Savages

by K. J. Parker

  There were twenty-four captains called Bathanaric in the imperial regular infantry; it was a popular name. Seventeen of the twenty-four were from distinguished families. There was a Bathanaric de Cadenet, a Bathanaric de Birnamanz, and so on. Captain Bathanaric of the 27th Infantry wasn’t one of them. His grandfather was the last of a long line of charcoal burners in the endless forests of the eastern Mesoge, who’d started tanning pig hides as a sideline. His son, Bathanaric’s father, had worked long and hard building up the business; when the war broke out, he got a contract to supply oak-tanned oxhides to the military, for making shields. It made him moderately rich, although by the time the war ended no amount of washing and scouring could ever get the smell of brains out of his skin and hair. His son got his commission in an unfashionable infantry regiment, decimated in the war and restocked from conscripted factory workers and discharged criminals, two weeks before the Field of Red and Blue Flowers. Accordingly, he’d never seen action, though he’d heard about it endlessly from the other subalterns, some of whom were two or three years younger than him. Bathanaric wasn’t a bad officer, but he wasn’t a particularly good one, either. It was an accurate reflection of the regiment’s reputation that, when Calojan was scraping the barrel to make up numbers against Hunza, the 27th was posted to garrison duty in a part of the frontier where no trouble was anticipated.

  When the news reached him about the massacre of an imperial merchant convoy by a Cosseilhatz faction he’d never heard of, his first reaction was cold, horrified panic. It reminded him of the dream he kept having, where he’d agreed to lead the Ascension Day prayers in Temple; he’d be standing in front of the high altar, with everyone watching him, and suddenly he’d realise he didn’t know any of the words.

  His second reaction was to send a messenger to Division to ask for instructions. But Division was three days away (and that was assuming the fords were passable); three days there, three days back, six days at the earliest, and by then the whole frontier could be ablaze. He tried to imagine how he’d explain the delay at his court martial, but inspiration was singularly lacking.

  His third reaction was to seek advice from his more experienced subordinates; but there weren’t any. The 27th was nine-tenths new recruits; even his colour-sergeant was new to field operations, ten years’ indifferent service in the supply corps, promoted to the double green stripe simply because there wasn’t anybody else. The standard-bearer had done two tours in the war, but then he’d been broken down from master sergeant for stealing and cowardice in the face of the enemy, so asking him for advice probably wasn’t a good idea. It dawned on Bathanaric, slowly and horribly, that he was going to have to make the decisions himself.

  Which was what the Book was for. A Manual of Field Operations, written three centuries ago by the emperor Genseric IV (the same emperor who’d lost most of Raetica and been disastrously defeated by the Aelians) occupied the place of honour on the wobbly-legged trestle table that constituted Bathanaric’s office. Frantically, he searched the table of contents, but the closest thing he could find was Punitive Expeditions against Jazygite Slave Traders, justifications for. He read it anyway. It started off, make a detailed assessment of the strategic and political situation and then went on to talk about supply trains. The Jazygites had been wiped out two hundred years ago. Presumably the revisions to the manual were held up in committee somewhere.

  He’d almost resolved to send to Division and risk the consequences when a rider arrived with news of the slaughter of an entire half-squadron of imperial regular cavalry by another Cosseilhatz sect, the Blue Flower, four days ago. Details were few and vague; there was something about the fighting having taken place on the wrong side of the river, but that was hard to believe. The Cosseilhatz were still supposed to be the empire’s allies, even if they’d been too scared to join up against Hunza. Therefore it was unthinkable that imperial troops would’ve been trespassing on their land. It was possible that they’d been invited there, lured into a trap; but details of that sort didn’t really matter very much. The simple fact was that the Cosseilhatz appeared to have turned from friends into enemies—

  The implications hit Bathanaric like a hammer. No, he hadn’t been in the war; but everyone who had told stories of Calojan’s invincible barbarian auxiliaries, butchers of the Sashan; the speed of their attack, their elan, their astonishing marksmanship and skill at arms, their unswerving determination, their reckless savagery once battle was joined. Wonderful people, if somewhat unnerving, to have on your side. Not so good if they were the enemy.

