The Proof House

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hoping to force Temrai into giving him an opportunity, Bardas kept up the bombardment for three days without changing the settings; he described it to his staff officers as ‘planishing the enemy’. They didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but they could see the reasoning behind it. The major obstacle was still the disparity in numbers; if they could force Temrai into an ill-advised sortie, they had a chance of killing enough men to bring the odds to within acceptable parameters. It was sound Imperial thinking, and they approved.

Nevertheless, the Imperial army was feeling the strain. A third of the halberdiers and pikemen had to be kept standing to at all times, in case Temrai launched a night attack; another third were fully occupied quarrying and hauling stone shot from the nearby outcrops (and the supply of useful rock was dwindling rather quicker than Bardas had allowed for); he’d had to detail two troops of cavalry to help the artillerymen. The troopers were disgusted at this reduction in status, while the bombardiers complained bitterly about cack-handed horse-soldiers doing more harm than good; the trebuchets themselves were starting to shake apart after so much continuous use, and Bardas found he was alarmingly low on both timber and rope, neither of which were available locally. He’d already given the order to break up the newly built siege towers for timbers and materials (but it didn’t look like they’d be needed now, and the hide coverings could be scavenged to make up more pavises, when he could spare a few carpenters from trebuchet maintenance).

It was just as well he had Theudas to help him; he had plenty of soldiers, but only a few competent clerks, and most of his work seemed to be drawing up rosters and schedules, allocating materials, updating stores manifests, the sort of thing he could do if he had to but which Theudas actually seemed to enjoy.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ the boy told him. ‘If I can help kill Temrai with a notebook and a counting-board, he’s as good as dead already.’ Then he launched into a highspeed resume of the latest daggers-drawn dispute between the chief carpenters of number-six and number-eight batteries over who had a better claim to the one remaining full keg of number-six square-head nails-

‘Deal with it,’ Bardas interrupted with a shudder.

‘No problem,’ Theudas replied cheerfully.

Bardas smiled. ‘It’s good to see you’ve found something you can actually do,’ he said. ‘You were a pretty rotten apprentice bowyer.’

‘I was, wasn’t I?’ Theudas shrugged. ‘Still, everybody’s good at something.’

Two men met in a shed on the outskirts of the sprawling Imperial supply depot at Ap’ Escatoy. It was dark. They didn’t know each other.

After a short interval during which they studied each other like cats, one of them reached under his coat and pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth. ‘Special delivery?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, that’s me.’ The other man reached for the bundle. ‘I hope you know where it’s supposed to be going, because I don’t.’

‘It says on the ticket.’ The first man pointed at a scrap of paper attached to the thin, coarse string that held the bundle together.

‘All right,’ the other man replied, frowning. ‘So what does it say?’

‘I don’t know, I can’t read.’

The other man sighed. ‘Give it here,’ he said. He felt the package curiously. ‘Feels like a stick. You got any idea what’s in here?’

‘No.’›

‘Your work fascinates you, doesn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

The next morning, someone stole a horse from the couriers’ stable, using a forged requisition. He was believed to have left in the direction of the war. Nobody could be spared to go after him, but a memorandum was added to the incident log, so that the matter could be dealt with later.

Temrai had got out of the habit of keeping his eyes open. There hadn’t been much point the last few days (how many days? No idea). There was nothing to see except dust, which clogged your eyes and blinded you anyway, to the point where it was easier to keep them shut and rely on your other senses for finding your way about. His hearing, on the other hand, had become an instrument of high precision, to the point where he could tell from the noise it made coming down almost exactly where the next shot was going to pitch. This method proved to be ninety-nine per cent reliable, the only serious exception being the shot that landed a few feet above him on the path, dislodging a great mass of rock and rubble and burying him.

That’s strange; I thought you had to die first. He opened his eyes, but there was nothing to see. Hands, legs, head, nothing he could move; breathing was just about possible, but so difficult and time-consuming that it constituted a full-time occupation. It’d be all right, though; they’d come and dig him out in a minute or so.

Assuming, of course, that they knew where he was, or that he’d been buried at all. Now he came to think of it, there was no reason to believe that anybody had been watching when the hill fell on him; seeing your hand in front of your face was something of an achievement, thanks to the dust. How long would it take them, he wondered, to notice that he wasn’t there any more? Even if they missed him almost immediately, it wasn’t exactly an instinctive response to say, Hey, we can’t find Temrai, he must be buried alive somewhere. He thought of the number of times he’d gone looking for someone, failed to find them and given up in a temper, assuming they didn’t want to be found.

‘It’s all right,’ said a voice beside him. ‘They’ll find us. We’ve just got to be patient and try to stay calm.’

