by K. J. Parker
'Well.' He thought for a moment. 'We were back at Deymeson, all of us-you, me, Gain, Elaos, Cordo, Ciartan-and it was just after first lesson. We were in third grade, I think, but you know how you can never tell how old you are in dreams. Anyway, the lesson had been metalwork, we'd been doing casting in bronze-'
'That's odd,' she interrupted.
'Well, of course it is, that's the point. We never did that, any of us.'
She frowned. 'Hold on,' she said. 'Didn't Gain take foundry as an option in fifth grade?'
He thought about that. 'You know,' he said, 'I think you're right. Ciartan and Cordo took forgework, you and I did precious metals, Elaos-what did Elaos do? I can't remember.'
'Engraving.'
'So he did, you're right. God only knows how you remember all this stuff.'
'Practice,' she said. 'So, we were all coming out of class. Then what?'
'We were moaning,' he continued, 'about the assignment we'd just been set. We had to cast a flute-'
'You don't cast flutes. You-'
'I know that, thank you. But in the dream, we had to cast a flute, in bronze, and we weren't allowed to use a core.'
She looked blank. 'Is that good or bad?' she asked. 'I don't know anything about casting.'
'Well, I don't know a hell of a lot,' he admitted. 'But in the dream it was pretty serious, because we were all arguing like mad about it. And then Ciartan lost his temper-'
'What's odd about that?' she interrupted, smiling. 'Sounds just like real life to me.'
'Ciartan lost his temper,' he repeated, 'and one of the other kids-I'm blowed if I can remember his name, but he had straight black hair, small nose, played the flute-'
'Torcuat.'
'That's right,' he said, surprised. 'Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. Torcuat. Anyhow, they got into a fight; and you remember how Ciartan went through that phase of carrying a knife all the time. Stuffed down inside the leg of his boot, the stupid clown, I'm amazed he never cut his shin open. Anyway, he got this knife out and he was waving it around, and Torcuat was yelling bloody murder at him, and we were all worried Father Tutor'd hear the racket and come and see what was going on. So you jumped in and took the knife off him-only for some reason it wasn't a knife any more, it was a little axe, sort of a hatchet. But you got it away from him, and he'd gone all dumb and ashamed, because you'd told him he was an arsehole. Then the door opened and Father Tutor came in, but he didn't seem to have heard the noise, or maybe he was preoccupied and wasn't bothered about it; he had this really serious look on his face, and we all knew there was something badly wrong. And here's where it gets a bit surreal, because suddenly we were all sitting in his study-'
'All of us? There wouldn't be room.'
'All of us,' he repeated. 'And in front of him, right in the middle of his desk, was this sort of stump thing, and on it there was this statue of a crow; only it wasn't a statue, because suddenly it spread its wings and said "Caw" or whatever crows say-'
'A crow,' she said. 'Interesting.'
'Well, quite. Sort of like what my old mother used to tell me: don't play with that, dear, you don't know where it's been.'
She frowned. 'Well,' she said, 'we've both known him a very long time, and remember what he told us, about the people where he came from, so maybe it's not so surprising after all. Go on.'
'It gets weirder,' he said. 'Father Tutor calls Ciartan up to the front, tells him there's this really bad news from home; his grandfather's died, and left him the farm-so, I was thinking, not such bad news after all; and his best friend's been burned to death in a fire, and his daughter's expecting a baby.' He paused, and she got the impression he'd missed something out at this point; nothing he felt was important, but something that she wouldn't like. 'And then he went on, Father Tutor, that is; he said that the volcano had erupted and buried his house and all the farmland under molten lava, so he couldn't ever go back home again-and I was thinking, bloody hell, even though it's him, you can't help feeling a bit sorry for the bastard, all that dreadful stuff happening all at once.'
'How very sweet,' she said.
