by K. J. Parker
They stopped for the night an hour before sunset, a long way short of where they’d hoped they’d reach. This journey was taking forever. Orsea was tired but not exhausted, and his wound hadn’t burst like everybody had said it would; there was a little blood showing through the bandage, but nothing spectacular. A Vadani doctor came to examine and dress it; a short, stout man with a fringe of straight white hair round a glowing bald head, very quiet, as though each word was costing him thirty shillings. Orsea guessed that it was the first time he’d had anything to do with the effects of a battle. Some people reacted like that, shutting the doors and windows of their minds to keep the intrusive information out. He said the wound was knitting very well, tutted to himself at the cack-handed Eremian way of winding a bandage, and left quickly. When he’d gone, Orsea poured himself a small drink and opened the book he’d brought along to read, and hadn’t yet looked at — Pescennia Alastro’s sonnets, the latest rescension, an anniversary present from his wife. He opened it at the first page, laid it carefully face down on his knee, and burst into tears.
5
Unlike his father, the young Duke hunted three days a week, always following the same pattern. On Tuesdays he rode parforce, with the full pack, drawing the upland coverts for roe (in season), boar, bear and wolf. On Thursdays the hunt was bow-and-stable, the hunters on foot and stationary while the pack flushed the valley plantations and the moors on the forest perimeter. Saturday was for hawking, unless the weather was too wet and cold, in which case they’d work the warrens with terriers, or try their luck walking up rabbits around the orchards. The great battues were a thing of the past now; the young Duke didn’t hold with the disturbance they caused, or the scattering of game from their regular beats.
Duke Valens took the hunt very seriously. The rule was, no business on a hunt day unless it’s a genuine emergency; and even then, the court knew better than to expect him to be good-tempered about it. Accordingly, Chancellor Delmatius was in two minds, possibly three, about passing on the message from the northeastern frontier. He spent a couple of tormented hours contemplating the true meaning of the words genuine emergency, evaluated the risks to a hair’s weight, and was just in time to intercept Valens before he left for the stables.
“It’s probably nothing,” he said, pausing to catch his breath. “I thought I’d mention it, but I don’t think we need do anything about it.”
Valens wasn’t looking at him; he was scowling at a square of blue sky beyond the window. “Shit,” he said (Valens very rarely swore). “And I was hoping we’d work through the long drive this morning. Pranno reckons there’s a twelve-pointer just moved in there.”
Delmatius didn’t sigh with relief, but only because he’d learned how not to. “Do you want to see the messengers first, or should I call the council?”
“I suppose I’d better see the messengers,” Valens answered, looking thoughtfully at the gloves in his hand. “I don’t need you to sit in, I’ll get Strepho to take notes for you. You get on and call the meeting. We’ll use the side-chamber off the east hall.”
Delmatius scuttled away like a mouse who’s left half his tail in the cat’s mouth; as soon as he’d gone, Valens relaxed his scowl and perched on the edge of the table. It was a pity; if there really was a twelve-pointer in the narrow wood, it’d be long gone by next week, most likely heading downhill toward the lusher grass. Either the Natho clan would get it, or some poacher who’d take the meat and bury the rest, and that superb trophy would go to waste.
Even a twelve-pointer, however, didn’t justify spitting in the face of opportunity. He’d already heard about the battle itself, of course. The scouts (his personal unit, not the regulars who reported to the chiefs of staff) had brought him the news a fraction less than twenty-four hours after the last scorpion-bolt pitched. By the time the joint chiefs and the council knew about it, Valens had already read the casualty reports (both sides’ versions, naturally). Predictably, they were split into two irreconcilable factions: attack now, kill them all, worry about the treaty later; or leave well alone and hope the wolves tidy up the stragglers.