Temrai was surprised, but pleased. He couldn’t remember seeing anybody near him when the hill came down (but thanks to the dust, that was hardly conclusive). ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

The voice laughed. ‘Never better,’ it replied. ‘Nothing I enjoy more than being stuck in a hole in the ground under a few tons of dirt. I find it helps me unwind.’

The voice was familiar – very familiar, in fact – but he couldn’t quite place it. So familiar that asking, Excuse me, but who are you? would be embarrassing. ‘Can you move at all?’ he asked.

‘No. How about you?’

‘Not so as you’d notice.’ It was odd, Temrai reflected, that he could hear the other man so clearly, as if they were sitting opposite each other in a tent. Maybe the human voice carried well through dirt; he didn’t know enough about such things to be able to form an opinion. ‘Maybe we should shout or something,’ he said, ‘let them know we’re here.’

‘Save your breath,’ the voice said. ‘You’ll just use up the air. I keep telling you, don’t worry about it. They’ll come and dig us out. They always do.’

That last remark was strange, but Temrai was too preoccupied to dwell on it. ‘Where do you think the air is coming from?’ he asked.

‘Search me. Just be grateful it’s coming from somewhere. And that you don’t have one of those irrational fears of confined spaces – though what’s irrational about being afraid of confined spaces I really don’t know. I remember once I was trapped down a tunnel with a man who was that way; gods know how, but he’d managed to keep it under control for years and years, and then when we had the roof cave in on us, it all seemed to burst out of him. He died, actually; he got so frightened his heart stopped beating. Sorry, that’s not a very cheerful anecdote; but it makes the point – the main thing is to stay calm. Can you smell anything?’

‘What? No. I mean, nothing unusual. What sort of thing?’

‘Garlic,’ the voice replied. ‘Probably just my imagination. Oh hell, my legs are going to sleep. Nothing like a few tons of spoil to cut off the flow of blood.’

Temrai could feel the muscles of his chest tiring from the effort of lifting the weight of the earth every time he breathed in. ‘Look, shall we just try shouting?’ he said. ‘I’d rather have a go and risk running out of air than just lie here.’

‘By all means,’ replied the voice indulgently. ‘After all, it might work. Forgive me if I don’t join you, though. I’m concentrating on my breathing and I don’t want to lose the rhythm.’

Temrai tried to shout; but the volume of sound he managed to produce was pitiful, more like a cat yowling, and dirt was getting in his mouth. He managed to spit most of it out and swallowed the rest. The effort involved was shattering.

‘I’d give it a rest if I were you,’ the voice advised him. ‘Either they’ll find us or they won’t; just for once, accept the fact that there’s nothing you can do. Relax. You could try meditating.’

‘Meditating?’

‘Seriously. A philosopher I used to know taught me how to do it. Basically it’s all about ignoring your body, making yourself forget it’s there. Of course, the philosopher reckoned it was all about merging your consciousness with the flow of the Principle, but you don’t have to bother with that stuff if you don’t want to. I use it to make myself go to sleep when I’m fidgety.’

‘All right,’ Temrai said dubiously. ‘But I don’t think going to sleep would be terribly clever right now. We might forget to breathe, something like that.’

‘You don’t have to go to sleep, that’s just one of the options. You can also use it to cope with pain, for example, like if you were laid up somewhere with a broken leg.’

‘All right,’ Temrai repeated. ‘How do you do it, then?’

The voice laughed. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ it said. ‘Easy enough to do when you know how, but hard to put into words. You’ve got to convince yourself that your body isn’t really there; bit by bit’s easiest. I usually start with my feet and work up.’

Temrai could remember thinking. No, I don’t think I’ll bother with that; and the next thing he felt was a surge of panic, flaring and quickly subsiding, when he realised that he didn’t seem to have a body any more. But the sensation was pleasant, exhilarating even; he was breathing, but he couldn’t feel the crushing weight of the earth or the pain in his chest. Nor did he have an oppressive sense of being in any one place (how tiresome that would be, to be in only one place at a time; he could vaguely remember what it had been like, and couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to cope with it all these years) -

‘Feeling better?’

‘Much,’ Temrai replied. ‘I must see if I can remember how to do this once we get out of here.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Like a head,’ Temrai replied. ‘A head without a body. But it’s all right. In fact it’s better. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ the voice said. ‘It’s one of the more useful things I’ve picked up in the course of a somewhat adventurous life.’

‘Really?’ Temrai couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or shut. ‘I could get to like being just a head,’ he said.

The voice laughed; it was definitely familiar, almost disturbingly so. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ it said. ‘You never know who’s listening. Favourite saying of my father’s, that was. He was a very superstitious man, in some respects. Not that it did him much good, of course, but that’s another story.’

