The Escapement

15

To punish the Cure Doce for the cowardly and unprovoked attack on Duke Valens, General Daurenja sent six thousand cavalry into their territory with instructions to do as much damage as possible in the course of a week. The expeditionary force was made up about equally of Eremians and Vadani, under the command of Colonel Miel Ducas.

As soon as he crossed the border, the Ducas divided his army up into three squadrons. Two of these he entrusted to seasoned Vadani officers; the third he led himself. He had a reliable map of the border country, with all the principal farmsteads marked. His orders to the two subordinate commands were to kill everybody they found, secure any stocks of food they might encounter, and burn the buildings. He set a schedule and arranged a rendezvous where the three squadrons would meet up before returning to allied territory.

The first farm on his itinerary was tucked away in the seam of a river valley. He attacked at dawn, aiming to catch the enemy at morning milking; that way, the herd would have been brought in to the main sheds, saving his men the trouble of rounding them up, and the farm workers would likewise be conveniently assembled in one place: the men and boys in the sheds, the women in the kitchens, fixing the men's breakfast.

Two thousand men were far too many for such a straightforward operation, and excessive numbers would simply get in the way. Accordingly, he drew up eighteen hundred of his men in a tight cordon around the perimeter of the home meadows, to pick up stragglers, and divided the remaining two hundred into five units of forty. The best available intelligence put the number of people living on the farm at sixty. Time was of the essence-as the Ducas put it, they had a lot of work to do in just seven days-as was thoroughness; given their tight schedule (six farms a day for seven days), it was imperative that no survivors escape to raise the alarm at the neighbouring farmsteads.

Everything went well. All five units were able to approach without being seen, thanks to the cover of the farm buildings. Squads one, two and three surrounded the sheds, burst in and killed all the men in just over three minutes. Simultaneously, squad five barred the doors of the main house and set it on fire, while squad four secured the herd. Squads two and three broke into the barns and loaded as much grain and hay as they could fit on the farm carts, while squad one skirmished the rest of the buildings, picking out half a dozen Cure Doce who happened to be there. The buildings were set alight, a prize party was detailed to take the cattle, grain and fodder back to the main camp as quickly as possible, and the squadron re-formed to move on to the next target. The whole operation was completed in just under the hour.

As he repeated the procedure at six more farms on the first day-he was so far ahead of schedule that he found he had time to fit in an extra raid-he rotated the duty assignments so that nobody had to take part in more than one attack. He himself was the only exception; in all seven raids, he insisted on leading the main strike force himself. By the time they camped for the night, carefully hidden away in a wood on the slopes of a deep combe an hour's ride from the last farmstead, the Ducas had personally killed seventeen men, nine women and seven children. That night, he dreamt that she was standing over him as he slept; he was standing off to one side, looking at her as she stared down at him, lying huddled on the ground, his head under the blanket.

She said: Why?

You wouldn't understand, he said. It's all to do with duty.

Don't give me that, she said. All your life, you've protected the weak and the defenceless: your tenants, the people of Civitas Eremiae, the refugees after the city fell, when you led the resistance. Now you've turned into the enemy you spent your life fighting. Why?

Duty, he said. I'm an officer of the Alliance. I have my orders. And I can't tell anybody else to do something horrible and evil if I'm not prepared to do it myself.

She said: that's not the real reason.

No, he admitted. It's a valid reason, or at any rate a valid defence to a charge of monstrous inhumanity. But it's not the real reason.

She repeated the question: why?

Because I want to, he said. Because each time I carve into a neck tendon or chop open a skull, it gives me pleasure, and it's permitted by the proper authorities, I'm allowed to do it. I've fought so long on the opposite side and I've always lost; it's a pleasure to be on the winning side for a change.

She said: you can't lie to me, Miel, we've known each other too long. Is that the real reason?

He thought before he answered: I don't know. I think it might be, but I'm not sure. It could be that I hate myself so much, and this is the most effective way of hurting myself I can find; to become the thing I hate the most.

She said: that seems more likely. But is it the real reason?

He thought some more, and said: it's the duty of the Ducas to help his friends and hurt his enemies. These people are my enemies, because my orders say so.

She said: your orders came from that freak Daurenja. He sees nothing wrong in rape and murder. Your duty is to protect the weak and the defenceless.

He saw himself stir in his sleep; a movement of the arm, as if trying to push something away. He said: my duty is to the Eremian people, who are part of the anti-Mezentine Alliance, whose leader was attacked and nearly killed by these people. It is essential that such a grave crime should be punished.

She said: that's not the real reason.

True, he conceded. All right, then: when I was with the scavengers, and then later, when I was killing and robbing soldiers just to feed myself and you…

(She frowned, but didn't interrupt.)

… when I was doing all that, it wasn't for duty or politics or in a just cause in a just war. I was a predator, killing to live. Now, you know what happens when a fox gets inside a henhouse. He can't help it, it's his nature.

She said: you know you can't lie to me, not after all these years. Is that the real reason?

He said: I'm not sure, but I think it might be.

As he woke up, he saw a man standing over him, looking worried. He recognised him as the sergeant of the troop he'd led on the last raid. "Are you all right?" the sergeant asked.

"Of course," Miel replied. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"You were screaming," the sergeant replied.

The next day they destroyed eight farms; the day after that, seven more. There would have been time for an eighth, but during the killing, a man managed to stab the Ducas in the thigh with a hayfork. The wound was deep but clean, missing the major blood vessels, and the Ducas tried to make light of it, but his senior staff insisted that he should rest and let the surgeon clean it up and dress it.

"It should heal just fine," the surgeon told him. "Unless you insist on exerting yourself and opening it up again; in which case, you'll lose blood, and that'll make you weak, and you won't be able to do your job. What you need," he added firmly, "is rest and sleep."

That made the Ducas laugh. "Actually," he said, "I've been having trouble sleeping."

"I can give you something for that," the surgeon said.

Whatever it was (he didn't like to ask), it worked; and when she came and stood over him that night, he could see her but wasn't able to make out what she was saying, and after a while she went away. That was good, except it meant he was left alone with Orsea.

How long have you been here? Miel asked.

I've been here all the time, Orsea replied. I go with her wherever she goes. Actually, it's embarrassing, now she's married Duke Valens.

It must be distressing for you, he said, watching them together.

Yes, Orsea said. But he has a better right than me. She loves him, you know. She never loved either of us.

Orsea turned to walk away, then hesitated. He asked: why?