  He sent for his two junior subalterns, both of whom he despised. One of them, Dodila, was minor nobility, the third or fourth son of someone important’s younger brother. He was a good-natured young man, but hopelessly stupid. The other one, Bessas, had ended up out here because nobody at division could stand the sight of him; he was arrogant, lazy and completely unreliable. He told them what had happened, then said, “Well? What do we do?”

  Dodila gawped at him. Bessas leaned back in his chair (standard issue, folding; it creaked ominously) and said, “Nothing.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s just think about this calmly, shall we?” Bessas said. “The Cosseilhatz are Calojan’s pet savages, right? So, one, they’d have us for breakfast, two, if we do anything to them, Calojan will have our heads, three, all we have is sketchy and unreliable reports and no orders. Therefore, we do nothing. You send a rider to Division, let them deal with it.”

  Bathanaric squinted at him, as if he was a badly-written page. “That’s all?”

  Bessas grinned insufferably. “Consider the alternative. You do something. What? You lead the men across the river, find some Cosseilhatz and attack them. Likeliest outcome, they cut us to pieces. That’s not going to help matters. Second likeliest, we kill a bunch of old men and kids, then turn round and come home. That’s improved matters how, exactly?”

  Bathanaric pursed his lips. “It’s a show of force.”

  “So is walking into a bar and hitting the biggest man you can find. All right, so you don’t attack. Instead, you close the gates, recall all detached units, lay in provisions, stand ready for an assault. What happens? Almost certainly, nothing. You look like a fool, the savages see how scared we are of them. Small but material risk that such action would in itself be interpreted as a display of hostility, which means that if this isn’t all just a storm in a bottle and there really is trouble brewing somewhere, you’ve just made things worse. Or you do nothing. Correction; you put out scouts, so that if the savages are on the warpath and come galloping up the valley, you can get the gates shut in good time, for all the very little good it’ll do you, because if the Cosseilhatz actually do mean to do us harm, we’re dead and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He smiled, and turned to Dodila. “That’s what I think. How about you?”

  “Me?” Dodila started nervously. “Oh, I agree.”

  “Splendid. So, what are our orders?”

  Bathanaric shrugged. “Post scouts and do nothing, I suppose,” he said. “Dodila, see to it, would you? And get me someone to ride to Division.” He scowled at Bessas, then added, “I guess our first duty in a situation like this is not to make matters worse by over-reacting. All right, dismissed.”

  The Cosseilhatz attacked his outpost at dawn the next day. They must have stalked and killed the scouts, because the first Bathanaric knew about the assault was riders on the skyline, which he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t had to get up early to visit the latrine. He stared for about five seconds, until he was sure of what he’d seen; then he ran up to the guard tower, yelling at the top of his voice.

  At first, the guard sergeant assumed he was drunk, and just grinned. Bathanaric grabbed him by the neck-rim of his breastplate, dragged him to the gateway and pointed. By then, of course, the riders were a hundred yards closer. “Shut the gates,” Bathanaric screamed in the sergeant’s ear. “Now.”

  The yelling had brought men out of the barrack huts. Bat
hanaric gave the sergeant a shove; he scrambled away to the gatehouse. “The savages are coming,” Bathanaric howled. “Everybody—” It took him a moment to remember the right form of words. “Stations for primary assault,” he said gratefully. The men who’d come out were just looking at him. He realised, they didn’t know what to do. The men took their orders from their sergeants, who took theirs from the junior officers. He could yell at them until he was blue in the face, but thanks to the chain of command they couldn’t hear him.

  Mercifully, Bessas appeared, with the colour-sergeant right behind him. Between them, the three of them were able to operate the relevant protocols and get men up on the ramparts just in time for the Cosseilhatz’ horse archers to shoot them down.

