The Belly of the Bow

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Gorgas had seriously underestimated the skill of his archers; there were just over three hundred and fifty bodies clogging up the river, bobbing gently up and down like a raft of logs on its way from the forest to the sawmill.

The good news was that they’d pulled off one of the most remarkable feats of arms in recorded military history; the total defeat of a hugely superior force, with negligible losses to themselves, in a remarkably short period of time. The bad news was that they now had nearly five hundred prisoners, dying of starvation and exhaustion, in desperate need of food and a secure billet. The disused stone quarry was almost large enough and the sides were far too steep to climb, except for one easily guarded track, but they were open to the violence of the sun, and of course there was no water. At a bare minimum of a pint and a half of water and half an Ordnance loaf per man per day, that came to nearly a hundred gallon jugs to be filled at the river, carried four miles along difficult roads, lugged down the steep track and up again; sixty trays of Ordnance loaves to be got from somewhere (Where, for pity’s sake? Keeping his own men fed was a serious strain on his ingenuity); two shifts of forty guards, making up a third of his mobile army. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had a major river blocked with dead bodies, and deputations from the four villages downstream whose drinking water was red and stinking. He was going to have to order his battle-weary soldiers to wade chest-high in that disgusting water to drag out all the swollen, sodden corpses, heap them up in stacks like bricks of newly cut peat, and dig three broad, deep pits in stony ground before they could even think of resting, patching up their worn and damaged kit, dressing their own minor wounds – assuming, of course, that they weren’t facing an overnight forced march to take on one of the other two armies he knew were still on the loose somewhere on the island. Only one thing worse than a defeat, somebody once said, and that’s a victory. Trite, Gorgas reflected, but true.

His rapid inspection tour of the holding camp in the quarry only depressed him further. He didn’t have enough medical orderlies for his own men, let alone any to spare for the enemy; but there were men dying of comparatively minor injuries, and that was a waste. He didn’t have to be a doctor or a scientist to know that unless the prisoners were moved on soon, a great many of them would die in the quarry from poisoned wounds, dysentery, malnutrition, any number of combinations of injuries and afflictions exacerbated by heat and squalor. Under any other circumstances he wouldn’t let such a dreadful thing happen, but as it was there was very little he could do. If any of them did survive and make it back to Shastel, the tales they’d have to tell of their treatment at his hands would be enough to harden the enemy’s resolve to fight to the last man if needs be, to make sure Scona was erased from the earth and rubbed out of human memory. It was what he’d want to see happen if he was in their place.

One final, painful look at the prisoners, bodies and clothes caked in dried bloody mud, squashed up tight together like children hitching a ride on top of a hay-cart; but he had a war to run, the deplorable consequences of victory to cope with, and he’d already done all that was humanly possible. He wiped the picture from his mind and went away.

Back at the burnt-out village he was using as his operational base – more shambles, more mess – he was just in time to hear the depressing news from his commissariat; yes, there were plenty of arrows, bows, shoes, food, everything he desperately needed, but there were only seven roadworthy wagons available to transport them, and the journey would take them a day and a half. Which did he want first? Arrows, without which his men couldn’t fight? Shoes, without which they couldn’t march, unless he ordered his victorious army to hobble and squelch their way across Scona in the footwear they’d been wading through mud and water in? Food? His choice. Oh, and by the way, Sten Mogre is marching on Scona Town; if you’re really quick, you might just catch up with him before he burns it to the ground.

Having obtained the raw materials, Bardas started to build the bow.

First, he put the fresh sinew up on the window ledge to dry in the sun. Then he mixed the sizing glue (fortunately he had plenty of sawdust to thicken it with) and pinned the rawhide up on boards to cure. Even in this heat, these three ingredients needed to be left alone for a few days before he could go any further. Fortunately, there was plenty more to be getting on with.

He made the wooden core, to which the back and belly would be glued. Among the billets of suitable wood he’d been supplied with (sent straight from the Bank’s own bow-factory, hand-selected by the superintendent; nothing too good for a Loredan) was a fine, straight-grained mulberry blank, taken from an old, fat tree, which he worked down with the drawknife and the plane into an even half-inch-thick square section some fifty-five inches long. When he was happy with it, he made the bending-jig, a complicated assembly of planks, blocks and clamps to hold the bow in the shape he wanted while he steamed it to make the wood take the drastic permanent curves the design called for. The contour was the traditional kissing mouth, like a full-mouthed woman’s upper lip. After he’d bathed the wood evenly in steam for a full hour, it lost its will to resist and sagged into the clamps like a fat man sitting down.

