave it up. For the last eighteen hours, he’d found it progressively harder not to think about water. Up till then, the other desperate issues of the march had been enough to distract his attention – hunger, exhaustion, the incessant nibbling inroads of the archers. Now he could hardly spare them a thought. Which is good, he tried to re-assure himself. Nothing like being thirsty for taking your mind off your troubles. He wriggled his shoulders against the hard straps of his pack, which were crushing the rings of his mailshirt through the buckskin jerkin underneath and into his skin. He had a blister on each heel where the backs of his boots nipped against the tendon. He tried not to think about water.

‘There’s one thing he haven’t tried,’ somebody muttered in the row behind.

‘Uh? What’s that?’

‘We could always surrender.’

Several men took it as a joke and laughed. ‘He’s got a point there,’ the young soldier said. ‘Why don’t we do that?’

‘Ah, go to hell,’ someone jeered. ‘We can do without that kind of talk.’

The young soldier frowned. ‘What’s your problem?’ he said. ‘Face it. Either we give in or we’re going to die.’

‘Make him shut up, Sarge,’ someone sighed. ‘Put him on a charge or something.’

The colour-sergeant shook his head. ‘We won’t surrender,’ he said. ‘Not while we still outnumber them five to one, or whatever it is now. It’s still overwhelming odds. We can’t surrender, we can’t get near enough to fight, we’re getting slower all the time and in a few hours we’re going to start keeling over without the bastards having to raise a finger. Craziest thing you ever heard of, but they’ve done us. It’ll be the biggest, most spectacular victory in history; they’ll be teaching it in their damned faculties for the next thousand years. Pity we got to be on the wrong side, really.’

Bol Affem was thinking along broadly similar lines, as he stumbled and dragged along between his two supporters. Amazing innovation, he thought, just when you thought every possible tactic had been tried and there couldn’t be anything new. After this, they’ll have to rewrite every textbook and treatise in the library – unless we win the war, of course, in which case we can forget this ever happened and go back to the proper ways of making war, the ones in the syllabus. He could feel his eyes closing all the time now; such an effort to keep them open, to stay awake, to be bothered. Now that he was being dragged along rather than having to make the effort of walking, he was beginning to feel removed, outside, not involved; it was like being a child again, carried on his father’s shoulders, too small to be any use or any trouble. He didn’t really feel hungry or thirsty; the pain in his leg was still there but even pain didn’t seem to work properly any more. Most of all, he could no longer make the effort to be afraid of Death. Foolish, pointless. It was like the fear he’d felt when he was a little boy, just before he went to a children’s party. It’ll be all right, his mother used to say, you’ll enjoy it once you get there.

‘Here they come again,’ someone nearby observed in a matter-of-fact voice. Nobody seemed very interested. Affem lifted his head and saw in the middle distance the line of archers walking towards them, not hurrying, moving up like a party of merchants on a long journey. He saw his soldiers wearily closing ranks, like very old monks performing a ritual they’ve long since lost all belief in. He let his head droop.

There had been a point, presumably, where they’d stopped believing in survival, but he couldn’t remember it coming and going. It had been gradual, gentle, the death of hope; the slow realisation and acceptance, made easier by the fact that none of them really cared any more. Water, shade, shelter, food – give them any of those and they’d stop and stay stopped. A future after water or shade or shelter or food wasn’t a realistic aspiration, and besides, where would be the point in it? It had become obvious that this march would never end, that somehow this rocky scrub and moorland stretched away into infinity. Given time, a man might eventually climb the stairs to the moon; but no one could ever reach the edge of this country.

We could surrender.

Bol Affem laughed. Yes, why not? In another life, perhaps, the next time round, the next army to be caught like this, in a siege without a city, a prison without walls, surrender might be an option. But not while there are still a thousand of us to a couple of hundred of them; because any minute now, we’ll reach the water or the shade or the shelter or the food, and there’ll be fighting, and when there’s fighting we’ll win. Or we could surrender, right now, we could refuse to go on. In theory.

