by K. J. Parker
Outside, he realised; I’m lying outside in the yard, on my back in the dust. “What happened?” He knew the answer, of course, but the question sort of asked itself.
“There was a fire,” Kunessin said. “We lost the main house and a couple of outbuildings.”
“Anybody . . . ?”
“Yes.” Kunessin frowned. “Two of your men, I’m sorry to say.” Then his face changed; it set, the way concrete goes off, but instantaneous. “And my wife.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” Kunessin said. “It was your fault. At least,” he added, “she’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you.” He looked away, his face thoughtful, intense. “While I was pulling you out of there, a rafter came down on her, pinned her down, and then the smoke got her. By the time I’d dragged you out and realised she was still in there, it was all over.”
Straton wasn’t quite sure he’d understood. “You . . . ?”
“That’s right,” Kunessin said irritably. “I woke up, figured out what was going on; the first thing I thought of was: is Commissioner Straton all right? So I looked round and there you were, choking to death, and none of your precious marines the slightest bit interested. So . . .” He shrugged. “They say it’s the ultimate test of your true priorities,” he said, his voice light and brittle. “If the house catches fire, you instinctively save the one you value most. If you’d died, the deal would’ve gone up in smoke with you.” He was looking down at his hands, as if he blamed them for something. “It’s funny,” he said. “If you’d asked me: what’s the most important thing to you, I wouldn’t have said it was the deal, keeping this island. Probably I’d have said it was the others, my friends, and Dorun after that. But apparently not. Where’s Commissioner Straton? Just that one thought in my mind. Well.”
Straton was trying not to stare at the raw red weals on Kunessin’s hands; he’d been looking straight at them while he’d been talking, but Straton would have been prepared to bet he didn’t even know they were there. “Thank you,” he said stiffly. “You saved—”
“Yes, fine,” Kunessin snapped. “A shame I just spoiled it by telling you it was a mistake. But there it is. You’ll excuse me, I’ve got every bloody thing to see to.”
Kunessin left Straton and crossed the yard, pausing every few paces to give an order or direct an operation. Back in the army again, he thought. He quickened his step to get him past the log shed, where the bodies were laid out under sheets. Two of the women, Enyo and he couldn’t quite make out who the other one was, were in there with them, but he couldn’t see what they were doing. He didn’t want to know.
The others were waiting for him by the gate of the stock pen. Kudei looked up as he approached and muttered something. They all turned round to look at him.
“Well?” he asked.
“Teuche—” Muri started to say, but Kunessin cut him off.
“Well?” he repeated.
Aidi was studying him; there was a long pause before he spoke. “It’s all right,” he said. “Nearly wasn’t, the heat cracked the big jar two thirds through, but somehow it stayed in one piece.”
Kunessin pushed past him and leaned heavily on the rail. “Has it cooled down yet?”
“God, no. I mean, it’s solid on the outside but the middle’s almost certainly still molten.”
“Can we move it?”
Aidi thought for a moment. “Not till tonight,” he replied. “But that was the plan anyhow, so . . .”
“That’s fine,” Kunessin said. “That’s what we’ll do, then. Kudei, you get the levers.”
“Teuche.” This time it was Kudei, and Kunessin stopped and listened. “I’m . . . we’re sorry.”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t be helped,” he said. “People die in war. She should’ve cleared out straight away.”
“She hung on to make sure the other girls were all out safe,” Alces said quietly. “Enyo told me. She was just about to leave when that rafter—”
“Like I said.” Kunessin rode over him. “Should’ve got out, instead of being all noble and brave.”
Aidi took a deep breath. “We should have told them,” he said.
Kunessin turned on him like a dog fighting. “That would’ve been a mistake,” he said, soft and fierce. “They’d have done something stupid if they’d known, like all leaving the house just before we set the fire. It’d only have taken one thing like that, and Straton would’ve figured it out, and we’d be screwed. No, we couldn’t have told them, and even if we had, who’s to say it’d have turned out different? End of subject,” he said firmly. “We did what we set out to do; now let’s give our minds to the next stage. Agreed?”