Temrai had an unpleasant feeling that he knew whose the voice was; except that it wasn’t possible. At least, it was possible, but highly unlikely. ‘Excuse me asking,’ he said, ‘but who…?’

And then he could hear something overhead; he felt himself fall back into his body (his painful, awkward body) like a boy falling out of a tree. There were voices, muffled and far away, and the scrape of metal in dirt, a ringing noise as a shovel-blade fouled a stone. He tried to call out, and realised that his mouth was full of dirt and he couldn’t make a sound.

‘Temrai?’ someone said. ‘Yes, it’s him, over here. I think he’s dead.’

‘We’ll see about that. Gods, I could do without this fucking dust.’

They had to go slowly, for fear of cutting him up or breaking his bones with their picks and shovels. For a long time he wasn’t able to see anything, even though he was sure his eyes were open. He had the worst headache he’d ever had in his life.

‘It’s all right, he’s alive,’ someone called out; and a trebuchet shot pitched nearby, sending a tremor through the ground. ‘Gently now, he may have broken bones. Temrai, can you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ Temrai said, spitting out the words along with a lot of dirt. ‘And please don’t shout, my head’s splitting.’

They lugged him out and put him on a plank; he couldn’t control his arms or legs, and they flopped off and hung over the side. ‘Was there anybody with you?’ one of them asked.

Temrai tried to smile. ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied.

But he was wrong; before they took him away, he heard them shouting to each other – over here, quick, yes he’s still alive. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

One of the stretcher-bearers called out the question. ‘It’s the spy,’ someone answered. ‘What’s his name? Dassascai. You know, the cook’s nephew.’

Temrai frowned. ‘What did he say?’ he asked.

‘Dassascai,’ the bearer replied. ‘You know-’

‘The spy, yes.’ Temrai sounded confused. ‘Well, if it hadn’t been for him-That’s odd, I could have sworn it was someone else.’

‘I thought you said there was nobody in there with you.’

‘I was mistaken,’ Temrai said. ‘Look, make sure they take care of him, all right?’

They took care of him, as was only proper with someone who’d apparently saved the King’s life (though how he’d managed to do this wasn’t immediately obvious). They dug him out and carried him back to his tent; there were no broken bones, he’d be up and about again in no time.

An oddity, which nobody commented on, was the fact that when they pulled him out he was holding an arrow (just an ordinary Imperial-issue bodkinhead), and when they tried to take it from him he clung on to it as if his life depended on it.

One ship; not an armada or a flotilla, not a horizon crammed with sails, just one small sloop (square-rigged, primitive, limping into the Drutz after a tussle with a seasonal squall) bringing the provincial office’s envoy to the Island.

There was something of a show of strength on the quay to meet him; a platoon of the newly recruited Civil Guard; another platoon from the Ship-Owners’ even more recently recruited National Security Association; and a mob of cut-throats, thieves and housebreakers (by definition) from the Merchant Seamen’s Guild. The three rival units stood still and quiet, staring at the incoming ship and each other with loathing and distrust, while First Citizen Venart Auzeil (in a floor-length red velvet gown and a big wide-brimmed red hat; he’d refused point blank to wear the almost-crown they’d made for him out of bent gold wire and a few scraps of salvaged rabbit fur) nervously picked at a loose thread in his cuff and wondered what was really going on. Flanking him were Ranvaut Votz (for the Ship-Owners’) and a certain Jeslin Perdut (for the Guild), both grimly eyes-front for fear of seeing the other and having to acknowledge their presence. Finally, there was a band – to be precise, two flautists, a fiddler, a rebec player and a girl with a triangle. Venart had no idea where they’d suddenly materialised from, but they looked so excited to be there that he hadn’t the heart to tell them to push off.

The ship nuzzled its way in, and a startled-looking man threw a rope across before scuttling away to the stern; something about the expression on his face suggested that the show of strength was working rather too well. Venart noticed this and, hoping to reassure the visitors, turned to the rebec player and muttered, ‘Play something.’ The band immediately launched into ‘Never More Will I See My True Love’ (the majority choice) and ‘The Sausage-Maker’s Dog’ (the favoured selection of the fiddler and the girl with the triangle) simultaneously. The resulting counterpoint was striking, but hardly calculated to reassure the apprehensive.

‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ muttered Ranvaut Votz loudly, thereby reinforcing Venart’s suspicion that the band’s presence had something to do with the Guild. ‘Tell them to stop that awful noise before it constitutes an act of war.’

Although he didn’t want to be seen to be taking sides, Venart turned the suggestion into an order, backed up by the full majesty of his office and the frantic waggling of his hands. When the noise had ceased, an extraordinarily tall, thin Son of Heaven emerged from the sloop’s small cabin and walked slowly to the prow, where he stood looking impatient.

