by K. J. Parker
Chapter Twenty-One
At first he assumed he was back in the peafield, and that the bodies lying out on the dry earth were the crows he’d killed. He could feel the pain in his knees – a pity I can’t change the past, he thought, I’d get up and stretch my legs at this point, maybe save myself five days of misery – and the weary ache in his right shoulder. But then he realised that he wasn’t alone in the ditch. It was full of men, in armour, clutching weapons and crouching low to keep their heads out of sight. Oh, he thought, I must be somewhere else.
He glanced sideways, doing his best not to be obvious about it. Whoever these people were, he had a feeling that they were under his command, and therefore had a right to feel confidence in their commander. It wouldn’t do for him to start asking disconcerting questions, like Where are we? and What the hell’s going on here? They might get the impression that he wasn’t in complete control of the situation, and that would never do.
I must be dreaming again, he thought. In which case it’s probably all right, nothing really bad can happen to me in the past, because if I’d died or lost an arm in this battle, I’d know it for sure back in the present. So that’s all right, he added. This is just a holiday, a guided tour of some momentous event laid on for my benefit, as a reward for beating the volcano.
If he was dreaming, he rationalised, it seemed reasonable to suppose that he wasn’t really here, and nothing he did could have a bad effect on the outcome; so he wriggled round to the point where he could put his weight on his feet and pushed up, just enough to let him see over the top of the ditch.
A column of soldiers was approaching. They looked remarkably like the soldiers next to him, as far as clothes, armour and equipment were concerned; the only difference he could see was that they were armed with straight-bladed swords, while in his own right hand he held a curved-bladed object that he recognised as an enemy backsabre—
(No, not enemy; at least, not as far as the present is concerned. The backsabre is our special design, unique to our people on the island. How he’d come by it, of course, he had no idea, but one of his men in the ditch seemed to have one, which suggested it was some kind of special trophy, an appropriate sidearm for a dashing and popular leader—)
There were, he realised an awful lot of soldiers drawing near, enough to make him very glad that he wasn’t really there. Of course, he had no way of telling, crouched down there in the ditch, how many men he had on his side. For all he knew, there could be thousands of them, not just the couple of hundred in the ditch but other units hidden with equal skill and cunning, behind hedges, among the trees, maybe even hunkered down in cleverly disguised pits dug in the field. Since he had no idea just how wonderfully imaginative and inventive he was when it came to laying ambushes and conducting battles, all he could do was keep very still and hope for the best.
There didn’t seem to be anything else he could glean from the approaching soldiers, so he turned his attention to the dead bodies. They weren’t soldiers. Most of them weren’t even men – there were a few old men, some boys, but the bodies were mostly those of women of various ages. All dead, of course, unless they were making a very good job of just shamming dead; but he didn’t really think he was clever and imaginative enough to have staged that. Some of them at least were quite palpably dead: heads chopped off or necks slashed half through, ribcages opened, the sort of thing you couldn’t really fake. The implication was that someone had massacred two or three hundred helpless civilians. He hoped very much that it hadn’t been him, because the sight was pretty grim. The approaching soldiers didn’t look too happy about it, for one thing, and they gave every indication of wanting to get their hands on whoever was responsible. That didn’t bode well, particularly if he didn’t have an extra thousand or so heavy infantry concealed about the place. He wasn’t sure he cared much for this dream, after all.
The soldiers carried on advancing; they were no more than a couple of hundred yards away by now, rather too close for comfort. He wondered if he ought to be doing anything, or whether whatever was going to happen next could be left to take care of itself. Probably not. If he really was the leader of the men in the ditch, it’d be up to him; to give the order to attack – assuming that they were planning an ambush and not hiding, though if these few with him were all there were that could well be the case. Really, it was no better than being awake, the frustration of not knowing who he was or what he was meant to be doing. He could get as much of that as he wanted just by hanging round the farm, without having to travel back in time for it.
The man next to him budged him in the ribs. ‘No offence,’ he muttered, in a tone of voice that suggested the exact opposite, ‘but you’re cutting it bloody fine.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he replied, much to his own surprise (but that was the other man talking, the one who had a right to be here). ‘Shut your face and wait for my mark.’
The man next to him froze, as if he’d just been hit across the face. He felt ashamed and embarrassed – the poor fellow had only been trying to help, and as far as he could see, the man had had a point, the enemy were getting closer all the time and it wasn’t going to be easy getting out of this bloody ditch. By the time they’d scrambled up the bank and retrieved their weapons and kit, there wasn’t going to be much in the way of an element of surprise. Still, he thought, there’s no logical reason to believe that the momentous event I’ve come here to see is a victory. For all I know we’re about to make a horrible mess of it and get slaughtered. He stole another look at the dead women and children scattered about the field like decoys, and added, Serve us right.