Uncomfortable pause, then Alces said: “It’s not going to be easy. Getting the jars up on the cart’s going to be the biggest headache, followed by unloading them at the other end and getting them on the sloop.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Aidi said quickly, like someone making conversation to cover someone else’s unfortunate gaffe. “If we get four of those long posts you cut for fence rails, Teuche, with a bit of rope, we could rig up a crane; I’m not saying we’ll be able to lift them off the ground, but we can take a lot of the weight, make them much easier to manhandle.”
He was about to expand on that, but Kunessin shut him up with a brisk nod. “Fine,” he said. “You’re on to it, Aidi, so I’ll leave it to you. We’ll meet up here as soon as it’s properly dark, all right?”
He left them without looking back, and crossed the yard to organise the covering-over of the grain sacks. As he worked, he allowed his mind to probe the operation so far; delicately, like the tongue testing a painful tooth.
Objective achieved, he thought; both objectives. By burning down the house, they’d broken up Straton’s tactical stranglehold without needing to use obvious force, and they’d solved the tricky problem of getting the gold-jars out without Straton realising what they really were. He was quite proud of that. Problem, to remove the jars from the house. Solution: get rid of the house. Sub-problem: to get the jars out without spilling half the dust. Solution: melt the dust into a solid lump inside the jars. Further problem arising: to get the jars on to the sloop. Solution delegated.
And the other business? Well, he said to himself, people die in war, and at least the five of them were all right, which was all he’d ever considered important. Put it in those terms and he could cope with it. Otherwise - he didn’t want to think about that. Not now, at any rate, when he had so much to do.
People die in war. Define war. It could be argued, he had to concede, that the war was over; that it had been over for many years, and therefore Dorun’s death wasn’t war, it was a horrible, stupid, wretched, meaningless, pointless mess, his fault, his stupidity, his weakness. But that objection wouldn’t lie - he knew he was right about this - because as long as A Company was still alive and together, as long as the five of them were together, the war could never end. It was part of them, their core, their reason, what they were for; they kept it alive and it kept them alive, which was why it, they had lasted so long, against all the odds. A Company could no more die in war than a fish could drown in the sea. Dorun - well, that was the deal, it always had been. Other people die, the good, the innocent, the inoffensive. The war goes on. We survive. That was the deal. That was why he’d made the choice, Straton or Dorun, the woman who was so much more than he deserved, or the good of the company. Actually, you couldn’t call it a choice. No choice, no need to stop and think. The good of the company, and don’t whine about the price.
He washed out his mind with activity. There was plenty to do.
When he’d formed the idea of setting the fire, his main concern was that it wouldn’t work: that the fire wouldn’t take hold quickly enough, and Straton’s soldiers would put it out before it had a chance to pass the critical point; or that it wouldn’t cook up hot enough to melt the gold in the jars. Needn’t have worried there. A stiff breeze had come up off the sea at just the right t
ime, blowing in just the right direction; the fire had gone straight up into the thatch, then come down through the smoke-hole in the roof, burnt its way through the floorboards and travelled under them, fanned by the marvellously convenient through-draught, so that the house had burnt from on top and underneath simultaneously. The smoke (smoke was the essential ingredient, to drive Straton’s men out before they could do any useful firefighting) had blown in right from the start. If he’d been an engineer designing a fire-trap, with enormous industrial bellows instead of the wind, he couldn’t have done a better job.
