19
‘Why aren’t they advancing?’ Bosco both wanted to hear what Cale had to say about the incomprehensible inaction of the Laconics and also to reassure himself that Cale realized just how incomprehensible it was.
Cale did not look up at Bosco as he asked this but kept on examining the half-dozen Materazzi helmets strapped to their wooden heads.
‘Do you expect to find out?’ he said to Bosco, still not looking up.
‘I do not.’
‘Then why worry about it?’
‘You’ve turned very insolent.’
This time Cale did look at Bosco.
‘Am I wrong?’
Bosco smiled, still never a pretty sight.
‘No. You are not wrong.’
The master blacksmith he’d been waiting for arrived and Cale showed him a spare helmet.
‘What do you think?’ asked Cale.
‘Good workmanship and good steel but the rust is too bad on this one I’d say. I wouldn’t want it protecting my head. Can I look at the others?’
‘When I’ve finished. Stand back.’
And with that he gave each of the six Materrazi helmets a ferocious set of blows with one of the curved Laconic swords. ‘Help me take them off,’ he said to the blacksmith when he’d finished. Three had held up well, one was damaged, two had been broken through.
‘By tomorrow we should have a couple of thousand of these delivered.’
‘In the same condition?’
‘Probably. Not sure.’ He gestured at the helmets that he’d pierced.
‘Can you repair them – weld an iron plate to the top.’
The blacksmith examined them carefully for a full minute.
‘Master, I think I could do something to strengthen them. How long do I have?’
‘I don’t know. A couple of days, at least, maybe longer. Do them as quickly as you can. Order in as many smiths as you can get here. The first batch will be here this afternoon. The Quartermaster has been told to give you everything you need. Come direct to me if there are problems. You’re not to go through anyone else. Understand?’
The blacksmith looked at Bosco. Cale thought about making a point and decided against it. Bosco nodded.
‘Yes, master.’
After he’d left Bosco could not stop himself from asking: ‘Why do you need the dogs?’
‘When I was in the veldt the Folk always left a dead animal in the water tanks to make life awkward. If there was a well they’d leave one there too.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t see,’ said Cale. ‘With standing water you can’t hide the fact it’s poisoned because of the smell. The Laconics are taking their water from the stream that runs past their camp. The dogs are going in upstream where the Laconics won’t be able to smell anything.’
‘If it’s running water the poison will be diluted.’
‘Yes.’
‘The Redeemers at Silbury Hill all had the squits and they still won.’
‘Yes.’
‘You know that poisoning water is a mortal sin?’
‘Then it’s lucky for me I have no soul.’
The twelve dead dogs turned into eight dead pigs and a box of pigeons all suitably rancid and carefully placed by Vague Henri and twenty Purgators as close to the Laconic camp as they dared. In the middle of the night in freezing water and handling large amounts of putrid animal it was as pleasant a task as you might imagine.
Four days had passed and still there was no movement from the Laconics. The state of the helmets brought by Vague Henri could have been better, could have been worse and the smiths were well on the way to Cale’s lowest target of two thousand strengthened helmets.
‘Will you discuss your tactics with me now?’ Cale was thrown a little by Bosco’s cool but respectful tone. He considered stalling not because his tactics were unready but simply in order to be awkward. On the other hand much as he hated Bosco he was, besides Vague Henri, the only person who could properly appreciate his brilliance. Besides, he wanted to test it out against his old master and Princeps. It had been Princeps who had won the actual victory of mud and violence at Silbury even if the campaign had been planned by Cale. He was sure that his plans to destroy the Materazzi at Silbury would have worked no matter who was in command but after they’d made such a ballsucking tooze out of the whole battle how could you tell for sure? Granted he had made mistakes on the veldt but nobody was perfect and he’d learnt from them and the Folk were now banged up on their miserable prairie and not a squeak out of them in two months. Still, he could not afford a mistake against the Laconics. He needed to test his ideas but only against people he respected. And with the exception of Vague Henri the people he respected he also hated.