Then he realised what he’d been waiting for. The enemy, having come right down the field, within fifty yards of the ditch, were turning to the right, from column to file, with a view to marching off somewhere. You’d never try such an unwieldy manoeuvre on a battlefield in the face of the enemy; but they didn’t know there was anybody in the ditch, so it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Obviously he’d foreseen that, his remarkably perceptive tactical brain allowing him to read the enemy commander’s mind, right down to the minutiae of timing and procedure. He couldn’t help admiring—
He was on his feet, clawing at the grass with his left hand to pull himself up the steep bank. On either side his men were doing the same thing, most of them rather more athletically than him. Already the first few dozen were up and on the move, hurling themselves against the enemy flank with a cold fury that argued a definite sense of purpose – probably they had a score to settle, some grievance that justified killing women and children, and prompted them to such a display of aggression. As for the other side, they didn’t know what was happening. (By now he was out of the ditch, hands and knees filthy with mud, catching his breath and straightening his cramped back like an old man while all around him his soldiers were charging.) For one thing, it seemed, the other soldiers couldn’t figure out why their own people were attacking them; they didn’t seem to want to fight or use their weapons, not until they’d given away the advantage and lost all semblance of order and cohesion. Meanwhile, there was more movement going on in other parts of the field – he’d been right, there was a large contingent of his men tucked away behind the far hedge, another lot were rising up out of the ground like sprouting corn (another ditch, he assumed, or something of the sort) and it was soon pretty obvious that he had as many men as the other lot, if not more. That was a relief, at any rate. In fact, the result was already a foregone conclusion, if his instincts were anything to go by. He had the enemy in flank and rear, with another unit rushing up to block their front and complete the encirclement. His lot, the men from the ditch, were in the process of cutting the enemy column in two, which he was fairly sure was a very good thing in a battle. All things considered, the other lot didn’t stand a chance, and all that remained was the tedious job of chopping them down where they stood. He was pleased to see that he, the leader of the winning side, was apparently content to leave the actual killing to
his subordinates. It was turning into a very nasty business, and he didn’t actually want to get involved, even if he wasn’t really there and so couldn’t come to any harm.
‘Not bad.’ Someone was talking to him; not the man he’d spoken to in the ditch, but presumably one of his officers, to judge by his manner and tone of voice. ‘Not bad at all. I’ll be honest with you, I thought it was a lousy idea and you were going to get us all killed. Glad I was wrong.’
He shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s always worked for me before. No reason why you should know that, of course.’
The other man grinned. ‘You’re a ruthless bastard, though,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of anybody else who’d knock off a whole village just to decoy a column into exactly the right spot. I thought it was just an excuse, because you like killing people.’
‘What, me?’ He was grinning, though he didn’t know what was so funny. ‘It’s like I always say, you’ve got to set out the right pattern, let ’em see what they expect to see, otherwise they’ll shy off and not drop in. We wanted them to think there were raiders in these parts, but they’d got no reason to believe that; so the obvious thing to do was make it look like the raiders had been through. Nothing does that like a couple of hundred dead bodies. Simple fieldcraft.’
‘It’s simple when you put it like that,’ the other man said. ‘Can’t say I’d have thought of it myself, though. Still, you lot have always had a different way of going about things.’
‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘We don’t give a damn, it makes life much simpler.’ He frowned. ‘Your people take their time, don’t they? We’d have been done and stripping their boots off by now.’
‘Maybe it’s because my men don’t need dead men’s boots,’ the other man said mildly. ‘Anyway, it’s a certainty now, so that’s all right. The general is going to be very pleased.’
He nodded. ‘Where is he, by the way? Wasn’t he supposed to be with the Seventh, coming in from the wood?’
‘That’s what I thought, too,’ the other man said. ‘Still, Cronan never did have a wonderful sense of direction. Maybe he wandered off and got himself lost.’
He laughed, for some reason. ‘That’d be right,’ he said. ‘Of course, this is going to be the crowning glory of his brilliant career, so I guess it’s appropriate, the bloody fool not even being here. Meanwhile, we do all the work and don’t get a damn thing for it.’
The other man looked offended. ‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ he said.
‘Yes, well. The main thing is, the job’s done. I think I’ll leave you to it, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a long day ahead of me tomorrow.’
‘That’s no lie,’ the other man said, with a certain degree of distaste. ‘Have fun; and for God’s sake, don’t miss any of them. If Cronan finds out what we’ve been up to—’
‘Oh, for crying out loud, Tazencius,’ he said, ‘what do you take me for, an idiot? It’s not like I’m new at this.’
‘No,’ the other man said. ‘You’re not.’ He smiled offensively. ‘But mistakes happen – you should know that better than anybody. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, would you?’
He could feel that that, for some reason, was a deadly insult; he was conscious of forcing down the urge to lash out, of filing it away among his grievances, to be paid for later. ‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘Right, I’m off. Are you heading back to town when this lot’s done?’
The other man nodded. ‘Soon as I can,’ he said. ‘Cronan can do without me for a week or so.’
‘I’m sure. When you get back, be sure to give Lysalis my love.’
The other man abruptly stopped grinning, and gave him a look of pure hatred. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her – well, I’ll tell her you’ve been making yourself useful.’
