by K. J. Parker
Valens smiled. "He was just like me, then," he said. "We've both got the knack of being the opposite of what we want to be. I feel so sorry for him now…" He waved his arm in a vague encircling gesture. "Now that I've brought us here, I mean. Now that I know what it feels like. You know what? If I'd been him, in this situation, I'd have done what he did. The only difference is, I wouldn't have been found out."
She stood up. "I'd better let you get on," she said. "I expect you're very busy."
"Me?" He shrugged. "I ought to be, but I'm not. They keep trying to make me take an interest, but the truth is, I've more or less given up. Which disappoints me; I'd always assumed I'd keep going to the bitter end, just in case there was a way out I hadn't noticed yet. But this is the first time I've really screwed up, and it's shown me just how feeble I really am. You know what? In the battle, when the Mezentine cavalry were cutting up the column, I very nearly ran away-I was halfway up the hill, and I only stopped because I was worn out; and then it turned out we'd won after all, so there wasn't anything to run away from. I haven't been able to get over that. I just couldn't see why I should hang around and get killed when it wouldn't do anybody any good."
"Well," she said. "It wouldn't have."
He shook his head. "I'd have lasted about half an hour," he replied. "About as long as it took me to find a tree and a bit of rope. I think the Mezentines killed me that day, and ever since I've just been wandering about wondering how come I can still breathe."
She looked at him. "Orsea would never have done that," she said. "When the city fell, he went rushing out trying to get himself killed. He made a mess of it, of course."
Valens nodded. "Would you have wanted him to have succeeded?"
"No. There's never any excuse for dying. It's such a selfish thing to do, if there are people who love you."
(Which was the difference, she didn't say; the condition that didn't apply in Valens' case. So he didn't ask: what about me; if I'd been in Orsea's place that day, should I have stood my ground and fallen nobly? He didn't want to make her tell a deliberate lie.)
"You're right." He vaulted to his feet-showing off, like a teenager-and straightened his back. "I really should be attending to business, rather than lounging around like a gentleman of leisure. How are your feet, by the way?"
"My feet?"
"Blisters. You were limping earlier."
She shrugged. "I turned my ankle over in the sand. I expect it'll wear off."
Valens smiled. "I'd better find you a horse to ride."
"No thanks. It'd look bad, and I'm unpopular enough as it is. Being the widow of a condemned traitor… It's all right," she added, "I'll manage. I'll admit that walking isn't my idea of fun, but I'm getting the hang of it."
"You're being brave."
"If you like. Really, it's a matter of having other things to think about."
"If you change your mind…" He clicked his tongue. "I've got no idea how all this is going to end," he said. "Badly, I imagine."
"As far as I'm concerned, it already has. Go on, I'm holding you up."
He turned and walked away, not looking round.
The morning of the seventh day in the desert, and he was suffering from nerves.
The way he felt reminded him of the first time he'd seen her. All he knew about her was that she was the foreman's daughter; as such, she represented advancement, promotion, a means of rising in his trade without needing to rely on other people being able to recognize his true merits. In his mind's eye, therefore, he'd seen her as a vital component in a mechanism, beautiful in the simplicity and economy of its design. He'd been kept waiting in the porch of her father's house. She won't be out till she's good and ready, her father had said with a wry grin; she'll be doing her face, puts more effort into it than any of you buggers making bits for scorpions. That remark had caught his imagination as he stood, half in and half out of the street, watching his breath cloud in the cold air. He'd perceived her then as an artifact, something manufactured, her face engineered with skill and dedication; and he was delighted to think that his prized component was being engineered to exacting tolerances and the tightest possible specification. Of course, the old man went on, I don't suppose any son-in-law of mine's going to stay on the fitting bench very long, and old Phylactus'll be retiring before the year's out. He remembered how he'd fixed his eyes on the door, not looking at the old man, ready to catch his first glimpse of her as soon as the latch lifted and she came out. The excitement; the nerves.
(Of course, he'd spoiled it all by falling in love with her.)