Because I want to, Miel said. Because Jarnac hunted wolves and foxes and all the scavengers and predators in the forest, but now he's dead, so there's nobody to stop me. And they always gave me duties I was never able to perform, because I was too weak or too stupid, but this is something I can do really well.

You're screaming again, Orsea said. You'd better wake up, before you disturb the whole camp.

So he woke up and looked round, and Orsea was nowhere to be seen; but for several minutes he felt sure that he was there somewhere, behind the armour stand or under the bed, like the adulterer in a farce. Then he told himself: get a grip, Orsea's dead, Valens had him killed, and that wasn't your fault, either. Even so, when he breathed on the polished steel of his breastplate, which he used as a shaving mirror, he had the strangest feeling that the face he could see was not his own but Orsea's, toad-belly white where the blood had drained from the severed neck veins; and he thought, yes, but why Orsea? Why not one of the hundred or so innocent civilians I've murdered over the past few days, or one of the soldiers I killed for his boots, or even some Mezentine I dispatched in the war?

They let him ride, because they couldn't stop him, but they wouldn't allow him to go with the raiding parties. He had to stay behind with the main cordon, watching for the first plume of black smoke; it made him feel like he was a small boy, being punished for something.

He gave up taking the sleeping medicine, and that stopped Orsea from following him around. He still had dreams, but instead of talking to him, she just looked at him and shook her head sadly, as if to say, I knew you'd end up like this. It had become the fashion for the artillerymen's wives to bring them their lunch up on the embankment, and to sit with them watching the enemy sappers digging the approach trenches. They were getting closer, and occasionally a man who wanted to show off would string his bow and shoot an arrow or two at the lead sapper as he poked his head and chest up out of the trench to move the shield trolley and place the front gabions. Some of the artillerymen were getting quite good-there was plenty of time to practise, now that they'd given up on the bombardment, and precious little else to do-and once or even twice a day, an arrow would hit the target; the head would slump forward, until the dying man's wriggles dislodged him and he slid back down into the trench. The lucky archer got free drinks all evening. The enemy never shot back. But when the trench came close enough for the artillerymen to catch the occasional word of what the enemy were saying, the lead sappers took to wearing monstrous full-face close helmets and breastplates, which the arrows couldn't penetrate. The scorpion crews were under strict orders not to shoot at them (nobody knew why), so the lunchtime sniping stopped and they started playing backgammon instead. Even then, the wives used to say that the enemy were getting worryingly close, and shouldn't Chairman Psellus be doing something about it? To which their husbands replied, explaining patiently, as men do to women, that it really didn't matter, since there was no way on earth they'd be able to get past the flooded ditch, and that was all there was to it. Scouts told General Daurenja that the worms were coming two days before they actually arrived. He'd sent observers out to keep watch for them; as soon as anybody spotted the dust from their wheels, they were to flash a mirror to the rear observation post on top of the ridge, who'd light a beacon. When the tiny orange glow eventually appeared, Daurenja went in person to inspect the progress of the machine trench. He wasn't satisfied, and issued an ultimatum; he also added another shift to the rotation. By the time the worms came into view from the ridge top, the trench was no more than seventy yards from the edge of the flooded ditch, which the general said was close enough. He then tripled all the work parties assigned to it, and set them to deepen and widen it, and to dig a number of spur trenches down on to the flat. To cover them, he ordered the general bombardment to resume. When the Mezentines returned fire, he noted with satisfaction that they were now shooting baskets filled with broken bricks, instead of finished shot. When they told him that the bricks made extremely effective missiles and casualties in the digging parties were high, he didn't seem particularly interested. Nor did he seem concerned when they told him that Duke Valens had come with the worms, though it was held to be significant that he sent for all the senior Aram Chantat officers, and met them in his tent for over an hour. There was no point in worrying about it, they kept telling him. They'd considered the matter very carefully. They'd consulted all the available literature on the subject, and questioned representatives of the Architects', Cabinetmakers' and Stonemasons' Guilds. Having examined the evidence, they'd taken a vote on it and found by an overwhelming majority that the flooded ditch couldn't be crossed in the time available to the enemy.

Psellus raised his eyebrows. "You voted on it," he repeated.

Dorazus of the military engineering subcommittee nodded gravely. "Seventeen to two," he said, "with one abstention. So you see…"

Psellus rubbed the corners of his mouth with forefinger and thumb. "You voted on it. Thank you, that certainly puts my mind at rest. Please tell the subcommittee that I'm greatly obliged to them for their efforts."

Dorazus went away, taking his papers and his diagrams with him, though he left the exquisitely detailed scale model behind. Psellus sat staring at it for several minutes after he'd gone; then, quite tentatively, he reached out his hand and scratched gently at the edge of the miniature embankment. A few flakes of green-painted plaster fell away, leaving a white scar.

He sighed, and opened the book. He'd marked the page with a scrap of paper torn off the corner of some report.

To cross a flooded ditch, he reminded himself, the usual method is to construct a siege mound directly overlooking the ditch at its narrowest point, or, where more expedient, at the point at which it is most advantageous to cross. Sappers then undermine the base of the mound, causing it to subside into the ditch, filling it. Where necessary, firm standing can be provided to cross the filled section by nailing planks to long ropes, which are then rolled up. A special machine (see Appendix Twenty-Six) is used to roll them out again.

A siege mound. He did some calculations, using brass counters on a chequerboard. No, they wouldn't have time for that; and besides, if that was what they had in mind, why hadn't they started it already? Instead, as far as he could make out from the reports, they were deepening the wide, broad trenches, which suggested an attempt to drain the ditch and carry the water away into the slight dip at the base of the ridge. That, however, would be impossible; it would take the sappers far too long, they'd be vulnerable to mangonel and scorpion fire, and even if they succeeded, they'd be swept away and drowned when the water broke through; surely even the savages weren't fanatical enough for that. So, Dorazus and his subcommittee were quite right. There was no way it could be done. If he'd been at the meeting, he'd have had no choice but to vote in support of the motion.

He picked up his pen, dipped it in ink and wrote on a piece of scrap paper:

Allow three days for breaching/crossing/filling in the flooded ditch.

Because he knew they'd do it, somehow; and then they'd face the embankment itself; which they'd sap and undermine. Allow days for sapping the embankment. He frowned at the space he'd left blank, then turned back through the pages of the book.

