The Left Hand of God

34

Wilfred “Fivebellies” Penn, watchman of the city of York, a hundred miles to the north of Memphis, stretched his eyes wide to keep himself awake as he looked over the city walls. Another beautiful sun rose over the woods that surrounded the town, and Fivebellies thought, dreary and dull as the night watch always was, this was a time of day that, no matter how often seen, made you wonderfully glad to be alive. It was then that he noticed something so odd that its strangeness, its impossibility, puzzled rather than alarmed him. It could not, what he thought he saw, be happening. From behind the tree line about a mile and a half away, a large black object had risen from the forest and was soaring into the reddish blue sky as it moved toward the city. The black object got bigger and seemed to move ever faster until, stunned as an animal before slaughter, Fivebellies watched as a large rock the size of a cow flew over him not twenty feet away, lazily turning on its axis. It curved into the city below, destroying four large town houses as it bounced through a shattered collapse of stone and dust and came to rest in the Municipal Garden of Nightingales.

During the next two hours the four mobile Redeemer trebuchet siege engines launched another ten rocks and, having found their range, were able to do great damage to the walls. The designs were new and untried on the battlefield, and two of them snapped along the great lever arms. The Pontifical Engineers who had accompanied the Fourth Army of Redeemer General Princeps duly made their measurements and assessments of the weaknesses of their new mobile designs and within the hour had packed up the broken arms and started the long return march to Shotover.

In the afternoon it was so hot that, while no birds sang, the sound of cicadas was almost deafening. There was a brief attack at three o’clock by two hundred and fifty light cavalry from the city, designed to draw a response that might give the garrison commander some idea of what he was up against. A volley of arrows from the trees caused them to swerve away, and all the Materazzi got for their trouble was two dead, five wounded and ten horses that had to be destroyed. The Redeemers holding the tree line watched the cavalry retreat. All of them could feel a hideous tension in the air, as if something dreadful was holding its breath and about to strike. Then they all started laughing as the threatening hush was broken by the creatures who were the cause. The grasshoppers, silenced by arrival of the horses and calmed by their disappearance, started up their racket in an instant, as if they were one creature instead of a million.

That night the real dirty work began as Master-Sergeant Trevor Beale and ten of his men went on patrol into Dudley Forest, as leerily reluctant as you might expect. By dawn Beale and seven of his men were back inside the walls with two Redeemer prisoners and giving his report of the night’s work to the Governor of York.

“What in God’s name are the Redeemers attacking us for?”

“No idea, sir,” said Master-Sergeant Beale.

“That was a rhetorical question, Master-Sergeant, one asked solely to produce an effect and not to elicit a reply.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about numbers?”

“Between eight and sixteen thousand, sir.”

“Can’t you be any more precise?”

“We were buggering about in thick woods in pitch black in the middle of a well-guarded army, so no, sir, I couldn’t be more precise. I doubt if it’s less, I doubt it’s more.”

“You’re very insolent, Master-Sergeant.”

“I lost three men tonight, sir.”

“I’m sorry about that, but it’s hardly my fault.”

“No, sir.”

Three hours later Master-Sergeant Beale was back in Governor Agostino’s office.

“All we can get out of them-one of them, anyway,” said Agostino,

“was his guess how many of them there were. Before he shut up for good, the prisoner said there were about six thousand in the forest but that the army had split up three days ago-oh, and they’re led by someone called Princeps.”

“Give me an hour alone with them, sir.”

“I doubt very much if you’re better at mistreating prisoners than Bradford. That’s his job, after all. Besides, I want you and three others to take a dispatch to Memphis. Go separate ways; you take the most likely to make it through the Redeemer pickets.”

An hour after Beale and his men had left the city, the Redeemers attacked a breach in the south wall, and a brief but savage clash followed with the three hundred fully armored Materazzi who were waiting for them. They were repelled with the loss of twenty of their number, without, it first appeared, any Materazzi being seriously wounded. It was nearly an hour after the attack that it became clear that three Materazzi were missing.

Odder still was that a few hours later four plumes of smoke started rising into the blue summer sky from the sites of the Redeemer siege engines. A group of scouts returned shortly afterward to tell the governor that the Redeemer army had withdrawn and that they had burned the four siege trebuchets that had cost them so much effort to bring to York.

When Beale reached Memphis three days later, the city already had news of the other half of Redeemer General Princeps’s Fourth Army and were no less baffled by what they heard from Beale. The second Redeemer force, instead of attacking the three walled cities in their way, all of them at least as strategically important as York, had simply passed them by and headed for Fort Invincible. The standing joke among the Materazzi was that Fort Invincible wasn’t a fort, but that this didn’t really matter because it wasn’t invincible either. It was, in fact, a place of wide expanses and gently rolling downs that came abruptly to a halt to be replaced by narrow canyons and rocky passes. Together these two contrasting geographies represented the best and the worst terrain in which cavalry and men in full armor could operate. As such it was the best possible place to train the Materazzi who flowed in and out of Fort Invincible from all over the empire. The result was that there were never less than five thousand cavalrymen and men-at-arms there at any one time, many with years of experience. For the Redeemers to attack Fort Invincible made no kind of military sense: it was to challenge Materazzi military might at one of its points of greatest strength on ground where they practiced daily. Four thousand Redeemers had set up in battle formation on the gentle downs in front of the fort and dared the Materazzi to attack them. This they did. Unfortunately for the Redeemers, a force of a thousand Materazzi cavalry returning from an exercise at the same time caught them in the rear, and the result was a bloody mess for the Redeemers in which they lost nearly half of their number. Fighting their way out, the remaining two thousand beat a retreat to the Thametic gorges and rejoined the four thousand Redeemers waiting there. Here the terrain was much harder for horses, and there was no bad luck for the Redeemers this time. The resulting first day’s battle was vicious but inconclusive. There was no second day. When the Materazzi woke up, it was to find that the Redeemers had withdrawn into the mountains, where the cavalry could not follow. What baffled the Materazzi generals in Memphis was what the attack on Fort Invincible could possibly have been meant to achieve.

The news that arrived in Memphis the day after was puzzling in a very different way, if “puzzling” can be said to include horror and disgust. At seven o’clock on the eleventh day of that month the Redeemer Second Mounted Infantry under Redeemer Petar Brzica rode into Mount Nugent, a village of some thirteen hundred souls. There was only one witness to their arrival, a boy of fourteen who, sick for love of one of the girls in the village, had woken early and gone into the nearby woods to weep without exposing himself to ridicule by his older brothers. To the boy watching from the trees they were a strange sight, but the oddness of three hundred soldiers heading for Mount Nugent was much softened by the fact that they were wearing cassocks, something he had never seen before, and that they were mounted on small donkeys and so jiggling up and down in a way that looked rather comical and not at all like the magnificently threatening troop of Materazzi cavalry he had gawped at in awe on his only visit to Memphis. By the time the Redeemers left the village eight hours later, all of its occupants were dead except for the boy. The description of the massacre by the county sheriff was based on his account and arrived on Vipond’s desk along with a linen bag.

The Redeemers quickly roused the villagers and instructed them by means of a voice trumpet that this was only a temporary occupation and that if they cooperated they would not be harmed. Males and females were separated, as were children under the age of ten. The women were taken to the village grain store, which was empty as the fields had not yet been harvested. The men were held in the meeting hall. The children were taken to the Town Hall, the only three-storey building in the village, and were held on the second floor. When we arrived we found that the Redeemers had erected a post in the center of the village and on that post was the device enclosed with this report.

Vipond opened the linen bag. Inside was a glove of sorts, but fingerless, rather like the kind worn by market traders in winter to keep their hands warm but their fingers nimble. The material here was of the strongest thick leather, and emerging from the thickest part along the edge of the palm was a blade about five inches long, curving round gently at the end so as to follow the turn of the human neck. On the blade was an inscription: “Graviso,” after the place of manufacture. Just inside the interior of the glove was a name tag, like those attached to the clothes of schoolchildren, with “Petar Brzica” neatly stitched in blue. Shaking, Chancellor Vipond returned to the report.

Beginning with the women, the Redeemers led them out singly. They were made to kneel. Then a single Redeemer wearing the device sent with this dispatch came from behind, pulled their heads back exposing their throats and drew the blade, clearly curved for that purpose, across the victim’s throat. The bodies were then dragged out of sight and then the next victim would be taken from the building in which they were being held. We could find only one living witness-a boy. According to him, each one of these murders would take no more than thirty seconds from beginning to end. Not knowing their fate, the victims seemed fearful but not terrified and their deaths were carried out with such speed that none cried out, nor indeed did so at any point during the day. In this way the Redeemers had killed all the women (391) by one o’clock. (The witness could see the clock tower on the Town Hall.) The men of the village were then dealt with in the same manner (503). However, when it came to the (304) children under the age of ten, they lost all concern for keeping their actions secret. In ones and twos the children were thrown from the highest balcony in order to break their necks. Not even the youngest baby was spared. In all my life I never saw such a thing. Upon completion of his testimony, and before we could prevent it, the witness ran off into the forest, swearing revenge upon the attackers.

