The Escapement e-3

by K. J. Parker

  He opened his eyes again and tried to sit up. Pursuit: but he remembered, and calmed down a little. He remembered opening his eyes as he lay on the soft rotten leaves, peering through the pain like fog, and seeing (of all things) a net stretched across the road, a few yards away. His horse was tangled in it, rolling on the ground, a leg clearly broken. A net; a hunting net. He remembered thinking he must have ridden into somebody's hunt-bloody careless fools, hunting on the highway, no wonder there'd been an accident-except that didn't fit the ambush (he identified it as such for the first time) back at the top of the hill. Then he'd heard voices, someone angrily shouting; someone had done something wrong, spoiled the hunt (he sympathised; there's always some idiot), and now there was confusion, things scrambling out of control, gaps in the line, the quarry able to escape. He'd realised the quarry was him.

  A man had come running up the road towards him, a crossbow (unspanned) in his left hand, a hanger on his belt. He'd been fumbling with the hanger as he stopped and bent down; it was still half in the sheath when he'd noticed Valens' eye twitch, but he'd been careless, come a yard too close. Valens could remember the sound, like a thick twig snapping, as he lifted his leg and stabbed his boot-heel in the man's mouth, and the stupid expression on the suddenly bloody face as he staggered and fell backwards.

  He remembered how he'd found out about the arrow. He'd jumped up, snatched the man's hand away from the hilt of the hanger, drawn it; then the man kicked him on the kneecap and he'd fallen on top of him. He'd realised about the arrow when the impact of the fall snapped off its shaft.

  An arrow, he'd told himself, and then the pain was everything. It drained off, eventually, and he'd remembered about the man he was lying on top of, the predator, his enemy. The hanger was stuck right through his ribs, the pommel wedged into his own midriff; pure luck, or accident. He'd had no choice about the direction of his fall.

  But that was all right. The enemy was dead, but (he remembered) there was an arrow in his face, the blood obscuring his left eye. The pain came back and closed him down. Before it wiped him out completely, he remembered, he'd moved, putting a little space between himself and the dead man, as though an accidental stab wound might prove contagious. His legs failed; he contrived to fall in a neat, convenient way, and remembered turning his head to look up at the sky, so that if the rest of the hunters found him, they'd see the stub of the arrow shaft sticking out of his face and assume he was dead. That was a small animal's trick, not worthy of noble quarry, but he couldn't care less. After that, it was all too much trouble.

  And now, here he was; alive, for now, though that might well change. Pain and danger form layers of immediacy, like the core of an onion; they may come back but they aren't here now; I may die of this, but not yet. He looked round, and saw the man he'd killed. The body hadn't been moved. In passing, he scolded the dead man for ignorance and stupidity, getting too close to dangerous game without first making quite sure it was dead. He wasn't a soldier. His clothes and weapons weren't military. Obviously not a Mezentine; beyond that, his nationality had died with him. Who he'd been did have some bearing on the nature and immediacy of the threat, but Valens didn't have the energy to make a proper assessment. Just some dead man.

  His horse was now hopelessly tangled in the net, worn out with struggling and the pain from its broken leg. He remembered that the dead man had been carrying a crossbow. Wearily-how expensive a simple thing had suddenly become, like bread in a mining camp-he hauled and stumbled to his feet, swayed like a drunk, waited for the pain to clear a little, looked round for the bow; the first duty of the hunter is to put a wounded animal out of its misery. Just as well his hunters weren't as conscientious as he was.

  He found the bow, and there were two bolts left in the dead man's belt; but he was too weak to span the bloody thing. That surprised him. It wasn't much of a bow, not the kind that needed a winch or a cranequin or a goat's-foot, but today it got the better of him. He felt bad about leaving the horse, but he had no choice.