  As the bodies slumped, Bathanaric could do nothing but stare. He’d been trained to deal with living soldiers; somehow he’d never anticipated losses, the idea that his command had suddenly been reduced by a fifth. It was Bessas who made them get their heads down, and who got archers up to the arrow-slits, and artillery teams to the scorpions. Their return volley fell short, because by then the Cosseilhatz had looped back, as they always did; but at least something had been done.

  Pulling himself together at that point was the hardest thing Bathanaric ever had to do. He managed it somehow, mostly by pretending he was a soldier, and knew what to do. He sent men to the walls to replace the dead, got the rest of his troops out of the barracks, armed and armoured, detached the archers from the spearmen, sent orderlies to pick up the wounded; it was all pointless, he knew, because in five minutes, or fifteen, the Cosseilhatz would come over his wall and everybody would be killed. In the meanwhile, however, he had a job to hide behind.

  Dodila proved to be useless; he froze in terror as soon as he saw his first dead man, neglected to get his head down, and got himself shot through the neck. Two orderlies hauled him away to the surgeon, and Bathanaric dismissed him from his mind. Bessas, on the other hand, seemed to know what he was doing. He scrambled up the twelve block steps onto the rampart as soon as the volley had been loosed, crouched down to take a long, careful look, then came running back. “I’d say there’s about six hundred,” he said breathlessly, “though I can’t see past the high ground, obviously. All mounted, I couldn’t see carts or a siege train, so they don’t look like they’ve got ladders or engines. If they’re coming for us, it’ll have to be through the gate.”

  Bathanaric just about managed to figure out what he was being told. The enemy didn’t have ladders or siege towers, so for the time being the walls would keep them safe; but he should expect them to try and bash down the gate. “Or fire,” he said. “They could burn us out.”

  “No,” Bessas said patiently, “because we’ve got hide curtains and a cistern of water for putting out fire arrows. You should damp down all round the gatehouse, though, because that’s all timber.”

  The standard bearer, standing behind Bessas’ shoulder, looked at him; he nodded, and the standard bearer hurried away. “Anything else?”

  Bessas grinned. “Last time I said do nothing, I was probably wrong,” he said. “But no, I think we just wait and see what they do next. Anything else is just giving them targets to shoot at.”

  That sounded plausible. “Right,” Bathanaric said. “Where should I go now?”

  Bessas thought for a moment. “Best place for you is the guard tower,” he said. “Keep low, see what they’re up to. Make sure the colour sergeant knows where you are, and get a corporal to run messages. I’ll be chivvying up the scorpion teams, and then I’ll be getting arrows up from the store to the walls. All right?”

  Bathanaric looked at him. He’d never loved anyone more in his life. “Look after yourself,” he said.

  “You too.”

  Bessas walked away; quickly but not running or scurrying. Bathanaric watched him go, then crossed the parade yard to the foot of the guard tower stairs. They’d moved the wounded, but the dead were still lying where they’d fallen, untidy bundles that looked disturbingly out of place. It was very quiet. He opened the guard house door, and the creak from the hinges startled him. Hard to believe that these were the last few minutes of his life, but probably best not to dwell on that.

  From the parapet at the top of the tower, squatting on his heels and peeping over the sawn-log battlement, he could see the Cosseilhatz quite clearly. They were sitting motionless on perfectly still horses—one of them chose that moment to lift its tail and dump a steaming brown triangle, but its rider didn’t seem interested; they’d formed up in a semicircle, in the centre of which stood four riders who were talking to each other. He could hear the voices but couldn’t make out the words; they sounded quite calm, businesslike, just another day at work. He was no good at judging distances, so he couldn’t say whether they were within bowshot—presumably not, or they’d be further back. For some reason, their calmness infuriated him, making him feel as though he was some trivial chore to be got around to when they’d finished chatting, and he decided he wanted to hurt them, while he still had the time and the means to do so. At that moment the colour sergeant joined him, creeping along with exaggerated care just below the level of the battlement. Without taking his eyes off the four horsemen, he said, “See those four bastards down there, at the front? Sergeant?”

  “Sir.”

  Well, why not? “Who’s on number one scorpion?”

