The Escapement e-3

by K. J. Parker

  Two hours after the war council, Aram Chantat staff officers reported that the first shift was ready, with the other four shifts standing by. As ordered, every man had a spade, a pick or a shovel instead of his usual equipment, they'd taken off their armour and they were ready to go.

  "All right," Ziani said. "Get them moving. You know where to go."

  An officer frowned at him. "With respect," he said, "shouldn't you start the bombardment first? Otherwise-"

  "We start shooting when they start," Ziani snapped back. "Not before."

  He watched as the first shift marched out into the empty plain: seventy-five thousand men, according to the roster. Five shifts of seventy-five thousand men, shifting five square feet of dirt each; you could change a country out of all recognition in a week. He shook his head. So much effort, so great an effect, all to accomplish such a simple objective. But it was too late to change anything now. The escapement was running, and very soon it'd all be over. He beckoned to one of his aides (didn't know the man's name; didn't care).

  "Take this letter to Duke Valens," he said. Valens read the letter, screwed it up into a ball and threw it on to the little charcoal brazier. "I'm just going out for a while," he said.

  She looked at him. "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "It's all right," he said. He was looking round for something. "You haven't seen that hanger, have you?"

  "I don't know," she replied. "What's a hanger?"

  "Shortish sword, with a sort of curved bit on the hilt. I put it down somewhere, but…"

  "What do you need a sword for?"

  He shrugged. "Not properly dressed without one," he replied. "Ah, here it is. It's lucky," he added, smiling bleakly. "At least, that's the theory. Hasn't actually brought me much luck so far, but there's still time."

  She caught her breath. "Is something going on?" she said. "I thought you said you were out of it now."

  "I am," he replied, not looking at her. "That bastard Vaatzes is in charge now, and welcome."

  "What did he want to talk to you about?"

  "Oh, nothing much." He was having trouble with the buckle of his sword-belt; not like him at all. Usually, all his movements were so precise.

  "Was it about the war?" she asked.

  "Everything's about the war," he said; and she thought, he doesn't really mean that.

  The tent-flap opened, and she saw Miel Ducas standing in the light. "Are you ready?" he asked. He didn't seem to have noticed she was there.

  "As I'll ever be," Valens replied. "All set?"

  "Yes."

  Valens took a step forward, then turned back to face her. "I won't be long," he said. "And then there'll be some things we'll need to talk about."

  She shrugged. "I'll be here," she replied. "Sewing something, probably," she added.

  He nodded, no expression at all on his face. Then he left and the flap dropped back, shuttering out the daylight.

  Miel had brought a horse for him, and held his stirrup as he mounted. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "Of course," he answered irritably. "I'm not a cripple or anything."

  "You heard about Daurenja."

  "Yes." Valens picked up the reins. "You know," he said, "I've been in charge of everything around me practically all my life. It's nice to have someone else running things for a change."

  Miel shrugged. "You say that now," he said.

  Valens laughed. "Hardly matters what I say," he said. "And what about you? Are you going to use the title? Only, Duke Ducas is a bit of a mouthful."

  "People can call me what they like," Miel replied.

  They rode together in silence for a while; then Miel said, "Are you really going to accept this?"

  "Yes," Valens said. "For now, anyway. Things may change later, of course. But right now, it's the only realistic course open to me."

  Miel nodded; but he said, "I really don't want to do this."

  "It's no big deal," Valens replied.

  Then they discussed technical matters: positions, tactics, co-ordination of movements, concealment of intentions and the element of surprise. As they rode over the top of the ridge and looked down, Valens reined in his horse and sat still for a moment.

  "There aren't enough of us," he said.

  "No," Miel agreed. "But that's all there is, so it'll have to do."

  But he hadn't meant it; because the sight of the Vadani cavalry, twenty thousand men-at-arms, standing in formation with lances at rest, was a glorious illusion, and he wanted to enjoy it for as long as he could. It made him think of his father, who believed in all this sort of thing, just as he believed in the hunt, and the concept of the good duke and the contract between ruler and people. Besides, he told himself, as they rode down to take their places at the head of the formation, Ziani Vaatzes thinks there's enough of us, and he knows best.