While the wood was cooling down and taking its set, he cleaned the last few ribbons of meat off the bones that would make up the belly, flicking the scraps into the sizing glue pot to give the mixture a touch more texture.

(‘What do you want with all this junk?’ Niessa had demanded suspiciously.

‘I want to make a bow for Gorgas,’ he’d replied.

That had taken her by surprise. ‘I thought you couldn’t stand him,’ she’d said.

‘I’ve reformed,’ he’d replied. ‘Forgive and forget, that’s me from now on. After all, family’s family, and we’re all in this together whether we like it or not.’

She hadn’t known what to say to that. ‘You’re going to booby-trap it, aren’t you?’ she’d said. ‘Or put poison on the handle, or saw through it so it breaks in the middle of a battle.’

He’d scowled at her for that. ‘Give me some credit,’ he’d said. ‘I may not be much, but I take a pride in my craft. If I build Gorgas a bow, you can be sure it’ll be the best bow the world’s ever seen. Besides, when all is said and done, I owe him. He gave me a Guelan sword to defend myself with when Perimadeia fell. I want him to have a really fine bow,’ he went on, ‘for when the Foundation sacks Scona.’)

Once he’d pared the rib-bones down to firm material, he cut the splices to join the sections together, using his finest fretsaw blade and a narrow scraper ground out of a razor. Cutting the double fishtail splice in each section was a long, difficult, nerve-racking job, one which had to be done right. It took him the best part of the day on which Gorgas fought the battle in the river bed.

Sergeant Cerl Baiss had been a sergeant for precisely three weeks. Before that, he’d been the superintendent of the second-largest flour mill on Scona, managing a staff of sixty men, doing a job he liked and doing it exceptionally well. Gorgas Loredan had decided he had leadership and administrative abilities that were badly needed for the war effort, and had drafted him into the reserves a fortnight ago. He’d just had time to master the basic elements of archery, such as how to string the bow and fit an arrow on the string so that it didn’t fall off again as soon as he took his hand away, when the reserves became the Town garrison, making Cerl Baiss the man responsible for the defence of Scona Town in Gorgas’ absence.

The news that Sten Mogre was fifteen miles from the Town gate with two thousand halberdiers hit Sergeant Baiss like a falling wall.

‘If Gorgas got our message,’ the young, brash ensign was saying, ‘he’ll most likely take this road here.’ He pointed to a squiggle on the map that Baiss had been assuming was a river, or a village boundary. ‘If he really gets a move on, he could be here -’ (another prod with the finger) ‘- by midday tomorrow, by which time Sten will be here, right on our doorstep, where he’d dearly love to be. Which really only leaves us with one course of action.’

One vice Baiss had never indulged in was false pride. ‘You’d better explain,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get this wrong.’

The young ensign nodded. ‘These mountains here-’

‘Oh. Those are mountains. Right. Sorry.’

‘These mountains here,’ the ensign repeated, ‘are our only chance. Sten’ll have to come through them here,’ (prod) ‘or here,’ (prod) ‘and my guess is he’ll take this fork here, even though it’s three miles out of his way, because he knows we could really string him up on the other pass. So we intercept him – he’ll be expecting it, mind, but that doesn’t alter the fact that we can make life pretty bloody for him – and just hope and pray Gorgas catches up in time to give him a boot up the bum. If everything holds together – if Gorgas comes – we might do ourselves a bit of good. If not, well.’

Sergeant Baiss stared at the map – he’d never understood maps – and tried to think like a soldier, something which came as naturally to him as swimming under the surface in mercury. Why was it, he wondered, that everybody in the army referred to the enemy generals by their first names, as if they were old friends?’

‘I think we should defend the other pass,’ he said.

The young ensign looked at him. ‘But that’d be asking for trouble,’ he said. ‘Sten’s too bright for that.’

Baiss shook his head. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘this is probably all first-grade stuff to professional soldiers, but if the obvious thing to do is go this way, wouldn’t he be better off going that way and missing us altogether? Especially as that’s the shorter way.’

The ensign shrugged. ‘You could go mad playing that game. I could say, “He’ll expect us to expect him to do that, so he’ll do that unexpected.” No way of knowing how many double-crosses to allow for, is there?’

