by K. J. Parker
A face withdrew from the circle. Monach tried to sit up, but that made him feel horribly dizzy. He could feel panic, very close: Xipho not there, and his body not working properly. ‘Find her, quick,’ he heard himself say; he sounded worried, frightened. But that was silly; Cordo wouldn’t hurt Xipho, they were friends.
Cordo wouldn’t hurt him either, for the same reason.
He made another attempt at sitting up; this time, it was like he’d always imagined drowning must feel, a total failure of the most basic systems. There was nothing he could do, about anything.
When Monach came round again, he was lying in one of the carts. Runting was there, and Trecian, and all the other necessary officers. They looked unhappy about something. ‘How are you feeling now?’ one of them asked.
He found it very hard indeed to speak. ‘Xipho?’ he said.
The man, whoever he was, Monach couldn’t remember his name, looked at someone else before answering. ‘We can’t find her,’ he said. ‘We’ve looked all over.’
Monach opened his mouth, but words had failed too.
‘There don’t seem to be any signs of a struggle or a fight,’ someone was saying. ‘No blood or anything like that. And some of her stuff’s gone, clothes. Not her sword, though.’
At that moment, Monach hated his body for failing him when he needed it. He made a tremendous effort; he could feel the harm it was doing him, as if it was tearing flesh. ‘Someone was here,’ he said. ‘He knocked me down. He may have been—’ He could feel the words draining away, as if there was a leak in his head and they were gushing out, going to waste. It occurred to him to wonder if he was dying, or just very badly concussed; but that was a side issue, and he couldn’t afford to let his attention wander. ‘Look for signs,’ he said, ‘footprints, whatever. He may have taken her—’ And then he knew he couldn’t say any more, not now or not ever, unclear which. He hoped he wasn’t dying; it’d be pathetic to die at a time like this.
He could see, but couldn’t remember opening his eyes. It was logical to suppose, therefore, that he was dreaming.
(Funny you mentioning dreams, Cordo had said.)
In fact, it was fairly certain he was dreaming, because he was standing up and his head wasn’t hurting; also, in real life you can’t understand what crows are saying.
This crow was perched on a stone window ledge, the only window in the small round room; and it was telling him something. ‘They’re coming,’ it said. Fat lot of use that was; so he waved his arms and said, ‘Shoo, get out of it,’ and the crow spread its wings and flapped reproachfully away. Crows, he thought. Marvellous. Then he turned round. He hadn’t noticed that there were people in the room; people he knew.
Ciartan: older, naturally, and gaunt-looking, scruffy (and him always so picky about his appearance, like a girl). And a big, broad man, short black beard, stub nose, huge round brown eyes. Someone Monach had known years ago, but he’d changed a lot since then. That was how it went. Some people kept on looking the same, others you’d hardly recognise.
‘You’re a bloody fool,’ the big man was saying, to Ciartan. ‘What the hell was all that about?’
Ciartan just seemed confused; he opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. The other man went on, ‘I know it’s all part of the mystique, this deliberately walking round in plain sight because you’re so cool and daring, but next time please leave me out of it. Dear gods—’
The crow was back. They couldn’t see it, because they were facing the other way. Monach went to shoo it away again, but it winked at him.
‘He doesn’t know,’ the crow said. ‘Hasn’t figured it out yet.’
Monach frowned. ‘Who doesn’t know what?’
‘Him.’ Bloody unhelpful bird. ‘He doesn’t know Poldarn’s lost his memory, that’s why he’s getting so upset. He thinks he’s just doing it to be annoying, showing off. Tragic misunderstandings like this shape history, you know.’
It’s only a dream. You can’t throttle birds in dreams, even when they’re really aggravating. ‘Like what?’
‘Like this. Because of this, thousands of people will die. Cities burned down. Emperors overthrown. War, plague, death. Everything so fragile, so messy.’
Monach shouted: ‘Because of what?’ But it was as if the crow couldn’t hear him. Meanwhile, the man he couldn’t recognise was saying, ‘Let’s get down to brass tacks. This business up the road—’
‘What business?’ Monach asked imploringly, but the stupid fucking crow had gone again.
