Mightier than the Sword

by K. J. Parker

  Mightier than the Sword Copyright © 2017 by K. J. Parker.

  All rights reserved.

  Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2017 by Vincent Chong.

  All rights reserved.

  Print version interior design Copyright © 2017 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-59606-818-6

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  subterraneanpress.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Translator's Note

  Content

  Translator’s note

  Although entirely lacking in literary merit, Concerning The Monasteries is a remarkable document in many ways. First and foremost, it is the oldest extant sustained piece of writing in the Robur language, so archaic in places as to be practically unintelligible, but fascinating nonetheless. Second, it was written at the time of the events it records (although see Baines, AJA 2007, 42-7 on the serious internal inconsistencies regarding chronology). Finally, it is a personal document rather than a formal chronicle, a unique example from such an early period. It therefore gives us an unparalleled opportunity to hear an authentic voice from the deep past—even if it is not, as Hansen (CJ 1987, 33ff) so ingeniously argues, the work of its apparent narrator, nevertheless it is a voice, from a world inexpressibly distant and remote from our own.

  I have followed Pedretti’s Cambridge text throughout, except where specifically noted. I am grateful to Dr John Lancaster of the University of Wisconsin–Madison for his interpretation of the notoriously corrupt final section, and his inspired suggestion of ‘linen-press’ for ezaucho.

  The usual metaphor is a lighthouse; the monastery as a guttering flame devotedly tended, its small pale gleam resolutely defining the way through the tumultuous storm of barbarism until the Sun rises again—in the East, it goes without saying. They don’t have metaphors for the monasteries in the North and the West, where such institutions aren’t beautiful images but everyday facts—hard landlords, unreliable business partners, bad neighbours, slow payers. At one time, the cenobitic orders owned two-thirds of the land north of Dens Montis and west of Shevec; they owned the mills and the bridges, the mines, the tanneries, the lumber yards, the forges, the weirs, the moorings, the fishponds, the locks, the ferries, every damn thing you really need. True, they built most of them, nobody else had the money; because the monasteries had taken it all, in rents and tithes. At any rate, that’s what they say in the North. I know, because I’ve been there.

  And what do they spend it on, they say in the North, for crying out loud? The usual answer is perfectly true. They spend it on tending the guttering flame; on fifty thousand literate hands, endlessly writing, copying out; on paints and painters, music, sculpture, architecture; on wisdom, beauty, philosophy, mathematics, the glory of the Invincible Sun; on knowledge and truth. A small price to pay, don’t you agree, for everything valuable ever achieved by the human race, which only the Orders are left to preserve and maintain in the face of the approaching darkness.

  And on other things, too. An insatiable need for vellum and parchment means vast herds and flocks; it also means veal and lamb until you’re sick of the sight of it, and you long for a simple bowl of lentil soup.

  And other things, too. The monasteries are where the Emperors dump their awkward relatives, out of harm’s way, out of sight, out of mind. That or slaughter them; a small price to pay for clemency.

  EVER SINCE THE Emperor was taken ill, the palace staff have been reporting for their orders to the Empress; five years now, and of course it’s only temporary, until His Majesty is up and about again. In practice, this means that when you present yourself at the Lion Gate and bang timidly on the wicket, the kettlehats who peer at you through the little grill are Household Guard, not Companions. I’m all in favour of that. I can see the rationale behind the Companions being recruited exclusively from illiterate barbarians—loyal and answer-able to the emperor alone, therefore outside and above politics, and so forth—but I still think it’s nice to have gatekeepers who can understand Imperial. I have an appointment with the deputy Chief Commissioner for Transpontine Waterways isn’t the easiest thing to get across in sign language.

  On this occasion, of course, it wasn’t have been a problem. If the Empress sends for you, the herald gives you a dear little ivory spindle, inlaid with emeralds and garnets, which the gatekeeper takes away from you, and then you don’t get any bother from anyone.

  Some chamberlain in a blue gown with gold tassels relieved me of my helmet and sword and led me up about a million flights of stairs and down a million miles of corridor—I’d just got back from four months on campaign and reckoned I was in fairly good shape, but before long I was sweating and breathing heavily, while this little pot-bellied bald chap trotted happily along in front of me, sandals clip-clopping on the flagstones—until we arrived at the great bronze doors of the Purple, and suddenly I knew where I was. I hung back while he announced me—all the ranks and titles and general scrambled-egg, which I shall never ever learn to associate with my own name—and then I was in; alone in the Presence.

  It’s all a pose, of course, because everything to do with empire and authority always is, but I have to say, she does it rather well. When the empress grants you an audience, she receives you in the ludicrously-named Small Inner Chamber—it’s the size of Permia, but without the rivers—and you stand on one edge of this desert of polished marble while she sits on the other, by the twelve-foot-high window, so as to get the light for her needlework.

