The Company

by K. J. Parker

  Never mind. At least he knew now what he had to do. Wait for the ships to come in, wait for his overwhelming superiority in numbers, and in the meanwhile keep out of sight and hope A Company didn’t know he was here (but if they’d sent out the woman and she hadn’t come back, they must suspect something by now. Oh God, he thought, what a complete mess).

  Muri came round, eventually, and was immediately, expressively sick.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Your wife,” Aidi replied.

  “It looks rather as though she tried to kill us,” Kunessin said. “Poison. Poisoned honey, of all things.”

  Muri opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  “Enyo’s dead,” Alces said. “And Clea and Chaere. We’re just very ill. We thought you’d had it, but apparently not. How are you feeling?”

  “Not so bad,” Muri croaked. “Is that really . . . ? I mean, she tried to kill us?”

  Kunessin nodded. “Apparently,” he said. “That’s what she told us, in so many words.”

  Muri stared at him, then looked away. “I had no idea,” he said.

  “Well of course you didn’t,” Aidi snapped.” Anyway, that’s what seems to have happened. She’s made herself scarce, needless to say; she must’ve figured out by now that we’re not dead after all. If she’s got any sense, she’ll be up in her beloved woods.”

  “What are we going to do? About her, I mean.”

  “Guess,” Aidi said.

  “But not now,” Kunessin interrupted. “We’re in no fit state to go crashing about in the woods. After all, she’s not going anywhere. Not unless she can teach herself to sail the sloop single-handed. She’ll keep.”

  Muri looked as though he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Instead, he nodded, a fine, economical, military expression of understanding and agreement. Kunessin yawned, then winced. Aidi said, “In the meantime . . .”

  “The best thing we can do is stay put here and get some rest,” Kunessin said. “The main thing is, we seem to have got away with it. I’m assuming so, anyway, I’ve never been poisoned before. When we’ve got our strength back, we can figure out what we’re going to do.”

  “Has it occurred to you she might try something else?” Aidi said.

  Kunessin nodded. “She could try and set fire to this building,” he said. “But on balance I’m inclined to think not. It’d be a hell of a risk, and she’s got no way of securing the door from the outside, to keep us in here. My guess is, she’s scared stiff and hiding, so for now at least we can forget about her.” He frowned. “I’m more worried about what she said about two ships.”

  “She was lying,” Aidi said firmly. “If they existed, they’d be here by now, and we’d be up to our necks in soldiers.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Kudei asked. “They’d be the government men, presumably. We don’t mind them, do we?”

  “Teuche’s got some bee in his bonnet about there being two of them,” Aidi replied. “Apparently, two is sinister.”

  Kunessin raised his hand, the quelling gesture. “Odd, rather than sinister,” he said. “I’m just inclined to be careful, that’s all. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could spit.”

  “Fair enough,” Alces said. “Not a great deal we can do about it, though, is there?”

  “We can stay here still and quiet and conserve our strength,” Kunessin said. “That’s about it.” He paused, then added, “If there is something going on, we’re more or less limited to making a dash for the sloop and getting off the island. Right now, speaking purely for myself, I don’t feel in absolutely peak condition for anything strenuous like that.” He sighed. “Quite likely there’s no ships,” he said, “or we’d have had company by now, like Aidi says. And if there are ships, I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, and they might even have a doctor, which’d be nice. But, just in case, there’s no harm in being paranoid, specially when you’re playing hardball with the government.” He pulled a face, as a surge of pain swept through him. “Talking of which,” he said, “I don’t suppose we’ve got any weapons in here.”

  Aidi frowned, then shook his head. “All that stuff ’s in the sheds,” he said.

  “I’ve got mine,” Alces said.

  “You would. Doesn’t help the rest of us much.”

  “No matter,” Kunessin said. “But when we’re feeling a bit stronger, it might be an idea to nip out and get a few things.”

  “There’s a bow,” Kudei said, “and a few arrows.”