'Well,' he replied, 'you were sobbing your little heart out, so you can't talk. And he was just stood there, grinning like an idiot; and the crow was cackling away like it was laughing, and then he sort of reached out-I tell you, he never moved that fast in real life-and he grabbed the crow round the neck and squashed it, literally squashed it down into the fireplace and held it there till it was all burned up. And Father Tutor just sat there, like he didn't mind a bit; and then he said to Ciartan to cheer up, because as a sort of consolation prize he was being given the hand of the Emperor's daughter in marriage, and if that all went all right-like it was a test or probation or something-if that all went all right, he'd be allowed to kill his son, make the flute and take his rightful place as king of the gods once term was finished. And I was sitting there thinking, that's a bit rich, this is bloody Ciartan we're talking about; then he leans across to me and says, yes, fine, but-' He paused, an embarrassed look on his face.
'But,' she said. 'Go on. It's about me, isn't it?'
'Well, yes. Basically, he was saying it was all very well getting all that nice stuff Father Tutor had just said, but it didn't count worth spit because I'd-well, you and me…'
She was grinning. 'You've gone all pink,' she said.
'Yes, well. I used to be a monk, remember? Anyway, the gist of it was that all the goodies didn't matter if, well, if it was going to be me getting the girl and not him; only that wasn't going to happen, since he'd kill me first, and all sorts of charming stuff like that.'
'Sounds pretty much like Ciartan to me.'
'Quite. Anyway, then he got his hands round my throat, and I was struggling and yelling, "No, stop-"'
'I know. I heard you.'
'And then,' he concluded, 'I woke up.' He shook his head sadly. 'Bloody hell, Xipho, I've got to admit, I've had about as much of him as I can take.'
'You have.'
'Well,' he said, embarrassed, 'anyhow. But it's getting beyond a joke.' He looked at her. 'You don't-well, you don't actually think there really is anything to it, do you? Seriously, I mean.'
It took her a moment to figure out what he was talking about. 'What, you mean about him? Being the god in-Being Poldarn?' She stared, then giggled. 'You idiot,' she said.
'Yes, all right. But I can't help it, really, wondering sometimes. Like when I found out you'd been doing that bloody stupid scam thing, with him pretending to be-And there I was, stupid bloody clown, galloping all round the countryside following you two about, and all the time it was you. And him,' he added. 'Which Father fucking Tutor never saw fit to mention-'
She shook her head, as if forbidding him to take the subject further. 'He must've had a good reason,' she said. 'He always had a good reason.'
'Yes, but then he went and died, thoughtless bloody bastard; and here's me left behind trying to figure out what in any God's name his ever-such-a-good bloody reason might've been.' He stood up and shivered in the cold. 'I mean, I ask you; he sends you trailing after him. Then he loses his mind, or his memory, whatever; so Father Tutor sends me off to trail after the two of you, but for some fucking reason neglects to mention to me that the god in the cart and his beautiful lady assistant are two of my old classmates. Yes, I know Father Tutor could be pretty bloody deep sometimes, but that's just-'
'Just bad luck that he died when he did,' she said calmly. 'Or maybe even good luck, I really don't know.'
'Good luck?' He sounded shocked. 'Like, you think the old fool somehow decided to die at that precise moment? You mean, as part of the grand design? Come off it, Xipho, that's just silly.'
But she shrugged. 'All I'm saying is,' she said, 'I don't know what he had in mind. But I trusted him and I still do. I have-' She smiled. 'I have faith. You remember faith, don't you? We did it in first grade; or were you away that week?'
He wasn't happy, though. 'And now all this stuff,' he said. 'General Muno Silsny. I mean to say,
we hadn't even heard of him back when the old man died, so how could he possibly have intended that as part of his grand and wonderful plan?'
'It was logical,' she said. 'General Cronan, General Muno. General Allectus before that. Tazencius becoming Emperor. That was right at the heart of it-'
'It was?' He stared at her. 'Tazencius? That moron?' He looked as though he was in physical pain. 'You mean Father Tutor wanted me to scrag Cronan-General Cronan who was the only man ever who beat the raiders-just so all-dick-and-no-brains Tazencius could get to be Emperor? Oh for crying out loud, Xipho. It doesn't want faith, it wants brain damage.'