‘A plank, quick,’ Venart hissed. Someone brought up a plank – actually, it was a long board for gutting fish, but it was the nearest suitable object – and the envoy came ashore.

‘I’m Colonel Tejar,’ he announced, with a tiny nod in Venart’s direction. ‘I’m here on behalf of the prefect of Ap’ Escatoy. I’d like to talk to whoever’s in charge here.’

It took Venart a moment to realise that it was up to him to reply. He’d seen Sons of Heaven before, even spoken to a few of them, but never one quite this tall or angular or official-looking. ‘That’s me,’ he squeaked, bitterly regretting the big red hat, which was flopping down over his left eye. ‘Venart Auzeil. First Citizen,’ he added.

The Son of Heaven looked at him. ‘Thank you for being here to greet me,’ he said. ‘Can we make a start, please? We have a lot to get through.’

‘Of course,’ Venart said, and a moment later found himself trotting along in the envoy’s wake like (for example) the sausage-maker’s dog. Fortunately, the envoy seemed to know where he was going. Venart didn’t.

‘Do you speak for the Ship-Owners’ Association?’ asked the envoy over his shoulder.

‘Oh, yes,’ Venart assured him, taking a couple of skips to keep up. He’d never seen legs that long on a human before.

‘And the Merchant Seamen’s Guild?’

‘Um,’ Venart said. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Good,’ said the envoy. ‘Then we won’t need to have their representatives present during the talks. I assume they’re aware of that?’

‘What? Oh, yes,’ Venart panted, and passed the message on to the relevant parties. Fortunately, since their legs were even shorter than his, he wasn’t able to hang around and listen to their reaction.

He still didn’t know where they were going, but it didn’t really seem appropriate to ask. It was vaguely disquieting to think that the enemy knew their way round the Island better than the First Citizen did, but the sensible way to handle that was to file it under significant information and call it up again the next time he felt the slightest inclination to underestimate these people.

They stopped. To be exact, the envoy stopped (outside the Four Blazons Of Virtue, which Venart hadn’t been in since he was a very young man; in fact, he had an uneasy feeling he’d been banned from there for life – or was he thinking of the Blameless Virtue in the Sheepwalk?) and waited for him to catch up.

‘I took the liberty of hiring a room,’ the envoy said, ‘through an intermediary, of course. I hope you find it acceptable.’

‘Fine,’ Venart replied breathlessly. ‘After you.’

The sight of a Son of Heaven in the public bar of the Four Blazons caused a considerable amount of alarm and despondency, which the presence of the First Citizen didn’t do much to assuage. But Colonel Tejar obviously knew the way; he walked straight through the bar, up a short staircase, across the landing and down a corridor. The door was open, and there was a tray with food and a wine-jug on the table. Impressive, Venart admitted to himself, but a tactical error, surely. Why make a display of your strength unless you want to persuade me it’s greater than it is? ‘This looks fine,’ he said, and sat down in the more comfortable-looking of the two chairs.

‘Now,’ said Coloner Tejar, perching on the other chair and taking a writing tablet out of his sleeve. ‘Do you wish to start with a statement or any questions, or shall we pass straight on to our proposals?’

‘Go ahead,’ Venart replied; and he was thinking, It may just be because he wanted to make sure we lost the other two, because he knows he can outsmart me, but he wasn’t sure about Votz or the Guild. Well, so long as I know that, I should be able to cope.

‘I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a draft agreement, ’ the colonel continued, pulling a little brass tube out of his other sleeve. ‘If you’d care to spend a moment or so looking it over…’

Marvellous handwriting these people had, Venart couldn’t help thinking; and even for a thoroughly utilitarian document like this they’ve been to the trouble of illuminating the initial letter with three colours and just the tiniest touch of gold leaf.

– Item: the Island to be associated with the Empire as a protectorate.

– Item: an Imperial Protector to reside permanently on the Island.

– Item: a permanent honour guard to attend the Protector, such guard not to exceed three hundred men-at-arms.

– Item: the expenses of the Protector and his staff to be divided equally between the Island and the provincial office.

– Item: -

‘Excuse me, ‘ Venart said, ‘but what’s a Protector?’

The Colonel stared at him down his nose. ‘An Imperial official assigned to reside in an Imperial protectorate, ’ he replied.

‘Ah. Thank you.’

– Item: the Protector to be consulted concerning all aspects of public, Association or Guild policy in any way having bearing upon the relationship between the Island and the Empire.

– Item: upon such consultation, the Protector to issue an official endorsement of such policy, such endorsement to be published in the same way as such policy.

– Item: in the event that such endorsement is not issued, the matter to be referred back to a committee composed equally of Imperial staff and officers of all relevant representative bodies of the Island.