Baiss felt his patience getting thin. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we’ll toss a coin for it.’

‘Might just as well,’ the ensign said with a grin. ‘You’re the boss, it’s your decision, thank the gods.’

That wasn’t what Baiss wanted to hear, but if he’d been a soldier rather than a naturally gifted mill superintendent, he’d have chosen the shorter road. ‘We’ll defend this one,’ he said. ‘How soon do you think we can get there?’

The young ensign walked his fingers across the map. ‘Four hours,’ he said. ‘If you’re right, my guess is that Sten’ll be there in eight.’

In the event, it took Baiss and his three hundred archers two and a half hours to reach the pass, which was just as well since they’d been two hours behind schedule setting off. As a token gesture, he’d sent fifty men to the other pass, trusting the young ensign’s assurance that any more than two hundred and fifty men would be a hindrance rather than a help in the sort of battle he was anticipating. Fifty men wouldn’t be enough to do more than make Sten Mogre angry if he chose the other way, but that was really beside the point.

An hour later, the enemy arrived; a great surge of armoured men squeezed so tight into the narrow gallery between two sheer sandstone walls that Baiss could hear shields and arm-guards scraping against rock. That was good, but not as good as he’d hoped. He’d been relying on being able to deploy his archers so that they’d all get a shot, but with the best will in the world he couldn’t accommodate a firing line more than sixty strong, and the pass curved about so much that the longest distance the enemy would have to cross in full view of the defending force was less than a hundred yards.

‘Five volleys if we’re lucky,’ the ensign said gloomily, ‘and then they’ll be on us like a dog on a rat. Of course, hand-to-hand in this sort of terrain will suit them down to the ground.’

Baiss frowned, trying to concentrate. Six fives are thirty, so three hundred; but of course, not every shot will count, so reduce that by, what, half? He had no idea. Say by a third. A hundred of the enemy shot down before they made contact. Was that enough to break an army’s morale? Or would it just make them so mad they’d fight like demons?

(An idiotic war; a bank, led by a baker, is fighting a university in a place where of necessity both sides will cut each other to ribbons.)

‘Here they come, anyhow,’ the young ensign said, and his voice was weak with fear. To his surprise, Baiss realised that the terror he’d been trying to cope with ever since Mogre’s army had been traced had somehow slipped away. Rationalising, he came to the conclusion that it was because there was nothing he could do now, no options remaining except to stick by what he’d decided and see it through. The prospect of his own death didn’t worry him, and the men under his command were proper soldiers, they’d know how to deal with the matter in hand.

‘Does everybody know what to do?’ he asked. The young ensign nodded. Except me, of course. Not for the first time, he wondered what in the gods’ names had possessed Gorgas Loredan to drop a civilian into a position in the chain of command where he might just possibly be called upon to lead an army into a major battle. When he’d asked Gorgas that question, though not in so many words, he’d been told that there were only ten regular sergeants in the army and four of those weren’t fit to lead a goat on a short string. ‘It’s all right,’ Gorgas had told him with a wide smile, ‘none of us have done anything like this before. I know I haven’t. You’ve got what it takes, you’ll manage.’

‘On my mark,’ the young ensign shouted, his voice high and shrill but clear nevertheless. ‘Draw. Aim. Loose.’

Baiss had never seen anything like it in all his life. The nearest he could come to it was a clump of tall thistles, the sort that grow head-high in overgrown pasture, toppling and falling together as one scythe-stroke slices through them. The front rank of the halberdiers had simply gone down, and the men behind had walked right over them; not because they were callous or exceptionally well disciplined, but because there wasn’t time to slow down or swerve to avoid them. Someone in the advancing mass shouted an order, and the formation changed from a brisk walk to a trot, the pace at which a middle-aged clerk runs after a hat blown off in a wind. The second volley took down two full ranks and made a mess of the third; this time there was stumbling and falling over, jogging men trying to jump clear over the fallen and either barely succeeding or spectacularly failing; the ranks behind running into the scrambling men in front and shoving them forward, so that more still went down and joined the jerking, twitching tangle; men wading through a sprawl of arms and legs like foresters picking a way over ten years’ growth of brambles in an abandoned ride; the young ensign, his eyes tight shut, calling Loose a third time.