So it was that sensitive to criticism and also pleased with himself, Cale set out the map of his plans to defeat the strongest army the Laconics had ever put into the field at one time and whose record of loss under such circumstances was unrecorded, presumably because it had never happened.
‘The Laconics move more easily and quickly than any soldiers I’ve ever seen or read about. From the bluff I could see they only strengthened the right wing of their attack two minutes before they struck – that’s where they break their opponents. They have their best men on the right and in a moment they move men out of the middle and are suddenly twice as strong where they’re already strongest.’
‘And so?’ said Bosco.
‘We must double the strength on the left.’
‘Simple as that?’ said Princeps.
‘Not so simple.’ He didn’t mind this, Cale, a good question he had an answer to. ‘Make them this deep without preparation and they just become a crowd – pushing and shoving and falling over each other. I’ve had them practising twelve hours a day to do it this deep. The more the Laconics delay an attack the better we get.’
‘And the helmets.’
‘There are only enough to go four deep on the right and two deep on the rest of the line.’
‘Isn’t there any chance to get more?’
‘No. Most of them rusted out in the open. The ones we saved were buried deep in the pile. It was a great waste leaving them there.’
There was a silence enjoyed by Cale but not by Bosco or Princeps, though it was hardly their fault. ‘In any case, if the Laconics break through further than four deep on the right I don’t think we’d have much chance anyway. We lost so easily at Eight Martyrs because the late Van Owen, God rest his soul, was kind enough to plan to their every advantage.’
‘And you won’t?’ said Princeps.
‘No. If they do come on and avoid attacking the Heights then there’s a point here where I’ll try to fight.’ He placed a finger on the map.
‘It looks as flat as Eight Martyrs,’ said Princeps.
‘But it isn’t. I noticed when I went through here and I’ve ridden over it half a dozen times since. The rise here in the middle of the plain, it’s really gradual but it deceives. It’s much more like a hill than it looks and it cuts the plain in two. You couldn’t advance an army in a line down here like at Eight Martyrs – you’ve got to go one way or the other. I’m building a stockade on this rise for bowmen – the Laconics won’t make it to the clashing point without taking twice the dead and wounded they did before. And I think I can make it worse. Over here is the slope of the Golan – too steep and far away for archers. I need to show you.’
It was half an hour later on the plain in front of the camp and the light was beginning to go. Hooke was, of course, missing his hideous red beard and his head was completely shaved but Bosco recognized him immediately.
‘This is Chesney Fancher,’ said Cale.
‘Master Fancher.’ A nod from Bosco, a silent nod from Princeps.
The problem in trying to introduce new ideas to a Redeemer (and what is a good weapon but a good idea made murderous flesh?) was that they disapproved so much of them. Ideas came out of thinking and thinking was something human beings were extremely bad at doing. But as St Augustine of Hippo, the nearest thing to a philosopher the Redeemers possessed, once said: ‘The human mind is poorly formed for thinking. Like amputation, it should be performed only by the highly trained, and then rarely.’ Even Bosco and Princeps, dangerously independent thinkers in their way, were not going to be easily convinced. In the callous way of youth Cale had wanted to use live pigs in his demonstration of the use of Hooke’s adapted mortars. Hooke had persuaded him that, aside from his own squeamishness, the impossibility of strapping armour designed for a man on to inevitably recalcitrant pigs would be asking for trouble. Reluctantly Cale agreed. But not for the second demonstration. For this Cale insisted on live animals. At least, Hooke comforted himself, however hideous the second demonstration would be quick.
Cale gave the two Redeemers a tour of the two sites to the suspicious bewilderment of both. The first was a line of sixteen dead pigs, two deep, with bits of Materazzi armour strapped to the carcasses where they could be made to fit. The second, fifty yards away, was a pen with a dozen live pigs grunting happily next to three large wooden boxes tightly bound with rope.