A bit too successful, of course. Apart from the deaths, there were other complications. The flames had spread to several of the outbuildings. Loss of stores burnt or spoiled by smoke was trivial, but those stores were now uncovered and vulnerable to wind and rain. He got them moved and protected. Next was the awkward question of where they were going to sleep, now that the main house was gone; also such issues as clothing, since all their personal effects had gone up in the fire. The second problem was no big deal: there were barrels and crates full of coats, shirts, trousers, boots stacked up in one of the lean-tos. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been enough covered space for everything. The damp had got into the crates, and everything came out mildewed and stinking, which didn’t improve morale. As for somewhere to live, he decided on the long building on the edge of the compound that was to have been the hay barn. It hadn’t had a roof for quite some time, and inside it was wet and overgrown with thick tangles of briars, but it was the only structure still standing that was anything like big enough to house them all. He set Straton’s soldiers to clearing out the briars, and sent the indentured men to cart sand and gravel from the river to stamp down into a floor. A Company was given the rather more skilled job of cutting, shaping and fitting rafters and thatching them over. Useful: it meant that carts and long poles would be on hand for the night’s work, and that (with any luck) the soldiers and the indentured men would be so exhausted by nightfall that they’d sleep like dead men.
As usual, Muri was the master carpenter. Aidi, chief engineer, rigged up an extremely ingenious and efficient crane out of poles, cart chains and rope. For thatch, they used bracken and briar vines stuffed into the branches of birch loppings and brash from Kunessin’s abortive lumber yard up on the hill, where he’d cut the poles they used for rafters. Amazingly, they had the job done by nightfall, and were able to help finish off the stamping-down of the floor, using some of the big flour jars as rollers. The result was no palace, but it was habitable; and, as anticipated, everyone was too worn out by the time they’d finished to care too much about the accommodations.
Everyone, of course, except A Company. It wasn’t long before everyone else was asleep. They got up quietly, slipped out of the barn and set to work. Aidi had dismantled the crane when the roof was put on, so all they had to do was carry the timbers across the yard to the burnt-out house and reassemble it. Kudei had left a cart handy; he and Alces fetched in the horses. The cart groaned ominously as they lowered the ton-weight jar on to it, and they decided not to risk loading the quarter-ton jar as well. They hadn’t bargained on making two trips, but there should be enough time in hand. Aidi quickly unstepped the crane and loaded it on to the cart. Twenty minutes after creeping out of the barn, they were ready to leave for the inlet on the other side of the island where the sloop was moored.
Things didn’t go quite as smoothly at the other end. As Aidi pointed out, they hadn’t thought that stage through properly. They couldn’t get the sloop in tight enough to use the crane, so they had to use the crane beams to form a ramp. With desperate expenditure of effort they managed to roll the quarter-ton jar up the ramp by brute force, but they knew better than to try that with the big jar; if it slipped and rolled back, the least they could expect was crushed legs. For once, Aidi had nothing to suggest; it was Muri who pointed out that there was a perfectly good winch in a crate in the large pigsty, unused, still packed up and in its grease. Kudei and Alces went back a third time and fetched it. As Kunessin had feared, the wet had got into it and seized the ratchet; they built a fire and heated it up to dull red, then quenched it in the sea; that and some straining eventually broke the rust, and thereafter things went reasonably well. Even so, they were cutting it fine for time. It was Alces’ suggestion to fill the cart with cobbles from the beach before turning back. Inspired: when they reached the yard, just as the sun was rising, it was accepted without question that they’d got up early and gone to fetch the makings of a proper floor. Luckily, nobody seemed to have noticed that the crane had disappeared.
“It’s not the crane I’m concerned about,” Kudei muttered, as they watched the cobbles being hauled into the barn in wheelbarrows. “Can’t be long before someone starts wondering what’s become of the jars.”
Kunessin didn’t turn his head as he replied. “No one’s going to say anything,” he said. “Not in front of the soldiers.”
Aidi said: “How long will they be here?”
Kunessin didn’t smile, but he allowed himself a little relish in his reply. “Long enough.”
Aechmaloten had been lucky to survive the fire. The mystery fever that had kept him in his bed left him too weak to move. One of Straton’s men had pulled him out.
Kunessin saw to it that he was installed, as comfortably as possible in the circumstances, in the barn, close to the fireplace, under a heap of foul-smelling blankets. “Doesn’t look like they’ve been taking proper care of you,” he said, and handed him a cup of water.