Geoffrey Menouth, Sheriff of the County of Maldon

During the hours of daylight for three days Cale had been in the woods that edged the Royal Park, watching the Materazzi army training in full armor. He had tested the weight of a suit left in a corridor while its owner installed himself in one of the rooms of Arbell’s palazzo. He must have been someone of serious significance because the city was already packed with Materazzi to the point where neither love nor money nor the rank that was more important than either could get you a decent bed. He guessed the suit must have weighed around seventy pounds. On the face of it he couldn’t see how such a burden could allow any of the speed and flexibility he took for granted, no matter how much protection it gave. But having watched them practice, he realized he was completely wrong. He was astonished at how quickly they could move, how light they were on their feet and how the armor seemed to flow with their every move. They could jump on and off their horses with an ease that astonished him. Conn Materazzi even climbed a ladder up the reverse side and then flipped himself over to scramble onto the tower he was pretending to take. The blows they landed on each other would have cut an unarmored man in two, but they seemed able to shrug off even the most hideous strike. There were some vulnerable spots-the top and inside of the thigh for one-but it would be hugely risky taking one of them on. This would need thinking about.

“BOO! Caught you,” said Kleist, emerging from behind a tree with Vague Henri and IdrisPukke.

“I heard you all coming five minutes ago. The fat women in the ice cream parlor would have made less noise.”

“Vipond wants to see you.” For the first time Cale looked at them.

“Did he say why?”

“A Redeemer fleet under that shit-bag Coates attacked somewhere called Port Collard, set fire to half of it, then left. One of the soldiers told me that the locals call it Little Memphis.”

Cale shut his eyes as if he had heard very bad news. He had. When he finished explaining why, no one said anything for some time.

“We should leave,” said Kleist. “Now. Tonight.”

“I think he’s right,” said Vague Henri.

“So do I. I just can’t.”

Kleist groaned.

“For God’s sake, Cale, how do you think you and Lady Muck are going to end up?”

“Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?”

“I think you should tell Vipond,” said IdrisPukke.

“We’re done here. Why can’t any of you see that?”

“Blab this to Vipond and all three of us’ll end up at the bottom of the Bay of Memphis feeding our kidney suet to the fishes.”

“He could be right,” said Vague Henri. “We’re about as popular as a boil at the moment.”

“And we know whose fault that is,” said Kleist, looking at Cale. “Yours, in case you were wondering.”

“I’ll tell Vipond tomorrow. You two leave tonight,” said Cale.

“I’m not leaving,” said Vague Henri.

“Yes you are,” said Cale.

“No I’m not,” insisted Vague Henri.

“Yes you are,” said Kleist, equally insistent.

“Take my share of the money and go,” said Vague Henri.

“I don’t want your share.”

“Then don’t have it. There’s nothing to stop you going on your own.”

“I know there isn’t, I just don’t want to.”

“Why?” said Vague Henri.

“Because,” said Kleist, “I’m afraid of the dark.” With that, he took out his sword and began lacerating the nearest tree. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

It was in this roundabout way that the three of them agreed both to stay and that IdrisPukke would go with Cale to tell Vipond.

This time Cale did not have to wait when he turned up at Vipond’s offices, but was shown straight in. The first ten minutes were taken up with Vipond’s account of the three Redeemer attacks and the massacre at Mount Nugent. He handed Cale the glove left on the post in the center of the village.

“There’s a name inside. Do you know this person?”

“Brzica? He was the summary executioner at the Sanctuary. He was responsible for killing anyone not meant to be an Act of Faith. ‘Public executions for the religious contemplation of believers.’ ” The tone in which he said this made it clear it was something learned by heart. “They were carried out by holier Redeemers than him. I never saw him use it, but Brzica was known for the speed at which he could kill with this thing.”

“I have made it,” said Vipond quietly, “my personal responsibility to find this man.”

He sat down and drew a deep breath. “None of these attacks seem to make much sense. Is there anything you can tell me about the strategy the Redeemers are using?”

“Yes.”

Vipond sat back and looked at Cale, picking up the odd tone in his reply.

“I know these tactics because I was the one who drew them up. If you show me a map, I can explain.”

“Given what you’ve just told me, I don’t think showing you a map would be wise. Explain first.”

“If you want my help, I’ll need the map to explain what they’re going to do and work out where to stop them.”

“Give me the sum. Then we’ll see about the map.”

Cale could see that Vipond was more skeptical than mistrustful-he didn’t believe him.

“About eight months ago Redeemer Bosco took me to the Library of the Rope of the Hanged Redeemer, something I never heard of a Redeemer doing for an acolyte, and gave me free run of all the works there on Redeemer military tactics for the last five hundred years. Then he gave me everything he had personally collected on the Materazzi empire-and there was a lot of it. He told me to come up with a plan of attack.”

“Why you?”

“For ten years he’d been teaching me about war. There’s a Redeemer school just for this. There are about two hundred of us-we’re called the Workings. I’m the best.”

“Modest of you.”

“I am the best. Modesty has nothing to say about it.”

“Go on.”

“I decided after a few weeks to rule out a surprise attack. I like surprises-as a tactic, I mean-but not this time.”

“I don’t understand. This is a surprise attack.”

“No, it isn’t. For a hundred years the Redeemers have been fighting the Antagonists-mostly it’s trench warfare and mostly now it’s stalemate. The trenches have stayed pretty much where they are for a dozen years. It needs something new to break the stalemate, but the Redeemers don’t like anything new. They have a law which allows a Redeemer to kill an acolyte on the spot if he does something unexpected. But Bosco is different; he was always thinking, and one of the things he thought was that I was different and he could make use of me.”

“How will attacking us break the stalemate with the Antagonists?”

“I couldn’t really work it out either. So I asked him.”

“And?”

“Nothing. He just gave me a good beating. So I got on with what he told me to do. The thing is, why I didn’t think surprise would work against the Materazzi is because they don’t fight like anyone else-not like the Redeemers, not like the Antagonists. The Redeemers don’t have cavalry to speak of, and no armor. Bowmen are central to the Redeemers. You barely use them. Our siege engines were huge and clumsy, each one built on the site of every siege. You must have four hundred towns and cities with walls five times thicker than anything the Redeemers were used to.”

“Two of the siege trebuchets used at York failed, but they burned all four. Why?”

“They broke through the walls on the first day, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes.”

“They tested a new weapon in a real battle against a new kind of enemy a long way from home. So even if two broke down, the other two worked.”

“But two didn’t.”

“Then make them better-that’s what all this is for.”

“Meaning what?”

“There’s no point in surprising your enemy on their terms and in their territory if you can’t be sure of destroying them quickly. Bosco was always beating me because he said I took too many unnecessary risks. Not here. I knew the Redeemers weren’t ready, that we…” He corrected himself, “that they needed to wage a short campaign, learn as much about how the Materazzi fought, how good their weapons and armor were, and then withdraw. Show me a map.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“I’m here and I’m telling you what happened, aren’t I? We could have just legged it.”

“Suppose this, what you’re telling me, is just fake honesty, and Bosco is pulling your strings and has been all along.”

Cale laughed.

“That’s a good idea. I’ll use it one day. Show me the map.”

“Nothing,” said Vipond after a moment, “is to leave this office.”

“Who’d listen to me but you anyway?”

“A good point-but for the avoidance of doubt, if anyone else finds out that you were a part of this, you’ll get a rope for a reward.” Vipond went over to a shelf on the far side of the room and removed a roll of thick paper. He looked at Cale very directly as he came back to his desk, as if this would make any difference to someone who had spent his entire life hiding his thoughts. Then he made up his mind for good or ill and unrolled it on the desktop, weighing down the edges with Venetian glass paperweights and a copy of The Melancholy Prince, of all books his favorite. Cale looked over the map with an intense concentration quite different from anything Vipond had seen from him before. For the next half an hour he answered Cale’s detailed questions about the sites of the four attacks and the strengths and dispositions of soldiers. Then he stopped and for ten minutes studied the map in silence.

“I want a drink of water,” said Cale. The water was duly brought and he drank it in one go.

“Well?”

“The Materazzi have walled towns and cities. I knew that without much lighter siege engines that could easily be moved from city to city we might just as well blow trumpets and expect the walls to come tumbling down. I told Bosco that the Pontifical Engineers would need to build something much lighter than we had and make them easy to put up and take down.”

“And you designed this yourself?”

“Me? No. I don’t know anything about that stuff. I just knew what was needed.”

“But he didn’t tell you he agreed, that he was actually going to put your plan into action.”

“No. When I heard about the attacks at first, I thought I was going… you know…” He made several circling motions around his head. “A bit loony.”

“But you’re not.”

“Me? Sound as a bell. Anyway, they learned what they needed to learn at York and that’s why they left and took the three Materazzi with them-they wanted the armor, not the men. It’ll be halfway to the Sanctuary by now, with the engineers waiting to give it a good going over.”

“You took a beating at Fort Invincible.”

“Not me, the Redeemers.”

“You refer to them as we sometimes.”

“Force of habit, Boss.”

“All right, then, your plan took a hammering at Fort Invincible.”

“Not really-just bad luck. The Materazzi didn’t intend to attack them from the rear, they just happened to be returning at the wrong time-for the Redeemers, anyway. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans-isn’t that what the Memphis moneylenders say?”

“You’re supposed to have a parole to get into the Ghetto.”

“Nobody told me.”

“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself.”

“I’m still alive, if that’s what you mean.”

“I still say it all went wrong at Fort Invincible.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“How so?”

“How many Redeemers dead?”

“Two and a half thousand-thereabouts.”

“They fought your cavalry twice and the rest of them got away. They were there to see what you were made of, not to win a battle.”

“And Port Collard.”

“You call it Little Memphis. Why is that?”

“It was built in a natural harbor very like the bay here. The city was built along the same lines. The layout worked once-provincials like to copy things…” He stopped in midsentence. “I see. Yes.” He sighed heavily and sneezed. “Excuse me. So what happens next?”