‘Tazencius and his people aren’t ready,’ the man was saying. ‘He hasn’t even started recruiting openly yet – dammit, he hasn’t had anything to recruit for, that’s my point, there’s been no build-up, just this, suddenly, wham—’
Monach felt something tickle his ear. ‘Timing,’ the crow was saying, ‘very unfortunate timing. Disaster for all concerned. He was supposed to bring them there, you see, and then betray them so the prince had a glorious victory. But it all went horribly wrong. Horribly.’
(‘The supply of large cities in these parts is somewhat limited,’ the man was saying. ‘We can’t go torching one a week till Tazencius gets his act together.’)
‘Ciartan’s not got much to say for himself, has he?’ Monach said.
‘Ah.’ The crow sighed mournfully. ‘He doesn’t realise. He doesn’t know. Ignorance, folly, madness, death. The soldiers are coming.’
‘What soldiers?’ Monach asked, but the crow didn’t answer; it had gone again, or forgotten how to speak, or maybe Ciartan had killed it with a stone. Then the man with the beard and the stub nose swung round to face the door, as a soldier appeared and said something; and the angle of his chin, the way his eyes narrowed before he spoke – I know you, Monach thought.
Cordo? Why aren’t you dead?
‘Why isn’t he dead?’ someone was saying. ‘Damn well ought to be, bash on the head like that. He must have a skull like a barn wall.’
So I’m not dead, then, Monach thought, looking up at the circle of faces above him. Either that, or I died and I must’ve been a very bad man indeed, to get sent to an after-life with this lot in it.
‘He’s woken up – look.’ A face came closer. ‘You all right, chief?’ it said. ‘How’re you feeling now?’
‘Like a mountain fell on me,’ Monach replied. ‘Where is she? Have you found her?’
Nobody answered, which in itself was an answer.
‘In that case,’ Monach said, ‘we’re going to Dui Chirra.’
And a miserable journey it was, too. The quickest route to Dui Chirra meant leaving the military road at Sarcqui and splashing through runny mud for two days down a miserable sunken lane with high hedges on either side; both boring and nerve-racking at the same time, since there was no way of knowing what was lying in wait for them around every corner. Ideal setting for an ambush; fell a substantial tree across the track, and you’d have the whole army bottled up. If the reports were accurate, Brigadier Muno was in charge at the foundry; a difficult man at the best of times, and it was unlikely that the untimely death of his nephew would have done much to improve his temper. He was just the sort to have a brigade or so of regular heavy infantry on hand to guard his precious compound, and an opportunity like a sunken lane would be something he’d be sure to make the most of. The idea of fighting a desperate defensive action in a cramped space, mud underfoot, against a horribly competent enemy didn’t appeal to Monach in the least; and God knew, they wouldn’t exactly be difficult to detect. If Muno was doing his job properly, he’d have picked them up already and either be on his way or already in position. Unfortunately, there was no other way of getting to Dui Chirra, apart from a week-long detour that’d take them through every sad excuse for a town between Falcata and the sea. Ignorance, folly, madness and death, just like the crow had warned him. It was a pity he didn’t have any choice in the matter.
Even so, it shouldn’t have been a problem. He was, after all, a brother of the order of Deymeson, trained to
cope with problems of every kind. But in order to deal with the situation, he needed a clear head, the ability to concentrate, and that was proving to be beyond his abilities. Xipho; Xipho missing, Cordo alive and suddenly turned hostile. No matter how hard he tried to concoct some feasible alternative explanation, he had to face the virtual certainty that Cordomine, his old college friend, habitually top of the class in strategy and tactics, diplomacy and the huge variety of antisocial and unethical activities which the Deymeson syllabus lumped together under the heading of Acts of Expediency, was alive, and he’d either taken Xipho with him by force or tricked her into going with him – or she’d gone of her own accord, gladly, or possibly even by previous arrangement. That thought was terrifying, far more so than the prospect of Brigadier Muno’s infantry suddenly pouncing on him from some gap in the carelessly-laid hedges of the Sarcqui to Dui Chirra road. Was it possible, he asked himself over and over again, that all this time she’d been playing him along, as she’d been playing Ciartan, not so long ago; following orders, furthering the Grand Plan by every means in her power. The loathsome symmetry of that possibility wasn’t lost on him. Suppose that’s what was really going on; now why hadn’t Father Tutor and the rest of the faculty ever bothered to cover that aspect of the trade in their third grade Expediencies coursework? What to do when you find out your lover is really your enemy; a dozen lectures, six tutorials, a written paper and a practical.