  That reminded him. Danger; he didn't know what had happened, why he was still alive, why the rest of the hunters hadn't come to finish him off, or what the net had been for, but that sort of thing would keep. The next thing to do (he resented it; chores, before he could rest) was get away from here. Where to? Deal with that later. Walking, not really an option. He could think of two horses that might still be free and in the area; could he face walking back up the hill to where Nennius and the trooper had died, and would he be putting himself in worse danger? Question too difficult. He sat down on a fallen tree, and the pain took over for a while. It quietened down eventually, but it took rather too much of his remaining strength with it. Finding, catching, getting up on a horse now too expensive; in which case, he was stuck here, and the only issue to be settled was whether the wound or the remaining hunters would get him first.

  He accepted the verdict calmly; it takes strength to panic, and he was too poor, couldn't afford it. He felt his body slip out of his control, muscles too weak to hold him still. He slithered sideways off the log. He knew what that meant, of course. He'd seen this sort of thing before: a pigeon struck by a falcon manages to get away, makes it as far as a tall tree, roosts motionless for ten, twenty minutes, then just topples off the branch. He thought about that. When he was a boy, he'd been terrified of the pictures in the margin of his father's copy of King Fashion; an old copy, heavily decorated, for show as much as for reading, made at a time when there was a brief revival of the Lonazep school. Accordingly, the capitals, margins and colophons were crammed with small, exaggerated, colourful scenes and sketches; the world turned upside down, the feast of all fools, the dance of death, all the standard themes of the Oblique movement. To a small boy they were rather disturbing; far and away the worst were the marginals and vignettes in which animals dressed as humans hunted small, naked men and women, illustrating the text in a kind of lunatic counterpoint. Even now he could close his eyes and see the tall, grinning hare, dressed in forester's green, ears lying back on its shoulders as it poked a hindpaw through the stirrup of a crossbow to span it; under a tree another hare crouched like a pointer, its head turned to stare up into the branches where a tiny man cowered in fear. On the opposite page, the same hare carried away its prey, trussed, head down, ankles hocked over a pole on the hare's shoulder. Elsewhere in the book deer and boar and wolves chased men and women parforce, or drove them into the elrick where the hares and foxes lurked with bows drawn, or dragged them struggling out of nets spanned between the trunks of trees. Of course it wasn't like that in the real world, it was just make-believe, intended to be amusing… But what if it came true, he used to wonder, lying awake at night staring at the darkness; what if something went wrong, and suddenly the animals changed somehow, got strong and clever and came to get us?

  The pain was back again. It was like being in the presence of a king or a duke; everything stopped and went quiet while it was there. This time, however, it faded slowly and gradually, King Pain sharing his throne with Queen Weakness (and in the margins of their book, the hares and foxes hunted, and the doves swooped, and they solemnly portioned out the carcass between the rabbits and the partridges under the stern eye of the heron and the bear), until he slipped away into a kind of sleep, halfway between life and death, where he paused for a moment to consider his options. No choice, said the hare, with its flat ears, grin, and easily spanned crossbow. Even if the arrowhead didn't make it to the brain (and if you want to get into a man's brain, you should really aim for the eye socket), that's only the beginning. Just a little rust or dirt on the blade would be enough to poison the blood; and the longer it stays in there, the better the chances of the wound going bad, even if the hunters don't come back. A wounded man alone in a hostile place doesn't stand a chance. He has no choice; all he can do is suffer and hurt until at last he dies. A responsible hare should follow up the wounded game and dispatch it, clean and quick. Besides, added the dove (in the allegory of the hunt, the dove is the bea
utiful beloved, pursued by the amorous hawk; love is the predator swooping down on outstretched wings, love is the bent bow in the elrick, and all pursuit is the headlong chase after joy), this quarry is dangerous game, not food to be eaten but vermin to be controlled and wiped out; this killer of men and sacker of cities. A predator deserves predator's justice, a quick death if he ran well, the short, solemn nod to do him honour, the sprig of green foliage laid on his mouth before he's skinned, his teeth and claws pulled to mount as a trophy. He would have liked to argue the point with her, but the case she'd made was unanswerable. Respect for the dangerous animal, but no pity.

