by K. J. Parker
Eiconodoulus shook his head. “I’ve been and looked,” he said. “While you were still asleep,” he added, unnecessarily and untruthfully. “There never was a track there, which means either the map’s wrong or we’re in the wrong place. You,” he went on — not being able to remember names meant he’d got a reputation for brusqueness in all his previous commands; mostly, he’d found it helped. “Take a dozen men on horses and go and have a look. Ride on about five miles, see if you can see any sign of this bloody track. You, take half a dozen on foot, go and see if your friend here’s right and there was a track there. Don’t take too long about it.”
Oddly enough, both scouting parties reported back within minutes of each other. No, there wasn’t a turning further up the main road. No, there hadn’t ever been a track in the gully under the horn. Eiconodoulus could feel the world tightening around his head like a sawyer’s clamp, but at least it wasn’t totally unexpected.
“Fine,” he said, as the scouts waited for the miracle they obviously expected him to be able to perform. “My guess is, whoever made the map looked at that gully and assumed there’d be a track down it. In any case, that’s the direction we’ve got to go in, and we don’t have any choice. Lucky we brought the road-building stuff.”
Hardly luck; he’d been ordered to bring it. But they needn’t know that. Let them assume it was his own resourcefulness and foresight. They seemed happy enough. They had confidence in him. Probably they’d asked around when they heard who they were being assigned to, and men who’d served with him in other campaigns had told them, you’ll be all right, he’s eccentric and a bit of a bastard, but he’ll get you home again. He’d worked hard for that reputation, so that over the years the lie had gradually started to come true. Anyway, he knew how to lay a road quickly and with the minimum of materials. Just to cover himself, he sent a messenger back to headquarters: No sign of track, am building road, anticipate three-day delay, will advise. That put it rather well, he felt.
Mostly it was digging, with pickaxes, crowbars, mattocks and shovels; get the big rocks out of the way and use them to fill the big holes. The further he went, the more certain he became that there was indeed a track, probably just over the lip of the first rise up ahead, somewhere in that basin of dead ground. As he stared at the hillside beyond he was sure he could see the line of it, a very slight contrast in color, like an old scar. In which case, what had happened was that the map-makers knew there was a track around here somewhere — maybe they were coming along it from the other direction — but through sloppiness or lack of time they didn’t bother to survey the link from it to the Butter Pass, just assumed that it followed the convenient gully. It annoyed him to think that they were probably dead by now (it was an old map) and so they’d never be officially found out and reprimanded.
He was right. They found the track a day and a half later. Just out of curiosity, he sent scouts back along it, and they reported back that it did indeed come out on the Butter Pass, about ten miles before the mouth of the gully. They’d probably have seen it quite easily if they hadn’t been relying on the map. Eiconodoulus tucked the thought of that away in the back of his mind, in his private store of other people’s notable failures, to be relished properly at leisure.
It wasn’t much of a track, after all that fuss. At times, Eiconodoulus wondered if he’d have been better off cutting his own, because there was a much more suitable lie about a hundred yards further up the slope. Clearly these hills had never been grazed — sheep are much better surveyors than humans when it comes to finding the easiest path — and whoever had laid this track in the first place must’ve been blind, or at any rate short-sighted. Every time a cart bottomed out in a hole or a hub graunched against a half-buried rock he winced, expecting to hear the crisp crack of failing wood or the brittle note of snapping iron. There would be worse places to be laid up mending a busted cart — it was open enough to allow him to see an approaching enemy in good time — but he had food and water to consider. They were going to be several days later than anticipated, and this wasn’t land you could live off. He knew better than even to consider ditching the carts and going back, leaving Mezentine war engines lying about for the enemy to find. If the worst came to the worst… Now he came to consider it, he didn’t know what he should do. Nobody had told him; destroy the engines before the enemy could get hold of them, yes, but the wretched things were made of steel, so they wouldn’t burn, and he didn’t have the tools to cut them up. The most he could do was bend them out of shape, but that’d take a long time and a lot of effort. He should have been briefed on that point. More negligence.