(Clever; if they want to stop us doing something, they bring in the other two factions and get them to veto it.)

– Item: the Empire and the Island to join in a pact for mutual defensive and offensive military support.

(They get the fleet.)

– Item: only weights and measures specified by the relevant officer of the provincial office to be used in commercial transactions.

– Item: a full extradition treaty in the standard form issued by the provincial office to be signed between the Island and the Empire.

Well, there were several more items, and taken together it was total and abject surrender, but with honour. What more could a First Citizen ask? ‘Excuse me.’

‘Yes?’

‘Just a small point,’ Venart said, ‘but you haven’t actually said here that the extradition thing won’t be retrospective. Do you want to put that in or shall I?’

The colonel frowned. ‘That’s not a standard term of provincial office extradition treaties,’ he said.

So no prizes for guessing who you’ll be extraditing first. ‘It’s pretty well standard for us,’ Venart said.

‘Really? I wasn’t aware you had any extant extradition agreements.’

Perfectly true. ‘We have arrangements,’ Venart lied. ‘Customary practices built up over the years. You know, precedents and the like.’

(And if he asks me to name one person we’ve extradited in the last six hundred years, I’ll have to admit there wasn’t any.)

‘I see.’ The envoy’s face was expressionless. ‘Perhaps it would be a more efficient use of our time to defer detailed discussion of treaty terms to a later date. It would be a shame to jeopardise the momentum towards an agreement by focusing too closely on individual issues. After all,’ he added, looking just over the top of Venart’s head, ‘we don’t have to finalise the whole thing here and now.’

‘Of course.’ Venart read the rest of the document, but he didn’t really take it in. They had no choice in the matter, after all. ‘One thing,’ he said, as he rolled up the paper. ‘I don’t suppose this has even been considered yet, but it’s worth asking, I suppose. Do you have any idea who they have in mind for the Protector’s job? Just on the off chance that it’s someone we’ve heard of, it could help to set people’s minds at rest-’

‘As a matter of fact,’ the envoy replied, ‘there’s a recommendation in place; and yes, it’s somebody you’re likely to be familiar with. Captain Bardas Loredan.’

Venart did his very best not to react. ‘I know Colonel – I mean, Captain Loredan,’ he said. ‘I met him during the siege of Perimadeia.’

The envoy nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That was a factor we considered when making the recommendation. Also,’ he went on, ‘Captain Loredan is familiar with the area and the various issues, and he’s certainly earned a promotion by his conduct of the plains war, and the business at Ap’ Escatoy. He’s very highly regarded by the provincial office. You can count on the recommendation going through; assuming,’ he added, ‘that you’re minded to accept these proposals.’

Venart took a deep breath. ‘In principle,’ he said. ‘I mean, as a starting point for negotiations. Obviously there are a few details-’

‘Of course.’ The envoy stood up. ‘For the time being, however,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’d care to sign the copy I just gave you.’

‘Sign it?’ Venart looked startled. ‘But I thought we just agreed there were points of detail-’

The envoy almost smiled. Almost. ‘Indeed. But I think it would be as well to have a signed agreement in existence, if only as a holding measure. Otherwise I couldn’t absolutely guarantee that provincial office policy in this area would necessarily remain static indefinitely.’ He turned his head, looked out of the window. ‘Since the agreement would be subject to formal ratification by the regional co-ordinator, we can safely say that the terms of this draft aren’t necessarily carved in stone, so to speak. For today, however, my primary concern is to protect both our positions.’

Venart hesitated. He knew a threat when he heard one; but surely this offer, these negotiations could only mean that the Imperials felt weak. It was tantamount to desperation on their part, anything to close off one lot of problems so as to be able to concentrate on the others. ‘This extradition business-’ he began.

The envoy turned back and looked him in the eye. It was like staring for too long down a well. ‘I can give you my personal assurance,’ he said, ‘that there will be ample opportunity for discussion at all levels before any actual proceedings are put in hand.’

Bardas Loredan, Venart thought. Well, there comes a point when a man’s got to believe in something. ‘All right,’ he said. His hands shook a little as he took the top off the brass cylinder; he hadn’t put the paper back in quite right, and it was jammed. After he’d fumbled with it for a moment or so, the envoy leaned over him, took it from him and drew out the paper without any difficulty. ‘Have you got something to write with?’ he asked.

‘Hm? Oh, yes.’ Venart felt in his pockets, then the pouch on his belt. ‘At least – yes, here it is.’ He found the little writing-set Athli Zeuxis had given him, years ago; pen, inkstone, small knife, all in a dear little cedarwood box. He moistened the stone with a little wine, rubbed up some ink and signed the paper.