Something was happening.

Affem looked up again, and saw that the men at the head of the column were quickening their pace, walking instead of slouching, breaking into a run. He tried to see what all the fuss was about; not the enemy, surely, they’d given up trying to engage them hours ago. Besides, he could see the archers on either side coming in close, shooting, taking men down in dozens and being ignored.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Don’t know,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Here,’ he called out, ‘what’s the rush?’

‘Water’, someone shouted back. ‘There’s a bloody river.’

To begin with, Gorgas had worried. It would be just like life, he reckoned, if at the very last moment, when all the hard work had been done and everything had worked out so perfectly, one little mistake cost them everything and turned this victory into a ghastly defeat. It would only take a little carelessness, allowing the enemy to get close enough to engage, getting between them and the water, with the odds still so desperately uneven, his army could be wiped out in a few minutes.

Then he stopped worrying, as soon as he saw the enemy scrambling and tumbling down the steep sides of the combe, dumping their packs and their weapons, hurling themselves into the water. Instead, he joined the line of archers steadily, methodically shooting them down as they drank and splashed.

They aren’t taking any notice. They don’t seem to know we’re here.

He nocked an arrow, drew, aimed, pushed with his left hand and let the load on the string pull it clear of his fingers, then watched the arrow lift and drop into the mark; a good one, seven hits on the trot now. There was another arrow on the string before he even knew it. He’d always done well, shooting from a distance.

Up till then, it had just been the front end of the column; now the main body had caught up and was pouring down the slope like a landslide, like a stampede, like sheep being driven down a narrow lane, like water splashing messily out of an over-filled bucket and slopping onto the floor. They were tripping over each other, shoving, falling and making others fall with them, sliding down the dry slope on their backsides like children toboganning on rush mats; but all they were aware of was the presence of water. Gorgas shot a man and watched him still gulping down water as he died.

‘Extraordinary,’ said the sergeant, disgusted. ‘Never seen anything like it in all my life.’

‘You’ll be feeling sorry for them next,’ someone commented. The sergeant shook his head.

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he said, as he drew his bow. ‘Nobody could feel sorry for them.’

It was true, Gorgas reflected. The sight was so obscene, that scrambling, crawling, inhuman mass – it was like watching ants or wasps, or a nest of woodlice revealed by the lifting of a rock. The only emotion he felt was revulsion, the urge to stamp on them and make them stop moving, put a stop to the indecent spectacle. That’s a point, he reflected. How long’s it going to take us? And are we going to have enough arrows? I really don’t want to have to come back tomorrow to finish off.

There was a raft of bodies on the surface of the water now, like the clogged mess that collects in a stream after a rainstorm, when hedge-clippings and dead leaves get washed into the watercourse and drift up against a rock or a tree root, forming an impromptu dam. ‘How many do you reckon we’ve done so far?’ someone speculated. ‘Three hundred?’

‘Not so many as that,’ someone else replied. ‘Say two hundred.’

‘Two-fifty, surely. At least two-fifty.’

‘Cease fire,’ Gorgas said.

They did as they were told; but they were staring at him as if he’d gone crazy. He took no notice. This had gone far enough. Any more would just be a waste.

‘You two,’ he said, ‘go and tell them to throw down their weapons and put their hands on their heads and they won’t be harmed. Find me their commanding officer.’

Had they noticed that the shooting had stopped? He could see no sign of it. Most of the men who’d made it into the water looked like they were dead, but that couldn’t be right, they couldn’t have shot that many. He looked again and saw that there were men just lying in the river, floating, full to bursting with water and waiting for something to happen, or just floating. The rest, the ones still scrabbling for a way in, seemed totally preoccupied with getting to the water. Calling for them to throw away their weapons was a waste of time: they’d all done that already. ‘All right, the rest of you,’ Gorgas said. ‘Make sure your quivers are full, we may not be done shooting yet. Where’s those carts with the arrows? Come on, just because we’re winning there’s no call for everything to grind to a halt.’