Well, he’d just have to complete the mission successfully, then. So much clearer when you simplify.
On the fourth day, young Lieutenant Stesimbracus — the one he didn’t like, the competent one — came back from scouting looking unusually cheerful. He’d found, he said, the other track marked on the map, the one which had been supposed to cross the one they were on at a place marked as “cairn,” except there were no cairns. Not being able to find it was more than a trivial annoyance. The missing track was a link between their path and another running parallel to it, which happened to be the frontier between Eremian and Vadani territory. Obviously it was important not to cross the border inadvertently. Likewise, they could reasonably assume that they wouldn’t be attacked from that direction, since the Eremians wouldn’t dare trespass on Vadani land. The last thing the Eremians would want would be a war on two fronts.
“It’s annoying, though,” Stesimbracus said. “The path on the Vadani side’s a much better road; straighter, and properly made up. We could save a day, and cut back here” — he jabbed a finger at the map — “and precious little chance of getting found out, because we’re a long way away from any of their manned outposts. Also, there’s a river down in a goyle on the other side.”
Eiconodoulus scowled. Neither of the streams marked on the map had been there, and although they’d found one that wasn’t marked, that had been two days ago, when they weren’t so worried about the water running out. They’d been relying on the imaginary streams believed in by the map-makers.
“You know better than that,” he said. “If we go blundering about down there and run into a Vadani unit, you don’t need me to tell you what could happen. In fact, you’d better pass the word around: nobody is to cross into Vadani territory for any reason whatsoever. Got that?”
“Sir.” Stesimbracus was wearing that kicked-puppy look he found so intensely annoying. “May I ask, what are we going to do about water?”
“Use it sensibly,” Eiconodoulus answered briskly. “We’ve got enough, so long as we don’t waste it. You’d better talk to the quartermaster about that.”
It got worse. Just after noon on the fifth day they reached the top of a low ridge, only to find a completely unexpected combe dropping away at their feet. Eiconodoulus’ first reaction was fury; competent scouts should’ve found it and told him, it should’ve been on the bloody map. He got off his horse, walked up to the lip and looked at it as though it was a personal affront.
You couldn’t get a cart down there. The other side perhaps, going up again; but going down would be suicide. He turned his head left and right. The bloody thing seemed to go on forever, it’d take days to go round it, assuming there actually was a way round. Combe; canyon, more like. The downward slope was studded with boulders, and he was prepared to bet that the dust and gravel wouldn’t give a firm footing. Final mockery: there was a substantial stream, practically a river, gurgling cheerfully away at the bottom of it. All the water in the world, but he couldn’t get at it.
He sulked for an hour, pretending to study the map, while scouts went out to see if there was a way round. Of course not. On one side the canyon went away straight until it faded out of sight, a very long way away. The other side wasn’t even worth exploring. He was fairly sure there would be a crossing-point quite close, a trail zigzagging down, or a hole in the wall. It had to be possible to
get through on the other side, because that was where the Vadani road ran, and of course he couldn’t go there.
Nothing for it. They’d have to cut a road of their own, just enough to let them take the carts down, unloaded, without the horses; then back up to the top, collect the dismantled war engines and carry them down on their backs. Three days? Be realistic, four. Plenty of water, of course, but food was going to be a serious problem. Half-rations; the men were going to love that. Finally, just in case that wasn’t enough to be going on with, he’d lost his precious visibility. Standing on the lip and looking round, he could see at least a dozen places where an enemy unit could sneak up on him and attack with little more than a quarter of an hour’s notice.
He thought about manpower. Building a road, then unloading, then carrying the machines; he needed sentries on those vulnerable approaches, and a fighting reserve in case he was attacked. He didn’t have nearly enough men (which was just as well, given the food situation) and he was already horribly late. It didn’t take much imagination to visualize the main expeditionary force pushing on to its assigned position, confident of artillery cover that wouldn’t be there. The map had done for him, just as he knew it would one day.
