The Last Four Things

23

You may have heard the devil referred to as Old Merk, a name taken from Nicholas Merk, the most infamous of those infamous diplomats for hire, the Talleyrand. Nevertheless for all the disgracefully cynical advice he handed out we must all admit an obligation to Merk: he tells us not how men ought to be but how they are.

‘A ruler determined to go on a foreign adventure should always take the path of conquest by plunder rather than conquest by possession. It is all very well for a great man to look at the maps on his wall and consider for how many hours the sun shines on his territories, but the problem with conquered peoples is that if you do not steal their possessions and leave at once you must run their country for them, repair their waterways so that they do not die of thirst, fill the potholes in the roads, stuff their granaries so that they do not perish of hunger. You must decide on their squabbles, which will usually be many and lethal, and pay your soldiers or theirs when the agreements you have so patiently negotiated break down, which they always do.

‘You may consider a conquered land to be like an inherited great house – wonderful to contemplate at first and worthy of blessing your good fortune but in reality nothing but trouble and a drain on your time, patience, blood and treasure. Steal!’

It was such a squabble of the endless kind Merk predicts that brought five hundred bad-tempered Redeemers marching into the foothills of the Quantocks to deal with an increase in the number of raids by mountain bandits on the local Musselman communities. It was cold and it was wet and there was little enough to eat because so much had been stolen from the Musselmen. The Redeemers could not see why they should be enduring these deprivations, not to say risking their lives, coming to the aid of people who were not even heretics. They worshipped false Gods, not even the right God wrongly like the Antagonists. It was not a habit of the new Redeemer Governor of Memphis to explain his actions to his men and nor did he, but the reasons were simple enough: Memphis must eat and the Musselmen provided the city with a significant proportion of its food. The actions of these mountain crooks were a fairly serious nuisance and an advertisement that Redeemer rules could be flouted and flamboyantly so. The expedition was not intended to restore order but to demonstrate to anyone watching what could be expected if Redeemer authority was challenged in any way. The Redeemers arrived as punishers not policemen.

While the notion of having nothing to do was certainly an agreeable one among the Klephts there was a deep antipathy to being obliged to have nothing to do and fulfilling that obligation in a prescribed place. Guard duty was therefore regarded with special loathing and while everyone under the age of forty was supposed to take their turn it was a custom, as Mary, Countess of Pembroke, used to say, ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’. Those who had the means paid others to take their place, generally those too lazy, useless and stupid to earn a living any other way. Now with so many of the daring and intelligent earning so much from the increased number of raids on Musselman territory there was more money around for more people to bribe the least competent of their fellows to stand on a hillside during winter in the extreme cold with nothing happening and nothing much likely to happen.

There were strict guidelines about the use of fires by the guards – only at night, small, in the recesses of light-smothering rocks and with the driest wood. It was not easy in the cold and rain to conform to these sensible but uncomfortable rules. There was also the sheer unlikeliness of an attack by the Musselmen in winter and at night. Blundering around on the steeps in the dark and in the ice or rain, possibly both, was as good a way to get yourself killed as any. Lying there in the cold or wet the temptation to take a tiny risk, probably not even that, and build up the fire a bit and use the damper wood because keeping anything dry up there was a mare, you could see how things would slip. And so the consequences of Kleist’s arrival worked themselves out: his talent gave the Klephts the opportunity for more raids and therefore more wealth and therefore more bribes, while all the time increasing the need for a watchfulness that actually grew less and less instead of more intense. And had it not been for Cale’s unintended heroism in saving Riba and all the disasters that grew from it, the guards calculating the balance of risk between catching pneumonia or getting their throats cut by Musselmen in the middle of the night would have been entirely reasonable. But they had not reckoned on the Redeemers. And why would they? But for all that, it was Redeemers who were crawling over the icy surfaces of Mounts How and Usborne and killing Klephts by the light of their forgivably overstoked fires.

But luck runs out even for the wicked and after the third set of Klepht guards had been piped they were spotted by an insomniac watchman who despite the larger fires had been too cold to sleep. He died in the fight but in the moil that followed one of the Klephts escaped and made his way home, warning the other outposts as he came. Now wary enough to stay alive, soon messengers with more detailed information arrived.

It did not take long as the story unfolded for Kleist to realize who he was dealing with.

‘Perhaps,’ said Suveri, ‘they’re Materazzi. They came about twenty years ago and burnt out half a dozen villages.’

‘There aren’t any Materazzi any more.’

‘Not official maybe. But there must be any number of trained men needing to earn a bob.’