Some time later the two men came back. With them were three of the enemy; two men carrying a third, all three of them soaked to the skin, their clothes, arms and legs dipped a sort of rosy pink. Down there in the river they were drinking the stuff. Gorgas felt sick.

‘This is Master Bol Affem,’ said one of the two halberdiers. ‘He’s in charge, but I don’t know if he can hear you.’

‘Unlikely,’ Gorgas replied. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Oh.’ The halberdiers let go, and the dead body flopped to the ground like a sack of flour. ‘So now what?’

Gorgas put his toe against Affem’s jaw and flipped it over so that he could see the man’s face. He smiled bleakly. ‘Consider yourselves promoted to the rank of acting generals. Surrender or I’ll kill the lot of you.’

‘We surrender,’ one of the halberdiers replied promptly. ‘Now what?’

It was a very good question. There was no force on earth short of death that was going to persuade the halberdiers to stop and get out of the water before they’d finished guzzling it. All he could think of was to make it look like there had been a proper official surrender, and trust that they’d all accept that that was what had happened. His knowledge of human nature suggested that they would. ‘Down the slope,’ he ordered. ‘Form a ring around them, forty yards out, and slowly close it up till they’re all herded together into a mass; then we’ll start pulling them out in groups of thirty and marching them out. And we’re going to need food for the buggers, and somebody’d better go ahead and make a start on a stockade; and you three, start assigning men to prisoner-guarding squads. The gods know, I never expected anything like this, so I haven’t a clue how you’ll go about it.’

‘Hang on,’ said a sergeant, ‘isn’t there an old slate-pit a mile or so up the road? We could put ’em in that for the time being.’

Gorgas shrugged. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘If it’ll work, let’s do it. This is embarrassing.’ Suddenly he grinned.

‘What’s the joke?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ Gorgas replied, smiling. ‘I’m just imagining that my sister’s going to say when I tell her I’ve brought some people home for dinner.’

‘We don’t need to wait for Affem’s column,’ said Sten Mogre. ‘Gorgas and the army simply aren’t here. We can press on and be in Scona Town by the end of the week.’

Avid Soef glowered at him over the wine jug. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Then what was the point of sending him?’

‘The point,’ Mogre replied smugly, ‘was a half-hearted attempt to lure Gorgas away on a wild-goose chase while we made a dash for the Town. I never for one moment imagined he’d be stupid enough to fall for it, but I thought what the hell, we don’t need Affem’s army anyway, the extra numbers’d just get under our feet and complicate logistics, and it’d be nice to have a third army loose behind their backs while we’re bashing them up in front of Scona. The fact that he went for the bait surprises me, but I’m damned if I’m going to let the opportunity slip.’

Soef thought for a moment. If there was a hidden agenda behind the manoeuvre he couldn’t see it. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘But we should still divide our forces, come at the Town from two sides. I don’t like the thought of four thousand men all marching up the same road.’

‘That’s a good point,’ said someone from the far end of the table. ‘It’s the same principle you referred to a moment ago. Too many men in the army’s often worse than too few.’

Sten Mogre frowned, and tilted the jug over his cup. It was empty, and he licked his fingers. ‘Obviously I’ve considered that,’ he said. ‘But the fact is, there’s only one realistic approach to the Town by land: along the heights and down the north road. Which direction do you suggest our other army should come from? In from the west, threading their way through all those rocks and rubbish? Or do you envisage them squelching their way through the south marshes?’

Avid Soef hadn’t thought of that. ‘You’re being a bit glib, aren’t you?’ he said to buy himself time to think. ‘Just how much do we know about the southern approach?’

Mogre smiled. ‘I’ve been there,’ he said. ‘I won’t say I know it like the back of my hand, but I remember having to pay a couple of peasants to pull my chaise out of the bog. Unless you know your way in that stuff, you’re asking for trouble.’