Instead, Valens had given orders for a modest relief column: food, blankets, doctors of course. The council were used to him adopting the one course of action they were sure he wouldn’t take, and listened meekly to their assignments. As usual when he gave an incomprehensible order, Valens didn’t stop to explain the rationale behind it. The most favored theory was that he wanted the doctors to bring him back extremely detailed reports of what state the Eremians were in, the exact strength of the vanguard and rearguard, so he could make the attack, when it came, as effective as possible. Other theories included an unannounced illness, a sudden conversion to some new religion that preached non-violence, or that old catch-all, lulling the enemy into a false sense of se curity.
In fact, he was allowing himself the luxury of savoring the moment. It had been a long time coming; but now, at last, his proper enemy and natural prey had made the mistake of bolting from cover at the first horn-call, so to speak. It’d be fatally easy to take the obvious course of action and lay into them, kill as many as possible and scatter the rest. Any fool could do that. Valens, on the other hand, knew the value of waiting just a little longer and doing a proper job. He’d heard a saying once; maybe it was from a Mezentine diplomat, boasting insufferably about how wonderful his people were at making things. The easiest way to do something is properly. When he’d heard it first, he’d been unable to make up his mind whether it was terribly profound or utterly banal. The moment of revelation had been when he realized it was both.
He knew what the people said about him, of course; he was the best Duke in living memory, he was a bastard but a clever bastard, he was ten times the ruler his father had been. Well, he knew the third one was lies. The second one he was prepared to acknowledge, if put to it. The first one he dismissed as unlikely. It was good that they said it, however. If they admired him, they were likely to do as they were told, just so long as he stayed successful. But there was no reason why he shouldn’t. If the hunt had taught him anything, it was the inestimable value of thinking in three dimensions. To hunt successfully, you must know your ground, your pack and your quarry. You must learn, by fieldwork and reconnaissance, where the quarry is likely to be and what it’s liable to do once disturbed. You must know the capacities and weaknesses of the resources — men, dogs, equipment — at your disposal. You must be able to visualize at all times where everybody is, once you’ve sent them to their stations to do their assigned tasks. You must be aware of the interplay of time and distance, so you can be sure that the stops and the beaters are in position when you loose the pack. You must be able to judge allowances — the angle to offset a drive so as to head off the quarry from its customary line of escape, how far ahead of a running stag to shoot so as to pitch your arrow where it’s going, not where it’s just been. Above all, at all times you must be in perfect control, regardless of whether things are going well or badly. A brilliant mind is not required; nor is genius, intuition, inspiration. Clarity and concentration are helpful; but the main thing is vision, the ability to draw invisible lines with the mind’s eye, to see round corners and through walls. It’s a knack that can be learned fairly readily; slightly harder than swimming, rather easier than juggling or playing the flute.
Well; if he wasn’t going to hunt today, he’d better go to the council meeting. Nothing useful would be achieved there — he would do all the work himself, it’d take him just under half an hour — but it was necessary in order to keep his leading men, his pack, alert and obedient. He’d been at pains to train them over the last few years, encouraging, rewarding, culling as needed, and they were shaping well; but time had to be spent with them, or they’d grow restive and willful. He swung his legs off the table onto the ground, a brisk, almost boyish movement that he certainly wouldn’t have made had anybody been watching, and walked quickly across the yard, composing the agenda for the meeting as he went. On the stairs he m
et the master cutler, who told him the new case of rapiers had finally arrived from the City. He thanked the man and told him to bring them along to his study an hour after dinner.
The meeting lived down to his expectations. The council had wanted to debate whether or not to launch an attack on the Eremians while they were vulnerable and desperate. When he told them he’d already sent food and doctors, they had nothing left to say; they hadn’t thought ahead, and so the buck had slipped through the cordon and left them standing. As it should be; it was easier to tell people what to do if they didn’t interrupt. He delegated to them the simple, unimportant matters that he hadn’t already provided for, and sent them away with a sense of bewildered purpose.
To his study next, where he had a map of the mountains. It was big, covering the whole of the north wall (there was a hole for the window in the middle of the Horsehead Ridge, but that didn’t matter; the ridge was sheer rock capped with snow, and you needed ropes and winches to get there); it was a tapestry, so that he could mark positions with pins and tapes if he chose to, but that was rarely necessary. He fixed his eye on the place where Orsea’s army had last been seen, and calculated where they were likely to be now.