Cale shrugged.

“I know what was in the plan next-it doesn’t mean that’s what they’re going to do.”

“Why shouldn’t they? It’s been reasonably successful so far.”

“Better than that-just successful. They’ve got everything I planned for.”

There was an unpleasant silence. Surprisingly it was Cale who broke it. “I’m sorry; the sin of pride is very great in me, according to Bosco.”

“Is he wrong?”

“Probably not.”

“Do you know this Princeps?”

“I met him once. He was the military governor along the northern seaboard then. There’s no trench warfare there, it’s all mountains and stuff. That’s why he’s running this campaign, because he’s the best they’ve got at fighting with an army on the move-and he’s thick with Bosco, though from what I can gather he’s not too popular elsewhere.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. But I’ve read all his campaign reports. He fights as if he thinks for himself. That kind of thing makes the Office of Intolerance nervous. Bosco protects him, that’s what I hear.”

“So why does Princeps need you to tell him what to do?”

“You’ll have to ask Bosco.” Cale gestured at the map. “Where are they now?”

Vipond pointed to a spot about a hundred miles from the Scablands at their northernmost tip.

“The view is that they’re going to cross the Scablands to the Sanctuary.”

“It looks like it. But it’s too risky taking an army, even a small one like this, across the Scablands in summer.”

“That’s not part of your great plan, then?”

“It’s exactly part of my great plan that they should look as if they’re heading for the Scablands through the Forest of Hessel and so you’ll try to get there first and wait for them to come on to you. But once they’re in the forest, they’ll turn west and cross the river here at Stamford Bridge and head for Port Erroll on the west coast here. The fleet that burned Little Memphis will take them from the harbor. Failing that, from what I read in the library, the beaches are shallow to this side. They can bring in the rowing boats if need be.” He pointed to a pass on the map. “Even if the weather’s bad and the fleet is delayed, once they’re through the Baring Gap a few hundred Redeemers could hold off even a large army for days.”

Vipond looked at him for so long without saying anything that it began to make Cale uneasy and then annoyed. He was about to speak when Vipond asked him a question.

“Do you expect me to believe you, that someone of your age, whatever that is, would be asked to prepare a plan of attack of this kind and then that plan would be carried out in exact detail? I’d have credited you with something more plausible.”

At first Cale simply went blank, a kind of dead expression that made Vipond begin to regret the tone of his frankness and remember the cold delight with which Cale had dispatched Solomon Solomon. This boy is barely sane, he thought. But then Cale laughed, a short and sudden bark of amusement. “Have you seen the moneymen playing chess in the Ghetto?”

“Yes.”

“There are lots of old men playing but also kids, I mean much younger than me. One of these kids always wins-not even the old rabbite with all the ringlets and the beard and stuff and the funny hat can beat him. So the rabbite says-”

“It’s rabbi, I understand.”

“Oh. I wondered about that. Anyway, so this rabbi, he says that chess is a gift from God to help us see his divine plan and this kid who can barely read is a sign to us to believe in the order that lies under everything. Me, I’ve got two gifts: I can kill people as easy as you could break a plate-and the other thing I can do is look at a map or stand in a place and I can see how to attack or defend it. It just comes at me like the game comes to the boy in the Ghetto. Though I don’t suppose it’s a gift from God. If you don’t believe me, tough. Your loss.”

“And how would you stop them?” He paused. “If you were going to.”

“For one thing, don’t let them reach the Baring Gap or they’ll be away. But I need a more detailed map from here to here,” he said, pointing at a section of some twenty square miles, “and two or three hours to think about it.”

Should he believe this strange creature in front of him or leave well enough alone? It had been a much-loved joke of Vipond’s father that when it came to a crisis, half the time it was better to wait: “Don’t just do something,” he would say, “stand there.”

“Wait in the room next door and I’ll bring the maps to you myself. Stay away from the windows.”

Cale stood up and walked over to the private office, but as he was about to close the door behind him, Vipond stopped him “The massacre, was that part of your plan too?”

Cale looked at him oddly, but whatever kind of expression it was, it was not one of offense.

“What do you think?” he said quietly and shut the door.

Vipond looked at his half brother. “You were very quiet.”

IdrisPukke shrugged. “What’s there to say? You either believe him or you don’t.”

“And do you believe him?”

“I believe in him.”

“And the difference is?”

“He’s always lying to me because he can’t bring himself to take more risks than he has to. Being too secretive is sometimes a mistake, and it’s one he’s still making.”

“I’m not sure it’s that much of a fault myself,” said Vipond.

“But, like Cale, you’re also a secretive person.”

“What about now?”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” said IdrisPukke.

“I agree.”

Once he had made the decision to intervene, Vipond became increasingly tense and impatient to see Cale’s plan, one that took not three hours but more than three days to complete. “Do you want it good or do you want it now?” said Cale in reply to Vipond’s repeated demand to see something at least of his ideas. If he was uncharacteristically impatient for such a cool-headed thinker, it was because he had been deeply upset at the deaths of the villagers and what these deaths said about the strange reports from the few Antagonist refugees coming out of the north. Something about Brzica’s glove had set his nerves on edge, as if all the malice and vindictiveness in the world had been made physical in the care that had gone into its design, the quality of the stitching and the way the blade was attached with such fine workmanship to the leather. He was all the more uneasy because he had thought himself to be a man of the world, almost a cynic, certainly a pessimist. He had come to expect little of people and was rarely surprised in his expectations. That there was murder and cruelty in the world was no news to him. But this glove was a witness to the possibility of something so terrible that could not be imagined, as if the hell he had long ago dismissed as a terror for children had sent a messenger not with horns and a cloven hoof but in the shape of a carefully crafted leather glove.

It was no easy matter for Vipond to influence the tactics of the Materazzi, who were jealous of their preeminence in such things to the point of hysteria. Vipond was not a soldier but he was a politician, both equal grounds for suspicion. There was also the problem that Marshal Materazzi had become increasingly unwell: the irritating problem with his throat had become a debilitating chest infection, and he was less and less able to appear at the innumerable meetings called to discuss the campaign. Vipond must deal with a new, if temporary, reality. He managed, however, with his usual skill. When the Materazzi scouts lost track of the Redeemer army in the Forest of Hessel, there was no great alarm, given that they expected them to emerge heading for the only passage into the Scablands.

It was then that Vipond had a secret meeting with the Marshal’s second-in-command, Field General Amos Narcisse, and informed him that his own network of informers had news about the real intentions of the Redeemers, but that for many complicated reasons he had no wish to be seen in the matter. If Narcisse were to present this information to the Materazzi council as his own, then this would reflect considerable glory on the field general, as would the battle plan that Vipond would also offer for the general’s consideration if he so wished. Vipond realized that Narcisse was a worried man. He was not a fool, but neither was he more than competent, and he was alarmed to find that with the Marshal’s poor health he was effectively in charge of the whole campaign. He would not admit it to anyone, but he did not in his heart believe he was the man for the job. Vipond encouraged his complete cooperation with veiled but clear promises of changes in the taxation law that would hugely benefit Narcisse and an offer to ensure the end of a long-running dispute concerning a vast inheritance in which Narcisse had been involved for twenty years and looked like losing.

The field general was not entirely venal, however, and even he would not agree to a strategy that put the empire in danger. He spent several hours poring over Vipond’s plan, which is to say Cale’s plan, before seeing that his financial interests and his military conscience were one and the same thing. Whoever thought up the plan, he told Vipond, knew what he was doing. He made not entirely convincing sounds about not taking another man’s credit, but Vipond assured him that it was the work of a number of people and that the real skill would in any case be in the leadership abilities of the man executing the plan. It was, in effect, really Narcisse’s plan when all was said and done. By the time he had presented and defended it to the council, this was no more than the truth, the clincher for the council being that the missing Redeemer army had turned up precisely where Narcisse predicted it would.

It was once famously said that it is as well that wars are so ruinously expensive, else we would never stop fighting them. However well said, it seems also to be endlessly forgotten that, while there may be just wars and unjust wars, there are never any cheap wars. The problem for the Materazzi was that the most expert financiers in their empire were the Jews of the Ghetto. The Jews, on the other hand, were deeply wary of other people’s wars because they frequently spelled disaster for them whatever the outcome. If they lent money to the losing side, there was no one to pay them back, but if they financed the winning side, all too often it was decided that the Jews had been in some way responsible for the war in the first place and should be expelled. As a result it was no longer necessary to pay them back. So the Materazzi insincerely reassured the Jews that the war debts would be settled, while the financiers of the Ghetto equally insincerely claimed that credit was hard to come by in such vast amounts and only at prohibitive rates of interest. It was during these negotiations that Kitty the Hare saw his opportunity and resolved the problem by offering to finance all the Materazzi war debts. This came as an immense relief to the Jews, who regarded Kitty Town as an abomination before God. It was well known that they would not do business with its owner under any circumstances, not even at the price of expulsion. Kitty was more concerned with the Materazzi. For all his bribery, blackmail and political corruption, he knew that public opinion in Memphis was growing against the disgusting practices that went on in Kitty Town and that a move against him was more or less inevitable. He calculated that a war, particularly one where public feeling was running so very high, would trump what he considered to be a temporary flush of moral disapproval over his place of business. By funding what he thought would be a short campaign, Kitty the Hare felt reasonably confident that bankrolling the whole enterprise would secure his own position in Memphis for a long time to come.