  “Fine.” Kunessin had his eyes shut, and a pained expression on his face. “More to the point, is there anything resembling a bucket?”

  The ships, at last. Anogei sent a man down to the quay to tell them what to do.

  First things first. Twenty men to reinforce the perimeter, making forty in all. The remaining thirty to make up the assault party. He played the worst possible outcome through in his mind.

  If everything goes wrong, he told himself, A Company will break through the thirty men at the barn door, killing maybe five or six. Then they’re most likely to head for the quay, with a view to seizing a ship, and terrifying the crew into sailing it for them (or would they be able to handle a ship themselves?). They have to get off the island. If I anchor the ships out in the bay, will that help? No, they’ll take the boat, or swim. Assume another two or three dead when they break through the perimeter; say ten, all told.

  Or, assume they break out but we head them off from the ships. So they go inland, up into those woods. Assume they’ve got stores of food up there, so it’s not as simple as just starving them out. Hunting down A Company in dense woodland, which they presumably know like the backs of their hands; he revised his assessment. In Kunessin’s place, he’d head straight for the woods, not the quay. If they got to the woods, a numerical advantage of seven to one (six to one by that point, of course) would be no advantage at all. Quite the reverse. The more targets offered, the easier it’d be to hit something.

  Fine. Kunessin gets to the woods, but we don’t go after him. We stay here, in the settlement, sixty men besieged by a superior force of five. Kunessin would like that. A series of night raids; hit and run, between five and ten men killed, the pressure mounting on him to strike back as morale plummets; he’d end up having to go into the woods after all, but by now he’d be down to fifty men, or forty . . .

  All right, Anogei thought, look at it another way. If he was in my shoes, what would Kunessin do?

  Simple.

  They took her to the quay, where two ships were tied up. “I don’t understand,” she protested. “I haven’t done anything wrong. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Don’t ask us,” the soldiers told her. “Nobody tells us anything.”

  They escorted her, respectfully but firmly, up the gangplank and on to the deck, where a tall, dark young man in civilian clothes - rather dashing civilian clothes - met her and dismissed her guards. He smiled as he asked who she was.

  “I’m Chaere Proiapsen,” she said.

  “Ah.” The young man raised both eyebrows. “In that case, I’d be obliged if you’d follow me. This way.”

  He walked quickly, so she had to skip to keep up with him. He had nice eyes, but a rather offputting mouth: clever, sarcastic. He led her down a flight of stairs in the deck into a narrow hold stacked with barrels. “Please, do sit down,” he said, quite charmingly, as though he was talking to a lady. “So you’re Major Proiapsen’s wife,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  He nodded slowly. “In that case,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ve got some rather bad news for you. My name’s Scapho, by the way, I’m with the adjutant general’s department. That’s the army’s lawyers.”

  She waited for a moment, then said, “What’s the bad news?”

  He studied her for three seconds. “I’m here with a warrant for your husband’s arrest,” he said.

  “Oh.” Then: “Are you sure you don’t mean General Kunessin?”

 
; He shook his head slowly, like a pendulum. “I’m afraid the charges are very serious,” he went on. “In fact, they’re about as serious as it’s possible to get. We have good evidence that your husband’s guilty of treason.”

  He saw her face lock up, as though a catch had been pressed. Not such a simple little thing after all, he thought.

  “What’s he done?”

  Scapho took a deep breath. “At the end of the war,” he said, “our forces landed in what was thought to be neutral territory with the aim of striking at one of the enemy’s most strategically important cities. It should have won us the war, and we weren’t expecting any trouble. We were sure the locals would let us pass through their country without bothering us. Do you remember?”

  “Vaguely,” she said. “I was only a child.”

  “Of course.” Scapho smiled, bleakly gallant. “Anyway, it all went disastrously wrong. We were ambushed by local militia, far stronger, better armed and better trained than we’d imagined possible. What really did for us, though, was the exact knowledge they had of where we were going, the route we were taking. Thousands of our men were killed; only a handful got away. Your husband was one of that handful.” He paused, looked at her sideways, and said, “He’s told you about this, perhaps?”