They’re still coming, Baiss thought in astonishment; but of course, it was the safe thing to do, much safer to go forward than try and fall back through that unspeakable hedge of dead bodies and trampled men. They were running now; no more formation trotting, these were men running for their lives away from the shambles, ducking under the inslanting arrows, following the line of least danger. The third volley hit them at no more than thirty yards; it was like watching water flung hard from a bucket splashing against a wall as they went down in a flop, gone from all movement to dead still in a bare moment. Maybe five men, all told, were still on their feet; the line parted to let them through (standard drill manoeuvre, so he’d learnt a whole eight days ago) and as soon as they skidded to a halt they were grabbed by the reserve lines like fighting drunks scooped up by their friends and made harmless. That was all that was left of that charge; the detachment behind stayed where they were, for some reason, and didn’t join in.

Victory, Baiss thought. Well, bugger me.

‘Stand to,’ the ensign yelled – Baiss still hadn’t a clue what that actually meant, and he remained none the wiser since nobody in his army appeared to react to it at all. ‘Casualties, report.’

‘All present and correct,’ someone shouted back, and a few enthusiastic souls cheered.

Baiss tried hard not to look at the bodies of the enemy who were still alive out in the heaps and drifts of corpses. It was another hot day; if he was lucky enough to live through it, he’d have the privilege of watching them slowly dying.

Nothing happened for a long time after that. Where was Gorgas Loredan? Shouldn’t he be here now, with his professional army, to take over and make this slaughter worthwhile? Baiss had done his bit, he’d won his victory. Surely he ought to be allowed to go home now?

‘The scouts just got back.’ It was the young ensign again, looking slightly crazy and grinning like a skull. ‘Guess what.’

‘You’ll have to tell me,’ Baiss said.

‘There’s not two thousand men out there,’ he said. ‘More like four hundred. The rest of Sten’s army must have gone the other way. We’ve been had.’

‘I think they came this way,’ someone said.

Gorgas walked to the head of the column and examined the scene. A few halberdier bodies were scattered among the rocks, like hastily discarded clothes on a bedroom floor. A little further on he found a mat of dead archers. They’d been backed into a dead end and cut to pieces. In this confined space, with bodies tightly packed together, there hadn’t been room to use the six-inch spike of the issue Shastel halberd; it had been an awkward affair of carving and slicing with the long curved blade, held overhead and brought down on throats, faces and shoulders. Afterwards, the halberdiers had tracked bloody footprints over the rocks.

‘These things happen,’ Gorgas said, stooping down and dipping a finger in a sticky brown pool. ‘This wasn’t long ago,’ he added. ‘We’ll catch up with them.’

‘What happened to the rest of the army?’ someone asked. ‘There’s only about, what, fifty of ours here?’

‘They ran, I suppose,’ someone else said.

Gorgas shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘My guess is this lot was a token force just to show willing; the main army must be guarding the other pass. In which case,’ he went on with a sigh, ‘we’ll have to deal with Sten Mogre on our own. Let’s go.’

For men who hadn’t eaten or rested properly since the night before the battle in the river bed, they kept up a respectable pace in their disintegrating shoes. They seemed to have mastered the quick trudge, the characteristic tempo of men who won’t have time to be exhausted until the job’s done. In many respects, they reminded Gorgas of what he’d heard about his Uncle Maxen’s legendary army, which had reputedly lived like this from battle to battle for something like seven years. The thought of that made him wince.

Even so, it was nearly dark by the time they came down out of the mountains onto the more gentle downlands that lay between them and Scona Town. From this point the road ran straight, with nothing to hold Mogre up except a shallow river and a small wood. Gorgas sent out a few scouts, but he was fairly sure he could guess what the enemy were doing. If he was Sten Mogre, he’d hide his army in Lox Wood for the night and make his attack on Scona first thing in the morning, planning to arrive there just after first light. In which case, he had two choices: to try and get to Scona before Mogre did, shut the gates and stand him off in a formal siege – not a bad plan, on the assumption that Scona still controlled the sea, but effectively giving up on the rest of the island – or to make a stand between Lox and Scona and take his chances in a pitched battle in the open. In either case, it meant marching all night, again. It would be asking a lot of his men to expect them to be able to stand up straight in the morning, let alone fight. There was also the small matter of arrows, shortage of.