Now at last the Materazzi were ready to move against the Redeemers, and with Narcisse’s great plan to guide them, forty thousand men in full armor left the city to the cheering of huge crowds. It was put about that Marshal Materazzi was finishing his strategy for the war and would join his troops later. This was not true. The Marshal was extremely poorly because of his chest infection, and he was unlikely to take any part in the campaign.

The Redeemers, however, were in a significantly worse position because of an outbreak of dysentery that killed few but had weakened a great many. In addition, the plan to fool the Materazzi into waiting for them in front of the Scablands while they headed in the opposite direction had clearly failed. Almost as soon as they had emerged from the Forest of Hessel, an advance force of Materazzi two thousand strong had begun to shadow them from the other side of the River Oxus. From that moment on, every movement that the Redeemer army made was observed and the details relayed to Field General Narcisse.

To the surprise of Princeps, no attempt was made to delay his army, and in less than three days they had traveled nearly sixty miles. By then the effects of dysentery had considerably weakened more than half his force and he decided to rest for half a day at Burnt Mills. He sent a deputation to the town’s defenders threatening to massacre all its inhabitants as he had done at Mount Nugent, but if they surrendered immediately and provided his men with food, they would be spared. They did as they were told. The next morning the Redeemers continued their march toward the Baring Gap. Now Princeps, seeing the terror that the massacre had created in the local population, sent a small force of two hundred men ahead using the same tactic to provide his still weakened men with a continuous supply of food, most of it much better than they were used to, something that cheered them up a good deal.

The campaign plan provided by Cale for an exploratory attack on the Materazzi empire had so far proved effective, but the territory they were entering now had only been vaguely mapped in the documents from the library in the Sanctuary. One of the most important aims of the plan had been to bring twenty cartographers and send them in ten separate groups to map in as much detail as possible the terrain they were to attack the following year. The three groups mapping the way ahead had not returned, and now Princeps was moving into a landscape about which he had only the most general idea. On the following day Princeps tried to take his army across the Oxus at White Bend, but the army shadowing him on the other side had now grown to five thousand. He was forced to abandon the attempt and move on into country where the going was hard and where the few villages they might have used to resupply had been evacuated by the Materazzi and everything of use and value removed.

For the next two days the Redeemers pushed on, looking with increasing desperation for a way across the river, something that the Materazzi on the opposite bank were equally determined to prevent. With each passing hour, the Redeemers grew more weary and weak from lack of food and the effects of dysentery, and were only capable of covering ten miles a day. But then their luck changed. The Redeemer scouts had captured a local cowman and his family. Desperate to save them, the cowman told them of an old ford, now disused, where he thought even a sizeable army would be able to cross. The scouts returned with the news that the crossing would be difficult and the ford needed considerable repair, but that it could be made passable. It was also completely unguarded. Their luck improved still further. Extensive marshes on the other side of the Oxus had forced the Materazzi guard to move well away from the river and out of sight. Having almost despaired, the Redeemers now felt a great rush of hope. Within two hours a bridgehead had been established on the other side of the Oxus, and the remaining Redeemers set to repairing and building up the crossing with stones from the surrounding houses. By midday the work was done, and the crossing of the Oxus by the main army began. As the sun went down, the last of the Redeemers had crossed safely to the opposite bank. Although small numbers of Materazzi turned up at a safe distance to watch the final hour of the crossing, they did nothing but continue to send back messages to Narcisse.

Three miles into their journey the next day, the Redeemers came across a sight that caused Princeps to realize that his army was finished. The muddy roads were churned up like badly plowed fields and the bushes ten yards to either side squashed flat-tens of thousands of the Materazzi had been there before them. Realizing that an army many times the size of his own must be waiting between them and the Baring Gap, Princeps did what he could to secure the remaining information that had always been the central purpose of Cale’s plan. The surviving cartographers traced as many copies as they could of the maps they had made, and then Princeps dispatched them in a dozen different directions in disguise, in the hope that at least one of them would make it to the Sanctuary. He took a short Mass and then they marched on. For two days they caught neither sight nor sound of their enemy beyond the river of mud the Materazzi trailed behind them. Then it began to rain heavily in hideously cold sheets. In the face of wind and rain, the army climbed a steep hill, and this they managed in good order, but as they emerged over the crest of the hill and onto the flat terrain before them, they saw the Materazzi army drawn up and waiting for them, in huge numbers. To either side, streaming out of the valleys, more were arriving all the time. The rain stopped and the sun came out, and the Materazzi unfurled their flags and pennants, which fluttered cheerfully, red and blue and gold, the sun shining on the soldiers’ silver armor.

A battle, for all the efforts of Redeemer General Princeps to avoid it, was now inevitable. But not that day. It was now nearly dark, and the Materazzi, having put the fear of death and damnation into the watching Redeemers, stood down and withdrew a little to the north. Seeing this, the Redeemers also drew back a short distance and found what little shelter was available to them, though not before Princeps had ordered each of his archers to cut himself a six-foot-long defensive stake from the trees on either side. Fearing that the Materazzi might attack by night, Princeps decreed that no fires be lit, in order to prevent any such attackers from making out their camp. Wet and cold and hungry, the Redeemers lay where they were, taking confession, hearing Mass, praying and waiting for death. Princeps walked among them handing out holy medals of Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes. He prayed for his soul and the souls of his men with everyone from the specialist cesspit diggers to the two archbishops charged with commanding the men-at-arms. “Remember, men,” he said cheerfully to each priest and soldier, “that we are dust and unto dust we shall return.”

“And we’ll all be returning by this time tomorrow,” said one of the monks, at which, much to his archdeacon’s surprise, Princeps laughed.

“Is that you, Dunbar?”

“It is,” replied Dunbar.

“Well, you’re not wrong there.”

Most of the Materazzi were less than half a mile away; their fires were burning bright and the Redeemers could hear snatches of songs, assorted shouts of abuse at the Redeemers themselves and, in the still air as the night wore on, the odd phrase of ordinary conversation. Master-Sergeant Trevor Beale was even closer. Seconded to Narcisse’s staff, he was lying low less than fifty yards away and looking to see what he might profitably do.

Miserable, wet, cold, hungry and full of fear at what was to come, Redeemer Colm Malik made his way to one of the few tents the Fourth Army had brought with them. Still, he thought, it’s your own fault. You insisted on volunteering when you could have been safe in the Sanctuary, arse-kicking acolytes.

He ducked in through the flap of the tent to find Redeemer Petar Brzica looking down at a boy, perhaps fourteen, sitting on the floor with his hands tied behind his back. The boy had an odd expression on his face-pale-faced terror, which was understandable, but something else also that Malik couldn’t quite put his finger on. Hatred, perhaps.

“You asked to see me, Redeemer.”

“Malik, yes,” said Brzica. “I wonder if you might do me a service.”

Malik nodded with as much of a lack of eagerness as he thought he could get away with.

“This boy here is a spy or an assassin chosen by the Materazzi, because he tells me he was a witness to the action at Mount Nugent. He needs dealing with.”

“Yes?” Malik was puzzled and not merely being obstructive.

“Just before the pickets caught him and brought him to me, I received a full absolution for all my sins from the archbishop himself.”

“I see.”

“Obviously you don’t. Killing an unarmed person, however much deserved, subsequently requires a formal absolution. I can’t kill him myself and then ask the archbishop for another shriving-he’ll think I’m an idiot. Have you confessed?”

“Not yet.”

“Then what’s the problem? Take him into the woods and get rid of him.”

“Can’t you get somebody else?”

“No. Now get on with it.”

So it was that Malik led the terrified young boy through the drizzle-sodden camp, past the numerous mumbled Masses the monks were giving for each other and out past the picket lines into the close-at-hand woods. With each step Malik’s heart sank deeper into his wet boots: arse-kickings and beatings were one thing, but to cut the throat of a boy who had already been witness to something that had sickened Malik to be a part of was more than he could bear. Tomorrow he would have a personal meeting with his maker. Once they were out of sight and into the bushes, he grabbed the boy and whispered, “I’m going to let you go. You keep running in that direction, you hear, and you never look back. Understand?”

“Yes,” said the terrified boy. Malik cut the rope at the boy’s wrist and watched as he stumbled, weeping, away into the dark. Malik waited for several minutes to be sure that in his terror the boy didn’t blunder back into the picket line. By tomorrow, if anyone found out, it wouldn’t matter. And so, hoping that this act of charity might weigh against his many other sins against the young, Malik turned back to the camp and straight onto the knife of Master-Sergeant Trevor Beale.

Cale was up long before first light, and as the sky slowly brightened he was joined by Vague Henri, then Kleist and, last of all, at dawn itself, by IdrisPukke. They were standing at the top of Silbury Hill, from where they had a clear sight of the battlefield. Silbury Hill was not a true hill but a huge mound that had been built for reasons now lost by a people long forgotten. Its flat top provided an excellent viewing platform, not just for lookouts to spy the movement of the enemy-though the field of battle was clear enough wherever you stood on the Materazzi side-but for the numerous hangers-on from the court: ambassadors, military attachés, important persons of a nonmilitary sort and even important Materazzi women. One of these was Arbell Swan-Neck, who had insisted on being present despite the deep opposition of her father and Cale, both of whom had pointed out that she was a prime target for the Redeemers and that in the fog and confusions of a battle, no one’s safety could be assured. She had argued that the presence of other Materazzi women would make her absence shameful, especially since this war was being fought to save her life. These men were risking death on her behalf, and only cowardice would explain her absence. This argument had continued right up until the day before the battle, the Marshal relenting only when Narcisse confirmed both the wretched condition and small size of the Redeemer army and the safety offered by Silbury Hill. It was too steep for an easy assault and simple to defend with a quick and safe line of escape. Cale was overruled, but he had already planned that at the first sign of danger he would remove her, and by force if necessary. Once he could see the battle lines drawn up early that morning, his anxieties were much relieved.