There wouldn't be time. Surely they understood that. Undoubtedly they had some plan for coping with the flooded ditch; their preparations told him that, even though he couldn't figure out what they were planning to do. But once they were past the ditch, they had to get through, or over, or under the embankment before they could get at the walls, and there was no way they could achieve that in the time available to them…

A thought occurred to him, and he made way for it politely. Reports said that the allies were plundering farms in the Cure Doce country, on the pretext of punishing them for the attack on Duke Valens. Wagons loaded with food and hay had been seen coming down the border road. Would these extra supplies extend the time available to them to any significant degree? His fingers paddled the brass counters across the chequerboard, and he frowned. Answer: no. The simple fact remained that the allied army presently camped on and behind the ridge consumed in a single week more than the three adjoining Cure Doce counties were capable of producing in a year.

Assault, he said to himself; a straightforward, brutal attack, with scaling ladders, siege towers, similar primitive equipment. Suppose they sent a hundred thousand men (he couldn't visualise that many people all in one place) to carry the embankment by storm. He found the place in the book where the author set out a clearly tabulated ready-reckoner. To carry a defended position by storm. (His finger traced along the line.) Light or heavy defences; well, say light, for the sake of argument. That gave him a multiplication factor of forty, reduced by thirty per cent (untrained or poorly trained defending army). He did the calculation. No, not possible. According to the tables, twenty thousand defenders entrenched on the embankment, poorly trained but equipped with short-and medium-range artillery, should be able to resist an assault by up to two hundred and thirty thousand attackers; projected casualties for an army of a hundred thousand, assuming the assault wasn't abandoned until the losses reached the point of critical perceived failure (there was a complicated equation to find this, but as a basic rule of thumb, say fifteen per cent losses in eight hours or less), between twenty and twenty-six thousand for the attackers, no more than fifteen hundred for the defence…

Psellus closed his eyes. He didn't for one moment doubt the accuracy of the tables, but how on earth did the book's author know these things? It could only be that, at some time in the past, so long ago that nobody remembered them any more, there had been sieges of great cities; so frequent and so commonplace that scholarly investigators had been able to collate the data-troop numbers, casualty figures-and work out these ratios, qualified by variables, verified by controls. The cities, the men who'd lived in them, had been forgotten for so long that nobody even suspected they'd ever existed. The only mark they'd left behind was the implication of their existence, to be inferred from the statistical analyses in a manual of best city-killing practice. Extraordinary thought. There were people who held that certain kinds of stone weren't stone at all, but the compressed bones of innumerable billions of fish, crushed into solid blocks by the weight of the sea. He didn't actually believe that; but suppose the book was the only residue left by the death of thousands of cities, each one of them as huge and arrogant in its day as the Perpetual Republic-the Eternal City of this, the Everlasting Kingdom of that, squashed down by time and oblivion into a set of mathematical constants for predicting the deaths of men in battle.

So what, he thought; all that told him was that the real enemy wasn't General Daurenja or the Aram Chantat, but war itself, a truth so profound as to be completely useless. Even so, something had snagged in his mind, like a bramble on a sleeve, and he wondered what it could be. Curious, he glanced over the tables once more, until suddenly he saw it, and was immediately paralysed by its implications.

Light and medium artillery; and in the earlier chapters of the book there were detailed descriptions of each class of engine-the light field engines, such as scorpions, springalls and torsion rock-throwers; the medium engines, mangonels, onagers, the heavy springalls and lithobales; the heavy engines, such as the trebuchet. When he'd first read it, he'd been pleased and impressed-the engines in the book are just like the ones we use now, he'd told himself, so the data in the book is still useful and relevant. Now, it stunned him that he could have missed such a devastating point so completely; because the engines described in the book weren't just similar to the Guilds' approved types. Apart from a few inconsequential details, they were the same. But the book wasn't Mezentine; it had been translated by a Mezentine, two hundred years ago, from a very old manuscript, written by some foreigner belonging to a city and a race that had completely disappeared. In which case, the designs, the specifications, were hundreds of years old, quite possibly thousands; in which case, the Guilds hadn't created them, they'd simply copied them from somewhere else. True, there was a special dispensation for military equipment; but that wasn't enough to prop up the gaping sap that suddenly threatened to undermine his entire world. The Guilds hadn't created these specifications; they were the work of foreigners, savages, who'd achieved perfection at some point in the obscure past, long before the Mezentines had even left the Old Country. In which case…

He was having trouble breathing. In which case, we aren't the authors of Specification. We're just thieves, like Ziani Vaatzes, who stole designs from our betters, which is the greatest sin. In which case…

Before he realised what he was doing, he was on his feet and running: down the passageway, recklessly fast down the worn steps of the back stair, into the middle quadrangle, across the lawn where Necessary Evil used to meet, up more stairs, along more passages, to the door of the records office; through that into the entrance lobby; where there was a wall with a niche in it about four feet up from the floor, and in the niche…

"Chairman Psellus." He recognised the voice (alarmed; shocked; well, understandable. Not every day the ruler of the City bursts into your office like a madman). "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Yes." He was short of breath, and the word came out creased. "This thing here."

As he lifted it out of the niche in the wall, he couldn't bring himself to call it by its name. A name, a common noun, carries deadly implications of identity. Call it what it is-a padlock-and it's identified; a padlock is a specific identified object, which means it must conform to Specification. Or…

"Ah, yes." The chief archivist relaxed very slightly. "That."

Psellus forced himself to breathe. "It was dug up in the flowerbed outside, wasn't it? When the drains were laid."

The archivist smiled, a little awkwardly. "That's right," he said. "Just before my time, actually, but my predecessor was there when it was found. It was knocking about in a drawer for ages, but I thought it'd be nice to put it up somewhere on display. There are so few old things from before the City was built, it's a shame to-"

"From before the City was built," Psellus repeated, laying down each word like a blow. "You're sure about that."

"Oh yes." The archivist nodded enthusiastically. "We can tell, because it was found under the thick seam of ash about three feet down; and we know the ash was left over from the destruction of the earlier city that was built on this site; we aren't certain how long-"

"Thank you," Psellus said. "Please go away."

When he was alone, he sat down on the edge of a table, the thing resting on the palm of his hand. The touch of it disgusted him; not because the thing itself was repulsive, but because of the guilt that came with it, like an infection. It was a padlock; corroded, rusted shut, the rivets and plates welded into a solid lump (pressure of time, like the weight of the sea). He knew it was a padlock, because there was the loop, and there was the casing that housed the mechanism; but the shape and the size were different from any type approved by the Guilds. In which case…

(He shuddered, and it seemed to hop off his hand like a frog on to the floor.)