When Temrai felt a little better, he gave orders for a large-scale sortie.

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ they said to him.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

The general staff, who’d almost given up hope of being allowed to do anything, weren’t too bothered to find out his motivation. They couldn’t have cared less if he’d told them he’d changed his mind because he’d been told to do it by special voices that only he could hear; they’d been cleared for action, that was enough.

With both Temrai and Sildocai out of action, overall command passed to Peltecai, whose official designation was cavalry marshal; a good man but a worrier, who worried that he worried. Because he was concerned that his tendency to apprehension might result in dithering leading to disaster, he delegated command to a number of other officers, while reserving the right to override any of their orders if he saw fit. He then held a council of war.

This proved inconclusive; the general staff, it seemed to him, were in a reckless mood as a result of the frustrations of the bombardment, so he resolved to be firm and not allow them to rush him into anything. On the other hand, he had nothing concrete of his own in mind, since he’d wisely delegated planning on the tactical level to his lieutenants. Time, meanwhile, was getting on; unless something was decided soon they’d be too late for a daytime operation and be obliged to mount a night attack; Peltecai saw only too clearly the risks of being hustled into such a risky initiative without proper planning or preparation, and therefore made up his mind to attack at once, with all his available forces.

He then addressed the question of what forces were available, and by the time he’d worked out the true implications of the question it was getting on for mid-morning, and the last thing he wanted was to be bounced into fighting a crucial battle in the midday heat, so he nominated one unit in three for garrison duty and told the rest to fall in for the attack.

At this point, a message arrived from Temrai asking what all the delays were in aid of. Flustered, Peltecai sent back a reply saying that they were just on the point of setting off, and rode to the head of the column. Whatever faults he may have had as a commander, lack of individual courage wasn’t one of them. He was determined to lead from the front, by example.

This turned out to be unfortunate, because, as the grand cavalry charge came into range of the enemy’s weak and uncommitted archers, one of the handful of men shot from the saddle and trampled into an unrecognisable mess by the troop behind was Peltecai. By this point, of course, nobody else had a clue what the plan was or how the chain of command was supposed to work. As the plains cavalry crashed headlong into the wall of the enemy’s pikes, therefore, they were operating on the default principle of kill as many of them as you can, then go home.

Which worked fine, at least to begin with. Temrai had decided at the start of the war that the only way to deal with the formations of massed armoured pikemen they were likely to encounter was a point-blank volley from the horse-archers to break the line, followed by an utterly committed follow-up with scimitars and battle-axes to widen the gaps and cause a panic. Once they’d achieved that, the enemy’s close formation and sheer bulk would be their undoing, if anything could defeat them.

At the hundred-yard mark, therefore, the horse-archers pulled ahead of the heavy cavalry and split their column into two lines, peeling off to ride down the face of the pike formations. The volley went home at thirty-five yards, each archer loosing as he rode past the designated point in the line. The hedge of spearheads crumpled in two places, as the dead and dying pikemen swayed and fell against their comrades in the rows behind, tangling and snagging the men around them. As soon as the archers were clear, the heavy cavalry drove into the wounds in the line, their column splitting down the middle as they rode. Penetration was the key; if they could drive deep enough into the mass of pikemen, they’d be fighting unopposed – at ground level, there simply wasn’t room to lower a pike or draw a sword, and the horsemen would cut the lines like a shear cutting sheet steel, using the tension of the material to make the cut possible. Meanwhile the horse-archers would stand off and shoot from as close as they could get into the rest of the line, trying to prompt them to charge and further disrupt their formation; and if they managed to do that, there were the heavy reserves and, if absolutely necessary, the infantry.

They made a very promising start; the front troops punched two deep holes in the line, like bodkinheads puncturing a breastplate. Once they were in, however, they found they had a problem; there wasn’t much the enemy could do to them, but their light, sharp scimitars weren’t up to the job of shearing Imperial proof. They hammered and bashed until their fine edges were blunt and the muscles of their wrists and forearms were crippled with the shock of resisted force running back up the bone, but it was like bashing with a hammer on an anvil, which is specifically designed to be bashed. Stalemate.