Soef nodded. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘And I’ll bet you money they’ll think so too, and they won’t bother setting up proper defences. Which is why we should send a force that way – picking up a few locals as guides, of course. Surely you haven’t forgotten your Guerenz?’

‘Remind me,’ Mogre said patiently.

‘Guerenz, chapter seven, section four or five, can’t remember which offhand. Avoid the enemy’s weaknesses, which he will fortify into strengths, and address instead his strengths, which complacency will render weak. Always been a favourite of mine, that.’

Mogre sighed. ‘Far be it from me to argue with Guerenz,’ he said. ‘But do we actually need to bother? What’s that other passage in Guerenz? To strike unexpectedly with overwhelming force is the only strategy; everything else is compromise forced by circumstance. And that’s not scripture,’ he went on, leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head, ‘that’s just ordinary common sense.’

‘Not so fast,’ someone else said. ‘I’ve been with you every step of the way up till now, but I think Avid’s making sense on this one. Suppose Gorgas comes back and engages us in front of the Town, somewhere in the high passes where a handful of men can easily hold up an army. Unless we’re prepared to bash through and take heavy losses, we could be held up for days, and remember, we’re on a knife-edge with logistics as it is, this far from home. I hear they’re already burning villages between here and Polmies. But if we had a second attack going home, we could afford to waste time playing games with Gorgas, because while we’re doing that, our second army’ll be in Scona Town ending the war. And if Gorgas just falls back on Scona and shuts the door, it won’t make any odds.’

One of the big candles in the middle of the table guttered and went out. A batman quickly replaced it with a fresh one. ‘All right, I’ll go along with that,’ said Sten Mogre. ‘Actually, it’s a good idea, though nobody’s mentioned the real reason; which is, the purpose of this exercise isn’t just burning Scona Town, it’s wiping out the rebel army and capturing or killing the Loredans. I like the idea of our second army coming up from Scona once we’ve taken it and catching Gorgas in the rear while he’s defending this notional pass we’re all assuming he’ll lay us up in. Now that’s neat.’

Avid Soef went to bed in a foul mood. True, he’d won the day and got his army, but once again that damned fat man had nipped out all the credit right from under his nose. There was also the slight possibility that taking an army across these marshes might not be the simple walk-through he’d assumed it was when he came up with the idea; and that Mogre was well aware of it when he so graciously conceded. On reflection, what he should have done was insist that Mogre lead the southern army – yes, but then Mogre would be the one to take Scona and catch Gorgas, while he was stuck fast in a mountain bottleneck fussing over water rationing and acceptable loss ratios.

Confound it; why did war have to be so difficult?

‘Uncle Gorgas will be just fine,’ Iseutz said confidently. ‘His sort never come to harm. The bad luck just sort of glances off them and hits the person standing next to them.’

Heris Loredan bit her tongue and made no reply. It was only to be expected that the child would be the next best thing to impossible given the life she’d led, and since Gorgas seemed to dote on her it would be imprudent to pick a fight. ‘I hope so,’ she mumbled. ‘I suppose he can look after himself.’ She put the stopper in her ink bottle, picked up the document she’d been copying and sprinkled it with sand to dry it off. ‘Aren’t you cold, sitting there without even a shawl?’ she asked.

Iseutz shook her head. ‘I don’t feel the cold any more,’ she said, ‘or at least not the way you people do. You forget, it was really cold in the prison.

Heris didn’t think she could take much more of her husband’s niece without doing something she’d later regret, so she took the original document and the copy and went back into the house. Irritating, to be chased out of her favourite seat in the cloister by this horrible, sad creature; but being married to Gorgas Loredan had taught her the value of strategic retreats and the avoidance of conflict. She retreated into the office and busied herself with the filing backlog.