An attack would be feasible — not straight away, there were two possible escape routes and he couldn’t get his forces in place to block both of them before the Eremians moved on; tomorrow evening or the morning of the next day would be the right time. He could bottle them up in the long pass between Horn Cross and Finis Montium, and it ought to be possible to wipe them out to the last man without incurring unacceptable losses. It could be done; now he had to decide whether he wanted to do it.
That was a much bigger question, involving a complex interplay of imperatives. His father, or his grandfather, great-grandfather and so back four degrees, wouldn’t have thought twice: kill the men, absorb the women and children, annex the land. They’d been trying to do just that, through war, for two hundred years. The hunt had, however, moved on; thanks to the long war, and the recent short interval of peace, Valens knew he didn’t have the resources, human or material, to control the aftermath of victory to his satisfaction. He’d be occupying a bitterly hostile country, through which his lines of communication would be stretched and brittle. Facts duly faced, there wasn’t actually anything in Eremia that he hadn’t already got an adequate sufficiency of. Get rid of the Eremians and take their land, and he’d find himself with two frontiers abutting the desert instead of just one; two doors the nomad tribes might one day be able to prise open. A preemptive massacre would cause more problems than it solved.
He considered a few peripheral options. He could secure Orsea himself and keep him as a hostage. The advantages of that were obvious enough, but they didn’t convince him. Sooner or later he’d either have to kill his cousin or let him go; at which point he could expect reprisals, and the Eremians had just proved themselves capable of gross overreaction. They would send an army; which he could defeat, of course, but then he’d be left with heavy casualties and the same undesirable situation he’d have faced if he’d taken this opportunity to wipe the Eremians out in the Butter Pass. Forget that, then; forget also bottling them up in the pass and extorting concessions. A republic or a democracy might do that, trading a vote-winning triumph in the short term against a nasty mess at some time in the future (hopefully when the other lot were in government). Valens was grateful he didn’t have to do that sort of thing.
Decided, then; if he wasn’t going to slaughter them, he must either ignore them or help them. Ignoring them would be a neutral act, and Valens found neutrality frustrating. Helping them would create an obligation, along with gratitude and goodwill. He who has his enemy’s love and trust is in a far better position to attack, later, when the time is right. The cost would be negligible, and in any event he could make it a loan. It would send the right signals to the Mezentines (mountain solidarity, the truce is working); if he made a show of siding with the Eremians against them, it’d incline them to make a better offer when they came to buy his allegiance.
He sat down and wrote seven letters. As anticipated, it took him just under half an hour — admirably efficient, but not quick enough. It was far too late for hunting today, and the twelve-pointer would be three quarters of the way to the river valley by now. Best not to dwell on wasted chances.
(And then there was the real reason. If he sent food and blankets and doctors, she’d be pleased. If he sent cavalry, she’d hate him. So; he had no choice in the matter, none whatsoever.)
He spent the rest of the day in the small, windowless room at the top of the north tower, reading reports and petitions, checking accounts, writing obstreperous notes to exchequer clerks and procurement officers. Then there was a thick stack of pleadings for a substantial mercantile lawsuit that he’d been putting off reading for weeks; but today, having been cheated of his day in the fresh air, he was resigned and miserable enough to face anything, even that. After the snakelike meanderings of the legal documents, the diplomatic mail was positively refreshing in its clarity and brevity: a letter of introduction for the new ambassador from the Cure Doce, and a brusque note from a Mezentine government department he’d never heard of requiring him (arrogant bastards!) to arrest and extradite a criminal fugitive with a difficult name, should he attempt to cross the border. Neither of them needed a reply, so he marked each of them with a cross in the left-hand corner, to tell his clerk to send a formal acknowledgment. Dinner came up on a tray while he was making notes for a meeting with the merchant adventurers (tariffs, again); when at last he’d dealt with that, it was time to see the new rapiers. Not much of a reward for a long, tedious day, but better than nothing at all.