  None of that need concern us, said King Pain, and the animals fell silent. All that matters now is that he should endure me in the same spirit in which he inflicted me, recognising the jurisdiction of the necessary evil. If he can manage that, we will forgive him for all those things for which he could never forgive himself, as he forgave those that roared and bared their teeth at him, killed his sheep and uprooted his fruit trees, trampled his standing corn and slaughtered his chickens in their pen. We will forgive him for the war, for killing her husband, for scrabbling with his claws on the gates of Mezentia, just so long as he admits the sovereignty of King Pain, by divine right the patron of the strong, fount of all justice, defender of the faith, chamberlain of life and death.

  At which all the hares and doves and roe deer shouted; but Queen Weakness only smiled, and said: he endures you only because he has no choice, being too weak to struggle any more. You had better finish him now, because if he lives, I promise you he'll betray you, just as he betrayed your loyal servant his father. You must kill him or let me have him, one or the other. The choice, she added, smiling, is yours.

  The animals groaned and stopped their ears, but the King grinned. No, he said. Let him choose. He opened his eyes and saw them looking down at him. He recognised their faces straight away.

  "He's waking up," the King said. "Can you hear me?" The Queen said nothing. Her eyes were red and wet.

  Her, he tried to say, not you. His lips moved, but he couldn't hear words. Then he thought: what's he doing here? He's supposed to be back at the camp, assembling the siege engines.

  "It's all right," he heard Daurenja say. "You're in the palace at Civitas Vadanis. You've been badly hurt, but you're out of danger." Her face told him he was lying. "They've given you something for the pain; it's probably making you feel a bit light-headed. You should go back to sleep now."

  It was an order, from a superior officer, and he had no choice but to obey. He tried to smile, because they'd made the choice for him. Something for the pain, to drive the King away. In which case, why was he still there, staring down with that infuriatingly compassionate look on his face? He felt sleep coming in, filling the space where the pain had been, but before he gave in to it he made himself say, "I got your letter. It's all right. I wanted you to know."

  He'd have liked to stay and see her reaction, but apparently it wasn't allowed.

  10

  The man in the common room of the Sincerity and Trust at Darrhaep was telling a strange story. He claimed to be the last survivor of a company of free rangers patrolling (the men listening to him knew what he meant by that word) the Vadani border. They'd intercepted a Vadani messenger, he said, carrying a letter in the duke's own handwriting, in which he wrote that he was on his way back to the capital and that he'd be taking the border road. The company sergeant, being a great patriot, had realised that here was a chance to capture a prize of incalculable value and win the war for the Mezentines at a stroke. The man paused just long enough for his fascinated listeners to buy him more beer, and went on to tell how they'd set a carefully planned ambush for the duke, and how he'd obligingly ridden straight into it. But… (He paused again. More beer arrived.)

  But the duke, he told them, wasn't alone. He was accompanied by a twenty-man escort, crack troops from the household cavalry. Instead of a simple ambush, the rangers faced a desperate battle against the finest mounted soldiers in the world. Did that deter them? Of course not. They knew their duty, and so forth.

  As the rangers locked in desperate hand-to-hand combat with the dragoons (a moment ago they were household, a voice at the back interrupted, now they're dragoons; make your mind up, will you?), the duke spurred on like a madman, riding headlong into the rangers' cunning snare. That should have been the end of it. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite as planned. The sergeant, watching the duke hurrying towards the concealed net over the sights of his crossbow, accidentally squeezed too hard on the sear, tripping the tumbler and loosing a shot. The arrow hit the duke in the head. Running in to see if the duke was still alive, the sergeant came a trifle too close, and the duke, barely alive, cut him down before himself dropping dead. At that moment, the surviving members of the escort broke through the rangers' cordon, killing all but one of them, recovered the duke's body and carried it off, heading for Civitas Vadanis.