Two valid points against risking a pitched battle; and Scona, as far as his sister was concerned, meant the Town, or to be exact, the Bank. The rest of the island was just the view from an office window. No doubt at all about what Niessa would want him to do. She’d been resigned to a siege since this escalation of the war began; he’d virtually had to plead with her for permission to engage the enemy in the field. And that, in Gorgas’ opinion, was wrong. The islanders were their people, they owed them a defence; he’d seen the mess the halberdiers had made at Briora. The thought of that sort of thing happening in every village on Scona was more than he could live with. If he retreated back into the Town now, he’d feel like a father shutting his door on his own children. No; the Loredan name stood for something in these parts, it had led these people to stand up against the Foundation and try for something better than the life of serfs and slaves. It was a matter of obligation.

The scouts confirmed his guess: Sten Mogre was making camp just inside the wood. There was a substantial clearing where a generation of straight-growing pines had been felled recently, and the army was there. Mogre wasn’t taking any chances. He’d placed pickets on the edges of the wood and a ring of sentries fifty yards or so out from the perimeter of the clearing, so there was precious little chance of sneaking up in the night to attack the camp. A battle inside the wood would suit Mogre well, since the archers would have no substantial advantage of distance in the thick undergrowth; at best, it would be another confused mess. His original idea of looping round the wood and barring Mogre’s way on the downs was still his best option, in spite of the disastrous odds. He gave the necessary orders, which were accepted with resignation, as if sleep and rest were politicians’ promises, often mentioned and never realised.

Sten Mogre was usually the sort of man who could sleep anywhere, but for once he found he couldn’t quite let go. After a couple of hours of lying in the dark in his tent with his eyes wide open, he gave up the struggle, lit the lamp and called a council of war. There wasn’t really anything left to discuss, but if he was going to be awake all night, he might as well have company.

‘We haven’t seen anything of Hain Eir’s relief party,’ someone reported. ‘Looks like we’re going to have to do without them.’

Mogre shrugged. If Eir had lost all four hundred of his men, it was worth it to keep the rebel home army occupied while he made his assault; besides, Eir was a Separatist, not to mention Avid Soef’s brother-in-law, which was why he’d been chosen for the job in the first place. Sixteen hundred men were more than enough for the task in hand. His only real worry was that Gorgas might not get there in time. It would be galling to have to kick his heels outside Scona Town waiting for him to catch up.

‘That’s enough shop for one night,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about something else, for pity’s sake. I know – has anyone hear read that thing Elard Doce wrote last month?’

Someone laughed; two or three others murmured. ‘Actually, ’ someone said, ‘I liked it. Especially that bit about the forked roots of consequence. The man should have been a poet, not a philosopher.’

Mogre smiled. ‘I remember that bit,’ he said. ‘And to give him credit, there’s just a trace of a valid point in there somewhere, tucked away in a dark corner.’

Various people made sceptical noises. ‘You reckon?’ someone said. ‘I thought it was just the old Obscurist line in a new hat.’

‘Oh, it was, no question,’ Mogre replied. ‘But the Obscurists had a point – no, don’t laugh, they were all as mad as a barrel of rats, but that doesn’t alter the fact they’d come up with the Law of Conservation of Alternatives when Dormand was still learning two-and-two-is-four.’

‘From entirely false premises,’ someone else pointed out. ‘And arse-about-face and back-to-front. If Dormand hadn’t taken it and turned it on its head, nobody would ever have given it a second thought.’

‘Actually,’ a thin man sitting near the tent-flap interrupted. ‘I heard that City man, Gannadius, say something interesting about that no so long ago. He was basically agreeing with Dormand-’

‘Big of him,’ someone broke in.

‘But he made the point that Dormand didn’t take it to its logical conclusion. Think about it,’ the thin man went on. ‘Let’s say you’ve got a number of alternatives contingent on one moment of choice; all right, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re Gorgas, right now, sitting in your tent trying to figure out what to do. You can scuttle into Town and lock the gates, you can take your chances in the field, you can slink off into the hills. Three alternatives. Now, Dormand says that the consequences resultant on those choices are not truly infinite. For a start, he says, all three options could result in Scona falling.’

‘The word could,’ someone interrupted, ‘in this context…’

‘Quiet, Marin,’ Mogre said. ‘This is interesting.’