That same excitement, as he watched the glowing, indistinct line that separated the sand from the sky. They were coming; when they came, that was where he'd see them first, and know that everything he'd built was finally fitting together; the active and passive assemblies engaging, the male and female components matching up, every gear-tooth meshing, every key moving in its keyway.
(It was a pity there had to be a battle and so many people killed, but you can't have everything.)
To occupy his mind, he ran calculations. Assuming a constant for the speed of a horseman in the desert, assuming that everybody was in the right place, making allowances for human inefficiencies; he glanced up at the sun, that imperfectly calibrated timepiece. There was still time. Besides, if he'd been right in his assessment of the properties of his materials, they wouldn't show up till they were good and ready. Doing their faces, as it were. All allowed for in his tolerances.
The nerves annoyed him, but there wasn't anything he could do about them. He made himself relax; leaned back against the thin tree trunk, spread his arms wide, exaggerated a yawn. At least the nervousness kept his mind off how hungry he was (and if his calculations were out, of course, he'd starve to death, along with everybody else; his life depended on the precision of the mechanism, but he couldn't bring himself to be afraid of death, only of failure).
Could horses gallop in the sand? Come to that, how long could a horse gallop for, even under ideal conditions, without having to stop for a rest? He'd used some figure he'd heard somewhere for the maximum sustainable speed of heavy cavalry, added fifteen percent tolerance, and based his workings on that. Was fifteen percent enough to allow for sand? Filthy stuff, he hated it. They didn't have it in Mezentia, except as a packaged material for making foundry molds; they didn't have it lying about all over the floor, making it well-nigh impossible for people to move and go about their business. The untidiness of these miserable places revolted him. Why couldn't the rest of the world be decently paved and cobbled, like it was back home?
A thought occurred to him and he hurriedly looked round. Daurenja had been trailing round after him for days now, like a dog sniffing round the fuller's cart, and he really didn't want to talk to him; now or ever. It would be so sweetly convenient if he got himself killed in the battle… But that'd be too much like good luck. There'd be time and scope to get rid of him later.
Falling in love with her had been a mistake; but it had also been the beginning of his life, the moment when things began to matter. That moment, when the door opened and she'd come nervously out into the porch, had given birth to this one, and all the moments in between; this had all started then, because without her, none of this would have been necessary. Suppose he hadn't fallen in love with her; he'd be foreman of the ordnance factory, presumably married to someone or other-happy enough, in all probability, but he wouldn't have been Ziani Vaatzes. That complex, unsatisfactory component only existed in relation to her. Remove her, and there was nothing, no point. It'd be like eating an orange simply to produce orange peel. The machine exists for a purpose, and every part, every assembly follows on from that purpose; without it, you're left with nothing but scrap metal, no matter how marvelously engineered.
He couldn't help smiling. Love had been his downfall, sure enough, but without it, he'd never have existed in the first place.
There'd be a man doing his job, wearing his clothes and answering to his name, but he'
d be a complete and irrelevant stranger.
"Vaatzes." Someone calling for him. He pressed his back to the tree trunk and slid up it to his feet. "Over here," he called out.
He recognized the face, but couldn't put a name to it. "You're wanted," the face said. "Staff meeting."
"What, another one?" Ziani scowled. "What's the point? There's nothing to talk about."
Whoever-it-was shrugged. "He wants to see you. Over there, by that big rock at the edge of the water."
Ziani nodded, and started to walk. Valens probably just wanted someone to bully (are you sure the map's accurate? Can you be certain that's what the journal said, and was the merchant telling the truth? To which he'd reply, no, of course not; and the Duke would scowl horribly at him. Presumably it had some therapeutic value; in which case, he was happy to oblige. Like Miel Ducas, he lived only to serve).
"I know you can't vouch for the accuracy of the map" (well; nearly right), "but maybe you can cast your mind back and remember if there was anything in the journals…" Ziani nodded, allowing his mind to disengage, while saying the right things to keep Valens reasonably happy. Would it matter terribly much if he made up a few spurious diary entries? On balance, better not to.