  It was a fine tale and the survivor told it well. When he'd finished, a carter who'd been sitting at the back got up quietly and left the room. He went upstairs to the best bedroom and knocked on the door. A short, thin woman in a red dress scowled at him and asked him what the matter was.

  The thin woman left the inn at first light the next morning, although she was supposed to meet a consortium of grain merchants there at noon to close a substantial deal. Instead, she drove her chaise rather too fast along the narrow back lanes of the Ashbrook valley, taking the dogleg route through the border country that was now the only safe way to Mezentia. When it grew dark she lit her lanterns and carried on, much to the distress of her driver and two porters. By mid-morning of the next day, she reached the customs house on the Mezentine border; abandoned, of course, but thankfully there were no allied patrols. She cleared the remaining miles over the flat at a pace that wrecked her cart's suspension and cracked two spokes, but the cart was a Mezentine Type Six and held together until she was a mile from the Westgate…

  Which didn't seem to be there any more. In its place was a huge trench, with an enormous mound of earth behind it, its top fringed with a palisade of tall, sharpened tree-trunks. Baffled, she stood beside her trashed cart and stared, until a foreman from the earthworks hurried up to see who she was and what she wanted. The news that Valens was dead took everybody by surprise. It was, Secretary Psellus said later, rather like being told by all your friends and relations that it was your birthday, when you knew perfectly well it wasn't. He managed to keep his fellow councillors reasonably calm and under control by urging them to consider the means by which the news had reached them. A man cadging drinks in an inn might well be telling the truth, or at least some things that were true, but on the other hand he might not. It wasn't, he reminded them, the first time Valens had died. In fact, if memory served him, it was the fifth, or was it the sixth, and on each previous occasion the duke had made a full, practically instantaneous recovery. This time, he went on, it was entirely possible that the report was true. Men die, particularly in time of war, and if the duke had been so rash as to go galloping through disputed country with an inadequate escort, he could easily have come to harm. Nevertheless, he argued, it would be foolish to do anything significant on the strength of one informal, unsubstantiated report. If Valens was dead, he pointed out, he'd still be dead tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Meanwhile, it would probably be as well not to let the rumour spread through the City. For one thing, it wasn't immediately apparent what difference, if any, the death of this one man would make.

  While Psellus was arguing these points in the chapterhouse, the woman in the red dress and her men were leaving the Guildhall. They weren't in the best of moods. Having repeated their news in full six times to six different officials, including the chief secretary himself (a pleasant enough man, the woman reckoned, though he struck her as a bit vague and woolly-minded for the ruler of the Perpetual Republic), they'd then been kept hanging about in various offices and waiting rooms until late afterno
on. Eventually they'd been allowed in to see a senior clerk in the paymaster's office, but instead of hard cash for their reward and considerable expenses, they'd been given a paper draft, redeemable as credit against goods; the idea being that they'd take their payment in kettles, scissors, buckets, curtain rings, brooches, Type Seven travelling clocks and embroidery boxes rather than silver money. When they queried this arrangement, they were assured that Mezentine trade goods were in widespread demand all over the world (except in those countries currently at war), and they'd have no trouble disposing of the items at a considerable profit, assuming they could arrange transport to ship them out of the City; failing which, warehouse space could no doubt be arranged for them on reasonable terms. Silver money, on the other hand, was out of the question. There simply wasn't any. The government had spent it all, on food and iron for the war. So sorry.

  The woman in red and her companions went to the nearest bar, where they pooled their actual cash money and found that they had rather less than they'd imagined: twelve Mezentine dollars, ninety Vadani quarters, sixteen Eremian doubles and twenty of the crumpled-looking brass discs-with-holes-in-the-middle that passed for money among the Cure Doce. Not good. Vadani silver was guaranteed ninety-six points pure and therefore ran at six quarters to the dollar, war or no war. The Eremian double was three points of silver to seven of copper, and the Cure Doce stuff was handy if you needed washers but otherwise useless. They asked the price of a room, and opted to sleep in the stable with the horses.