‘Likewise,’ the thin man went on, ‘the pitched battle and siege options share a large number of possible outcomes; in other words, the lines of possibility diverge at the point of choice, but then try and join up again as if the choice had never existed. The Obscurists – all right, we know about them, but let’s give them their say – the Obscurists would have us believe in the Obscure Design that overrides the choice; Destiny, all that crap. Dormand says there’s no destiny, just a natural law that keeps the number of real alternatives to a minimum. What Gannadius was saying, and coming from him it’s worth considering, is that there’s also a human element – human interference with the natural development of alternatives through the medium of interference with the Principle.’

‘In other words,’ someone said, ‘magic. Sure thing. And then Doctor Gannadius pulls a toad out of his ear and vanishes up his own pointy hat. Somehow I’m not convinced.’

‘It’s a leap of faith, I agree,’ Mogre intervened, ‘but not an insurmountable one.’

‘A hop of faith, you mean.’

‘Yes, I like that, a hop of faith. Let’s just suppose for argument’s sake that there is this thing called magic, and the likes of Gannadius and his toad-abusing cronies can sometimes bend the Principle at will. Dormand would say it’s still random, it’s just individuals making choices, only carrying them out through a different medium – doesn’t matter whether I exercise the choice by walking through the door myself or influencing you to walk through it, the door still gets walked through, the choice happens.’

‘Ah,’ said the thin man, ‘but Gannadius would say that the sort of event that attracts magical interference follows a pattern. Battles, the fate of cities, blood curses and family feuds, that’s when magic gets used; and that in itself creates a trend, which in turn corrupts the purely random development of choice. In other words, there is an obscure design. It may not be Destiny, Obscurist-style; it’s purely artificial. But it’s a trend nonetheless, and unlike Dormand’s law, it’s not natural. Then consider the knock-on effect, and you can see where it’s leading.’

‘Obscurist crap,’ someone replied. ‘All this talk about something being corrupted implies there’s something to corrupt, an Obscure Design. If there’s a trend, it’s just part of the ordinary trend of human nature, just like Sten said a moment ago.’

‘Ah, yes,’ someone else objected, ‘but a supervening trend, a trend that’s bigger and stronger than just ordinary motivation, because it pushes people around, makes them do what they otherwise wouldn’t have done.’

‘In other words,’ Mogre said, ‘further economising on the number of possible alternatives. Pure Dormand. The State rests.’

‘Talking of which,’ said one of the council, standing up and stifling a yawn, ‘what’s good enough for the State’s good enough for me. You lot may be able to stay up all night and fight a battle next day, but I need my eight hours. Oh, and a word of advice: make sure Sten wins the argument, unless you want to find yourself posted in the front rank tomorrow.’

‘Funny you should mention that,’ Mogre said.

The departing councillor stared at him; there was a little twinkle of pure fear in his eyes. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ said he. ‘Sten, that’s not funny.’

There was a long moment of silence; then Mogre smiled and said, ‘Of course I’m joking, Hain. This time, at any rate. See you in the morning.’ The circle around the small brass brazier had gone rather quiet, but Mogre didn’t appear to have noticed any change in mood. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘where he’d got to? Ah, yes-’

Revision. Ack.

Machaera looked up at the guttering candle, then back at the page in front of her. Sometimes a momentary break in eye contact with the book helped jolt her out of drowsiness. This time it didn’t look like it had worked. She’d read the same twenty lines at least five times now, and still it didn’t mean anything to her.

She tried again.

Although, in refuting the foolish and frivolous claims of Maddianus and his fellow adherents to the so-called Doctrine of the Obscure Design, I have in part sought to disallow the notion that the number of such possible alternatives is restricted through the agency and at the whim of an unknown and imperceptible supervening external agency-

Machaera’s head nodded forward onto her chest. She snored-

– And was sitting in darkness, looking down into a circle of light. To be more precise, she was balanced on a rickety folding stool that wobbled as she shifted her weight slightly. The canvas top sagged at one corner, and as she tried to get away from the sag she felt the material tear a little more. She sat perfectly still, and tried to make out her surroundings.

There seemed to be two circles; an inner circle of men sitting round a glowing brazier, whose light and heat scarcely leaked past them; and an outer circle, dim silhouettes of heads and shoulders at the back of the tent (I’m in a tent, she realised. I haven’t been in a tent since I was seven, and it wasn’t this kind of tent), of whom she was apparently one. Directly opposite her in the inner circle, just visible between the heads of two other men with their backs to her, was a face she recognised. Everybody who’d been to see the army off would recognise that face. General Mogre. Presumably she was eavesdropping on a council of war. Fascinated, she craned her neck as far forward as she could without further provoking her derelict stool, and tried to catch what the great man was saying.