In which case. This was the original specification, and the padlocks the Cutlers' Guild made nowadays were different, and the difference was abomination; the deadliest sin. We came here (the thought ploughed up his mind) and we found a city of men, where they made things, and we burnt the city and we changed the specifications, just like Ziani Vaatzes, and so everything we've done and said ever since must, logically, have been evil…

He didn't know how long he sat there, staring at the thing on the floor; it had him pinned down, he daren't move because of it. He thought: perhaps there's a pattern, a type, a specification for the death of cities. Perhaps all cities are a mechanism, of which Ziani Vaatzes and his equivalents throughout time are the escapement, transmitting the energy of the motive components to the delivery system-engines, sappers, fire-to complete the task for which the mechanism was designed, namely its own destruction. Perhaps that's what cities and societies are for, to destroy themselves; just as a tree sheds leaves that rot into mould to nourish the roots. In which case, the fall of Mezentia is the necessary evil. Perhaps (he didn't like the conclusion, but he really had no choice) all evil is necessary.

But evil ought to be opposed, which is why we have laws and specifications and Compliance and war engines and armies. So perhaps it's necessary that we should oppose evil, and equally necessary that we should always lose.

Perhaps the only way to win the war is to lose it.

Ziani Vaatzes.

He stood up, laughed aloud and kicked the padlock across the floor. It skittered, hit a chair leg and vanished under a cabinet. The idea taking shape in his mind was so monstrous that he could scarcely believe he was allowing himself to consider it. But it made sense, when nothing else did, and it was all there in two words, so familiar he'd long since stopped asking himself what they actually meant: necessary evil.

For the first time in many years, he felt inspired, bursting with energy. Naturally, having found the answer, he wanted to dash out and start putting it into practice, straight away, before he lost his nerve. But he forced himself to stay calm. Just because it was the right thing to do, it didn't necessarily follow that it'd be easy. He could still fail, and that would be disastrous. He felt the passion inside him sublimate, into a kind of serene determination. It could be done. He could do it. But it had to be done right. First rule of all the craft and artisan Guilds: the easiest way to do anything is properly.

So he walked slowly back to his office, the long way round, pausing to admire the Founders' Monument in the centre quadrangle. It too was so familiar that he'd stopped seeing it years ago; he remembered that when he first set eyes on it, as a young trainee clerk just starting in Clerical Support, he'd thought it was crude and ugly, and the head of the allegorical figure of Perfection in the centre of the group was too big for her body-but, needless to say, he'd never dared say it to anybody. Now he looked at it again, and yes, he'd been quite right. The head was much too big. The Artists' had established the true ratio two hundred years ago. The head should be precisely one-eighth of the length of the body. Perfection, on the other hand, had a head like an oversized watermelon, and the expression on her face was little short of idiotic. It was so perfect, he could almost believe it was deliberate.

But it wasn't, of course, so he went back to his office, closed the door, took a clean, new sheet of Type Sixteen paper, and wrote on it:

Lucao Psellus to Ziani Vaatzes, greetings. While he was doing that, an Aram Ghantat working party was unloading the wagons that had arrived from Civitas Vadanis.

They had to use the crane to lift the worms off. The crane had been General Daurenja's idea; he'd designed it and supervised its construction, and it worked extremely well. The frame, counterweight and bearings were salvaged from a wrecked trebuchet, to which he'd fitted a new, reinforced arm with a chain and hook in place of the throwing net. Once it had been hauled into position, and the arm was directly over the thing that needed to be lifted, the counterweight was wound up to its maximum height, bringing the arm down low enough for the hook to reach the transfer straps or carrying ring. Once it had been secured and the chain ratchet locked, the weight was released, lifting the arm and the cargo up into the air. All that remained after that was to drive the unloaded wagon out of the way and slowly feed out the chain until the cargo was resting on the ground.

As well as the worms themselves, the wagons carried a number of stout oak posts, thick as a man's waist, nine feet long, fitted at the top with pulleys, cogs and a ratchet. Once they'd been craned off the wagons, they were lowered on to flat wheeled trolleys, to which teams of a dozen mules were harnessed. They were pit mules taken from the silver mines, where they were used to haul the ore carts up the shafts to the bulk elevators. Even so, the sappers had a hard time trying to get them down into the machine trench. They dug their heels in and started up a long, exasperating chorus of brays, creaks and whines, until someone hit on the idea of walking in front of them with a bucket of crushed oats. After that, the only difficulty was the very real threat to the bucket-carrier, who didn't dare stumble and fall as he walked backwards down the trench holding out the bucket, for fear he'd be trodden on and squashed to death under the trolley wheels. A team of sappers marched behind; they were wearing the heavy-duty helmets and breastplates that caused so much frustration to the lunchtime snipers on the embankment, and in addition to their usual gear, they were carrying crowbars, sledgehammers and sacks.

The observers on the embankment had been wondering why the sappers had widened the trench about ten yards from the end nearest to them. The answer was quite prosaic. It was nothing more than a lay-by, somewhere to turn the trolleys once the posts had been unloaded. The mules were sent back, and the sappers dragged the posts the rest of the way. Something about the manner in which they set about the job must have bothered the artillerymen; in spite of their earlier discouragements, they got out their bows and started shooting, though now they weren't calling out bets and nominating their targets. They managed to hit one sapper in the hollow of the elbow joint and another in the thigh, but nobody claimed the shots or yelled out congratulations. Meanwhile, the sappers were digging out post-holes, five feet deep, through the topsoil and down into the dense red Mezentine clay. Behind them, other men were emptying the sacks, which turned out to contain sand and cement, and mixing up concrete.

A captain of artillery (Lucuo Dozonas of the Clockmakers' Guild, only recently promoted) ordered his crew to span and load their scorpion. Several people pointed out that this was directly against orders, but he didn't even reply. Since he was still quite new to all this, he had to get out his book of elevation and windage tables before he could wind in the settings. Fortunately, since the head of the trench was so close to the edge of the flooded ditch, he knew roughly what the range was. He gave the order to loose, and watched the bolt lift into the air. At first he thought he'd overshot, but the trajectory decayed and the bolt dropped, the sun flashing briefly on its point, glanced off one of the gabions and hit a man bringing up a pail of water. He was wearing one of those breastplates, but the bolt went through as though it was just a shirt.