She was starting to get annoyed with him, but he couldn't help that. 'You don't know,' she repeated. 'You haven't got the faintest idea, really, what his plan was.' She drew in a deep breath. They'd been taught to do that, in second grade, as a way of keeping their tempers, but it'd never worked for him. 'Look at it this way. Suppose you came from a place where they didn't have doctors, all right? And suppose you saw a surgeon, a real top-notch Guild surgeon from Boc or some place like that; and he's got his patient on his back on the table, and they've stuffed rag in his mouth and they're holding him down with ropes while the doctor grabs a scalpel and starts cutting him open. And you're thinking to yourself, they must be crazy. This guy's sick enough already, and sticking a knife in his guts is supposed to make him better?' He was pulling a face. 'All right,' she said, 'it's a corny example. But for all we know, he wanted Tazencius to get the throne so's the provinces would rebel and overthrow the Empire and restore the Republic. It could be as big as that. We just don't know. The thing is, if we don't do exactly what we're told, we're liable to screw it all up and everything'll go wrong. You do see that, don't you?'
He yawned and shook his head. There was a leak in the roof, he noticed; every so often, a big fat drop of water would fall from the thatch and land, plop, on the rotten place in the fifth floorboard in from the wall. 'Yes, I guess so,' he said. 'Only, Father Tutor's dead, we don't know what the rest of the plan was going to be; so it's probably pretty safe to say that the plan's gone wrong already. To take your example,' he added (she was beginning to fidget; extended discussions and debates weren't her style), 'suppose I'm this guy from far away who's never seen a doctor; and I see this surgeon of yours, and I think, great; all I've got to do to cure someone if he's sick is take a damn great knife and carve him open. You and I may think we know what the old fool had in mind, or we can guess, or maybe reconstruct, whatever; but, like you keep saying, we don't know. So maybe we should just leave well alone, right?'
'Oh yes?' Now she was starting to get angry. 'Fine. The patient's lying on the table with his guts hanging out, you're saying, we don't know what to do, let's just walk away and leave him there. That's so intelligent, Mon.'
He could see the fallacies in her reasoning, but even he had the common sense not to point them out. 'Screw it, Xipho, it's got me so messed up I don't know anything any more.' Suddenly he laughed. 'You know what?' he said. 'You and me, we're in pretty much the same god-awful fix as Ciartan. He's lost his memory, we've lost Father Tutor and the rest of the plan; we're stuck midway across the river, with the current dragging us away, and we don't know what the fuck's going on or what we're supposed to do. Only,' he added with a scowl, 'Ciartan might get his memory back. Gods forbid, but he might. Father bloody Tutor's going to stay dead, no matter what.'
She was smiling; bad temper averted, apparently. Wise tactic on his part, to show a little weakness to defuse the situation. And he'd worked it all out for himself, too; they hadn't offered Understanding Women at Deymeson. 'You never know,' she was saying. 'Maybe he wrote it all down somewhere, and tomorrow or the next day someone'll find the bit of paper and suddenly we'll all know. Yes,' she said, forestalling him, 'I know, totally unlikely. But it might happen.'
He grinned. 'Faith.'
She grinned back. 'Moves mountains.'
'I thought that was extreme volcanic activity.'
'That too. But faith doesn't spit them up in the air and dump them on your head.'
Thinking about that, he wasn't so sure; but it was a good place to leave the argument. They had a long way to go today in terrible conditions; it'd probably be as well if the joint commanders of the enterprise were on speaking terms. He pulled on his boots (sad excuses for boots; and not so many years ago, footwear was like the rising of the sun, he never had to worry about it, it was simply there…) and squelched outside to see to rescheduling their departure.
Being a warlord, Monach had learned the hard way, was about three per cent fire and the sword, the rest incessant pettifogging administration. Regular armies, he supposed, were like rich men's sons, never having to worry about where the next supply train or six hundred pairs of thick leather gaiters were coming from; they had indulgent parents at the capital who sent them what they needed, and were always there to fall back on when weevils got in the cornmeal or twelve wagonloads of tents got swept away crossing a flooded river. Warlords, by contrast, are the sturdy peasant farmers of warfare, forced to rely on their own sweat and initiative or else do without. Right now he needed fifty sets of chains for cartwheels, if he was to have any hope of getting his sad convoy up the river of mud that passed for a highway as far as the luxuriously metalled military road. No wheel chains to be had for love, money or the fear of death this side of the Bay, so they were going to have to think of something else. Relays of men carrying armfuls of brush to lay down in front of the wheels-no, that'd be ridiculous, all that'd happen would be that half his army would get filthy dirty and bad-tempered, and they'd maybe cover two miles a day before getting hopelessly and irreversibly stuck in some bog. A regular general could simply write a friendly letter to Divisional HQ. and be sent sappers, engineers, cartloads of fascines and portable roadway, those great big rolled-up carpets of birch twigs tied together with cord. Spoiled rotten; and could they hold together five minutes against the raiders? Could they hell.