The field of battle was a triangle. He was on Silbury Hill at the left-hand corner of the base, and the Materazzi army of some forty-five thousand spread in a thick line to the right-hand corner. The Redeemers occupied the sharp end of the triangle. On either side were thick and almost impenetrable woods of bluish black and in between a large field, most of it recently plowed but with a strip of brilliant yellow stubble marking out the Materazzi position. They guessed the distance between the armies was about nine hundred yards.

“How many do you think?” said Cale to Vague Henri, nodding at the Redeemers.

He did not answer for a good thirty seconds.

“About five thousand archers. Maybe nineteen hundred men-at-arms.”

“You have to hand it to Narcisse,” said IdrisPukke, yawning. “The Redeemers can’t retreat, and if they attack against such odds he’ll cut them to pieces. I’m going to get some breakfast.” Kleist went with him over to an old servant blowing into a fire, his face as red as a lobster, next to him a plate of brown eggs and a smoked ham the size of a horse’s leg. As they stood and watched, a red setter belonging to one of the Materazzi women joined them, wagging its tail and hoping to be included in the coming meal.

In the Materazzi camp below, no one else was handing Narcisse anything except for a considerable amount of grief. While there was widespread support and admiration for his general plan, and this from men who were highly experienced and skillful warriors, for twenty years they had been used to Marshal Materazzi having the last say about matters of precedence in the line of attack. His unfortunate absence from the battlefield allowed the reemergence of long-buried rivalries with no very clear way of resolving them. In addition, Narcisse had been obliged to change his battle plan on three occasions-something that even great generals were often obliged to do. This meant that noblemen of royal blood who had once been assigned important roles in the front line were now being asked to accept undistinguished but still vital commands in the rear guard. To them it looked like a dishonorable demotion in lives that had been devoted to, and whose very meaning was defined in terms of, military glory and prowess. The cleverness of the plan in trapping the Redeemers in a narrow field now became itself the problem in that there were too many nobles of great experience, skill and courage and not enough places in which to put them all. Each one of them was convinced besides, and with good reason, that he was the best man for the job, that to step aside in order to merely preserve a consensus was a compromise too far that could harm the empire all were honor bound and willing to die to protect. Each man had his argument for inclusion, and there were few that were not good ones. It would have taken all of Marshal Materazzi’s diplomatic skill and years of authority to have forced a conclusion and, competent though he was, Narcisse had neither. In the end he decided that all the most powerful nobles could each lead a section in the front line, and only those he felt he could afford to offend were ordered into secondary roles. It made the chain of command horribly complicated, but it was the best solution he could come up with, and the situation was becoming more convoluted by the hour as large numbers of fresh arrivals also demanded their proper place in the great scheme of things. Narcisse comforted himself by considering that while Princeps’s problems were infinitely simpler, they were also infinitely worse. Pretending that he had to survey the deployment of the enemy, he left the White Tent and its arguments behind, but as he did so, he noticed Simon Materazzi dressed in full armor and being made a great fuss of by a dozen men-at-arms as he demonstrated his newly acquired sword strokes. Narcisse pulled one of his equerries to one side and whispered quietly to him.

“Have the Marshal’s half-wit taken to the rear immediately and keep him under guard until this is all over. All I need is for him to start wandering into the battle and getting himself killed.” To be on the safe side he even waited to see it done, to Simon’s incandescent but impotent fury. Koolhaus had gone to get himself a drink of water and saw nothing of this.

Cale and Vague Henri stayed watching and figuring, but however much they discussed what they would do in Princeps’s place, neither of them could fault IdrisPukke’s summary of the case. Their anxieties began to ease.

“It’s your plan really,” said Vague Henri as he looked admiringly over the splendidly laid out ranks of armored men and colorful pennants.

“It’s my idea. What’s down there is Narcisse’s doing. It looks all right. Bit crowded, though. Still.” He considered with satisfaction the dismal future that lay ahead of the Redeemers below.

Nevertheless, it was with unwelcome feelings of hatred mixed with fear that the two of them continued looking out over the Redeemer army as it began shaping itself into blocks of men-at-arms, cut into three separate units by two small blocks of cavalry. On either side, left and right, were two further blocks of archers.

For all their grim feelings about the Redeemers, Cale and Vague Henri could see how bad their position was. By now they had little or no food and they were cold and wet-as the sun shone a little and they began to move about, you could see the steam rising off them. For those suffering the squits, matters would have been worse-there was no chance to leave the field and they must shit where they stood. And all of this in front of an army that was well supplied, well fed and vastly outnumbered them. It was a satisfyingly unpleasant prospect.

Below them the Materazzi had been very roughly drawn into four groups of men-at-arms, fully armored (though many were not yet fitted) and each group eight thousand strong. On either side and behind these four lines were armored cavalry numbering about twelve hundred. The front lines of the Materazzi were still unformed-many had sat down to eat and drink, and there was a good deal of shouting, cheering and laughing as well as a good deal of unofficial pushing in and jockeying for position in the front line. Sheep were being roasted as well as a horse, with long lines of steam coming from the boiling kettles. Those too excited to sit and eat, with their still unarmored legs tucked under them on the light yellow stubble, buckled up, took up their position and tried to get closer to the front with more heavy shoving, though none of it was so undisciplined as to descend into anything more violent.

Two hours later and nothing had happened. A pale Arbell Swan-Neck joined them, accompanied by the now well-fed IdrisPukke, Kleist and also Riba. For all her loss of plumpitude during the preceding months, she was still and always would be a striking contrast to her mistress. She was shorter by nearly eight inches, dark, with brown eyes, and still as curved and abundant as Arbell was sinuous and blond and slim. They were as different to look at as a dove and a swan.

An anxious Arbell asked them what they thought would happen, and all agreed that the Materazzi were right to stay put because sooner or later Princeps would be forced to attack. However Cale looked at it, the Redeemers’ position was satisfyingly desperate.

“Has anyone seen Simon?” said Arbell.

“He’ll be with the Marshal,” said IdrisPukke. These days Simon and the Marshal were inseparable. “Almost like father and son,” joked Kleist, out of Arbell’s hearing. Still worried, she was about to dispatch two servants to check on her brother when a group of five mounted soldiers approached them. One of them was Conn Materazzi. He had not been this close to Cale since their fight.

“I have been sent by Field General Narcisse to see if you’re safe.”

“Quite safe. Have you seen my brother?”

“Yes. I think so-about an hour since. He was in the White Tent with the nerk who translates for him.”

“You’ve no right to talk about Koolhaus in that way. Look for Simon and please make sure he’s sent here.” Then she turned to her two servants and sent them down to the White Tent with the same instructions.

For the first time Conn Materazzi looked at Cale.

“You should be safe up here, I’d say.”

Cale said nothing. Conn turned his attention to Kleist. “How about you? If you’ve got more courage than to sit up here and let us do your fighting for you, I’ll arrange a place for you in the front line.”

Kleist looked interested.

“All right,” he replied agreeably. “There’s one or two things I have to do here, but you go ahead and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

Conn lacked much of a sense of humor, but even he realized he was being made fun of.

“At least your soapysam friends out there have the courage to fight for themselves. The three of you are just standing up here and letting us do it for you.”

“What’s the point,” replied Kleist, as if explaining to someone of diminished understanding, “of having a dog and barking yourself?”

But Conn wasn’t so easy to mock, or rather it made less impression on him because he had been born to regard himself as of immense worth.

“You’ve more reason to be in this fight today than any of us. If you think that’s amusing, then I don’t need some buffoon’s last word for anyone to see what you really are.”

And having had the last word himself, he turned his horse away and was gone. The truth was that this had little effect on Vague Henri, none at all on Kleist, but scraped a sore spot on Cale. His victory over Solomon Solomon had shown him that his skill was dependent on a terror that might come and go at any moment. What was the good of such gifts if panic could obliterate them? He knew that what kept him on top of the hill was that it was not, strictly speaking, his fight, that he was bound by duty as well as love to protect Arbell Materazzi, but also the remembrance of the trembling, the weakness and his dissolving guts-the horrible funk of being afraid and weak.

Now there was another visitor to the top of Silbury Hill and one whose appearance caused a fascinating stir from the very important persons gathered there. Although he had arrived at the foot of the hill in a coach, he had transferred into a completely covered sedan chair of the kind used by Materazzi ladies to travel in the narrow streets of the very old town where a carriage could not be used. Eight men, clearly exhausted by the climb, carried the chair and another ten watched over it.

“Who’s that?” Cale asked IdrisPukke.

“Well, I can’t say I’m often surprised, but this is a wonder.”

“Is it the Ark of the Covenant?”

“Look down, not up. If the devil himself were ever possessed, this is the creature who could do it. It’s Kitty the Hare.”

Cale was suitably impressed and for a moment said nothing while he looked over the ten guards. “They look handy.”

“So they should. Laconic mercenaries. Must cost a bob or two.”

“What’s he doing here? I thought he was heard of but never seen.”

“Mock on. You cross Kitty and you’ll regret it. He’s probably come to keep an eye on his investment. Besides, today is a chance to see history being made and be safe doing it.”

Then the door of the sedan opened and a man got out. Cale groaned in disappointment.