Dozonas hesitated, well aware that everybody was looking at him. "Fine," he snapped, in a rather shaky voice. "Span and reload."

Before his scorpion could loose again, four or five others had beaten him to it. Then the short-range mangonels opened up, throwing bricks and rubble. Before too long, they'd killed half a dozen sappers and wounded twice as many again, but the working parties hardly seemed to have noticed. They'd finished digging the holes; they were scooping in the concrete and manhandling the posts upright, with the machinery at the top. One scorpion bolt-pure luck-hit one of the posts dead centre, splitting it neatly up the middle. That seemed to bother the sappers far more than their dead and dying. They piled up more gabions and moved the shield trolley a few inches.

To get the posts into the holes, the sappers had to stand upright, giving the Archery Club something to aim at. Most of the arrows that connected with the target skittered off the heavy helmets (someone had consulted a dictionary; the proper technical term was cabassets), but eight kills were later confirmed, another three claimed but disputed. The posts reared up and dropped into the holes, with guy-ropes to hold them up straight. One scorpion crew managed to shoot the winch-and-ratchet arrangement off one of them; it took sixteen shots, and they were officially reprimanded for wasting ammunition. The next morning, they saw that the mechanism had been replaced during the night. "It was a wonderful bonus when they started shooting at us," said General Daurenja, sharpening a pen with a little blue-bladed knife. "I thought they had more sense, but apparently not. Now we know exactly how many scorpions and mangonels they've got up there, and precisely where they are." He tested the point of the pen with his finger; just right, apparently. "It doesn't matter for the next stage, of course, but it'll be a great help when we come to take the embankment."

The Aram Chantat liaison nodded gravely. "Most satisfactory," he said. He was trying not to stare, but he couldn't help watching Daurenja fiddling with the pen. Such small, delicate movements, such precision in such a trivial cause; and (he wasn't at all sure what to make of it, though it made him feel slightly queasy) such complete confidence each time he cut. He wondered if surgery was yet another of the general's accomplishments. "However, I didn't come here to talk about that."

"No." Daurenja looked up at him; his eyes were pale, almost empty. "You want to know what I'm going to do now that Valens has come back."

"Yes."

Daurenja dipped his head in acknowledgement. "Surely that's up to you," he said. "You make the decisions, after all. If you feel Duke Valens is better at this than I am, naturally you'll want the best man for the job. If you want me to stay on, I'll stay on."

The liaison kept his face straight and blank. "If I decide otherwise?" he said.

"Then I hope you'll let me carry on making myself useful," Daurenja replied. "That's all I ask."

"That's all," the liaison said.

"Well, yes, of course." The glow of sincerity in his eyes was as perfect as his cutting. "If you're interested in what motivates me, it's quite simple. I'm a man of various talents, and my aim is to use them as advantageously as possible. After years of wandering around indulging my intellectual curiosity, I want to make something of myself. I flatter myself that I have a certain amount to offer, and I'm prepared to work hard to earn whatever I'm given. That's it, essentially. Please don't think I'm complicated, because I'm not."

The liaison found that he didn't want to look at the general's face. "I was led to believe that you're rather more than what you say," he said quietly. "I have it on good authority that you have developed a new weapon, and it was this weapon that Engineer Vaatzes had in mind when he recommended you to us so vehemently. I gather he believes it's crucial to the success of the entire venture. Is that true?"

"Absolutely," Daurenja replied. "But I don't need to be in command to deploy it. In fact, doing this job means I haven't been able to spend as much time as I'd have liked getting it ready. But I was asked to do this job, and I accepted, so…" The liaison heard the creak of a chair but didn't look round. "Like I said, it's entirely up to you whether I carry on here or not. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it."

The liaison stood up. He really didn't want to be in a confined space with this man any more. "We would be grateful if you would continue to lead the army for the time being," he said. "We feel that Duke Valens is still weak from his injury, and should not be required to exert himself unduly until his recovery is complete. However, we will require further information about this weapon, so that we can decide how best to use it. You will be so good as to arrange a demonstration as soon as reasonably possible."

"With respect." There was an edge to his voice now; no, not quite that. It put the liaison in mind of the way the fine feather of a cutting edge curls over on itself when it's inadvertently struck against something hard; still sharp, but distorted. "I've avoided conducting tests so far because I want to make sure the enemy don't find out anything about the weapon until we actually use it against them in earnest. With the best will in the world, if we test it, they'll find out. The same goes-no offence-for telling you any more about it. I know you wouldn't tell anybody, but you can't control the information once you've passed it on to your superiors. I'm sorry, but I really must insist. At the moment, the only people besides myself who know what it is or what it does are the duke and Ziani Vaatzes. And if it means you don't want me to stay on as general, well, like I just told you, I could use the extra time."

"I understand." The urge to leave was too strong. He stumbled towards the tent-flap, like a diver trying to reach the surface before he lost control of his breath. "I need to confer with my superiors. I'll let you know what they decide."

Outside in the fresh air, he took a moment to pull himself together. Try as he might, he couldn't account for the panic (no other word for it) he'd just experienced. He knew there were people who went to pieces in closed spaces. He wasn't one of them, but now he reckoned he could understand how they felt.. Quite ridiculous, of course, and he was properly ashamed of himself, but the feeling had been too strong to ignore. As he walked away (and each step he took eased the pressure in his mind), he tried to analyse it. Not anger; not fear. The nearest he could get to it was disgust, but there wasn't anything about the general that could have provoked him so violently. He knew Daurenja had an unsavoury reputation: he was violent and licentious, like so many of these city-dwellers; there was talk of murders and violence towards women. Not that; he was certain of it. He disapproved of such conduct, naturally, but he knew he was capable of putting it out of his mind when he was dealing with foreign leaders. Consider Duke Valens, for example. He'd killed Duke Orsea just so he could take his wife. Even if what they said about Daurenja was true, it could hardly be worse than that.

About a hundred yards away to his left, they were dragging tarpaulins over the machines the duke had brought with him from Civitas Vadanis, which he assumed were the famous worms (strange name) he'd heard so much about. Partly from curiosity and duty, partly to help clear his head, he changed direction and headed towards them.