‘It’s all in Dormand,’ said General Mogre. ‘Everything you ever need to know about anything; you look in Dormand long enough, you’ll find the answer.’

(Rubbish, Machaera said; but here, the words only sounded inside her own head. And I should know; I’m reading the horrid thing, right now.)

‘Let’s hope Gorgas hasn’t got a copy,’ said one of the men with his back to her. ‘Assuming he can read, that is.’

‘I’ll bet you Niessa’s read it,’ someone she couldn’t quite see chimed in. ‘Though I see her more as a disciple of the sainted Maddianus. The complete witch, in fact.’

Sten Mogre grinned. ‘Maybe that’s why she had Patriarch Alexius kidnapped,’ he said. ‘To explain the long words to her.’

‘It’s a nice picture,’ someone else said. ‘You can just see her, flicking through trying to find the recipes for love potions and raising-storms-at-sea-made-simple.’

‘Probably reckons it’s written in code,’ said another. ‘You know the sort of thing, pick out every sixth word and it’ll spell out the true message.’

(I must try that, Machaera said.

It’s been tried, replied the person next to her. Doesn’t work. At least, it makes as much sense as reading the whole thing, but that’s not saying much.

Who are you? Machaera asked.

Alexius. You’re that star pupil of Gannadius’, aren’t you?

I – Machaera couldn’t think what to say. It’s an honour to meet you, she mumbled.

You think so? Good gods. By the way, Gannadius is over there somewhere. Hello, Gannadius.

Hello yourself. And hello, Machaera. Shouldn’t you be revising Dormand? Though I suppose this almost counts. Alexius, what in the gods’ names are we doing here? I don’t understand. This can’t be a crucial turning point, they’re just talking horse manure about abstract philosophy.)

‘To get back to what we were talking about,’ said a thin man. ‘You should read what this fellow Gannadius wrote. It really does make a lot of sense.’

(Horse manure? Alexius said.

Oh, be quiet. Actually, it was. Pure drivel, from start to finish. You wouldn’t want me to tell these lunatics the truth, would you?

Hush, someone said.)

‘The heart of the problem as I see it,’ one of the inner circle said, ‘is identifying your crucial moment. Well, how do you recognise the things? All right, let’s suppose that Huic over there stays here another half hour, then goes back to his tent. On his way he trips over a guy-rope and pulls a muscle. In the battle tomorrow, that pulled muscle slows him up just a fraction at a crucial moment, his unit just fails to make its ground in time, and in consequence we lose a battle we’d have won if he’d gone to his tent five minutes earlier or five minutes later. Suppose one of us says something about the operation of the Principle that burrows its way into the back of Sten’s mind and influences him in some minor way when he’s making a decision tomorrow. Suppose if I leave here in two minutes’ time for a piss, I’ll be outside at precisely the moment Gorgas and his army try to sneak past us, and I’ll just catch the faint echo of someone coughing, or see the moonlight on a belt buckle. All right so far? Very good. Now, suppose I’m a wizard or a witch, trying to find the crucial moment so I can prise it open and make things happen differently. How’m I going to know that was the crucial moment? Chances are I’ll be snooping round Gorgas while he’s trying to figure out what he should do, or else I’ll be at the battle itself. And of course, I’ll find heaps and heaps of crucial moments there, because every damn moment’s a crucial moment, or it could be. At this precise moment, maybe there’s a crucial moment going on wherever Gorgas is, and there’s a whole mob of wizards and witches crowding round him playing tug-o’-war. Now they can’t be there and here; but if they change his critical moment, who’s to say my crucial moment’s still going to be crucial? Like, if they make Gorgas go a different way round the wood, then when I leave this tent he won’t be there for me to see.’

Sten Mogre nodded. ‘What you’re saying is,’ he said, ‘either magic can’t work, because there’s no real economy of alternatives and Dormand is a pack of nonsense, or every moment is crucial, in which case it doesn’t matter where your witches and wizards stop and peel off the skin, they’ll always find a point where they can change everything. Avert, you should have been a lawyer, not a soldier.’