Having retired behind a five-foot-high wall of thick logs about a hundred yards from the dead pigs and with Hooke having taken hold of a large red flag on the end of a pole, the Redeemers watched as Cale signalled him to begin. Hooke waved the large flag energetically in the air. Nothing had happened for about thirty seconds when the two expectant Redeemers saw a dense cloud appear in the air high up over the pigs and then land all at once with a series of light and heavy thwacking noises. Cale led the two priests back to the line of pigs and invited them to inspect the damage. Within an area of forty square yards the ground was thickly covered in the eight-inch-long bolts from the two dozen mortars positioned about eight hundred yards away on the Golan. Of those bolts that had hit the pigs not much more than an inch was sticking out of their flesh. But even the bolts that had struck armour had penetrated the flesh beneath to a depth of three or four inches.
‘We can put fifty of these mortars on ledges halfway up the Golan. From that high up we can reach more than a mile into the valley. As long as I can force the Laconics to come up the left channel we can reach their right flank at least and probably deeper.’ They asked questions but not many. It was hard not to be impressed. From fifty yards away the live pigs grunted at them as if in persuasive agreement.
‘We’ll need to go back,’ Cale said to the two men. But this time a nervous-looking Hooke did not go with them but walked over to the pig pen, where one of Cale’s Purgators was waiting with a lighted torch. Behind the wall of logs Cale, nervous himself but hiding it better than Hooke, signalled him to begin. He walked away from the pen along with the Purgator but the latter stopped about thirty yards from the pen while Hooke continued and suddenly disappeared into a large trench. There was a shout from Hooke, then the Purgator dropped his torch on the ground and, specially chosen for his speed, legged it over the field like a man pursued by Hummity and vanished into the trench beside Hooke. About five seconds later the gates of hell opened in the pig pen and a vast pit of fire erupted around the animals with a bang! like the end of the world.
Even Cale, who knew what to expect, nearly split his skin but Bosco and Princeps had been so shocked and startled they had fallen to the ground, driven not only by fear but by an irresistible physical convulsion away from such hideous power. In his heart Cale enjoyed their humiliation almost as much as the successful carnage he could see had taken place in the pig pen. He gave them five minutes to recover themselves and then led the appalled men over to Hooke and the Purgator, who were standing by the pig pen, and what was left of the pigs who once occupied it, waiting for their inspection. It had, as Hooke as Fancher hoped, been quick but the damage was beyond anything either of the two priests could easily grasp. The grisly process and effect of executions was something they had witnessed frequently – but these judicial deaths had been slow and laboured – that, after all, had been the point. What they saw in front of them, these bigger-than-human bodies scoured of internal organs, legs and heads was the mark of a power that was terrible but not human. This was the violence of another world and it was ungraspable to them. They could not have been more shocked if the devil himself had flown here and torn the pigs apart with his bare hands.
Nevertheless, Cale and Hooke were still astonished when an hour later, and still white with horror, Bosco refused to let Cale use this abominable engine against the Laconic mercenaries.
‘Do you realize,’ he said, ‘what the Curia will do when they find out about these eruptions? They’ll make such a bonfire out of every one of us they’ll be able to warm their buttocks on it in Memphis. Do you and this loon have no idea what you’ve let loose today?’
‘What we’ve let loose, Lord Redeemer,’ shouted back a furious Cale, ‘is the one sure way to defeat an army who’ve already wiped the floor with you. And if they do it again they can march all the way to the throne of the Hanged Redeemer in Chartres without anyone to so much as piss on them.’
This extravagant but substantially true claim seemed to startle them both into silence. Princeps and Hooke as Fancher looked on in amazement at this fishwife exchange between the great prelate and the boy who was not a boy but the indignation-of-God-made-flesh. In control of himself now it was Cale who spoke again first.
‘If I lose there will be no second chance. This is what you wanted from me.’
‘The time is not yet right to move against the Curia.’
‘What other time will there be?’
It was not possible to disagree and once Bosco realized that everything he had worked towards for thirty years had come to the great pinch of action he said little more. If it was not now it would be never.
‘We must go now if we are to prepare events in Chartres. If you have a victory, send news, surely and quickly. If not the Laconics will bring the news for you.’