When she’d gone, Iseutz picked up her book and read for a while. It was a Perimadeian technical treatise on applied metallurgy, dealing with such topics as the extraction of mercury and the refining of precious metals; for some bizarre reason, the subject interested her. Behind her, Luha (solid, dull, insignificant, tree-like Luha) was dutifully doing his homework. Thankfully, little Niessa had gone off to be a pest somewhere else. Iseutz had finally managed to control Niessa by convincing her that she was a witch who ate cats and rats and turned little girls into insects; Niessa avoided her whenever possible now, and peered anxiously at her from behind furniture when it was required that they share a part of the house for any length of time. Heris she could banish from her presence just by being aggravating, and Luha was the easiest of them all; she only needed to wave her mutilated hand under his squeamish little nose and he was off and away like a flushed partridge. As for Uncle Gorgas – well, she didn’t mind him. But while he was away, it was imperative that she should be able to exercise some degree of control over her environment.

‘Excuse me, miss.’ Iseutz looked up; it was that damned obsequious porter. ‘Is the mistress in the house, do you know?’

‘Yes,’ Iseutz replied. ‘Why?’

The porter looked at her. ‘Well, miss, there’s a man at the door. He says he’s the master’s brother, miss. Bardas Loredan.’

Iseutz kept perfectly still. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Show him in here, I’ll deal with him.’

As soon as the porter had gone she jumped up and looked round frantically, but there was nothing to be seen. Hardly surprising; civilised men like Gorgas Loredan don’t leave deadly weapons lying around in their houses. There was always a heavy blunt object, like a chair leg; or she could hide in the doorway and strangle him with her dressing-gown cord. Both ideas seemed faintly comic. She stayed where she was.

‘Hello, Uncle Bardas,’ she said.

It was amusing to see his reaction. To do him credit, he didn’t shrink away or yelp, but he was visibly startled.

‘Hello,’ he replied.

Iseutz smiled and waved him to a chair. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Last place on earth I’d expect you to turn up of your own free will.’

Bardas nodded and sat down, never taking his eyes off her. ‘Ordinarily yes,’ he said. ‘But since I know for a fact that Gorgas isn’t here-’

‘And you either didn’t know I was, or you’d forgotten. Bad staff work on either count, Colonel. Would you like some of this wine? It’s not bad, and I didn’t have a chance to poison it.’

He shook his head. ‘Not thirsty,’ he said. ‘And these days I don’t drink much, anyway.’

‘That’s a change,’ Iseutz said. ‘When you were teaching me to fence there was always booze on your breath.’

‘I’m a reformed character,’ Bardas replied.

‘I’m sure. So what are you doing here?’

Bardas grinned feebly. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m here to meet my nephew. Is that him, there in the corner?’

‘That’s him,’ Iseutz replied. ‘Luha, come and meet your Uncle Bardas. Your Uncle Bardas is a great man, Luha; he’s a soldier and a fencer and a craftsman and the gods only know what else besides.’

The boy looked at Bardas warily; a wise reaction, Bardas thought, on meeting a new Loredan. Wiser still would have been to run away.

‘Hello, Luha,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Geometry,’ Luha replied. ‘I’m not very good at it.’

Bardas smiled. ‘You and me both. I had to learn it in the army, calculating angles for aiming catapults. I could never get the hang of it, though.’

Luha looked at him blankly and said nothing. ‘Don’t worry,’ Iseutz said cheerfully, ‘it’s nothing personal, he’s always like this, aren’t you, Luha? The quiet sort.’

‘Yes,’ Luha said. ‘Can I get on with my homework now?’

Bardas nodded. ‘Would you like me to try and help you?’ he said.

Luha frowned. ‘I thought you said you weren’t any good at it.’

‘I’m not,’ Bardas replied. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not better at it than you.’

Luha thought for a moment; he was one of those boys you can watch thinking. ‘If you like,’ he said, ‘but I’m not bothered. I always do my homework on my own. Father says I should.’

‘You carry on, then,’ Bardas said. ‘I’ll sit here and talk to my niece.’

Luha nodded and went back to his corner. Bardas sat back in his chair and let his hands trail on the grass.

‘This is cozy,’ Iseutz said. ‘If you like, I’ll send him to fetch Heris and little Niessa.’