The only other option was to dump the carts, load the supplies onto the men's backs, and porter the whole lot as far as the hard surface; the carts could then follow on as and when the roads were passable again. Or mules; mules were the ideal solution, except that he hadn't got any. Any fuzzy-chinned clown of a hereditary colonel could have all the mules he wanted just by handing a note to his junior equerry, but a hard-working warlord was going to have to break it to the lads that each of them would be lugging a hundredweight of junk on his back all the way to Falcata -Unless there was a river. Boats, barges, rafts. All this disgusting water everywhere-there had to be a river going in vaguely the right direction. Then he remembered: they were going up the hill to the military road. Even if there was a navigable river, it'd be bugger-all use to him.
(And she wasn't helping, he thought, unfairly. Why the hell didn't she ever stir herself and deal with something; something important, like bacon or socks or duty rosters, instead of all that religious garbage? He knew perfectly well why; because he was in command, and the men wouldn't take orders from her. But he carried on resenting for a minute or so anyway.)
On his way to the staff meeting in the derelict linhay, he shared his concerns with one of the line captains, an ex-monk by the name of Trecian. 'It's only a dozen miles to the military road,' he said wretchedly, 'and it might as well be in Morevich for all the good-'
'Why don't you take the short cut?' Trecian interrupted.
Monach stopped and looked at him. 'What short cut?'
Trecian grinned foolishly. 'Actually,' he said, 'it's not a short cut, because it's actually six miles further; but we call it the short cut, because this time of year it cuts half a day off the trip.'
Monach understood. 'You're from round here, then.'
'That's right. Born just down the road, in fact, place called Ang Chirra. Poxy little village, really, haven't been back there since I was fifteen. But I expect the short cut's still there. Don't suppose they could manage without it, this time of year.'
'What's so good abo
ut this short cut of yours?' Monach demanded. 'We'll just get the carts stuck, same as if we went the other way.'
Trecian shook his head. 'No fear,' he said. 'Good hard going all the way. People hereabouts reckon it must've been a government road once, years ago; probably from before Tulice was part of the Empire. True, you'll find about half the paving slabs mortared into farmhouse walls and gateposts from here to Danchout. But the other half are still there, and there's a good eighteen inches of compacted rubble and gravel under that. Whoever built it sure knew how to lay a good road.'
'Wonderful,' Monach said, rather bewildered at this amazing slice of luck. 'So how come it's not on any of the maps?'
Trecian laughed. 'People round here've always had a funny attitude toward telling the government about things. I think the argument was, if the government knew about the road, they'd decide it was worth fixing it up, and we'd be stuck with the bill. Or maybe when the surveyors came out here they pissed off the locals, so they kept quiet about it just for spite. That's Tulice for you. We may look to the outside world like a bunch of inbred hillbillies, but there's less to us than meets the eye.'
It occurred to Monach to ask why nobody'd seen fit to mention this secret road to him earlier. But he reflected on what Trecian had told him about the Tulice mentality, and concluded that he'd be happier not knowing.
The Sticklepath (as the short cut was apparently known) obviously wasn't used much, even in the wet season. In fact, if Trecian hadn't told him where it was Monach could easily have gone past it without realising. A deep carpet of pale yellow flowers covered it; Trecian told him what they were called, something really uninspiring, like gravelwort. But it suited the carts just fine, and when they camped for the night on a spur overlooking the dense, sprawling Cherva forest, they'd already covered just over half the distance to the military road. Monach gave orders for setting watches, organised the duty rosters for the morning, the sort of things he now did without having to think or remember; they came as naturally as drawing a sword.