  "He'll send a rider," Miel was saying. "Till then, we just stay here still and quiet." There was a mild stir, a gentle buzz, as the artillerymen realised that Chairman Psellus had come up on to the wall. It hadn't escaped anybody's notice that he hadn't been there when the enemy blew up the embankment and slaughtered all those people. It was curious: nobody really believed he'd gone away because he was afraid, or anything like that. He'd gone, they knew, because he'd been called away to deal with something more important; so if he was here now, it meant that whatever happened next mattered…

  "We think it's a work party," someone was telling him. "We sent a few scouts down; apparently they're not armed, they've got digging tools. We put the number at somewhere between eighty and a hundred-"

  "Yes, thank you," Psellus said mildly. "I believe I know what's happening." Someone brought up a chair, and he sat down. "Their artillery."

  "A lot of activity," whoever it was replied. "All the signs are, they're getting ready to launch a massive bombardment, though oddly enough they've taken men off the trebuchets and put them on the-"

  "Indeed." Psellus wiped his nose, which was running. "Our artillery is ready, I take it?"

  "As ordered," the man replied briskly; a slight, anxious hesitation, then: "I take it you do know we've stood down the long-range engines and-"

  "Yes, thank you." He was looking straight ahead, at the huge square shape moving toward the city, and beyond it, to the enemy artillery. "You've done very well. Please make sure we're ready to start shooting as soon as I give the order. Not before, under any circumstances. Is that quite clear?"

  Whoever it was nodded. "Of course," he said. Another pause, and then, "But you haven't given us the targets yet," he said, tactfully. "You did say to stand by and you'd give the targets when you were ready, but…"

  Psellus sighed, like a man being chivvied into a task he'd have preferred to avoid. "Not quite yet," he said. "Let's all just stay still and quiet for now."

  Still and quiet, as though the world was holding its breath; until, some time later, whoever it was said, "Chairman, they're practically within scorpion range now, surely we should be doing something…"

  Psellus sighed again. "You're quite right," he said. "Tell the captains to target the main body of the enemy-is that the right expression? I mean that great big square of them coming towards us."

  Whoever it was hesitated just for a split second. "With respect, shouldn't we take out their artillery first? Otherwise-"

  "Please," Psellus said, very quietly. "Do as I say."

  Orders were passed down; it amused him, the way one officer passed them on to another, who went and told someone else, who went and told someone else… The chain of command, presumably, and it was admirably military. But absurd, nevertheless. "All ready, Chairman," the nonentity was saying. "At your command."

  "Thank you," he said firmly. "Please wait."

  They all think I'm mad, he thought. They're trying to make up their minds to push me out of the way and do what needs to be done; but they won't do it. Which is just as well. Even so, we're a pathetic excuse for a nation…

  Then a flash of light caught his eye
, and he looked at the top of the ridge, where he'd been told to look when the moment came. "Tell me," he said urgently. "My eyesight's so poor these days. Is there a large body of horsemen on top of the ridge?"

  Slight pause. "Yes," whoever it was said. "But…"

  Deep breath. "In that case," Psellus said mildly, "kindly open fire." Miel Ducas galloped down the slope, terrified in case his horse should stumble and throw him, and keep him from his duty. But the Ducas is, of course, a supremely accomplished horseman, and his mount is the finest money can buy.

  Ten yards short of the artillery line, he reined in and looked round for someone to talk to. An artillery captain (an Eremian, thank God) turned round and stared at him.

  "Hey, you," Miel shouted at him. "Do you know who I am?"

  The captain nodded.

  "Good. New orders. You need to bring down your elevation fourteen minutes, all of you."