‘They’re not Materazzi for hire or anything else,’ said Kleist.

He explained and for some time there was silence.

‘When the Materazzi came we just upped sticks and hid in the mountains. We wait them out, they burn the villages – a pity – but they can’t stay here for ever.’

There was considerable protest at this: their recent increase in wealth had started not just the richest to build themselves new houses more fit for their improved circumstances. Many were half finished and there was much resentment at the idea of abandoning them to be destroyed. This squabble continued for some time.

‘For God’s sake!’ said Kleist when he couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘They haven’t come here to make a point – not to you anyway because there won’t be one of you left alive to learn any lesson they’re bringing with them. They’re not going to burn a few houses to teach you not to be so greedy. They’re going to wipe you off the face of the earth. They’ll kill the old men, the young, the girls, the children. They’ll pass over nothing that lives. And they’ll do all this in front of you so that it’s the last thing you see before they put you under with saws and harrows of iron and the axe and the rope. Then they’ll pass all of you through the brick kiln. Then they’ll pour the ashes into the rivers and the streams so that they run black and all that will be remembered of you is cinders, all that will remain of you is a byword for ruin.’

There was, as you will have guessed, a dreadful silence, broken by Dick Tarleton, well known for his refusal to take anyone or anything seriously.

‘That bad,’ he said.

‘Wait here for two days, fool, and you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face.’

‘Are you suggesting we fight?’

‘You’ll lose.’

‘What then?’

‘Leave.’

‘And go where?’

‘Where’s the nearest border?’

‘Upper Silesia.’

‘Then go to Upper Silesia.’

‘Hundreds of the old and young over the mountains in winter. It’s a fantasy.’

‘Well, you better find a way because, if you stay, within a week there’ll be one kind of Klepht – dead ones.’

And indeed what Kleist was saying was unthinkable and full of terrible possibilities. For hours they argued as Kleist delivered one story of Redeemer cruelty after another.

‘You’re exaggerating to get your way.’

Exhausted and afraid and frustrated Kleist lost his temper and punched this sceptic to the ground and had to be dragged away, though not before he had managed a kick to his ribs so hard he broke two of them. This outburst seemed to help convince the shocked onlookers that Kleist was, even if wrong, completely sincere. When he calmed down he could see the mood had changed.

It was time for some boasting. The problem with the Klephts, however, was that they not only tolerated exaggeration concerning one’s former achievements, it was positively admired. To have created a reputation for something without having earned it was an accomplishment often more highly regarded than an actual accomplishment itself. This was no place for diffidence or modesty.

‘You know me,’ Kleist began. ‘The new houses you are so willing to die to protect are being built because of me. My skill has made you rich – nothing else. There isn’t one of you who could beat me in a fair fight or an unfair one. If I didn’t choose to kill you from half a mile away I could do it face to face – not that there’d be much of it left after I’d bitten your nose off and thumbed out one of your eyes.’ He might have enjoyed these flourishes if the lives of his wife and unborn child were not at stake.

‘And where do you think I got these talents from? Under a stone? I got them from the men who are less than a day from here. And remember that I’m just a footboy, a novice in killing and cruelty compared to the Redeemers coming here – they have no more pity than a millstone, iron is straw to them, arrows are stubble. You must take the women and children now and the bulk of the men will come with me. We will try and draw them away from the march as best we can. This is my last word. If you don’t agree I’m gone and my wife with me.’

‘Your wife, Kleist, is about to drop.’

‘So you know I mean what I say. She has more chance, both of them, giving birth in a ditch by the road than staying here.’

This was not quite good enough for the assembled Klephts, but they had to have Daisy called out to confirm what Kleist had said – young as she was, Daisy was regarded with a certain respect. Bluster was one thing, and to be admired, but taking a wife nearly nine months gone out into the wilderness during winter was a dire thing to do if it were true and all too horribly convincing.

Daisy turned up and, now enormous, waddled into the meeting house with an aching back and an aching arse. She was not much in the mood for persuasion and gave the sum of things to them straight.

‘I thought we admired a man who knew when and how to be afraid. We’ve always had the brains and thought ourselves better than anyone else because we delighted in the usefulness of a savvy coward. I know you suspect my husband of courage but you should trust him all the more if he’s ready to take me now, like this, rather than face the Redeemers. Show some sense – live and don’t die.’ And with that she left and went back to her home to lie down and be terrified.