"The food position's fairly straightforward," Valens was saying to somebody else. "Tomorrow we start eating the horses. Ever since I realized how much time we'd lost getting over that fucking mountain, I've been banking on the horses to get us across this desert. In which capacity they do it, as transport or as provisions, doesn't really matter at this stage. We've got nothing left for them to pull or carry, and if we do get to the other side, we won't need them desperately. Either the Cure Hardy'll take us in and look after us, or they'll slaughter us. Besides, if we don't kill the horses, they'll starve anyway. The fodder's completely gone, and they won't get far on a bellyful of oasis grass. It's that coarse, wiry stuff mostly, they won't eat it even when they're famished. It'd be good if we could keep a few of the thoroughbreds as presents for our hosts. They were quite keen on a few to improve their bloodlines. We'll start with the scraggiest specimens and leave the best till last. Common sense. Next on the agenda, casualties. Anybody interested in the figures, or shall we skip and go on?"
They skipped. Someone started talking earnestly about watch rotations. Ziani tried to concentrate on what he was saying, to keep his mind from dwelling on what ought to be about to happen. Apparently, they were presently working to a six-shift rotation, but wouldn't it be much better to go to seven shifts, thereby allowing each duty officer an extra half-hour's sleep, even though it would mean using more officers? The benefit of this approach…
Ziani never got to find out what the benefit was likely to be. The first thing he noticed was a head turning; then another, then four or five more, and the watch rotation enthusiast shut up in the middle of a sentence and tried to peer over Valens' shoulder to see what everybody was looking at.
What's the matter? Ziani thought. Never seen a running man before? Whoever he was, he was going flat out, veering precariously to avoid people in his way, or jumping over their legs if they didn't shift quickly enough. When he reached the rock and the general staff, he only just managed to keep from toppling over into the water. He looked round for Valens, and gasped, "Dust-cloud."
No further explanation needed. "Where?" Valens snapped, jumping up like a roe deer startled out of a clump of bracken. The runner was too breathless to speak; he pointed.
(Well, now, Ziani thought; and in his mind's eye the porch door opened.)
An orderly defense, according to the big brown book Valens had grown up with (Precepts of War, in which is included all manner of stratagems and directions for the management of war, at all times and in all places, distilled from the best authorities and newly illustrated with twenty-seven woodcuts), must be comprised of five elements: a strong position well prepared, proper provision of food and water, good supply of arms, a sufficient and determined garrison and a disciplined and single-minded command. Precepts of War had been three times a week, usually sandwiched in between rhetoric and the lute, and had consisted of copying out from the book into a notebook. The five elements of an orderly defense were as much a part of him as being right-handed.
As they watched the dust-cloud swelling, he ran through them one more time in his mind. Position: open on all sides. Provisions: none. Arms: all those barrels of carefully reclaimed arrows they'd left behind with the carts. Garrison: a mess. Command…
So much for his education. The cloud was rolling in, a strange and beautiful thing, sparkling, swirling, indistinct. Faintly he could hear the jingling of metal, like bells or wind-chimes. He had seen and heard approaching armies before, but this time everything felt different, strangely new and unknown.
"We've done everything we can," someone was reassuring him. "The men are in position."
He wanted to laugh. There was a thin curtain of cavalry, little more than a skirmish line; behind that, the infantry and dismounted dragoons were drawn up in front of the stand of spindly trees that fringed the oasis. Behind them, the civilians. He knew what the Mezentines would do. Light cavalry to engage and draw off the horsemen. Heavy cavalry to punch through the foot soldiers and send them scrambling back as far as they could go, themselves forming the clamp that would crush the civilians back to the edge of the water. From there it would be a simple matter of surrounding the oasis and pressing in, slowly and efficiently killing until there was nobody left. There were other ways in which it could be played out; he could abandon the oasis and run, in which case the Mezentines with their superior mobility would surround them in the open, or he could attack and be shredded on their lance-points, with a brief flurry of slaughter afterward.
They were trying to tell him things, details of the defense, who was commanding which sector, how many cavalry they'd managed to scrape together for him. He pretended to listen.