‘I wasn’t saying either of those,’ the man called Avert replied. ‘I was just pointing out something you’ve got to address if you want to believe in magic.’

‘Which you don’t, presumably.’

‘I try and keep an open mind, actually.’

(If he calls me a witch one more time, someone said, I’ll smack his head, even if I’m not really here.

Niessa Loredan, Alexius whispered. Machaera shuddered a little. It’s all right, Alexius went on, for some reason we’re all very polite here, nobody tries to stab anybody else or bully them into betraying secrets. It’s quite the nicest, friendliest war you ever heard of. Isn’t that right, Gannadius? For instance, Gannadius and I are on opposite sides.

Oh, Machaera said. Isn’t that awkward? I thought you were friends.

We are, Gannadius said. But we aren’t really here, so it doesn’t matter.

Speak for yourself, interrupted the voice that had said, ‘Hush!’ a while back. I’m Vetriz Auzeil, by the way. And I’m definitely here.

Excuse me, Machaera said. But does any of you know, if we’re here, why we’re here?)

Sten Mogre suddenly yawned and stretched. ‘That’s enough of that for tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ll finish this discussion tomorrow, in Scona Town. Everybody clear about what they’re doing?’

‘Actually-’ someone replied.

(I think we just decided the result of the war. Gannadius said. Any idea who won?)

– And found himself sitting upright in bed, with a pain in his temples that made him cry out loud. For some reason he felt cold and frightened, as if he’d just seen some horrible accident in the street. ‘Machaera?’ he said aloud, not really knowing why.

He climbed slowly out of bed and looked out of the window; still pitch dark outside, and the night-light was only just over half gone. He flopped down into his chair and reached for the wine jug.

Magic, he thought, someone’s been making me do magic. For some reason, he felt sick. He swallowed three mouthfuls of wine, stood up again and washed his face and hands thoroughly in the big stone bowl by his bed. He felt an urgent need for light; he had three candles and an oil-lamp in the room as well as the night-light, and he lit them all. It helped a little.

There was a knock at the door. He opened it.

‘Machaera?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

She looked up at him with those terribly young, rather gormless eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I had a dream-’

Gannadius stepped out into the passage and looked both ways. Middle-aged teachers weren’t encouraged to receive young female students in their quarters in the small hours of the morning. ‘I know,’ he said, drawing her inside and closing the door. ‘Can you remember what it was?’

She nodded. ‘I think so,’ she added, picking at the edges of her fingernails. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Oh, sit down, for pity’s sake.’ Gannadius found his slippers and eased his feet into them, then slouched down opposite her and poured himself another drink. He didn’t offer her one. ‘All I can remember is waking up hearing you asking a question,’ he said. ‘By the way, does your head hurt?’

She nodded. ‘A bit,’ she said.

‘A bit. Fine. Tell me what you remember about your dream.’

She told him. When she’d finished, she saw that he had his eyes shut, his face turned away. ‘Is something the matter?’ she said.

‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘I think we’ve just sent hundreds of men to their deaths, and I don’t even know who.’

There was still an hour to go before the first cracks of light would appear in the sky. Gorgas Loredan, who’d always had exceptional night vision, couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He’d estimated the distance once they’d passed the wood by counting his own footsteps. There was every chance he’d got it wrong. He knew where he wanted to be, but he hadn’t the faintest idea where he actually was.

One hell of a way to choose the site for the most important battle of the war, he reflected. It would be a sad thing if Scona fell because he’d underestimated the length of his own stride.

‘All right,’ he said, hoping someone was close enough to hear him, ‘fan out and dress your ranks. And let’s all hope we’re facing in the right direction.’

My decision, he kept telling himself, mine and mine alone. Niessa doesn’t want me here. I assume the people I’m doing this for are relying on me, but I don’t know that; for all I really know, they’re welcoming the halberdiers as liberators. The only thing I’ve relied on in making my decision is my sense of what’s right. My sense, for gods’ sakes. That’s comedy.

He closed his eyes. For Bardas; for Niessa; for Luha and little Niessa; for Iseutz and Heris; for them, whether they wanted his help or not. For us and what’s ours, right or wrong. Never, not once, have I ever regretted anything I’ve done, I stand by it all, and I suppose this is where it all gets put to the test. Victory will be vindication of what I once did and all I’ve done since. Well. We shall see.

And then the sun rose on Sten Mogre’s army.