  It is, let me tell you, the most politicised haberdashery in human history. The pose is; empress of the civilised world she may be, but at heart she’s still just an ordinary hard-working housewife, diligent, thrifty, hard-headed, waste-not-want-not. So there she sits, in a gold and ivory chair, wearing a plain dress of worsted she spun herself, turning a shirt-collar or sides-to-middling a bedsheet. She’s not just miming, it’s genuine work, all the grooms in the Imperial stable wear socks hand-knitted by Her Majesty; and as she sits there, counting her rows and biting off ends of thread, she’s doing the budgets of six provinces in her head and calculating a new exchange rate for the hyperpyron against the Vesani thaler.

  She didn’t look up. “Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

  I mumbled something about reporting as ordered. “Speak up,” she snapped. I repeated it, shouting. She thinks it’s appropriate for old women to be a bit deaf, though in fact she’s got ears like a bat.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” she said, in a voice that made my heart sink. “I saw the reports from Supply. Eighteen thousand pairs of boots in the last six months, and nine hundred tons of chain-mail links. You’re seventeen per cent overspent on this year’s budget. Do I look like I’m made of money?”

  “No, aunt.”

  “Your father was just the same.” She squinted, trying to thread a needle. “I told him till I was blue in the face, it’s no earthly use you winning all those glorious victories if you haven’t got the money to pay for garrisons and fortifications. You go out there, you kill a hundred thousand savages, then you’ve got to turn right round and come straight back again. And what does that achieve? Nothing at all, it just makes the savages hate us. Of course he never listened to me, and now look.” She thrust the needle and cotton at me. I’m good at threading needles, I’ve had the practice. “You let the contractors rob you blind, that’s what it is,” she said. “You just don’t think, that’s your trouble. You imagine all I have to do is wave a magic wand and suddenly there’ll be money. Well,
it’s not like that.”

  I cleared my throat. “Actually, aunt, I don’t do procurement of supplies, properly speaking I’m not even a soldier any more, I’m an Imperial legate, which means—”

  “Oh be quiet.” She took back the needle and made a few stitches, neat and infinitesimally small. “I know what you are, I got you the job, remember, when your uncle wanted to send you to Scaurene. And now I’ve got another job for you, and let’s hope you don’t make a complete mess of it.”

  You could resent a remark like that. Let the record show that over the previous six months I’d negotiated a two-year truce with the Sashan, disposed of the crown prince of Ersevan and hammered out a horrendously fraught alliance with the Blemyans against the threat of the southern nomads. I don’t expect any of that to be remembered, because it’s all wars that never happened, mighty battles that never got fought, darkest hours of the empire that never had to be faced. But what the hell.

  “Of course, aunt,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s those wretched pirates.” She made the dreaded Land and Sea Raiders sound like a butcher who persisted in overcharging for sausages. “They’ve attacked Cort Rosch and Cort Seul, burnt to the ground, nothing left. Disgraceful. It’s got to stop. So I’m sending you. Pass me the small scissors.”

  I was too stunned to speak. I passed her the scissors.

  ACTUALLY, SHE'S NOT a bad old stick. The strategic mention of Scaurene won’t have escaped you; she’ll never let me forget that, of course. If you’re aware of my dreadful past history, you’ll know that I was caught in bed with the Princess Royal, rest her soul, and His Majesty Ultor II, emperor of the known world and brother of the Invincible Sun, was absolutely livid. He wanted to chop my bits off and send me off to a desert monastery, to reflect (his words) on what constitutes acceptable behaviour. But she saved me. She nagged him every morning over breakfast and went on and on at him during his afternoon nap, and just as he was about to fall asleep after a gruelling day’s work she’d bring the subject up yet again; he’s only young, give the boy a chance to redeem himself, I owe it to the memory of my poor dear brother, who died saving your life, over and over again. It’s thanks to her I’m writing this, and not frisking my pillow every night for scorpions.

  HAVING RECEIVED MY commission, I did what any responsible man does when he’s posted to the frontier. I set my affairs in order.

  The regular crowd doesn’t dig in at the Diligence and Mercy until well after midnight, but I knew she’d be there. I pulled my hood round my face—silly thing to do, it marks you out to everyone in the place as Man Trying Not To Be Noticed, and everybody stares—and asked one of the serving women if she’d seen her.

  She looked at me. “Haven’t you heard?”

  Most of the rest of the night I spent dashing frantically from one miserably depressing charitable institution to another; eventually, just when I’d given up hope, I found her in the Reform House. The bastards, they’d dumped her in the drunk-tank, with nothing but a filthy old blanket and a vague assurance that someone would be along at some point. She lifted her head and frowned at me. “Hello, you,” she said.

  I nearly broke up. Standing joke between us; her least favourite regular (he’s about seven foot tall, absolutely no idea of the concept of personal space) always addresses her thus, and it makes her want to scream. “Hello,” I said. “Taking the night off?”

  The knife had gone in about an inch to the left of her navel. No way of telling how much blood she’d lost. “I think I might have annoyed him,” she said. “How bad is it?”

  She knows I know about these things, being a soldier. “It’s not wonderful,” I told her.