(It’s a tragedy, he told himself bitterly, that I can only kill Ciartan once.)
—And Cordo; Cordo alive, even though he’d seen him dead, once in the butchered flesh, and two or three times a week in bad dreams since. Cordo, who’d hit him hard enough to kill (but he’d said he was sorry in advance.) As the carts lurched and wobbled through the mud and jolted over the stones washed out by the rain, he tried to understand exactly what that was supposed to mean.
There had been six of them; the Crow’s Head Gang, named after the crumbled, slapdash carved stone corbel that looked down over their stall in the chapter house at Deymeson, where they’d stood patiently shivering and bored through countless assemblies, chapters, lectures, liturgies. Elaos Tanwar, born leader, prime mover, inspiration and guiding spirit, long since incontrovertibly dead, for what little that seemed to be worth nowadays. Xipho Dorunoxy, born second-in-command, always the cleverest, always the most sensible, the most patient, the one who stopped the rest of them fighting among themselves, the one who’d somehow got it into her head that the Gang mattered, that it was about something other than breaking rules and relieving boredom. Ciartan – always had been a nasty piece of work, but he’d had other qualities then: a narrow and rigid loyalty, courage, a reckless disregard for risk and danger, an evil bastard but their evil bastard, even more terrifying to outsiders than he was to the other members of the Gang. Cordomine: always there, never left out, never missed a council of war or a staff meeting, always knew what was going on, what the opposition was up to (the faculty, the groundsmen and domestics, the other gangs; how he knew they never found out, never asked); always thinking long thoughts, cherishing grudges, exploiting little cracks and rifts, always listening, never a wasted word; always top at Expediences, and Doctrine too, for some bizarre reason. Gain Aciava, Cordomine’s self-appointed henchman: at times no more than an associate member, and then suddenly he’d be in the thick of it, master of alternatives, the eternal custodian of Plan B; always talking, never saying anything unless he wanted to – and in the end he’d proved to be something rather more than Cordomine’s shadow, an extension of his friend’s mind; more and worse; and of course, it was Gain who brought Ciartan to Deymeson, having found him wandering in the wilderness, like some prophet in scripture. It’d be nice, Monach thought, if he’d seen the last of Gain Aciava, but he wasn’t at all sure about that. Himself the seventh; and of all seven, the one he knew least about and had the most trouble labelling and pigeonholing. At the time he’d have said: always the most reasonable, always the most boringly sincere, the one whose homework the others copied, not because he was the best but because he always did the work. The most stolid, reliable, prosaic; Father Tutor’s pet, the one who wanted to do well at lessons, the one who actually cared about religion and stuff. That had been then, of course; and it was notoriously hard to form a clear view of history while it was actually going on. To the above, he could also add, always the most marginal, the least important, the least valued, always the one picked last for the team, always the one they had to remember not to leave out. Since then he’d always believed: the last one left, the only survivor – until Xipho had turned up, popping up out of the ruins of Deymeson and shattering what little peace of mind he had left by announcing that she’d been the priestess of the god in the cart he’d been vainly chasing after, while the world had been getting ready to end all around him. Then, in the same breath, bloody Ciartan; he was still around, and worse still, at some point in the intervening years he’d somehow become the most important (Ciartan, always the least likely to succeed), until suddenly he’d lost it all in the muddy fringes of some river, surrounded by dead bodies and crows—
(He remembered; it was Ciartan, of course, who’d come up with the gang’s name. Who else?)