In a battle, however, stalemate never endures; something always happens, usually through nobody’s conscious choice. While the heavy cavalry were pounding ineffectually on the anvil, the enemy cavalry (who’d been held back as a reserve; a mistake, as Bardas Loredan later admitted) sprinted up to engage them and ran into the horse-archers, who were pulling out in order to avoid them but mistimed their manoeuvre. In desperation, the archers loosed as much of a volley as they could put together on the fly; in accordance with standing orders, they shot at the horses rather than the men, and were far more successful than either party had anticipated. The front rank of Imperial troopers went down in a welter of noise and dust, and the next rank couldn’t stop in time; they rode over and through the fallen horses, crashing like a runaway cart hitting a wall. Startled but greatly encouraged, the horse-archers put up their bows, drew their scimitars and charged, only to find they had the same problem as their colleagues in the heavy cavalry when it came to cutting steel. They’d anticipated rolling up the Imperials with the momentum of their charge; instead, they stalled and came to a standstill as they found out the hard way that their chain-mail and cuir-bouilli was enough to stop them getting cut by the four-pound Imperial swords but didn’t do much to prevent smashed bones or concussion. At this point the back three troops of Imperials (who’d lagged behind and only just caught up) swept round their flank, cut off their escape and started hacking them down like an overgrown hedge.

The captain of the sixth reserve troop, a man called Iordecai, saw what was happening and led a charge. Through sheer carelessness the Imperials didn’t see him coming until it was too late for them to get out of the way. Iordecai’s men were one of the few units of lancers in Temrai’s army, and they had no trouble at all punching through heavy plate. Their impact shifted the balance of the engagement; the Imperial captain panicked, imagining that he’d been set up for just such an attack, and tried to pull his men out, but they were too deeply engaged to be able to withdraw; instead, they tried to cut their way out through the horse-archers, and made an impressively good job of it. As they broke through the side of the melee, however, they were rammed in flank and rear by another troop of lancers, following up on Iordecai’s lead.

At this point the balance of the rearguard, who could see the victory being won by the lancers but not the mess in the pike formation, decided it was time they had their turn; so they charged the pikemen, who were no longer being worried by archers and had had time to recover a little order. When the rearguard (who weren’t lancers) drove their charge home, they found the levelled heads of the pikes waiting for them, by which point it was too late to slow down.

Bardas Loredan, on a low hill behind the camp, couldn’t see much of the pike formation either, but he had a fine view of the cavalry battle and decided that his only chance of saving the day was to commit his halberdiers against the lancers at the charge and hope they got there in time. They did the best they could, but it was a fairly hopeless venture; by the time they’d skirted the pikemen, the enemy infantrymen had deployed across their line of advance and were manoeuvring to take them in flank. There didn’t seem to be anything to be gained by slowing down at this point, so the captain of halberdiers led his column at the double into the centre of the enemy line. The effect was spectacular: they cut the line in half, routing one wing completely. That helped; they were now at liberty to hook the enemy formation and press home the attack on three sides. Their mistake was not spotting the two troops of heavy cavalry that had failed to get into the pike formation and retired to the side of the battle with nothing to do.

There weren’t enough of them to cause catastrophic damage, but they carved up a lot of men. The halberdiers had a weak spot, where the pauldrons buckled over the shoulder; a cut across the exposed straps with a sharp blade left them with loose, flapping armour plates hampering their arm movements and the whole of the shoulder and the side of the neck open to attack. Not many killed, but a great many disabled, as the scimitars glanced off the angled sides of the halberdiers’ kettle-hats and sliced into neck tendons and collar-bones. Where the halberdiers were able to turn and present arms, they had the better of the deal – the impetus of the oncoming horseman made a far better job of driving the halberd spike through mail and flesh than the human arm could ever do – but on balance the advantage, expressed as the ratio of casualties inflicted, was with the plainsmen.

At this point the battle was out of anybody’s control; even with both sides co-operating in a spirit of friendship and goodwill, it would have been a hard job to have disentangled the component parts of the two armies to the point where a general retreat would have been possible. There were only two practical options: to fight it out until one side was wiped out, or to disengage and pull out in the nearest possible approximation to order.

For a while, it looked depressingly like the first option. The plains cavalry wedged into the pikemen were slowly being crushed in from the sides; stuck in the middle of a melee, the lancers no longer had any advantage from impetus or momentum and were mostly blunting their scimitars on the dented and mangled but uncompromised armour of their opponents; enough halberdiers were dead or on the ground to give their colleagues room to turn and start pushing spikes up into the plainsmen’s faces; if the battle continued along this course, sooner or later the Imperials were bound to prevail, and their survivors, probably no more than a few hundred at best, would be left with the field and the monumental task of disposing of the dead.