The rapiers had come in their own dear little case, oak with brass hinges and catches. They were superb examples of Mezentine craftsmanship — the finest steel, beautifully finished and polished, not a filemark or an uncrowned edge — but the balance was hopeless and the side-rings chafed his forefinger. He told the armorer to pay for them and hang them on a wall somewhere where he wouldn’t have to look at them. Then he went to bed.
The next day was better; in fact, it was as good as a day could be, because, after the servants had taken away his bath and he was drying his hair, a page came to tell him that a woman was waiting to see him; a middle-aged woman in a huge red dress with sleeves, the page said, and pearls in her hair. Valens didn’t smile, but it cost him an effort. “Show her into the study,” he said.
He hadn’t met this one before, but it didn’t matter; the huge red dress was practically a uniform with the Merchant Adventurers these days, and the delicate, obscenely expensive pearl headdress told him all he needed to know about her status within the company. He gave her a pleasant smile.
“You’ve brought a letter,” he said.
She started to apologize; it was late, because she’d been held up at the Duty & Diligence waiting for a consignment of five gross of sheep’s grease that hadn’t arrived, and by the time it finally showed up it was too late to go on that night so she cut her losses and took her twenty-six barrels of white butter to Lonazep instead, because in this heat they wouldn’t keep as far as the Compassion & Grace, and of course that meant it was just as quick to go on up the mountain to Pericordia where she’d made an appointment to see some bone needles, two hundred gross at a good price but the quality wasn’t there, so rather than go back down the mountain empty-handed she nipped across to Mandiritto to buy more of that nine-point lace, and that was when it decided to rain —
“That’s quite all right,” Valens said. “You’re here now. Can I have the letter, please?”
She looked blank for a moment, then nodded briskly. “Of course, yes.” From her satchel (particularly magnificent; tapestry, with golden lions sitting under a flat-looking tree) she took out a stiff packet of parchment about the size of her hand, and laid it down on the table.
“Thank you,” Valens said, and waited.
She smiled at him. “My pleasure, of course,” s
he said. “Now, I don’t suppose you’ve got a moment, I know how terribly busy you must be…”
He wanted to say yes straight away and save having to listen, but that wouldn’t do at all; his hands were itching to get hold of the letter — not open it, not straight away, just hold it and know it was there — but he folded them in a dignified manner on the table and listened for a very long time, until she finally got to what she wanted. It turned out to be nothing much, a license to import Eremian rawhide single bends, theoretically still restricted by the embargo but nobody took any notice anymore; he got the feeling she was only asking so as to have a favor for him to grant. He said yes, had to repeat it five times before she finally accepted it, and once more to get her out of the door without physical violence. He managed not to shout, and kept smiling until she’d finally gone. Then he sat down and looked at the letter.
It had started eighteen months ago, pretty much by accident. A trader had been caught at the frontier with contraband (trivial stuff; silver earrings and a set of fine decorated jesses for a sparrowhawk); instead of paying the fine, however, she’d claimed Eremian diplomatic immunity and pleaded the peace treaty, claiming she was a special envoy of the Duchess, and the trinkets were privileged diplomatic mail. Probably, it was her ingenuity that impressed the excise inspector. Instead of smiling and dropping hints for the usual bribe, he decided to call her bluff; he impounded the goods and sent to the Duke for verification through the proper diplomatic channels. Valens’ clerk wrote to the proper officer in Eremia Montis, and in due course received a reply from the keeper of the wardrobe, enclosing a notarized set of diplomatic credentials and a promise that it wouldn’t happen again. It wasn’t the sort of thing Valens would normally expect to see, even though the original request had been written in his name, and he supposed he must have signed the thing, along with a batch of other stuff. But the reply was brought for him to see by a nervous-looking clerk, because there was something written in at the bottom, just under the seal.