There was another hour of wrangling and some of course refused to put themselves at such a risk – and it was a dreadful one – on the say-so of a boy, however useful. But it would be fair to say of the Klephts that once they had decided to run away they did not do so by halves – and running away was something they knew how to do. Desperate as he was to be gone, Kleist realized that nothing could happen in the way of a start until the next day, when the Redeemers might be no more than twelve hours away. They must be deployed and quickly if there was to be any chance of the train making it out of the mountains and to the borders.

‘I will have Megan Macksey with me as midwife,’ said Daisy, trying to be reassuring in a way she did not feel.

‘But how good is she in a fix like this?’

‘I suppose we’re going to find out.’

He smiled. ‘You’re very brave all of a sudden.’

‘Take that back. I never felt more of a coward than I do now. And I want you to be a coward too.’

‘Trust me.’

‘I don’t trust you. You love me and it makes people stupid that kind of thing.’

‘You want me to love you less?’

‘I want you to love me enough to stay alive.’

‘You have to take risks if you want to stay alive. The trouble with the Klephts is that they don’t mind killing but they don’t want to die in the process.’

‘All the more reason not to sacrifice yourself for their sake.’

‘I’ve as much intention of dying for the sake of the Klephts as they have of dying for me. I’m not doing this for anyone but you and that creature.’

‘Good. And you’ll remember that.’

‘I’ll remember. You’re an odd girl, aren’t you?’

‘What do you know about girls?’

There was not much sleep for either of them that night and when they went to the first of the staging posts the next morning it was in a terrible silence. Kleist felt like a child being abandoned and a father deserting his children all in one. He had known a good deal of misery in his life but nothing as sharp and deep as this. When they arrived, however, these dreadful emotions were smothered by sheer fury. It was clear that the Klephts had decided that because what was left behind would be lost they would not leave anything behind. Kleist would not have believed so few people could own so much and be able to fit it on what looked like every horse, ass and donkey in the known world. He needed little enough provocation given how he felt and he flew into a bitter rage, cutting ropes, belts, left, right and centre, screaming at the women and threatening the men until in less than an hour a mountain of stolen pots, pans, hideous knick-knacks, silk, boxes, and carpets and bolts of cloth lay in a vast pile of the plunder of fifty years. He took the five commanders who were to lead the hundred men set aside to guard the train and swore he’d disembowel them personally if they didn’t strip every caravan they collected on their way out of the mountains in the same way. This delayed their leaving even longer and there was no time to say goodbye to Daisy. He kissed her, helped her onto the small but stocky mountain horse with great difficulty, and held her hand as if he couldn’t bear to let her go.

‘Be careful,’ he said, at last. But she couldn’t speak as he took his hand away and she then tried to snatch it back. And then she found her voice – wrenched out of her with a fearful sob. ‘I’ll never hold it again.’

‘You will. I know how to stay alive. Believe me.’

And then she was moving away looking back at him all the time, although it hurt her neck and back as if they were in a splint. She did not take her eyes off him once until she had turned out of the village and was lost to sight.

Daisy’s father walked over to him.

‘Let’s hope you’re right.’ He almost said it aloud but what he was really hoping was that he was wrong.

*

Redeemer Rhodri Galgan was ten back from the front of two lines that trailed more than five hundred Redeemers down the pass at Simmon’s Yat. It was a steep climb and he was carrying nearly half his own weight in materiel. To keep his mind off his exertions he was praying to St Anthony.

‘Dearest Saint,’ he whispered under his breath, ‘for whom the fish rose out of the water to hear him preach, to whom a mule knelt down as you passed him by with a reliquary of the true gibbet and who restored the leg of a young man who cut it off in remorse for having kicked his mother, have mercy on a poor sinner: forgive my audacity, my lust and my cupidity, my pride and my gluttony, anger and fultony, envy and sloth, forgive me for both.’ Looking up for a moment from his supplications he noticed a small black object in the sky about sixty yards away. The very first tingling of fear had begun on the nape of his neck when the object moving faster than a falling stone struck him in the chest. All around him a dozen others fell but the dreadful pain and burning in his ears distracted him in the very few seconds he had left to live.

The Redeemers had barely grasped what had happened before fifty or so Klephts led by Kleist were already running away back up the Yat hoping to vanish before the Redeemers pulled themselves together and caught up with them. They would only be surprised once and Kleist waited just a little longer than the Klephts to see what the damage was. Perhaps a dozen, he thought, but not enough or anything like it. The trouble was that the passes were easy to ambush but were also wide enough to provide plenty of cover among the great boulders that had fallen down the sheer sides.