Instead, the Imperials panicked, which was probably the best thing they could have done in the circumstances. The catalyst was a furious all-out attack by a young section leader by the name of Samzai on what he mistakenly believed was Bardas Loredan’s honour guard (in the event it turned out to be the cavalry escort for a detachment of trumpeters and other musicians; but they were rather splendidly dressed and equipped, and they’d somehow ended up wedged in among the pikemen, so it was an understandable mistake). Samzai didn’t make it; he fell swinging his axe – when his body was hauled out of the mess, they found seventeen holes in his mailshirt – just one rank short of his objective, but the survivors of his section managed to chop and shear their way through the pikemen and kill enough of the escort to get within arm’s length of the musicians, at which point someone started shouting that Bardas Loredan was dead… A head (nobody ever found out whose) was hoisted up on a pike, and the plainsmen, even the ones being clubbed to death while unable to defend themselves, started to cheer as if something important had just been decided. At first the reaction was just a moment of hesitation, concern that something was going on but nobody knew what it was; then the pikemen started to edge backwards, dropping their pikes (where possible) and looking for a way to get out of the press and into open ground. As the main infantry formation wavered and came apart, there was suddenly enough room for the cavalry to move; and a brief over-the-shoulder glimpse at the retreating pikemen was enough to convince the Imperial cavalry that something was badly wrong, prompting them to pull out as well. As the panic gathered momentum, so did the pace of withdrawal; men who’d been walking slowly backwards turned round and started to run, no longer remotely interested in the enemy in any capacity except that of possible obstruction. The battle seemed to come to pieces like a frail wicker basket, scattering its contents everywhere.

Two troops of plains heavy cavalry set off in pursuit of the Imperial pikemen; they were intercepted by an equal number of Imperials, cut to pieces and scattered. After that, there wasn’t much enthusiasm for pressing home the advantage, and the plainsmen fell back on the fortress as quickly as they could. As for the Imperials, they calmed down a little when they were told that Bardas Loredan wasn’t really dead (by Bardas Loredan himself, riding up to find out what the hell had happened) but still kept going till they reached the camp. It’s always hard to know how to act when you’ve just been driven from the field, particularly if the field you’ve just been driven from is now deserted. Perhaps wisely, Bardas didn’t try to make anything of it; he went back to his tent and called for casualty lists and the general staff; he had a lot to do, organising stretcher details and burial details, making sure as many of the wounded as possible at least got within sight of a doctor before they died, posting pickets and seeing to it that the camp was properly secured against follow-up attacks.

It took a full day to retrieve the wounded. Bardas sent a herald to sort out the usual truce, and the officers in charge on both sides reached a sensible understanding whereby each side cleared up its end of the field and handed back the other side’s wounded in a reasonable state of repair. It was harder to reach agreement on disposing of the daunting number of dead bodies that needed to be dealt with before they became a health hazard to both parties. Temrai’s men had to be cremated, whereas the Imperials needed to be buried, so a reciprocal arrangement was out of the question; Bardas’ negotiators suggested taking it in turns – they’d go first, collect their dead and then withdraw while the plainsmen collected theirs – but Temrai’s people objected on the grounds that that would mean waiting for at least a day, which wouldn’t be advisable if the sun decided to come out; instead they proposed having retrieval details working side by side, but the Imperials weren’t having that – too much risk of an incident, they said, tempers flaring, fights breaking out; instead, why not divide the field as before and each side make two piles, ours and theirs? Time was getting on, and Temrai’s people reluctantly agreed, but the deal nearly foundered on where the line across the field was to be drawn – more people had died on both sides up at Bardas’ end of the field, and his negotiators felt they were ending up with the rough end of the bargain, so they suggested splitting the field lengthways instead of down the middle. The plainsmen refused, but agreed to bring up the dividing line by a hundred and fifty yards, so that they took responsibility for most of the bodies from the cavalry actions, while the Imperials cleared up after the fighting around the pike formation. When the deal had been done and the work details were lining up, one of Bardas’ men remarked to his opposite number on Temrai’s negotiating team that whereas during the battle they’d been fighting to get as much of the field as possible, now they were struggling to give as much of it as they could away. The plainsman thought this remark in poor taste and lodged a formal complaint, which was ignored.

After the field had been cleared, the bodies removed, as much in the way of armour, arrows, horses and weapons as possible scavenged for salvage, it was finally possible to work out the score and announce the winner. It turned out to be a remarkably close thing. Purely on head-count of men killed, Temrai had lost; on percentages of total forces engaged killed, he had a marginal advantage. Broken down between cavalry and infantry, assuming cavalry to be worth more, Bardas had a slight lead, but the basis of accounting was dubious there, since heavy infantry were more useful to him than cavalry, and he’d lost rather more of them than Temrai had; besides which, properly speaking, at least three quarters of Temrai’s army were theoretically cavalry, which made a nonsense of the whole calculation. Since the battle hadn’t been about territory, and neither side had gained or lost an inch, that wasn’t much use as a criterion of success. The last accepted category, objectives achieved, was equally unhelpful, since (when they came to think of it) nobody could clearly define what either side’s objectives had been, or whether they’d had any at all; if there were any, nobody had achieved them, which meant that both sides had lost, which was plainly ridiculous.