  The sergeant thought for a moment, then reeled off some names. They didn’t mean anything to him; he couldn’t think why he’d asked. “Tell them,” he said, “a solidus each if they can hit one of those buggers. Four tremissis if they get his horse.”

  As the sergeant withdrew, he thought; four men on a scorpion, have I actually got four solidi in the world? He couldn’t remember. Still, the chances of him being called on to pay were remote. He waited; the horsemen stayed where they were, no hurry, probably talking about the weather. One of them was wearing a Sashan helmet; the others were in blue or green shirts and red trousers, probably their best clothes, for special occasions.

  The characteristic noise of a scorpion being loosed is the steel slider bashing into the oak stop; it’s a sort of dead thump. The projectile is a half-inch thick steel rod, four feet long. Accuracy varies, depending on age, maintenance and which contractor made it; the three at the outpost were old and not particularly well cared-for, so it was probably just luck. The bolt hit the helmeted rider in the thick of the thigh, passed straight through the saddle and the horse’s flank, on into the rider’s other thigh, where it stopped. The horse reared, but the rider was pinned to it and couldn’t be thrown; his arms flew out wide and his head rocked back; the helmet was tied on under his chin. The horse bucked wildly, kicking the horse next to it. Then its legs folded and it dropped. There was a loud, sharp crack; a bone breaking. The rider was still alive, flailing at the ground with one arm. The horse lifted its head. The other three riders stared for a second or two, then fled.

  What was all that about, Bathanaric wondered; it was a remarkable thing to have seen, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it meant, or whether it meant anything. The Cosseilhatz horsemen weren’t still any more. They moved like the surface of simmering water, backing up or stepping forward a pace or two before turning in a tight circle; Bathanaric guessed the horses were about to spook, picking up from their riders. The colour sergeant was back; he was grinning, the fool. Bathanaric wondered if he’d had time to get a bet on.

  “Well,” the sergeant said, “we’ve taught them to keep their distance, anyhow.”

  Bathanaric didn’t reply. He knew he’d done either a very clever or a profoundly stupid thing, and that luck had taken his intuitive, badly-thought-out idea and made a big deal out of it. The Cosseilhatz were slowly getting their horses back under control. The shot horse was trying to get up; its front legs were working, but its back end was dead.

  “I want a white flag,” he said. “Quickly.”

  A moment or so later, someone gave him a spear with a shirt tied
to it by the cuffs. He held it up as far as he could get it to go, then counted to three and stood up slowly. They’d seen him. He took a deep breath and tried to think what to say.

  He yelled; “Come and get your man. We won’t shoot.”

  They were staring at him as though he wasn’t right in the head. He yelled it again. The three survivors were having an animated discussion; then half a dozen riders from the rank behind them shot forward, swerved round them and trotted over to where the horse and rider were lying. They dismounted—the three leaders were shouting at them, presumably ordering them to come back right now—and tried to lift the horse, but it was too heavy. The man screamed with pain—something they’d done; it was ludicrous, a comedy turn. Now they were trying to pull the bolt out, but they only had two inches to try and get a grip on, and the bolt was three and a bit feet into solid meat. Bathanaric had to fight an overpowering urge to run down there and see if he could help; he never could abide watching fools do something badly.

  More of the Cosseilhatz had joined the rescue party; enough of them, eventually, to get the horse upright—it was struggling, but didn’t have the strength; now they were trying to pull the rider’s legs apart so they’d lift off the ends of the bolt, but there was too much gash either side, and all they did was make him scream horribly. What they needed, Bathanaric could see, was a hacksaw, but he guessed they didn’t have one. Someone had drawn a sword, his gestures suggested he was urgently recommending a double amputation, but fortunately he wasn’t getting any support for his proposal.

  Any minute now, Bathanaric guessed, the poor man will bleed to death and save them the bother. The hell with it. He ran down the stairs to the guard tower back room, where he’d seen a box of tools. He had to empty the whole thing out before he found a hacksaw. He’d only ever used one once, and made a hash of it.