“That’s not Kitty,” said IdrisPukke.

“Thank God for that. Beelzebub should look the part.”

“I forget sometimes that you’re still a kid. If you ever get the chance to meet that one,” IdrisPukke added, gesturing at the man, “remember, Mister Wet-Behind-the-Ears, to find a pressing engagement somewhere else.”

“Now you’ve made me scared.”

“You’re a cocky little sod, aren’t you? That’s Daniel Cadbury. Look in Dr. Johnson’s General Dictionary under ‘henchman’ and you’ll find his name. See also ‘assassin,’ ‘murderer,’ and ‘sheep stealer.’ Quite a charmer, though-so obliging you think he’d lend you his arsehole and shit through his ribs.”

While Cale was puzzling out this interesting claim, a smiling Cadbury made his way over to them.

“It’s been a long time, IdrisPukke. Keeping busy?”

“Hello, Cadbury. Just dropped in on your way to strangle an orphan?”

Cadbury smiled as if genuinely appreciating the malice in Idris-Pukke’s voice and, a tall man, looked down approvingly at Cale.

“He’s a card, your friend, isn’t he? You must be Cale,” he added in a tone that implied that being Cale meant something. “I was at the Red Opera when you put out Solomon Solomon. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer chap. Quite something, young man, quite something. We must have lunch when all this unpleasantness is over.” And with a bow that showed Cale respect but as if from an equal who was worth having respect from, he turned and went back to the sedan.

“He seems very nice,” said Cale, meaning to be aggravating.

“And will be, right up until the moment when he is obliged, with the greatest regret, to cut your windpipe.”

There was a shout from Vague Henri. There was movement in the ranks of the Redeemers. In a line about ten deep the five thousand archers and the nineteen hundred men-at-arms slowly moved forward. Fifty yards farther on, at the edge of the plowed field that stretched nearly as far as the Materazzi, they stopped and the front rank knelt down.

“What in God’s name are they up to?” said IdrisPukke.

“They’re taking a mouthful of earth,” said Cale, “to remind themselves that they are mud and will return to mud.”

With that the first rank stood up and walked onto the plowed field. The rank behind them moved forward, knelt, took a mouthful of earth, followed them, and so on. Within less than five minutes the entire Redeemer army were back in their loose battle rank, walking at no more than a stroll and out of step on the rough surface. All there remained for the Materazzi and the observers on Silbury Hill to do was wait and watch.

“When will they quicken for the assault?” asked IdrisPukke.

“Not at all,” said Vague Henri. “The Materazzi use no archers, so the killing range is what? Six feet? There’s no need to rush.” It was now about ten minutes into the advance, and when the Redeemers had covered about seven hundred yards of the nine hundred to the Materazzi front rank, a shout went up from the Redeemers’ centenars, each one of whom controlled a hundred men. The advance stopped.

There was more muffled shouting from the centenars, and the archers and men-at-arms began to step to the left and right and make space so that the line now filled the width of the battlefield. In less than three minutes they had finished rearranging their battle order and were now about a yard apart. The seven lines behind the front row were staggered checkerboard fashion, so the archers could see and shout more easily over the heads of the men in front of them.

For a few minutes it had been clear that each Redeemer was carrying what looked like a spear about six feet long. Now that they had stopped and were much closer, it was plain that whatever they were carrying it was too thick and heavy to be a spear. There was another order from the centenars and their use became obvious. There followed a long period of hammering as what were now clearly defensive stakes were driven at an angle into the ground with the hefty mallet each archer also carried.

“What are they preparing a defensive line for?” asked IdrisPukke.

“I don’t know,” replied Cale. “You?”

Kleist and Vague Henri both shrugged.

“It doesn’t make sense. The Materazzi have caught them cold.” Cale looked at IdrisPukke anxiously. “You’re sure the Materazzi won’t attack?”

“Why would they throw away such an advantage?”

By now the Redeemers were busy sharpening the ends of the stakes.

“They mean to try and provoke them into attacking,” said Cale after a few moments. He turned to IdrisPukke. “They’re within bow-shot. Five thousand archers, six arrows a minute-do you think the Materazzi will put up with twenty-four thousand arrows coming at them every sixty seconds?”

IdrisPukke sniffed and considered.

“Two hundred and fifty yards is a hell of a long way. I don’t care how many there are. Every one of the Materazzi is covered head to toe in steel. The arrow isn’t made that can get through tempered steel from that range. I can’t say I’d fancy being under a shower like that myself-but the Redeemers will be lucky if one in a hundred finds a mark. And they won’t have enough arrows-a couple of dozen each-to keep that rate up for long. If that’s their plan…” IdrisPukke shrugged to indicate how little he thought of it.

Cale looked across at a group of five Materazzi signalers also watching the Redeemers from the vantage point of Silbury Hill. One of them was leaving with news of the defensive stakes being driven into the ground, something it would have been difficult to see from the front lines of the Materazzi. It had taken them some time to work out what the Redeemers were doing with the stakes and whether it was significant enough to send a messenger.

Having watched the messenger disappear over the edge of the hill, Cale turned back toward the Redeemers. A dozen bannermen, holding white flags with the figure of the Hanged Redeemer painted in red, were raising the colors. The order to take aim went up from the centenars, too indistinct to hear precisely but obvious as the thousands of archers pulled the strings back on their bows and aimed them high. A short pause, then a shout from the centenars and the banners fell. Four clouds of arrows arched a hundred feet into the air, streaking toward the Materazzi first line.

Three seconds passed and then they hit the Materazzi, heads bowed to deflect the points. The five thousand arrows struck, pinged and clattered, ricocheted over the armored line, the Materazzi bent into the steel rain as if they were leaning into wind and hail. From the flanks there were the screams of horses hit. But already another five thousand arrows had struck. Ten seconds later, another. For two minutes this rain continued on the Materazzi. Few died, only a few more were wounded-IdrisPukke was right that the armor covering the Materazzi men-at-arms would do its work. But consider the noise, the endless metal clanking, the short wait, the arrows again, the screams of the horses, the cries of unlucky men hit in the eye or neck, and that none of them had ever endured such a hostile, terrifying strike. What sense did it make just to stand and take an arrow from some cowardly Holy Joe without any breeding or skill or the courage to fight hand-to-hand?

It was the cavalry on either side who broke, the left side first, unsure when two of their own bannermen fell-was it a signal?-so hard to know among the screams of wounded horses, their own steeds panicking and ready to bolt and only an eye slit through which to see the picture unfolding around them. Three horses started forward, spooked. Is it a charge? No one wanted to show their cowardice by holding back. Like athletes in a race, watching and tense when one man jumps the start, the whole line goes. Shouts from the back to hold the line are lost among the noise-and then the arrows land again.

Then suddenly the horses on the left flank move ahead-impatience, fury, fear and confusion start them off.

Narcisse, watching from the White Tent, swears as if to bust. But soon he realizes they cannot be recalled. He waves his ensigns to signal the right flank of cavalry to attack as well. Only then does the messenger arrive from Silbury Hill to warn him of the hedgehog of stakes dug in among the archers on the flanks.

Up on Silbury Hill an appalled Cale stares in disbelief as the cavalry move forward, the riders spurring their horses to form a line-swiftly they merge at three rows deep and knee to knee, three hundred yards across to match the line of archers facing them. At first they keep a speed not much faster than a man can jog, standing in their stirrups, lances under their right arms, left hands holding the reins. For two hundred yards and forty seconds they keep this pace, enduring the flight of twenty thousand arrows as they charge. Then the last fifty yards-two thousand points of man and beast and steel spurred on to ride the archers down.

The archers, still tasting the mud mixed with fear, let loose one more flight. More horses scream and fall, crushing their riders, breaking backs, taking their neighbors with them as they crash. But the line draws on. And then the shock of the clash.

No horse will willingly ride down a man or take a barricade it cannot jump. No man in his right mind will stand against a charging horse and spear. But men will choose death where a beast will not. They can be trained to die.

As the horses seemed about to break over them like a crushing wave, the archers stepped back and moved quickly into the thicket of sharpened stakes. Some slipped, some were too slow and were crushed or lanced. Horses arrived on top of the stakes too quickly and could not refuse. Impaled, their screams were like the end of the world, their riders thrown, their necks broken. As they lay in the mud and flapped like fish, Redeemers finished them with mallet blows, or another held them down as oppos stabbed between the armored joints, making the brown mud red.

Most of the horses refused. Some of them slipped, throwing their riders, others held on as the great charge stopped in a moment, turning on itself, horse crashing into horse, some flying off the sides into the woods. Men cursed, horses screamed, turned in their fear like creatures half their size and weight, and fled back toward the safety of the rear. Riders fell in their hundreds, and within a moment archers darted out from behind the stakes and battered the heads and chests of the stunned and fallen riders with crushing blows from their hammers. Three Redeemers in their muddy soutanes to every thrown Materazzi cavalryman staggering to his feet, trying to draw his sword as he was pushed and slipped and tripped and stabbed through eyeholes and joints. Farther back among the hedgehog stakes, angry and now free from fear, archers let loose at the retreating riders. More wounded horses fell, others driven into a frenzied bolt.