“Too busy,” Aechmaloten said, with just a hint of resentment. “Getting the—”
Kunessin frowned, and Aechmaloten took the hint. “Not so good, then,” Kunessin said. “How are you feeling now, anyway?”
“About the same,” Aechmaloten said.
“I’ll get Aidi to take a look at you,” Kunessin said. “He was always the closest thing we had to a medic. Got me through a nasty dose of fever once.” He pulled up an empty box and sat down. “We need you on your feet again,” he said, lowering his voice a little.
Aechmaloten shook his head. “Don’t reckon I’ll be up to much digging for a while yet.”
“I wasn’t meaning that,” Kunessin said, quieter still. “I need you to get your people ready for something.” He was looking at one of Straton’s sergeants, standing by the door, taking a rest from hammering cobbles into the barn floor with the poll of a splitting-axe.
Aechmaloten frowned; then his face went blank. “Oh,” he said.
“You know they’ve served us notice to quit,” Kunessin went on. “You do realise that’s not just us, it’s your people as well.”
Aechmaloten had to gather his strength to answer. “Yes, but that doesn’t matter. We’ve got—”
Kunessin said: “We saw something interesting while we were loading up those cobbles this morning. Ten of the soldiers, down at the jetty, and they’d got Aidi’s crane with them. And another thing.” He stopped, made a show of looking round. “There’s some things missing, from the main house. Two jars.”
Aechmaloten’s face stayed frozen. “They took them, you reckon. Put them on the ship.”
“Well,” Kunessin said, “that’d explain why they wanted the crane.”
Aechmaloten closed his eyes for a moment. “Those bastards,” he said.
“Well.” Kunessin took another look round. “I can’t see there’s much that can be done about it. Straton’s keeping me and my men pretty closely marked, and there’s only the five of us, when all’s said and done. As far as we’re concerned, they’ve won that round.”
No reply. Kunessin poured more water into the cup.
“You’re just going to let them—”
“What choice have we got?” Kunessin said bitterly. “They’re armed, we’re not. We can’t fight without weapons. Looks like our best shot is to take them to law for our out-of-pocket expenses, once we get home.”
Aechmaloten was thinking. Eventually he said: “The soldiers aren’t watching us.
”
Kunessin turned his head sharply. “Don’t even think about it,” he said. “They’re regular soldiers, and what have you got? Picks and shovels. You wouldn’t have a hope in hell.”
Aechmaloten smiled. “There’s all that gear you got stashed in the sheds,” he said.
“You know about that, then.” Kunessin frowned.
“They wouldn’t be expecting any trouble,” Aechmaloten went on. “My lads aren’t regular army, but five of us were in the war. What do you call it, element of surprise?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“What, so we just let them steal it off us? I don’t think so.” Aechmaloten tried to move, gave up. “After all the work we put in. No, I don’t think so.”
Kunessin sighed. “You’re on your own, then. I’m not getting my men involved.”
“Then don’t expect us to share,” Aechmaloten said angrily. “Thought you boys were the hero type.”
But Kunessin smiled at him. “We don’t do that any more,” he said. “Got some sense as we got older. You’d do well to follow our lead.”
“All right for you,” Aechmaloten said. “You’ve all got money of your own. No, fuck that. We worked hard for our chance.”
Kunessin stood up. “Good luck, then,” he said. “I’d rather you had it than the government, at any rate.”
That’ll keep Aidi quiet, he thought, as he walked back across the room.
Aechmaloten talked to his people. During the meal that evening, three of the indentured men slipped out without the soldiers seeing them and broke into the barrels and packing cases in the shed next to Aidi’s workshop. They found helmets, enough for everybody, but the chainmail shirts had taken the damp badly and were rusted solid. They cracked open a case of Type Fifteen swords and another of steel thirty-inch bucklers. They filled three wheelbarrows and took them round the back of the barn; at which point, they were arrested by half a dozen of Straton’s men and dragged back inside. There they found the rest of the indentured men herded together in the far corner, surrounded by soldiers with drawn swords.