As he expected, the Redeemers shed most of the weight of their rucksacks and left them to be guarded by fifty men and moved on, but now in groups of ten moving up and on in spurts overtaking each other, taking cover and then being overtaken in turn. The first attack had slowed them but it was not enough.

‘You must take more risks,’ he said to the Klephts, ‘or they’ll catch the column.’

If he was surprised by their response it was because he had not entirely grasped their way of thinking. However much Kleist hated the notions of martyrdom and self-sacrifice he had been brought up to regard as the very essence of what it meant to be a worthy human being, they had nevertheless left their mark on his way of seeing war. The fact was that the Klephts would not die for an idea of freedom or honour (a notion they found not so much ridiculous as incomprehensible – what good were freedom or honour if you were dead?). On the other hand, they were still cautiously ready to do so for the lives of their families. The word for hero in the ancient language of the Klephts was synonymous with the word for buffoon – but they were not dead to the idea of reluctant courage of a kind only to be demonstrated when absolutely necessary, a kind of bravery known as brass. There are few men, after all, who do not draw a line somewhere with regard to the importance of their own lives, and now convinced that Kleist was not taking them for fools – the Klephts being obsessed with not having the wool pulled over their eyes – they began to knuckle under.

Kleist was impressed by the change in them but he found it hard to see how much practical difference it would make. They were now determined but not being men of great martial skill against Redeemers who had nothing else, this determination was of limited value. So the Klephts heaved rocks at the Redeemers from the tops of the high passes, they slowed them down with their inferior skills at archery and they occasionally put themselves in a position where they were forced to stand toe to toe and slug it out. They always lost, and badly. So much so that Kleist found himself telling them to stop being so rash – a speech it can certainly be said that was never given to a Klepht before.

But even the most honour-fixated society, the most prone to martyrdom and high-minded principle, has its share of traitors. The Redeemers had the legendary apostate Harwood, the Materazzi had Oliver Plunkett. Even the Laconics, obedience as much as part of them as their spines, had Burdett-Harris. For the Klephts at this time of their greatest hazard it was Burgrave Selo. Of all the Klephts he had the most to lose, being the wealthiest of them by far. He was a wheeler and a dealer, moneylender, a time-serving slippery coquette, a charmer, a black-leg and a trimmer. He could go into a twelve-inch gap behind you and come out in front. In short, Burgrave Selo, an ancient title to which he, of course, had no right at all, thought he could outmanoeuvre everyone. And it is to be said in his defence that he always had outmanoeuvred everyone and so why shouldn’t he have regarded Kleist as a child and an alarmist who did not know how to tergiversate and come to an agreement that suited everyone – especially Burgrave Selo. He did not, reasonably enough, believe in Kleist, but he did with good reason believe in himself. So, genuine in so far as genuineness was a quality he possessed at all, Selo believed that what was good for him would in the end, once you took the long view, be good for the Klephts. He took, it should also be fairly said, many hours to square his conscience but after what was for him a great and terrible struggle he did what he thought was best all round. He approached the Redeemers almost personally – at considerable risk – by sending his most trusted brother to shout out at them in the dark that he wanted to talk. The Redeemer captain in charge, a man trained by one of Cale’s Purgators, was suspicious but cautious of missing a chance and promised Selo’s brother safe passage (broken promises made to worshippers of false gods were said to make the Hanged Redeemer smile with pleasure. Not that the Klephts really had a god in the sense that a Redeemer would have understood). A meaningless deal was struck in which the captain guaranteed the lives of Selo’s family and his possessions and position and executions were to be confined to a dozen or so Klepht leaders. All in all Selo considered it was an ill wind that blew no one any good and he had come out on top, removed his enemies and rivals, and preserved the lives of the Klephts despite their own stupidity so they would all, or most of them, live to fight another day.

Once the Klepht attack started Selo had arranged personally – it wouldn’t do to trust anyone else – to lead half the Redeemer force away from the main pass of the Yat and via a dangerous but quick route over the mountains and out the other side where they could catch the women and children and turn them back from what Selo regarded, with justification, as an insanely dangerous journey.

Only a year before, what happened next could not have taken place. The Redeemer captain, one Santos Hall, would never have divided his forces had he not learnt different from Cale’s Purgators. Until Cale, keeping your men together was a rule never, and usually wisely so, challenged. But though flexibility came hard to the Redeemers, Hall’s experience in the veldt had taught him a fair amount concerning irregular forces – and the Klephts were, apparently, a good deal less formidable than the Folk, particularly if the poverty of their lookouts and the treachery of their leaders were anything to go by. Given that his mission was fundamentally a punitive one, allowing most of his targets to escape was unacceptable. Selo might be leading his men into a trap or on a frolic of his own to take them in the wrong direction but Santos Hall calculated that Selo was entirely sincere in his duplicity and the attacking Klephts were clearly trying to slow them for a reason. Sending their women away even under such risky circumstances was exactly what they should be doing given what was in store for them.