‘Don’t trouble him on my account,’ Bardas replied. ‘But thank you for being so civil,’ he added. ‘I must admit, I expected a scene when we next met.’

Iseutz shrugged. ‘You’ll keep,’ she said. ‘But I still can’t get over seeing you here. You must be really demoralised.’

Bardas nodded. ‘That’s a fair assessment,’ he said. ‘Mostly, though, it’s only morbid curiosity. Try as I might, I just couldn’t imagine Gorgas with a home and a family. It’d be like going round to Death’s house for dinner. But apparently I was wrong.’

Iseutz smiled. ‘Don’t be fooled,’ she said. ‘It’s like those toy houses they sell for little girls’ dolls; it’s all perfect, absolutely true to life, all the doors and windows actually open, and it was all ordered sight unseen from a catalogue. Except me, of course, and I’m in the process of being slowly digested. In a few years’ time I’ll probably be quite housebroken. Hey, if I’m really good maybe my fingers’ll grow back.’

‘I think you came with the set,’ Bardas replied. ‘I think you’re the token skeleton in the cupboard, utterly lifelike but made of wax and only three inches tall. Now you’re upset,’ he added, grinning. ‘Didn’t I teach you always to keep your guard up?’

She nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You know what I’m going to do now? I was just going to bide my time, be patient and kill you when I had the chance. But that’s be too good for you. So I’m going to hurt you.’

Bardas raised eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘And how do you propose doing that?’

Iseutz smiled. Under other circumstances, she might have had a nice smile. ‘I’ll tell you something I know and you don’t, something Uncle Gorgas told me. I’m guessing it’ll burn you up.’ She shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘And if it doesn’t, I’ll just have to find something that does. But this ought to do the trick.’

Bardas made a show of yawning. ‘I’m listening,’ he said. ‘What’s this tremendous secret that you know and I don’t?’

Iseutz turned her head away, flipped her fringe out of her eyes, and then looked back, like a young girl flirting. ‘It’s about who opened the gates of Perimadeia,’ she said.

Later that evening, Bardas Loredan went back to the Bank. He was allowed to come and go freely now, so long as he told his sister where he was going. A little clerk from the back office followed him everywhere and told Niessa where he’d really gone and what he’d really been doing. He knew this. It didn’t matter.

He had two rooms, one to sleep in and the other for amusing himself. The second room was large and airy, with one big window about seven feet off the ground, looking out over a back alley, and a midden. It was empty except for a chair, a stool, and a long table robust enough to be used as a workbench. There were also two caskets full of the tools he’d asked for, though so far he hadn’t had the energy to unpack them.

He unpacked them now, carefully arranging them in a logical order on or under the bench, wiping the preservative grease off the blades with handfuls of the hay they’d been packed in. Three saws; two drawknives, one straight, one curved; five assorted planes, ranging from the long, bulky boxwood try plane to the neat little brass-bodied block plane; four spokeshaves, straight and curved; any number of files, rasps, chisels and gouges; three short-bladed knives for whittling and scraping; abrasive reeds and pots of sand and grit and resin for bonding them to blocks, wood, brass and iron clamps, in a great variety of shapes and sizes; pots and jars of glues and gessos, and a pestle and mortar; beeswax and the makings of lacquers and polishes; a glue kettle; steel and brass hammers, bastard, ball-pein, planishing and tack; drifts and punches; copper, hide, lead and lignum vitae mallets; whetstones, oilstones, slipstones; a bow-drill, a breast-drill, a screw-drill, all with boxed sets of various collets and a rosewood tray of fine steel drill-bits; three ebony rules and two squares, one boxwood and one brass; charcoal and chalk; calipers and dividers and contour gauges; an awl and a fretsaw and a couple of handy-looking little objects even Bardas didn’t immediately recognise; all new and clean and of the finest quality, their edges fresh from their first grinding, their faces true and unbattered, enough tools to build the world.

When he’d finished unpacking he took a stick of charcoal and started drawing sketches on the benchtop.