Worse was to come. To support the cavalry, as he was bound to do, Narcisse was forced to send the front line of his men-at-arms to back the charge. Eight thousand strong and eight men deep, they were already halfway toward the Redeemers’ ranks when the returning cavalry, the horses terrified and maddened by fear and injury, crashed into the ranks of the advancing Materazzi men-at-arms. Because they were crowded together and prevented from moving by the thick woods to either side and ranks of armored men behind, it was impossible to move aside to let the charging horses through. Desperate to avoid the killing clash as the bolting horses fled into their ranks, the soldiers shoved sideways into each other, thrusting and barging to clear a way, grabbing their neighbors, setting up waves that spread backward and to either side as each man fell and clutched at his mate to stop himself from falling.

So all around the advance was halted and broken up-men slipped in the much-churned mud and cursed and pulled each other down. The Redeemer archers, now with the time to organize themselves again, let fly with their remaining arrows. But this time, with the Materazzi standing still and barely eighty yards away, the arrow points could make their way even through the steel of armor if they struck it right.

Even though only a few hundred men were crushed by the fleeing horses or wounded by arrows, the thousands left began to bend behind each other before the sergeants and the captains, shouting and screaming, heaved them back into line and the advance began again. Though they were vexed by disorder and the walk in sixty pounds of armor on three hundred yards of muddy plowed field, the might of their attack now built. Fifty yards. Twenty. Ten, and over the last few feet they broke into a run, aiming their spears to drive the points home into their opponents’ chests.

But at the moment of the clash, the Redeemers, as if they were one, rushed back a few yards, wrongfooting the stepping thrust of their enemies. And yet again along the Materazzi line there was a staggered halt as some advanced and some held back; and so, in fits and starts, the great momentum of the charge was stalled again.

Now, though, for all the confusion of the attack, the Materazzi knew with certainty that they must win-armored, the greatest soldiers in the world and finally face-to-face and four-to-one. Convinced of victory, they pressed ahead. Now the air, besides the shouts and screams of men, was filled with the clatter of spears and the grunting heave of the Materazzi-but now further squeezed and twenty deep in places, with all of them shoving and pushing to get to the place of action and honor. But only the Materazzi at the front could fight-fewer than a thousand men could strike a blow at any given time. Fewer in number, the Redeemers had space to move in and out of the killing zone of only a dozen feet or so. Unable to advance, the Materazzi at the front were shoved and pushed by their comrades just behind and, worse, a dozen back-those at the rear knew nothing of what was happening at the front and kept on pressing forward, those in the middle likewise. The pressure began to build, one man pushing into another and another and another. As the Redeemers hacked at them, those at the front were trying to dodge and sidestep or retreat but found no room. Then the pressure from behind, impossibly strong, shoved them forward into the thrusts of spears and hammer blows. Some fell, wounded; others, unable to keep their feet in the pressure and the axle-greasy mud, slipped and caused the man behind, pushed from the rear, to fall himself-and then another and another. Wanting to get to grips, the middle Materazzi ranks tried to step over the fallen men in front. But whether they willed or not, the pushing from the back from men who couldn’t see forced them to step on their fellows-many slipped and fell themselves, falling in the mud or unable to keep a balance as they stepped on the squirming and flailing men beneath their feet. What use armor now without room to move, only an encumbrance as they tried to gain their feet or climb over the bodies two or three deep? And always the stabbing from the front and hefty blows.

Even if the Redeemers also fell, they could rise easily or be pulled free. In three or four minutes, walls of the fallen Materazzi formed at the front, protecting the Redeemers and impeding the attack-and still the pressure from the rear, so deep that none of them at the back could see what was happening at the front. The men at the rear thought that each collapse of the forward line was an advance and were only further encouraged to push. Few of the Materazzi lying in piles were dead or even wounded to any great degree, but in the thrust and shove and mud a single knight found it hard to rise once he had fallen to the ground. With a second on top of him, it was almost impossible to move. A third and he was as helpless as a child. Imagine the rage and fear-the years of training and the many fights and scars, and to be reduced to being squashed to death or waiting, lying in the mud, for some peasant with a mallet to crush your chest or stab through the eye-slit in your helmet or the joint under your arm. What anguish and terror and helplessness. And all the while the terrible pushing from behind as twenty ranks of Materazzi heaved, convinced of victory and desperate to make their mark before the battle was won. Messengers stationed around what was now the rear of the battlefield, anxious for news, unable to see the disaster at the front and that the battle was already lost, sent back reports that victory was almost theirs and called for reinforcements to finish the day.

Within the White Tent there was conflicting news from Silbury Hill, where the collapse at the front could be clearly seen by the observers. But even here it was only the boys and IdrisPukke who appreciated fully the calamity unfolding in front of them. The observers, unsure and uncertain, could not countenance advising the Materazzi to withdraw. It was itself unthinkable, and they could so easily be wrong. And so they wrote alarming messages but hedged by doubts and ifs and buts. Narcisse was receiving signals from the front demanding reinforcements to finish the day, contradicted by the bleaker observers’ reports from Silbury Hill, though hedged by caution and unwillingness to face the evidence that the battle was already lost. Against his better judgment Narcisse had staked most of his forces on a single throw against an enemy that was sick and weak and underarmed, fighting the greatest army in the world, which hadn’t lost a battle for more than twenty years. Defeat did not make sense. And so, for all his alarm about the messages from Silbury Hill, the field general quickly gave the order for the second and third ranks to move to the attack.

Up on the hill, when the boys and IdrisPukke watched the second and third lines move toward the battlefront, a cry went up from all of them of disbelief, astonishment and rage.

“What’s happening?” said Arbell Swan-Neck to Cale. Her lover raised his hand and groaned.

“Can’t you see? The battle is already lost. Those men are going to their deaths, and who’s going to protect Memphis once their bodies are rotting on the field down there?”

“You can’t be right. Tell me it’s not so. It can’t be that bad.”

“Look for yourself,” he said, gesturing toward the battle line. Already thousands of Redeemer archers were swarming around the sides and even to the back of the Materazzi, hacking them down with pole and mallet, causing collapses as each one that fell took another three or four with him to the ground. “We have to leave,” Cale said softly. “Roland,” he called out to her groom. “Get her horse-and now! My God!” he cried in dreadful anguish, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”

He nodded to Vague Henri and Kleist, who started to move back toward the tents. But as they moved, a limping figure out of breath headed toward them. “Wait!” he called. It was Koolhaus, flushed and agitated.

“Mademoiselle, it’s your brother, Simon. He gave me the slip while we were at the rear looking at the cavalry. I thought we’d just lost each other in the crowd, but when I got back to his tent the armor your father gave him for his birthday was gone. He was with that shit-bag Lord Parson an hour ago, and he was joking about Simon coming with him in the first attack.” He stopped for a second, quietly. “I think he’s down there in the battle.”

“How could you have been so careless?” Arbell screamed at Koolhaus. But instantly she turned to Cale. “Please find him. Bring him back.”

Cale was too stunned to say anything, but Kleist was not.

“If you want both of them dead, that’s as good a way to go about it as I can think of.” Kleist gestured her to look at the battle. “There are going to be thirty thousand men down there in a couple of minutes, all squeezed into a potato field. The Redeemers have won already. All we’re going to be seeing for the next two hours is men being killed. And you want to send him into that? It’ll be like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack. And one on fire at that.”

But it was as if she heard nothing, just looked into Cale’s eyes, desperate and pleading.

“Please, help him.”

“Kleist is right,” said Vague Henri. “Whatever happens to Simon, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale’s eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze.

“I understand,” she said.

It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he’d become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration. All through this the wide-eyed Riba had kept her mouth shut, hoping that she could rely on the others to stop Cale. But she knew that when it came to Arbell, he had lost all sense. Much as she held her strange savior in a kind of dread, and brusque and usually indifferent to her as he was whenever she passed by him in her daily tasks, she had seen for months that when it came to Arbell there was a kind of madness in him.

“Don’t do this, Thomas,” she said, stern as a mother. Arbell looked at her as much shocked as furious at her servant contradicting her in such a way. But with so many against her in this, she could not tell Riba to be quiet or, indeed, say anything. But it made no difference. It was as if Cale hadn’t even heard.

Cale looked over his shoulder at the disintegrating battle below him, his heart sinking. He looked at Vague Henri and Kleist. “Cover me as best you can but don’t leave it too late to get out yourselves.”

“I wasn’t going to,” said Kleist.

Cale laughed. “Remember, if one of you hits me, I’ll know who it was.”

“Not if it’s me you won’t.”

“Head back to Memphis with her guards. I’ll follow when I can.” They ran to the tent to fetch their kit. Cale took IdrisPukke to one side. “If things go badly, head for Treetops.”

“You don’t want to go down there, boy,” said IdrisPukke.

“I know.”

Vague Henri and Kleist returned firm-handed and began to set up. IdrisPukke told one of Arbell’s equerries to take off his official vestments, a shirt covered in blue and gold dragons on which was embroidered the Materazzi family motto: “Sooner Dead Than Changed.” IdrisPukke handed the shirt to Cale. “Go down as you are and everyone will be taking a hack at you. At least the Materazzi won’t go for you if you’re wearing this.”

“And if you’re captured,” said Arbell, “they might realize that you’ll be worth a great ransom.”

At this Kleist started to cackle as if it were the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

“Leave her alone,” said Cale.

“You want to be worrying about yourself, mate. She’ll be fine, I should think.”

With that Cale started for the edge and disappeared over it, sliding down the steep hillside at almost running pace. In thirty seconds he was on the battlefield. Ahead of him the second rank was already moving into the brutal shambles of the first attack, another eight thousand men crammed into a space too small for half that number. Already the Redeemers were spilling around the sides, penning the new arrivals in-the reinforcements merely giving them more immobile soldiers they could take their time to hack and trip.