‘Thanks. Tell her I’ll be bringing her back something nice for her birthday. I don’t know what it is yet, mind, but there’s bound to be something she’ll like at Josequin.’
The other man was about to say something, but he wasn’t there to hear it; he was sitting on a stone bench in the middle of a beautifully tended lawn, surrounded on three sides by an elegant sandstone cloister. Behind him he could hear running water, and he knew without looking round that the source of the sound was a small, rather ornate fountain in the shape of a grotesque dolphin. There was a woman next to him on the bench, cradling a baby girl in her arms. Between them lay a painted wooden box, about the size of a house brick. The hinged lid was open, and inside it was a necklace: woven gold with pearls and coral beads.
‘It’s lovely,’ the woman said, with obvious pleasure. (He thought it looked flashy and vulgar, but he didn’t say so.) ‘Where on earth did you find it?’
‘On a stall in the market at Boc,’ he replied, knowing he was telling a little white lie. ‘As soon as I saw it, I knew it was you all over.’
She beamed, as if the compliment mattered more than the gift. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and kissed him. Her lips were very soft and full. She was very pretty, and not more than nineteen, with masses of dark auburn hair piled up on top of her head in an over-elaborate coiffure. He noticed that the earrings she was wearing matched the necklace. Ah, he thought, that’s probably why she likes it. How thoughtful of me.
‘How long can you stay for this time?’ she was saying, a little wistfully. She really was very attractive, and he awaited his reply with interest. ‘Not long,’ he heard himself say (he was disappointed), ‘I’ve got to see some people and then get back. But I couldn’t miss your birthday.’
She smiled. ‘I think that’s really sweet of you,’ she said, ‘coming all that way. We hardly seem to get any time together these days. Still, with all the wonderful help you’ve been giving Daddy I can’t complain. I’m so glad you’ve decided to be friends at last.’
I remember you from somewhere, he thought, but of course he couldn’t say anything like that. ‘Well,’ he said instead. ‘The truth is, he’s a bit out of his depth at the moment. It’s this damned feud of his with General Cronan – it’s going to cause a lot of trouble if something isn’t done about it.’
‘Oh.’ The woman looked confused. ‘But I thought that’s what you’d been doing. Helping General Cronan, I mean.’
He laughed. ‘That’s exactly what we’ve been doing,’ he said. ‘That’s the whole point. Only, our fool of an emperor assigned your father to Cronan’s staff.’ She looked even more confused, so he explained: ‘That means he’s working for Cronan, he’s his subordinate. Well, you can imagine what he thinks about that. So nothing will do except he’s got to steal all the glory; which is why he needed me, to pull off a really big coup, and beat General Allectus before Cronan could get to him. That was the idea, anyhow. Luckily for all of us it didn’t turn out that way; your father rushed on ahead, trying to get to Allectus before Cronan could, and if he’d managed it, chances are Allectus would’ve had him for breakfast and there’d have been nothing I could do about it. But when your father did catch up with Allectus, he wasted two days dancing round him trying to get a good position, and by then Cronan was right behind him. So your father panics, tells me to think of something quickly—’
‘Which you did, of course,’ she interrupted, ‘and it was brilliantly clever and you won the battle and everything worked out splendidly.’
‘Well, sort of,’ he replied, pulling a face. ‘Actually, I hung around pretending to be clever until Cronan’s men arrived, and then I managed to draw Allectus into an ambush. But for some reason Cronan wasn’t there, he actually managed to lose his way in a forest on his way from the camp to the battlefield, of all the ridiculous things, and so he missed the whole thing. We had to go and look for him in the end. Of course, that pleased your father more than anything, far more than winning the battle. Silly, really. Still, it’s over and done with now, and I don’t suppose it’ll make a blind bit of difference in the long run.’
She sighed. ‘It does all sound rather childish,’ she said. ‘Still, I don’t know anything at
all about politics or war, so you mustn’t pay any attention to me.’ She reached out and gave his hand a quick, friendly squeeze. ‘But if the war’s over and horrid old General Allectus has been beaten, why’ve you got to go back again? And so soon, too.’
He shook his head. ‘The rebellion wasn’t really important,’ he said. ‘It’d have petered out of its own accord, probably. We only went after Allectus because the emperor wanted to make a point of crushing him immediately, Cronan wanted another victory for his collection, your father wanted to wipe Cronan’s eye – all that sort of thing, you know what it’s like. No, the real problem in the Bohec valley is the raiders, that’s who we really have got to deal with, before they turn the whole province into a desert.’
She looked worried, frightened. ‘Do they really need you to go?’ she said. ‘Oh, I know I’m being silly, but you hear such dreadful things about them. Couldn’t they send somebody else instead?’
He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘nothing’s going to happen to me, I promise. Trust me.’ He grinned. ‘I know for a fact that nothing’s going to happen to me, because I can see into the future, remember?’ That had to be some sort of private joke between them, he guessed. Anyway, it seemed to reassure her. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I’d forgotten about that. Silly of me.’