Visible now; he could make out individual horses and riders, although there was precious little to distinguish one from another. He was impressed; the Mezentines had managed to cross the mountain and the desert in remarkably good shape, and they held their formations as precisely as a passing-out parade. Clearly they'd found a way of coping with the difficulties that had defeated him, and he could think of no terribly good reason why he should add to their problems by trying to kill or injure a handful of them before the inevitable took its course. It was obvious that they were superior creatures, therefore deserving victory; even so, it did occur to him to wonder how they'd contrived to get this far in such astonishingly good order-as if they'd known, rather better than he had, where they were going and what they were likely to have to face. But that was impossible…
"They'll offer a parley," someone was telling him. "They won't just attack without trying to arrange a surrender first. You never know, they might offer terms…"
Valens grinned. "I don't think so," he said. "Unless my eyesight's so poor I can't see the wagons full of food they'd need to get us back across the desert alive. No, they've come to finish us off, simple as that."
"We'll let them know they've been in a fight," someone else asserted. Valens couldn't be bothered to reply.
He'd chosen a point in the sand, a dune with its edge ground away by the wind. When they reached that point, he'd give the order for his cavalry screen to advance. It'd be automatic, like a sear tripping a tumbler, and then the rest of the process would follow without the need of any further direction. He'd considered the possibility of telling the cavalry to clear out-get away, head off for the next oasis, in the hope that the Mezentines would be too busy with the massacre to follow them. There was a lot to be said for it: several hundred of his men would have a chance of escaping, instead of being slaughtered with the rest. He wasn't sure why he'd rejected it, but he had. Maybe it was just that it'd be too much trouble to arrange-giving the new orders, dealing with the indignant protests of the cavalry, imposing his will on them. If they had any sense, they'd break and run of their own accord. If the
y didn't, they had only themselves to blame.
He hadn't been paying attention. The Mezentine front line had already passed his ground-down dune, and he hadn't noticed. He shouted the order, and someone relayed it with a flag. The skirmish line separated itself and moved diffidently forward; a slow amble, like a farmer riding to market. In reply the front eight lines of Mezentines broke into movement, swiftly gathering speed. He wasn't able to see the collision from where he was standing, but he didn't need to.
A lot of silly noise behind him. From what he could hear of it, people were panicking. He assumed they had a better view than he did. The first Mezentine heavy cavalry appeared in front of him; they'd broken through the skirmish line, no surprise there, and they were charging the infantry screen. He sighed and stood up. It was time to go and fight, but he really didn't want to shift from where he was. His knees ached. He felt stiff and old. Even so…
He frowned. Men were walking past him, trudging to their deaths like laborers off to work in the early morning. He let them pass him; some of them shouted to him or at him, but he took no notice. The one good thing was, it didn't matter anymore what anybody thought of him. He was discharged from duty, and the rest of his life was his own.
(In which case, he thought, I'd like to see her again before I die. A mild preference; it'd be nice to die in the company of the one person he'd ever felt affection for, who for a short while had felt affection for him. He frowned, trying to figure out where she was likely to be.)
"What's happening," an old woman asked her. "Can you see?"
"No," she lied. "There's too much going on, I'm sorry."
"But we're winning," the old woman said. "Aren't we?"
"I think so."
Not that she understood this sort of thing. She knew it was very technical, like chess or some similarly complicated game. You had to know what you were looking at to make sense of it. But unless the Vadani had some devastating ruse up their sleeves (and that was entirely possible), it wasn't looking good. Too much like the last time, except that it was happening in the open rather than in among crowded buildings. The line of horsemen she'd seen riding out to meet the enemy (the celebrated Vadani cavalry, generally acknowledged as the best in the world) simply wasn't there anymore; it had been absorbed like water into a sponge; evaporated; gone. There were more soldiers out on the edge of the oasis, she knew, but it seemed unlikely that they'd make any difference. Of course, she wasn't a soldier, and there wasn't anybody knowledgeable around to ask.