  The captain was doing mental arithmetic. "That can't be right," he said. "If we do that, we'll be shooting straight at-"

  "Fourteen minutes," the Ducas repeated. "Now." The parts of a machine fulfil their various functions because they have no choice. A lever pivots a sear, which slips out of the notch cut in the underside of a roller. Unsupported, the roller gives way, releasing the slider, which shoots forward under the pressure of two springs along a close-sided keyway, driving the arrow shaft along its channel and away through the air. The arrow has no choice but to fly until it hits the target. Or a lever pivots a sear, which slips out of its notch in the roller, which releases the swinging arm, which rushes through ninety degrees, pivoting around its axis pin, until it slams into the crossbar, launching a net full of bricks, broken masonry, flints and potsherds into the air. Then the hook goes on the slider or the arm and the winch begins to turn. The tongue dances over the teeth of the ratchet as each turn drags back the slider or the arm against the furious resistance of the springs, until the sear drops into the notch on the underside of the roller, and a new arrow or a new consignment of lethal junk lands in the slot, and the lever drops, and the sear falls out. Between the spanning of the spring and the release there is only the sear, the trigger, the escapement, and once it lets go, the force is committed beyond recall.

  Then the scorpion bolts lift, like a flock of rooks disturbed while feeding; they climb into the air on a lifting curve that reaches a high point, hesitates for a tiny moment, then (as though a sear has been tripped) falls in a decaying trajectory, accelerating as it slants down out of the sky. Or the hundredweight of jumbled, ballistically inefficient rubbish soars in a dissipating pattern, hangs, decays and drops, each lump spinning and twisting in the air like a falling man treading emptiness, powered by its own height and the furious pull of the ground, until it pitches… Miel Ducas had seen it all before, of course. Once upon a time, he'd watched the Mezentine artillery beat flat the Eremian army, the way the wind lays a field of corn. Once you've seen one wipeout, there's a case for saying you've seen them all. So it didn't bother him that he couldn't see what happened after the cloud of bolts lifted up into the sky. He could picture it in his mind easily enough.

  Instead, he watched the Vadani cavalry pouring down over the ridge, parting into two wings as it reached the plain and surging up to surround the remaining four fifths of the Aram Chantat as they waited still and quiet for their shifts to begin. Of course, they couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the bank that shielded the artillery from the city batteries. They wouldn't have the faintest idea, until the scorpions swung round on their traverses to point straight at them.

  Even so, he thought, it'd probably be a good idea to get out of the way. He walked his horse through the gap between the head-high stacks of scorpion bolts, dismounted, handed the reins to someone or other and scrambled up on to the wall, at a place where a Mezentine shot had punched a hole. What he saw was quite familiar.

  "One more shot," he called out, "then a new setting."

  This time, nobody questioned the order. The war council was still sitting, of course. There had been issues they wanted to discuss without General Vaatzes there. But the general came in anyway, and he had a platoon of Eremian soldiers with him.

  "Your attention, please," he said. No choice at all, as he explained to them. A fifth of their men were already dead, shot or squashed by the combined fire of the Eremians and the Mezentines. The remainder were unarmed, packed close together, surrounded on three sides by the Vadani cavalry and faced on the fourth side by the allied scorpion batteries. As Ziani pointed out, if they chose to fight, there was a chance they might prevail by sheer force of numbers, eventually, but their losses would be something of the order of seventy per cent; and then they'd still have the Mezentines to contend with.

  "I arranged it with Duke Valens and Chairman Psellus," he went on. He was almost too tired to speak, but the impetus of the final stage swept him along. "We all agreed that, compared with the threat you represent, our differences are relatively trivial; the sort of things we can always sort out later on, we decided, once we've got rid of you."

  They were staring at him, but he really couldn't care less about that. His mind was a long way away, preoccupied with far more important issues.

  "At any rate," he went on, "we've solved the supply problem-which," he added with a grin, "I created when I told Daurenja how to blow up the embankment. It was my gesture of good faith to Chairman Psellus; by using up a third of our flour reserve, I guaranteed to him that the City couldn't be taken by conventional siege and assault, because there simply wouldn't be time before our supplies ran out. He had to take my word for it that General Daurenja's secret weapon wouldn't work, but that was a foregone conclusion. I was there when it was made, and I knew it would fail. Now, of course, the supply problem's been solved, simply by virtue of the fact that there's eighty thousand less of you and twenty thousand fewer Mezentines. It was a brutal solution, but rather less so than the alternative, which was to slaughter all the Mezentines. And if you discounted that, there really wasn't any choice."