So as Santos Hall pushed ahead through the Yat and up into the steeper Lydon Gorge half of his men were slowly moving over Mount Simon towards the Klepht train making its slow progress out of the mountains altogether and onto the plains that led to the border five days away. Hall was now taking fewer risks as they fought up the Lydon Gorge and he allowed progress to slow both to protect his men and to give the impression that the Klepht tactics were working. Santos Hall now knew about Kleist from Selo and though he did not know the name or the connection to Thomas Cale – Santos Hall was now a devoted follower – it did explain the terrible accuracy of some of the sharps coming from the Klephts. If this Kleist was once a Redeemer acolyte he would be in no doubt what was coming to him if they caught him, something Santos Hall was confident they would. Once the other half of his cohort was over the mountain they’d be with the train and then turn back to take the Klephts fighting them in the mountains from the rear.

With the Redeemers so cautious the Klephts were elated; with every hour that passed the train, however slowly, moved an hour further from disaster. They had, they thought, inflicted so many casualties on the supermen of the Redeemers that this was what had slowed them to a crawl. It was not, perhaps, entirely unforgivable that some began to question whether Kleist was right in his estimation of their abilities and if so in his assessment of the dangers that had cost them so grievously. Others wanted to hang on to the idea that the Redeemers were monsters of military excellence – it made them, and who can’t understand such an impulse, all the more impressed with their own bravery. And it was considerable. Klephts died in what was for them great numbers. They were few after all, and no one shirked. But now, even as they inflicted fewer deaths themselves, they also suffered fewer losses.

Given that Kleist had feared the worst you may perhaps blame him for not questioning the lack of aggression of his old masters. He did. But hope is a great obstacle to clear judgement. He knew nothing about Burgrave Selo and had barely even talked to him. No one had brought the path over Mount Simon to his attention -there being no shortage of them and their being so treacherous to the unguided. In addition he excelled himself in murderous accuracy – there were no inhibitions about killing when it came to the priests. Any movement and he would let loose and, to his own grim delight and the noisy joy of the Klephts, he would find his target far more often than not. Redeemer Santos Hall was forced to sit behind various rocks devising ever more hideous punishments for the little shit causing him and his men so much grief. And, besides, Kleist had never fought in any battle other than at Silbury Hill and that was of no useful comparison here. So he puzzled over the comparative ease of his success but lacking anything solid to challenge it had little choice but to accept it as it stood. So as the Klephts and Redeemers fought in the gorges and died in small numbers, two hundred and fifty men crawled over the freezing top of Mount Simon making their way after the nine hundred women and children now easing their way onto the Mulberry Downs and making better progress than anyone had a right to expect.

It was late on the second day of the slow Klepht withdrawal up the gorges that Kleist realized it was profoundly wrong to kill the Redeemers. It made much more sense to wound them instead. Whatever their belief in the value of suffering for others they took their own pain less patiently and this applied at every level: they were insanely touchy about criticism of any kind and regarded the slightest resistance to their freedom of action, no matter how brutal, as evidence of outrageous persecution. In the white heat of battle they would sacrifice themselves and their fellows in great numbers without a second thought, but subsequently treated their wounded in a manner that would have been touching if it were not for their brutality towards those of their enemies. The Redeemers were the superior of all in their treatment of wounds and had a great willingness, one extended to no other field of learning, to try any new method of healing. From that time on, where it was possible, Kleist shot to the arm or the leg or the stomach knowing that in slow ambush warfare of this kind they would be hard pressed not to stop to treat the injured. The result was a satisfying increase in weeping and gnashing of teeth from his old tormentors and an even greater slowing of their progress.

But now the other Redeemers were off Mount Simon and moving down quickly to the Mulberry Downs. When they caught up with the train they were still more than two days from safety.

What is to be said about what happened next? The great Neechy held it to be true that even the most courageous must reserve the right to look away.

By sunset, some five hours after they caught the train, the Redeemers were riding away back to the mountains to attack the Klephts who were now utterly bereft of wives, children and parents. They left behind them ten hangmen’s scaffolds and piled around each a heap of ashes.