  “He never talks about the war.”

  Scapho nodded. “At the time, we were pretty sure that the enemy had got hold of one of our people and extracted the information from him somehow.” His face darkened, and his eyes weren’t nice any more. “We recently found out who the traitor was. Your husband.”

  If she reacted at all, it was a very slight widening of the eyes, which hadn’t blinked, he realised, for a long time. He could almost hear her mind working behind those closed shutters: a busy mind, not brilliant but able to concentrate very intensely. “How do you know it was him?”

  “Ah.” Scapho broke eye contact - a bit like looking straight into the sun, but more like staring down a deep well shaft; wearing, in any event. “We’ve never stopped investigating, of course; something like that can’t just be let drop and forgotten about. Six weeks ago, one of our agents managed to get close to the top men in the enemy militia, and he found out who’d carried out the interrogation of the traitor. We managed to capture the interrogator and get him back our side of the border. Then, not to put too fine a point on it, we beat it out of him. It took a long time - he was determined to be difficult, from sheer bloody-mindedness mostly - but we got there in the end. He told us the man he questioned was a linebreaker: ‘one of the famous ones’, he said, which could only mean your husband’s old unit, A Company. We pressed him a little harder, and he said it was a tall man, well over six foot, with broad shoulders and fair curly hair.” He shrugged. “He’s still alive, so he can identify your husband at the court-martial. I’m sorry,” he said, “but it’s as clear-cut a piece of evidence as anyone could wish for.”

  She hadn’t blinked yet. “That’s very bad, isn’t it?”

  Scapho nodded. “I’m afraid so, yes. Also,” he went on, “from the description of the interrogation that this man gave us, we have a pretty good idea of where to look for some rather distinctive scarring on your husband’s arms and back.” He pursed his lips. “Maybe you could tell us about that.”

  She was looking at him as though he was a window. “Am I going to be in trouble?” she said. “Because he’s my husband.”

  “You needn’t concern yourself about that,” Scapho said. “All this happened long before you married him, so obviously you’ve done nothing wrong.”

  She nodded sharply. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  The right question, but not the emphasis he’d have expected. “There’s only one penalty for a crime like that.”

  “Afterwards.” She paused. “It won’t affect me, will it? I mean, I’ll still inherit his property and everything.”

  He wanted to laugh, but that wouldn’t have done at all. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “The estate of a convicted traitor forfeits to the state. The government takes it,” he translated. “I’m very sorry, but that’s the law.”

  “Yes, but what if he doesn’t . . .” She stopped, and when she spoke again, it was a much smaller voice. “If he’s never actually convicted, I mean. If he died first.”

  Scapho frowned. “If he dies resisting arrest, you mean?”

  “He’s already dead,” she said quickly. “All of them, they died not long before you got here. It must’ve been something they ate.”

  “They’re dead?” He felt as though he’d just been punched in the mouth. “That’s . . .”

  She was nodding eagerly. “And if he’s dead,” she went on, “then he can’t stand trial, and your witness can’t identify him, so it wouldn’t be fair at all, would it? I mean, it’s so important, isn’t it, a fair trial. Aidi always used to say, that’s the sort of thing we fought the war for. I mean,” she went on, talking quickly, “he might not have been guilty after all; you can’t really prove it if he’s not there. And if he’s dead . . .” She let the words hang in the air, like a fat ripe plum from a tree.

  Scapho stood up. Suddenly he was very anxious indeed to leave the cargo hold and get away from this extraordinary creature, small and bright-eyed and intense and vicious as a rat in a live trap. “It’s not up to me, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m not the prosecutor. It’d be his decision. I’m sorry.”

  “But you could talk to him,” she persisted. “I mean, it can’t really be important, can it? Not compared with all that stuff you were talking about.”

  All that stuff. “I’ll see what I can do,” Scapho said, and that, apparently, was enough to get him away from her and back into the fresh, clean air.