And that was that. He left the tent without saying anything more but returned almost immediately with a letter in his hand. ‘I meant to pass this on several days ago. It’s from your replacement on the veldt. Thought you’d be interested.’ With great show Cale put it in one of his ostentatiously numerous pockets – ostentatious because acolytes were forbidden to have pockets, which stood in the Redeemer faith for all that was secretive and hidden in the human soul. ‘Pocket’ was a nickname for the devil himself.
Twenty minutes later Bosco and Princeps were on their way to Chartres and Cale was finishing telling Vague Henri what had happened while he was outside the tent trying to listen in. They sat in silence for some time.
‘Now might be a chance to slip away – if you wanted to try,’ said Cale.
‘I thought you said it was too risky.’
‘Could be wrong. And now Bosco has to trust me whether he wants to or not. No one will be coming after you. It’s risky if you stay – fifty-fifty.’
‘I can’t go.’
It was clear Vague Henri had something else in mind.
‘Why?’
‘I can’t leave the girls.’
Cale groaned in disbelief. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them.’
‘So I should walk away?’
‘If there’s nothing you can do, why not?’
‘What if you win? What will you do about them?’
‘What I can – which is probably not much. Or anything. I don’t know what to do about myself – or you.’
‘But you know how to beat the greatest army ever put into a war.’
‘Possibly.’
‘How can that be right?’
‘Because beating the Laconics is possible but flying into and out of the Sanctuary on the wings of angels isn’t.’
‘You want to fight them, don’t you?’
‘Because I’d rather take my chances doing what I’m good at than running away, which I’m obviously not.’
‘It’s not just that – you want to fight them. You like this.’
‘Tell me what choice I have.’
‘Run away.’
‘I told you. No. A worse choice isn’t a choice.’
‘But it’s all right for me?’
‘I didn’t say that. Why are you trying to pick a fight?’
‘Look who’s talking. Picking a fight is just what you do. It’s what you are. You could pick a fight with a one-eyed sloth.’
‘That doesn’t even make sense. What’s a sloth?’
‘They have them in the zoo in Memphis.’
‘Amiable?’
‘Very.’
‘If you go up with Hooke on the Golan you should be as safe as anywhere.’
‘Right.’
‘So – you’re not going to insist on staying with me in the thick of battle?’
‘No.’
‘Showing some sense at last.’
‘Are you going to be in the thick of battle?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘You thought that at Eight Martyrs.’
‘I’ll try to learn from my mistakes.’
‘You better not make any this time.’
‘No.’
‘We can’t leave them.’
‘We can. Bosco won’t kill the girls just for the sake of it.’
‘You didn’t always think so well of him.’
‘I don’t. I just know him better. What he thinks I can do matters more to him than his own life. It matters a lot more than the girls in the Sanctuary.’
‘And what do you think you can do?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Not sure. Maybe it means that you’re beginning to like the idea of being a God.’
‘You’re the one who thinks I can pluck girls out of thin air, not me. All I’m trying to do is stay alive – and, for reasons I can’t put my finger on, do the same for you.’
‘Tell me you aren’t looking forward to tomorrow.’
‘I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t care what you believe.’ There was a silence while they both tried to think of something nastier to say. Oddly, it was Cale who backed down.
‘He won’t kill the girls even if we run,’ said Cale.
‘Why not?’
‘Because if he keeps them they might be useful.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No – but it’s what I think.’
‘It’s what you think I want to hear, that’s what you think.’
‘That, too. But it’s true all the same. Everything he does is for a reason. I used to think he hit me because he was a shit. But it’s more complicated than that.’
‘You like him?’
‘I admire him.’
‘You like him.’
‘He’s as mad as a sack of cats – but he thinks everything through. I admire that. I like that. It’s a quality that will save me – save us – if I can get him right.’
‘If you end up understanding Bosco, you better watch out.’
‘Blab! Blab! Blab! Are you talking or is it just the sound of the wind exhafflating from your backside?’
‘There’s no such word.’
‘Prove it.’