And now Cordo, materialising out of the darkness like a fairytale goblin, bashing heads and abducting princesses (unless she’d gone willingly; unless she’d been waiting for him; maybe she’d been the one who hit him, not Cordo –); and he’d asked after Gain, implying that he was still out there somewhere, still hovering and listening and cooking up little plots. Still the same old gang, out to cause mischief, insisting that he join in but not bothering to tell him what it was all about— And his one triumph, his late achievement; it had almost made up for the trashing of Deymeson and the death of the order. Finally, at the end, it’d been him, the runt of the litter, who’d scooped the pool (by right of survivorship only, he’d freely admitted that) and got what the other five never managed: he’d got Xipho. Sure, she’d been with Ciartan, she’d had his child, even named the little brat after him, but that had all been in the line of duty, yet another intolerable burden she’d borne for the sake of the order; but (she’d told him, beetroot red with embarrassment and shame) actually, always, it had been him she’d loved, right from the start, only she’d never given in to it for the sake of the gang, knowing that if she did it’d be the end of them, splitting them up, driving them apart (as if that’d have mattered; after all, it was only an informal student’s club, a trivial thing . . .) Until at the end, in the ashes and rubble—
Had she told Ciartan the same sort of lies? No, of course not, because he’d lost his memory; she’d have had to think up some different lies for him. So, what about Cordo? Had she loved him and him only, all along, too?
As if it mattered, Monach told himself. Far more important issues to be dealt with here – an army to command, lives at stake, all these poor fools depending on him, following him to the ends of the earth, his people. (And you could ask two dozen of them exactly why were they following him, to achieve what ultimate purpose, and get maybe one sensible answer – if you were lucky.)
And then it got worse.
The fact that he’d been expecting it didn’t help terribly much. All the way up that terrifying chimney of hedges and high banks he’d been waiting for the moment when armed men would start pouring down on him, like burning lava from a volcano. Of course, it happened only when he’d eventually stopped watching the sides of the road and allowed his attention to wander. Worse still, they attacked when the army was at its most vulnerable, straddled across a deep, fast ford.
It began with rocks and stones; then a fat old chestnut tree yawned and flopped across the track, so closely following Monach’s worst-case scenario that for a moment he almost believed he was remembering something that had already happened. The attackers gushed out of the dense cover behind and on both flanks like sea water flooding a holed ship.
No room, Monach acknowledged hopelessly; no room to turn the carts to f
orm defensible redoubts, which was about the only worthwhile trick he and his officers knew. Without that slim advantage, Monach’s army quickly resolved itself into what it had really been all along: a loose and unreliable confederation of poorly motivated individuals. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he realised that he hadn’t got a clue who these predictable but horribly efficient enemies were. Not regular army, not raiders, not rustic levies. Amathy house? Didn’t matter. No time to bother with trivia, such as who precisely was killing his people, let alone why.
Clarity; give me clarity, or else let me die quickly and avoid the shame. Training told; he snapped into focus, assessed the situation, calculated the inevitable outcome. Unfortunately it wasn’t good. Whoever these people were, they had ambushes and surprise attacks polished up as sharp as a needle. No point looking for mistakes, they wouldn’t have made any. Simple as that.
Precepts of religion, Monach thought wildly as the man standing next to him was pulled down off the cart by his ankles. Strength is weakness; and the precepts are never wrong, it’s just that occasionally humans are too obtuse to grasp the subtleties. Strength is weakness; their strengths were surprise, speed and efficiency. All right then, bugger precepts of religion. We’re just going to have to slog it out and see what happens.
Once he’d reached that conclusion, it was easier for him; he was excused strategy and tactics for the duration of the battle, and was free to indulge himself in the one thing he was actually rather good at. He’d never enjoyed killing, for the same reason he’d never enjoyed breathing – it was too reflexive to be capable of being enjoyed. (How can you relish a moment that doesn’t exist?) But at least it gave him something to do and took his mind off the miserable shambles all around him. He jumped down from the cart, identified a target and dealt with it. His sword was shaken free of blood and back in the scabbard before he had time to think about what he was proposing to do; the best way, he’d always found.