  He paused for breath. He'd been talking quickly, to get it over with so he could move on. He slowed down a little as he continued:

  "My deal with Psellus is as follows. We-I mean the Vadani and the Eremians-will disarm you and escort you over the mountains to the edge of the desert. Once you've crossed back to where you came from, Mezentine engineers will destroy the string of oases, so no one will ever be able to bring an army across there again." He shrugged. "I have no idea how you go about wrecking a large pool of water, but my people have the expertise, not to mention the incentive. Then, apart from the inevitable small raiding parties every so often, we'll never see or hear from you again, which is how it should be. The Mezentines will break down the City walls and undertake never to raise a standing army; and there'll be a trade agreement, we haven't worked out any details yet, but it'll mean the Mezentines will sell their goods for a fair price, and pay a substantial war indemnity; there'll also be a lot of changes in the way the Republic's run, but that's an internal matter, nothing to do with you. In return, the Vadani and the Eremians will be responsible for the City's defence." He frowned. "It's not a very good deal for any of us, and I expect it'll break down sooner or later and we'll all be back at each other's throats again before very long, but at least we'll be rid of you. It took this war to make us all realise that you're the one problem none of us can accommodate. You're a different kind of threat; you change everything."

  One of the Aram Chantat said: "You realised it, though. Before the wedding, even. That's why you made it happen."

  Ziani gave him a blank stare. "I'm not important," he said. "What possible relevance could one man's concerns have to the fate of nations? What I've done is end the war with the minimum of bloodshed and damage, and given the people of three countries some kind of chance of living in peace. Surely that's a leader's duty, and if it isn't, it should be."

  "We misjudged you," said another. "We assumed you wanted revenge."

  "I'm
not a savage," Ziani replied calmly. "Only savages think like that."

  He was about to dismiss them, but one of the Aram Chantat caught his eye and said, "Will you go back to your wife and daughter, and your work in the factory? Isn't that what you wanted?"

  Ziani looked back at him, like someone looking into a mirror. "The meeting is closed," he said.

  18

  There was a man called Cuno Abazes; a Mezentine, about thirty-two years old, a bachelor in a city where nearly everybody over the age of twenty was married. He didn't belong to a Guild, having failed the trade test for the Carpenters'. Instead, he'd earned a sparse living as a porter, drover and general labourer, loading and unloading, holding horses and collecting nightsoil for the Fullers." The war had been remarkably kind to him: he'd joined the army on the first day of recruitment, realising it was his one and only chance of making good, and had done so well that within a matter of weeks he'd been made an officer, a captain of general infantry. He'd been assigned to guard duty on the embankment on the day of the assault, but a splinter of rock from an allied round shot had hit him on the side of the head as he went to report for the start of his shift, and when the embankment was blown up he was lying in bed in the hospital. His injuries proved to be superficial, and next morning he was passed fit for active service and told to report to the Guildhall for sentry duty. There he heard the news that the war was over.

  "That's terrible," he blurted out. "What's going to happen to the army?"

  "Being disbanded," they told him. "Express term of the peace treaty. You'll be able to go back to your old life, pick up where you left off. Isn't that good news?"

  Cuno Abazes didn't reply to that. Instead, he asked, "So who won?" and they said, "You know, that's a very good question." Later that day, Captain Abazes was on duty in the main hall when Chairman Psellus himself passed through, on his way to the small conference suite. Since hearing the bad news about the end of the war, Abazes had had time to calm down and think it over, and he'd reached the conclusion that even if they were doing away with the army as such, they were still going to need guards, sentries, security officers, and this was exactly the time when they'd be choosing who to keep and who to let go. Accordingly, as Psellus went by, he snapped to attention like the swinging arm of an onager slamming against the stop. Abazes had always been good at drill, and he put everything he'd got into it, with the result that the crack of his heels coming together made Psellus shy like a horse and stare at him for a moment. That disconcerted him; he'd assumed the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Republic would be a connoisseur of fine drill, but Psellus had reacted as if he'd stuck his tongue out at him and blown a raspberry.