Heavy carriages, made of big square oak beams, fitted with solid wheels; the sides boarded in to head height with oak planks two inches thick. As a result he couldn't see inside to examine the mechanism. Ten yards away, the machines looked like ordinary conventional battering rams, except that the ram wasn't tipped with a spike or a beak. Instead, he saw four rounded steel blades sticking out of a central boss like the petals of a flower. Their shape made him think of windmills, except that the blades were twisted, and reminded him of the claws of a bird.

He had no idea what they were supposed to do.

Neither (small consolation) did the general, if he'd been telling the truth; at least, the general said he'd never seen one, since they were Engineer Vaatzes' invention, completely new, and that they'd been designed specifically to breach the banks of the flooded ditch, so the water could drain away along the trenches. All well and good; but, quite apart from how they worked, he couldn't see how they were going to get them into position. They were big-smaller than a trebuchet but bigger than a mangonel or an onager-and it'd take a team of twelve oxen to draw them. You'd never get oxen down in the trench; and besides, he couldn't see any fixings to attach booms and yokes to, just one massive steel ring riveted to the front at axle height. Surely Vaatzes wasn't expecting the sappers to haul it down there with ropes?

He reminded himself that the engineer was an inventive, resourceful man with an eye for detail. It was inconceivable that he could have overlooked something as crudely fundamental as how the machines were to be moved about. He considered Engineer Vaatzes for a moment, taking the machines he'd designed and built as a model. On the outside, plain and closed; on the inside, systems so complex that he would never be able to understand them properly, let alone aspire to emulate them. Admirable; but it should nevertheless be borne in mind that the purpose for which they'd been created was violence-in his case, violence directed against his own kind for the benefit of strangers, which was something the liaison was very glad he couldn't begin to understand. A mind that could create something like that must be so utterly hateful that looking into it would surely damage you for ever.

As he approached his own tent, he saw a crowd of people standing about outside it. Their clothes told him they were Vadani soldiers (cavalrymen, to be precise, wearing the thick, comical-looking horsehair-stuffed jerkins that went under the heavy Vadani armour); there was also a woman with them, and a man in what looked like a nightgown, sitting in a chair. They stopped talking before he could get close enough to hear what they were saying, and stared at him. But it was the woman who spoke.

"Are you the Aram Chantat liaison officer?" she asked.

He nodded. "I'm afraid I don't-"

"My name is Veatriz Sirupati," the woman said. "I'd have thought you'd have recognised my husband."

The man in the chair turned his head, and he saw the wound, which he'd heard and read so much about. The man behind the wound-it was the only possible way to think of him-smiled bleakly and said, "I need to see General Daurenja."

"That's not possible right now," he heard himself reply. "If I'd known-"

"That's what the duty officer said," the duke interrupted. "And the guard captain, and the sentries. Not possible. I find that hard to believe."

The liaison was suddenly aware that the Vadani soldiers had moved. They were standing round him, closing in a step at a time when he wasn't looking, like inquisitive bullocks mobbing a stranger. "I'll tell the general you'd like to see him," he said. "Perhaps tomorrow, if there's-"

"I think I'd rather see him straight away," the duke said quietly. "You'll come with us, and then there won't be any fuss."

Well, he thought; the general wants to be useful, so he can start with sorting out this situation before there's any bloodshed. But he couldn't put his duty out of his mind, so he said: "I think you should know that we have decided to retain the general as commander-in-chief until the end of the present campaign. We feel that in the interests of continuity and…"

He tailed off. The silence was far worse than any shouting would have been. Duty done, he told himself. Now it's up to the general. "I'll take you to him straight away," he said, his voice strained but brisk. "If you'd care to follow me."

"We know the way," said one of the soldiers.

They'd folded in on him; he had to be careful where he put his feet to avoid treading on the heels of the man walking in front of him, and all he could see was shoulders and necks. Then they stopped, and he was gently squeezed through the group until he emerged to find himself back outside the general's tent, face to face with two extremely worried guards.

"It's all right," he said (clearly it was very far from all right, but the truth was the last thing any of them needed right now). "These gentlemen have urgent business with the general, so if you'd just step aside…"

"Very sorry, sir." The guard's voice was so high it was almost funny. "The general's not to be disturbed right now. Direct orders."

"I'm relieving the general of command." Valens: he moved through the group like the prow of a ship. "It's only polite to tell him, don't you think?"

The guards had had enough. They looked at each other, and then they simply weren't there any more. Valens' hand attached itself to the liaison's wrist, and he felt himself being drawn forward, into the tent.

Daurenja was sitting in his chair with his feet up on the small charcoal stove. He had a cup in one hand and a book in the other. Spharizus' Eclogues, Valens couldn't help noticing; typical Mannerist pastoral poetry, the amorous shepherd to his love. He'd been told to read it when he was fifteen, but had never managed to get further than the author's preface. Without thinking, he said, "You read Spharizus?"

"Yes." Daurenja frowned at him. "I maintain you can't begin to appreciate the later Mannerist movement unless you're fully grounded in its neo-classical origins. What the hell do you mean, you're relieving me of command?" He turned his head very slightly, like an artilleryman adjusting for windage, and stared at the liaison. "I assume he's brought you here by force," he said. "I take it you'd like him restrained and placed under arrest."

Valens grinned. "Well?" he said, relaxing his grip. "Is that what you'd like?"

"I have no authority," the liaison said. It came out as somewhere between a bark and a whimper. Daurenja frowned, and Valens laughed. "I need to consult the war council and get their instructions. This is not-"

"Let's not bother them right now." Daurenja stood up; it was like watching liquid being poured into a glass vessel. He's got no joints, Valens thought, he just extends, like a worm crawling. He remembered a legend he'd heard many years ago, about the fox demons: country people believed that once they left their bodies, they took on whatever shape the person looking at them expected to see. "I have a commission from the Aram Chantat high council to conduct this war on their behalf. As I understand it, that commission was confirmed a short while ago by this officer here." (Maybe the liaison was a fox demon too; he was trying very hard to look like someone who wasn't even there.) "But you're the Vadani duke, and you're going to tell me you don't recognise the high council's authority, because you're the leader of this alliance. Well?"

"Yes," Valens said.

"You realise what'll happen?" Daurenja was growing taller before his very eyes, he was sure of it. Not broader; if anything, he was losing breadth as he gained height. "The Aram Chantat will stand by their appointment, because to back down would shame them. Your people, who don't like the savages-that's what you call them, isn't it?-they'll back you, and pretty soon we'll be treating the Mezentines to the pretty spectacle of their enemies fighting each other; it'll confuse them half to death, but I'm sure they'll enjoy it, even so. Is that what you want?"