He sent Stesimbracus away with the sentries, mostly because he was getting to the point where he couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore. That meant he had to put stolid, stupid Lieutenant Ariophrantzes in charge of the road party, while he perched on the edge of the combe doing nothing with the fighting reserve. That looked bad, he knew. The men would think he was skiving, when he ought to be down on the slope, digging or lugging baskets. But Ariophrantzes couldn’t be trusted to command the reserve if there was an attack; it was a tactical nightmare in any case, because any enemy with a functional brain would use the terrain to attack in front and at the side, possibly from the rear as well if there were other gullies and ravines he hadn’t spotted yet. One thing he could do: he gave orders for two dozen of the war engines to be assembled, fitted to their field carriages, and set up on the highest point of the lip. If he had to carry the wretched things, he might as well use them.
As four days dragged on into six, and half-rations had to be further reduced, and the road party’s progress gradually slowed, he became convinced that there’d be an attack. It was obvious, the logical thing. It went without saying that the Eremians must have scouts out, watching every single thing he did. They’d know that he’d be at his most vulnerable when the road party were almost at the bottom of the canyon. First they’d attack the reserve, kill them or drive them off. The road party, practically defenseless, could then be slaughtered at leisure, the engines brought down the road Eiconodoulus had so obligingly built and carried off in triumph to Eremia. Anybody, some nobleman’s idiot nephew, could devise an effective strategy for that. Defending against it, on the other hand… At the back of his mind, Eiconodoulus knew it was possible, but he also knew that he wasn’t a good enough tactician to do it. Probably they’d write up the disaster in the military textbooks — his place in history — and cadets would be taught what he should have done (blindingly obvious, no doubt, with hindsight) as an awful warning against overconfidence. It amused him that he didn’t even know the name of this place, though he’d be remembered in the same breath as it forever. Meanwhile, the Eremians would be inspired by their miraculous victory, the Mezentines would be stunned by the worst defeat in their history, and all because some fool couldn’t draw a decent map, though nobody would remember that in two hundred years’ time.
The digging party reached the bottom of the combe, and no sign of any enemy. Eiconodoulus merely found that insulting; as well as building the road for them, he had to lug the stupid machines down it just to save them the effort. He thought about that for a while; and yes, it was blindingly obvious. They wanted the two dozen engines dismantled and out of action before they committed themselves. Very sensible. He obliged, and gave the order.
They didn’t attack while the unloaded carts were led down, but of course they had more sense. Then it was time to carry the dismantled engines; the men were very unhappy about doing that, but they’d be even unhappier when the Eremian arrows started dropping down on them. Apparently, however, Eiconodoulus hadn’t quite judged their plan right, because no arrows flew and the engines reached the river, eventually, after the hardest day’s work Eiconodoulus could remember. By now he was very worried indeed. If the Eremians were content to pass up such a glorious opportunity as the one he’d just given them, it could only be because they had something even more deadly in mind, which he was too stupid to perceive. The engines went back on the carts, the water-barrels were filled, the horses spanned in; gradually it dawned on Eiconodoulus that there wasn’t going to be an attack after all. They’d blundered; they’d passed up the most wonderful opportunity to give the Republic a bloody nose, through laziness, negligence, cowardice or stupidity. For the first time since they left the Butter Pass, Eiconodoulus laughed out loud. He’d beaten the map, after all.
On the other side of the canyon, there was no sign of any path; but there was gloriously even ground, better than the pitted and rutted surface of a track. Heather had probably grown there once, but the wind had scoured off the thin layer of topsoil and ground away the bumps and tussocks, leaving a layer of shingle and small stones that would’ve compared favorably with a nobleman’s carefully tended gravel drive. The ground fell slowly away to the blurred gray seam of land and sky, where mists rose from the Lasenia river valley. Two days, or a day and a half if they could force the pace, and they’d be bypassing the foot of the mountain on which the city perched, on their way to where they were supposed to be. Eiconodoulus was a cautious man when it came to interpreting the actions of Providence, but he reckoned it wouldn’t be presumptuous to assume that he was getting his reward for the tribulations he’d recently endured.