  “Guard that hold,” he said to the first man who passed him. “Make absolutely sure she stays in there, and don’t let her talk to anyone.”

  He went back to his cabin, a small, curved-sided box wedged in behind a bulkhead at the stern of the ship. He opened his trunk, scrabbled about under various shirts, found a bottle, uncorked it and glugged four big mouthfuls. Then he sat down to write a letter to his superiors, recommending that forfeiture of property be waived in the Proiapsen case. It wasn’t, he couldn’t help feeling, as if he had any choice in the matter.

  Major Anogei also wrote a letter. He had to send back to the ship for paper and ink and a pen.

  He wrote:

  Major Aidi Proiapsen is under arrest on charges of treason, in that [he wasn’t sure if that was the right turn of phrase, but he hoped it would do] he betrayed troop movements to the Stethessi militia, thereby enabling them to ambush and wipe out our forces. We have identification evidence and an eyewitness, namely the militia officer who conducted the interrogation. Surrender Major Proiapsen and you will not be harmed. You have one hour. Signed, Thumos Anogei, major, 6th Marines.

  He dusted it with fine sand to blot it, then folded it lengthways, crept up to the barn, slid it under the door and ran away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What’s that?” Aidi asked. Teuche frowned. “It looks like a sheet of paper,” he said. “Fly, you’re nearest.”

  Alces groaned, rolled off the pile of sacks and blankets that served as his bed, levered himself on to his feet and staggered to the door. “It’s a letter, I think,” he said.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, give it here.”

  As Kunessin opened it, Muri said, “Who the hell can it be from? We’re on an island . . .”

  “Teuche?” Kudei said.

  Kunessin was reading. Alces said, “If it’s from your fucking wife, Muri, apologising . . .”

  “It’s not from her.” Kunessin was staring at the paper, as though it was too bright to look at.

  “Come on, then,” Aidi said irritably. “Who’s it from?”

  “The government, presumably,” Kudei said. “But why a letter, of all things? Why don’t they just knock on the door and talk to us, if—?”

  “See for yourself,” Kunessin said, and handed him th
e letter.

  “Teuche,” Aidi protested, lifting himself on one elbow, “stop mucking about and tell us what’s going on. Have they gone back on the deal or something? Talk to me, for crying out loud.”

  No reply; dead silence. Kudei, Aidi noticed, had actually stopped breathing. “Kudei,” he said. “Teuche won’t talk to me for some reason; you’d better tell me. What is all this? Kudei?”

  But Kudei had passed the latter to Alces. He was grinning when he took it, and the grin didn’t really fade; it stuck (the wind’ll change and you’ll stick like it), so that he looked rather like a fox pelt nailed up on a door to dry and cure, with the head left on, and the drying-out shrivels the flesh of the jaw, drawing it open in a grin . . .

  “Someone talk to me,” Aidi said angrily. “Fly, for crying out loud.”

  Alces lifted his face away from the letter, and it was whitish-grey, like low-grade pipe clay, and his eyes were very wide. Without looking away, he shoved the letter towards Muri, who was just out of arm’s reach. “Screw you, then,” Aidi snapped, and he lunged at the paper in Alces’ hand; it was whisked away before his fingers could close on it, and he felt Kunessin’s hand on his shoulder. He stopped where he was.

  “Leave it,” Kunessin said. “Let Muri read it.”

  Muri read it; and then his hands dropped to his knees, and he said, “It’s not true. It can’t be. Teuche?”

  Kunessin was looking at Aidi, thinking, doing some sort of complex mental calculation. “Let him see it,” he said.

  Muri shook his head, like a horse shying. “It’s just the government playing games,” he said. “It’s not possible.”

  With a sound somewhere between a grunt and a roar, Aidi sprang forward and snatched the letter from Muri’s hand, darted back to where he’d been and glanced at it. Then there was a moment when his eyes seemed to slip off it, like a rasp off hardened steel. His lips parted, but he made no sound.