Valens shook his head. "I don't see any need for that," he said. Veatriz was beside him, tugging at his sleeve. He ignored her. "The way I see it, I got myself shot, and you very kindly took over running the siege while I was sick. I'm better now, and I'm relieving you of command. I'm sure you'll be happier without the responsibility. You'll be able to get back to your pet project, which Vaatzes tells me is very important to the war effort. After all, you're not a soldier, are you? In fact, I'm not really sure what you are."

For a moment, Daurenja stared at him, his face white with anger. Then he smiled. "I'm a gentleman," he said. "I'm a man of good birth and breeding, a scholar, a soldier and a scientist. I flatter myself that everything I do, I do extremely well. I imagine you'd describe yourself in the same terms, so really, there's not a great deal to choose between us, as far as qualifications go. Wouldn't you agree?"

I know what he's going to do, Valens thought suddenly; I know what he is. He's a fox demon with a mirror. "Not really," he replied pleasantly. "I think you're a sinister, dangerous creature who lives in a world of his own and believes that none of the rules applies to him. Everywhere you go, you hurt people and make trouble; you'd have been put down years ago, except you're cunning and talented enough to escape." (This is what he wants me to say, Valens realised, but I have no choice.) "I think it's high time you were put in your place, and I suppose it's up to me to do it. I wish it didn't have to be now, but that's my own stupid fault for letting you burrow your way in deep, like a maggot."

Daurenja's smile told him everything he needed to know. "I have to disagree," Daurenja said. "And really, you've gone too far, saying all that in front of these people. It's ridiculous, but you brought it on both of us. You do see, don't you, there's only one way we can resolve this. Otherwise…" He looked round, and the liaison seemed to reappear, like a genie summoned by a charm. "I'm very sorry," he said. "You must be wondering what sort of people you've allied yourselves with. But this gentleman and I have got to fight each other now. He's insulted me, so either I challenge him or else I insult him right back, which means he'll have to challenge me." He frowned. "No, wait, I'm forgetting. He's a duke, and you aren't supposed to challenge your social inferiors, you've got to make them challenge you." He looked back at Valens; the smile on his face was practically friendly. "Isn't that right?" he said. "You're the expert, of course, but…"

"You do what you like," Valens replied.

As Daurenja's smile split open into a grin, Veatriz pushed in front of Valens, so he couldn't see past her. "This is stupid," she said, angry and pleading at the same time. "For a start, you're in no fit state-"

"I'm the best fencer in the duchy." It was a weary statement of fact, practically an admission of a shameful and inconvenient truth. "He thinks he's being clever and manipulating me, but he's made a mistake. I'd be stupid not to take advantage of it." He reached out and, gently but very firmly, moved her out of the way. She stared at him in horror, then looked away.

"Splendid," Daurenja said. "And another insult for good measure."

He cleared his throat; brisk, businesslike, calling the meeting to order. "As the challenged party, you have the choice of weapons. Of course we're limited by what's available, but I do happen to have a case of rather fine rapiers-Mezentine, first export quality…"

Valens smiled. "I bet you do."

"That's settled, then." He dropped on to his hands and knees, a remarkable movement, like putting away a folding chair, and fished out a long rosewood box from under his camp bed. "The man I bought them from said they're plunder from Civitas Eremiae. There's a monogram on the escutcheon on the lid-look, there, you can just make it out. That's the Phocas, isn't it?"

Valens reached out his foot and gently kicked the lid open. "Buying plunder," he said. "That's just about your level. And that's the Erylas, not the Phocas."

"Of course, you're quite right," Daurenja replied smoothly. He picked the two swords out of the box and presented Valens with the hilts. Valens snatched the nearest one, not bothering to look at it. "That's the splendid thing about Mezentine rapiers," Daurenja said. "Since they're all identical, you don't have to worry about finding one with the right balance. I see you favour placing the middle finger in front of the cross. Unfashionable these days, but if it was good enough for Ferro…"

Valens sighed, an oh-for-pity's-sake noise, and left the tent. As Daurenja started to follow him, Veatriz moved quickly to block his way. "If you hurt him…"

Daurenja smiled. "I wasn't planning to," he said mildly. "But really, it's up to him. I'm afraid I can't undertake to let myself get killed for your sake. Let's both of us hope his injuries have slowed him down."

(She thought: if he really loved me…)

She said: "You manipulated him. You've been planning this. You want-"

"You can have absolutely no idea what I want", and it was as if someone totally different had spoken, a man standing behind him she hadn't seen before. "Listen," he added gently, so very gently; you could imagine the owner of that voice tapping a cranefly in his hands, so careful not to break its fragile wings. "The Alliance needs its best general, and unfortunately, that happens to be me. Your husband is the duke, and of course he has my loyalty and my service, but right now I can only do my duty, to him and the Alliance, by replacing him, until the siege is over and the war has been won. After that, I'll go away, I promise you. I won't be needed here any more and I have other things to do. But until then…" He smiled, and she had to fight not to trust him. "I'll do my very best not to hurt him," he said kindly. "You have my word of honour."

She looked at him, and saw something completely artificial, something like Ziani Vaatzes' mechanical doll, except that this one, this unique type, had built itself. She understood, then. Daurenja was the better general, the best the Alliance had. He would take the City, succeeding where Valens would most likely fail, because he needed to, in order to move on to the next stage of his development. Therefore the monster had to be stopped, right now, before he could grow and spread. At the same time, she recognised that Valens had left her, putting his duty ahead of her, as a good duke should. When he came back from the fight with the monster's blood on his hands, he'd try and make her believe he still loved her exactly the same way, that nothing had changed, but neither of them would ever believe it. It would be as if he hadn't ridden to Civitas Eremiae to save her and drag his people into the war; he'd be absolved of that by renunciation and sacrifice, which was of course the right path for the duke to follow. But the man who'd loved her would never come back from the duel.

"I hope he kills you," she said calmly.

"Of course you do," he replied. "Nobody can blame you for that. And now you'll have to excuse me. I mustn't keep them all waiting any longer."

He left the tent. She stayed where she was. It was her duty to be there, watching the fight; Valens needed his witness, regardless of the outcome. But she stayed where she was. "There you are," Valens said, as the tent-flap parted. "I was starting to wonder where you'd got to."