The packed ranks of soldiers had split here and there as they pushed and shoved, and huge piles of bodies, some as high as ten feet, caused the scrum to flow around them like the sea around rocks. Cale took up a fast trot, and within two minutes he was moving around the Materazzi rear of the fight. In contrast now to the overview from the hill, he had no sense at all of what was going on. Some of the soldiers at the rear were hanging back, uncertain; others were pressing forward. Only because of the view from the hill did he know that, at the front and moving down the sides, a massacre was going on. Here there wasn’t even much noise, just groups of soldiers moving to go forward, changing direction as each one saw a gap or, following another collapse at the front, surged forward, thinking they had made another break in the Redeemers’ ranks. And so thousands of men a little impatient, hoping that they would not miss out, went slowly to their dreadful deaths.

Cale raced along the line at the rear looking for Simon, a task as hopeless as Kleist had said it would be. But if he had been deluding himself when he started down Silbury Hill, now there was only despair. He would never find Simon, even if he were not already dead. All that would happen is that he would die down there or return a failure in Arbell’s eyes. Even if she accepted that there was nothing he could do, he did not want her to accept such a thing. He did not want to give up what it meant to be adored.

Then he had other things to be worried about. Around the side of a line of Materazzi pressing forward, two dozen Redeemers appeared. In groups of three they attacked any men-at-arms looking for a way to get to the front of the fight. One tripped them with a long billhook, a second hit them with one of the hefty mallets they had used to bang in their wooden stakes, and a third stabbed them under the arm or through the eyeholes of the helmet. With the stragglers down, they even started to use the billhooks to pull back the legs of the men pushing in line to get to the front. In the crush and mud, and not expecting an attack of this kind, soldiers who would have been almost invulnerable anywhere else slipped and fell and were dispatched waving and struggling in the mire, helpless as newborns.

Then a group of Redeemers saw Cale and moved to take him from three sides. An arrow struck the one to his left in the eye, a bolt the one on his right. The first fell silently, the second screaming and scratching at his chest. The third still had a look of astonishment on his face as Cale struck at his neck and cut his throat deep into his spinal cord. He fell thrashing in the mud beside the Lord of Six Counties he had slaughtered only seconds before. Then Cale stepped into a second fight, holding the arm of his attacker to one side, crashing his forehead into the Redeemer’s face and stabbing him skillfully through the heart. A billhooker went down openmouthed to one of Henri’s bolts, but Kleist’s arrow only took the mallet-wielder in the arm. His luck lasted two seconds as Cale, slipping in the mud, missed the fatal stroke and took him in the belly. He fell crying out, and lay where it would take him hours to die. Then another wave of men-at-arms pushed back the Redeemers that remained, and Cale stood, covered in blood and impotent, not knowing whether to turn this way or that. All his great skill was nothing in the press and the confusion-now he was just a boy in a crowd of dying men.

And then, just as he was about to turn away, there was another collapse. Sixty men deep ahead of him, the biggest yet, and a split going far toward the front opened up. For a second, terrified, he hesitated, knowing this breach was the very jawbone of death opening up for him. But fear of failure in his lover’s eyes drove him into the briefly widening gap, and able to run far faster than the slipping armored men around him, he made it to within a dozen feet of the front. But all that met him was an impenetrable wall of dead and dying Materazzi. No one in front of him had a wound; they had simply collapsed on top of each other and were being crushed by the weight of those above them and pushing from behind. For a few moments there were only the piles of dead and a strange, low groaning. The helmets of some had come loose, others, trapped but with a hand free, had removed them in a desperate bid for air. Their faces now were purple, some were nearly black-a few groaning in a horribly wheezing effort to fill their lungs-but nothing could enter their horribly crushed chests. Even as Cale looked, the breathing stopped and the mouths gaped like fish on a riverbank. Several spoke to him-horrible whispers. “Help! Help!” He tried to pull a couple free, but they might as well have been set in the rice flour and concrete of the Sanctuary walls. He turned away and scanned the piles of the dead and dying moaning around him.

“Help!” creaked a voice. He looked down at a young man, his face a dreadful purple blue. “Help!” Cale looked away. “Cale. Help!”

Astonished, Cale turned back. And then he recognized him, even beneath the puffed-up black and blue of his face. It was Conn Materazzi. An arrow shot past Cale’s right ear and pinged as it hit one of the armored dead. He ducked down next to Conn.

“I can finish you quickly. Yes or no?”

But Conn didn’t seem to hear. “Help me! Help me!” he said-a horrible soft and rasping sound. Once again, more powerful now with the appalling sight of someone he knew, Cale felt the awfulness of being here-and how useless. Looking anxiously over his shoulder, he could see the gap that had let him so near the front begin to squeeze to a close as the Redeemers forced the Materazzi on the edges back into the middle. He stood up to run for it. “Help me!” Something in Conn Materazzi’s eyes froze the hairs on his neck-the dreadful horror and despair. Cale reached into the pile of dead and heaved with all the strength he had, doubled by rage and fear. But Conn was pinned, one below and three on top, by a thousand pounds of dead weight and sheet steel. Again he heaved. Nothing. “Sorry, chum,” he said to Conn. “Time’s up.”

Then he was sent sprawling to the ground by a hefty shove in the back. Frightened and surprised, he slipped on the mud as he tried to pull his sword and scramble free of his attacker.

It was a horse. It looked at him and snorted expectantly. Cale stared at the animal-its rider dead, it was looking for someone to lead it away from the battlefield. At once Cale grabbed the rope fastened to the saddle, knotted it around the hefty pommel then rushed to tie it round Conn’s chest and under his armpits. His face was black now and eyes sightless. Luckily the rope was thin but very stiff, more ceremonial than practical, and easily pushed under one arm and then the other. Cale tied it, howling in rage as he fumbled it twice, and then fell over in the mud trying to jump into the saddle. More desperate than ever now, he grabbed the pommel and, seeing the gap closing, screamed in the horse’s ear. Startled, it set off, slipping and flailing in the mud, almost falling but finally getting a purchase as it pulled with all the strength of a large hunter used to carrying three hundred pounds on its back. At first nothing moved, then with a rush and the snap of Conn’s right leg, he was pulled free of the pile of dead men crushing him. With this rush of movement the horse nearly fell again and Cale almost lost his grip on the saddle. Then they were off, the three of them heading for the gap at no more than four or five miles an hour. But the horse was strong and well trained and it moved, happy now, for all the disaster around it, that it had a rider on its back. The instinct that had kept the horse safe in its wanderings around the battlefield for more than fifteen minutes in the middle of a massacre now kept it safe again. Cale held his body as flat to the horse’s back as he could, ready to pull his knife and cut Conn free if he threatened to pull them over. But the mud that had caused the death of so many Materazzi, and was to kill many more, was Conn’s savior. Unconscious, he slumped easily in whatever direction he was pulled, almost like a sled in snow. Cale kept his head down and urged the horse on with his feet, not seeing the two Redeemers coming to meet the slowly moving animal. Nor did he see them fall, crying out in their horror and distress as if one man, cut down by the dreadful watchfulness of Kleist and Vague Henri.

Within less than three minutes the horse had made its way through the mass of men who were being pushed into the center of the field and, without drama or fuss, left the battlefield, carrying the rattled Cale and dragging the unconscious Conn into a narrow path between Silbury Hill and the impassable woods containing the battle. Once out of sight, Cale stopped the horse and got down to look at Conn. He looked dead, but he was breathing. Quickly Cale stripped off his armor and with great difficulty manhandled him, stomach down, over the saddle. All the while, unconscious, Conn groaned and cried out from the pain of his broken ribs and right leg. Cale led the horse on and within five minutes the sound of the battle faded and was replaced by the sound of blackbirds and the wind moving through the leaves of the woods.

An hour later Cale was overcome by an abrupt wave of exhaustion. He looked for a way into the woods and, failing to find an entry through the mass of briars and thorns between the trees, had to cut a way in, though he was slashed over his face and arms as he did so. Once past the edge, however, the thickets gave way to a mulch of dead leaves. He tied the horse and eased Conn carefully to the ground. He stared at him for a couple of minutes as if unable to understand what had brought them to this place together. He set his leg as gently as he could and strapped it with two branches he cut from an ash tree. Then he lay down and immediately fell into a deep and terrible sleep.

He woke up two hours later when the nightmares became unbearable. Conn Materazzi was still unconscious, now white as death. Cale knew that he had to find water at least, but he was drained and exhausted still, and for ten minutes he just sat as if in some dreadful trance. Soon Conn began groaning and moving restlessly; he woke up to find Cale staring down at him. He cried out in horror and confusion.

“Calm down. You’re all right.”

Wide-eyed and terrified, Conn tried to move back and away from Cale. He screamed in pain. “I wouldn’t try moving around,” said Cale. “Your thigh bone’s broken.” For a couple of minutes Conn said nothing as the terrible pain in his leg only slowly ebbed away.

“What happened?” he said at last. Cale told him. When he’d finished, Conn said nothing for some time. “The thing is,” he said when he finally spoke, “I never saw one-a Redeemer, I mean. Not one. Is there any water?” Conn’s utter hopelessness and misery, just the terrible state of him, began to move Cale to both pity and irritation.

“I saw some smoke just before we came in here. I thought I heard yesterday something about a village near the hill. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He stripped the armor off the horse and cut away as much as he could of the mailed padding on its back and flanks and then led it out onto the path. He mounted and stroked the top of its head.

“Thank you,” he said to the horse, and then rode it on.