The final confirmation for this view came in the shape of a flock of wild sheep sheltering from the wind in a small dish-shaped combe; the scouts who found them managed to creep away without startling them, and Eiconodoulus quickly convened a tactical meeting. He listened to various suggestions (the oaf Ariophrantzes had been a hunter in his youth, and prattled on about nets and drives and beaters until ordered to shut up) and gave his orders.
His strategy was basic and simple. On three sides of the combe he drew up his spearmen, creating a hedge of sharp points about a hundred yards shy of the skyline. On the fourth side he sent in his strike force in two ranks; in front, the archers, and behind them the rest of the men, shouting, banging rocks and pans and helmets, waving their arms, generally making themselves as obnoxious as possible. As soon as they advanced over the rim of the combe the sheep bolted in the opposite direction. Running into the spearmen they veered off to the sides, round the inside of the encircling hedge, back to where the advancing line had closed the ring. Forced back into the hollow of the combe, they could then be shot down by the archers without risk to the spearmen.
It went perfectly, smooth as a carefully designed machine. At the precise moment he’d specified, the panic-stricken sheep galloped straight into his enfilade. About forty-seven went down in the first volley, whereupon the survivors bolted down into the belly of the combe, giving the archers the backstop they needed. There wasn’t any need for skill. The archers simply loosed volleys until there was nothing left moving; then they strolled down into the combe to pick up their arrows and collect the carcasses for dressing. None of the sheep escaped. It was, Eiconodoulus couldn’t help thinking, a rather encouraging omen for the war at large.
After days on half-rations, the men were happy again, and the excitement of it (Eiconodoulus wasn’t sure if it had been a hunt or a battle) had done wonders for their morale; there were even volunteers for the chores of skinning, paunching and butchering. The only man who seemed unhappy was the fool Ariophrantzes; he scowled when he thought nobody was looking, and tried to stay out of the proceedings as much as possible. Eiconodoulus was inclined to put that down to pique (
Ariophrantzes had put himself forward at the tactical meeting as a mighty hunter, his learned advice had been ignored, and still they’d got the lot) and he decided that such an attitude needed to be nipped in the bud. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked him.
Eventually he got a straight answer. “It’s nothing really, sir,” the oaf replied. “Honestly. We had to get some food from somewhere, and it all worked out pretty well.”
Big of you, Eiconodoulus thought. “So what’s bugging you?”
“I don’t know.” The oaf made a vague, helpless gesture. “It’s just that — well, like I told you earlier, my people hunted a lot when I was a kid, and I suppose I’ve still got their way of looking at things. Killing the whole lot like that —”
He couldn’t be bothered to argue. “If that’s all,” he said, “you can get on with your work. This is a military expedition, Lieutenant, not a day out with the hounds.”
“Very good, sir. One thing, though, if I might ask. What were you proposing to cook the meat with?”
The world is full of annoyances; none more infuriating than a fool with a valid point. In the end they had to unload a cart and trash it for firewood, having distributed its load between the others. Being best-quality Mezentine treated timber, it burned with a foul smell and a thick cloud of dark gray smoke, which made the meat taste of pitch. It was still a distinct improvement on nothing at all, but it wasn’t the glorious feast of roast mutton that Eiconodoulus had been anticipating as a due reward for his achievement. Then it rained in the night, putting out the fires and drenching the remaining firewood with half the carcasses still raw. There was no point burdening themselves with uncooked meat that’d spoil by the time they reached anywhere they might expect to find more fuel, so the remaining carcasses had to be abandoned. It was just an unfortunate mishap, but somehow Eiconodoulus couldn’t help feeling that the oaf Ariophrantzes had somehow been vindicated.