Daurenja took a few steps forward, the crowd of bewildered onlookers shrinking away from him as he moved. Then he stopped, like a ship dropping anchor. Valens noticed he'd shifted his grip on the rapier: two fingers in front of the cross now, instead of just one. He wants to be me, he thought, right down to the smallest detail.

"I suppose we'd better get started," Daurenja said. "Do you want to bother with seconds and marshals? Strictly speaking-"

Valens lunged. As he committed his body to the movement, he knew he'd got it wrong; he could hear the sergeant click his tongue, too much left shoulder, but of course he was out of time. Daurenja raised an eyebrow as he sidestepped, not bothering to raise his sword, though Valens had left himself open to a lethal riposte. He recovered to the back guard as quickly as he could, but it was a scramble, open and shameful.

"No seconds, then," Daurenja said pleasantly. "That's fine."

Immediately, he changed shape; there was no perceptible movement. Now he was straight-backed, his feet just under a shoulders' width apart, right foot pointing at Valens, left foot behind and at ninety degrees; his sword-arm held out at shoulder height, very slightly bent at the elbow. He was a fencing-manual illustration of the circular fight, unbreachable defence, every attack countered in time, with two dimensions of distance.. The sergeant hadn't even tried to teach him the circular fight; it was far too difficult to learn, unless the student was really committed. Instead, he'd been taught the linear fight-low right hand, all major developments in double time, a debate rather than a conflict of inflexible assertions. Suddenly, without fear but with depressing certainty, Valens realised he'd made a very bad misjudgement. The only way you could win against the circular fight was if your enemy made a mistake.

Daurenja smiled at him, and he felt a furious urge to lunge again. That, of course, was what Daurenja wanted him to do. As he lunged, pursuing the straight line, Daurenja would take a small step, not back but sideways, his feet following the invisible circle, and as he stepped and Valens' sword punctured the empty air where he'd just been, all he'd need to do was poke gently, and Valens' own momentum would drive him on to the sword-point, a plank hammering itself against a nail. So, he couldn't attack, and Daurenja wouldn't attack, because the circular fight is all defence and reaction; all he could do was stand in the back guard (which you can't do for very long before cramp sets in, and a fencer with cramp is as good as dead), hesitating, unable to do anything, ridiculous, a joke…

He felt his back twinge. Weeks lying in bed; even when he was in the peak of condition, he couldn't have held this contorted stance for very long. He knew what he had to do: relax his hand, let the sword drop from it like an apple from a tree, then take two steps back and apologise, because there was no way he could carry on with the fight, let alone win it. The only other choice was to lunge, keep on lunging until Daurenja stuck him and he died, and that was no choice at all. He scrabbled through the archives of his mind, every exhibition bout he'd ever seen, every stupid book he'd ever read, for some ploy or trick that could beat the circular fight: all the special plays, for the advanced class only, the volte, the pass in single time, the boar's thrust. Absolutely nothing.

Oh well, he thought; and he leaned forward a little, bending his right knee, extending his arm, edging himself forward into distance, until the needle tip of Daurenja's sword was so close to his face that it blurred. It was ridiculous, but it was the only thing he could come up with: tempt him beyond endurance until he attacked, and then, in the thousandth of a second available, try and think of something. He saw his face, reflected, distorted, in the polished cup guard of Daurenja's sword. So much distortion, he could barely see the grotesque red swelling around the wound: lies that rectify, two wrongs making a right, necessary-

Daurenja moved his hand. It was just a little twitch. The proper name for it was the stramazone; using the tip of the rapier to scratch a cut. No force; but the pain of the sharp point in the inflamed mound around the wound stunned him. He heard his sword clatter on the ground-his eyes were closed-and a fraction of a second later, the ground hit him. The other noise was someone screaming. He had a pretty good idea who that was; but he didn't associate the sound with himself particularly. His brain seemed to clench tight, and that was forcing the air out of him, a simple mechanical process.

"Get the doctor," a voice said; a calm, safe voice, a sensible friend not yielding to panic. He thought: I've lost. That's Daurenja's voice, and I'm grateful to him for making them get the doctor. Then the pain flooded out that thought too, and there was no space left in his head for anything. "I'm sorry," Daurenja was saying. "I really didn't want to cause him so much pain, but you'll appreciate, I had to stop it somehow." He smiled. It was almost charming. "My fault," he said. "I overestimated him, as a fencer."

She heard herself thank him; and later, she thought: a compassionate man, resourceful, he stopped the fight without doing any lasting damage. I owe him my husband's life. A good man; he turned pain to his advantage, but he used it to save the life of his enemy. What was the phrase? Necessary evil.

She didn't go back to the tent. She told herself it was because she didn't want to get under the feet of the doctors while they were treating him, but that was nonsense, of course. It was just a scratch, by all accounts, all it needed was cleaning and a light dressing. She told herself: I don't want to be there, he won't want me to see him lying there, beaten. That was a good reason, but not the true one.

Instead, she wandered through the camp, not bothering to notice how people stared at her, got out of her way. The truth was-it was stupid, she could hardly believe it, but she had to accept it; the truth was, she couldn't love him any more, not now that he'd been beaten, by that creature. He'd chosen, as he had to do, between her and his duty; he'd made the right choice, even though it meant breaking the wings of their love, but on the strict understanding that he'd win, that the victory over evil would justify the betrayal. She thought about that. Suppose you did a bad, terrible thing, for the right reason, the end amply justifying the means, but then you failed. The good evaporates, leaving the evil behind. He'd risked death, risked her only chance of happiness, their unborn child's future, everything, in order to stop the monster, but he hadn't stopped the monster, if anything he'd made it stronger. The intention was good enough, but the outcome was disastrous, and so…

So, instead, she'd thanked the monster for sparing him, but what he'd given back to her was spoiled, unacceptable; and Daurenja had done the right, the noble thing, but he'd turned it into waste and evil. It was ridiculous, but it had happened.

She went back to the tent. The doctor was just leaving. "He's asleep," he said. "Try not to wake him up. God only knows what possessed him to go fighting a duel in his condition."

"So it was the wound, then," she said. "Why he lost, I mean."

The doctor looked blank. "I really couldn't say," he said. "It can't have helped, anyway. The main thing is, there's no real harm done, it's just a-"

"Thank you."

The doctor flinched, as though she'd hit him. "I'll come back tomorrow," he said cautiously. "Meanwhile, if there's any problems, send for me."

She stepped aside to let him pass, but when he'd gone she turned away. The last place she wanted to be was in the tent, with him.