  “The bleeding’s stopped,” she said. Her lips trembled as she spoke. “And it was a clean knife. Mine. You know, the silver-handled one.”

  She keeps it under her pillow. “We’ll have you out of here,” I promised her. “I’ll get the sawbones from the Twenty-Third, you’ll be fine. Just stay there, I’ll be right back.”

  She said something as I ran out, but I didn’t catch it. I sprinted up Cartgate, managed to find a chair—amazing luck—at the Chantry steps; the barracks, I told them, and showed them a five-thaler. They ran all the way, bless them.

  By the time I’d rounded up the doctor (he was asleep in bed; had to give him a direct order) and the chairmen had run us all the way back to the Reform House—I wasn’t expecting to find her alive. I remember praying under my breath all the way, my life for hers, as though I genuinely believed there was someone up there to pray to. I don’t know. Maybe there is.

  He’s a miserable old bugger, that doctor, but once he sees his patient, nothing else matters. I’d dragged the chairmen in with me to be porters, and they carried her out like she was made of icing-sugar. “She can’t go back to the barracks,” the doctor told me. “It’s against regulations.”

  I hadn’t thought of that; and the doctor’s a terror for the rules. You see, I don’t actually have a house, or a home of any sort; I just camp out in various palaces. Stupid, really. And that was the first time I realised it.

  I don’t have a home but I do have money. “The Caecilia house on West Hill,” I told the chairmen. “Know it?”

  Stupid question; it’s one of the principal landmarks north of the river. They found it just fine; weren’t very happy when I told them to kick the door down, but another five-thaler changed all that. “You can’t just barge in like that,” the doctor said. I glared at him. The house is for sale, I pointed out. I’ve decided to buy it. First thing in the morning, I’ll send someone round to the agents with a draft. Meanwhile, do your fucking job.

  I stayed an hour or so, then I couldn’t bear it any more; left him to it, told the chairmen (they’d hung around waiting without being asked; amazing how, when the world turns against you, there’s so often some too-lowly-to-matter strangers who’ll stick by you right to the end) to take me over to the Knights. I woke them up by kicking the door. The man who answered the door was about to call the watch when I told them I was there to buy the Caecilia house.

  “It’s three in the morning,” the man said. “Can’t it wait?”

  “What’s the asking price?”

  He screwed his fingers into his eyes and ground the sleep out of them. “Six million,” he said.

  “Got some paper?”

  I wrote out a draft, on the Golden Cross temple, and handed it to him. He stared at it, saw the name; his demeanour changed somewhat. Please come in, he said, sit down, make yourself comfortable. Would you care for some tea and honey-cakes?

  Thanks, I said, but I’m in a hurry. He blinked. The keys, he started to say. I told him, that’s fine, I don’t need any keys.

  Funny, isn’t it, how there are things—really big, huge, important things that shape and dominate your life—that you don’t even know about until something like that happens. I hadn’t realised that I had no home. I hadn’t realised I loved her, more than anyone or anything in the world.

  “It’s all right, lads,” I told the chairmen, “no need to run.”

  —Because I was in no hurry to get back to the Caecilia house (now my property, my home). It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive and be told something you don’t want to hear. It seemed like it took no time at all to get back to West Hill. Just enough time to prepare my mind, as I’ve done on a number of occasions in my life. Well, you know what they say. Hope for the best, expect the worst.

  So when the doctor scowled at me and said, “She’ll be fine,” I really wasn’t expecting it. That unimaginable surge of relief, that lifts you off your feet.

  “Really?” I said.

  He gave me a look I deserved. “No, I’m just pretending. Yes, she’ll be fine, eventually. Come on, you’ve seen wounds like that often enough.” He frowned, suddenly remembering. “Didn’t I stitch you up for something like that?” he said. “The Chloris campaign, about three years ago.”

  “So you did.” I’d forgotten. Shows what sh
eer terror does to the brain. My guts had been hanging out over my belt. He stuffed them back in, like making sausages. So that was why I’d chosen him for this occasion. Honestly, I’d clean forgotten.

  “Well, then. Complete rest and change the dressing twice a day. Can I go home now?”

  At that moment I’d have given him anything—the empire, my head, whatever. “Thank you,” I said.

  “I ought to report this,” he muttered at me. “I’m an army surgeon, not your personal bloody physician.”

  Actually, I think he did. I vaguely remember some talk of a court-martial, which my aunt had to put a stop to. But that was later, and who gives a damn? “Can I see her?”

  He shrugged. “I imagine so,” he said, “she’s ill, not invisible. She’s asleep now, don’t wake her up. Your chair can take me home.”

  I gave each of the chairmen a gold tremiss. They stared at me and said how grateful they were. Them grateful to me, for stupid money. Ridiculous.

  She woke up just after dawn. By that point, I’d located and hired a fancy society doctor and six nurses; amazing what you can get hold of in the wee small hours if you can pay for it. Something else I’d never realised before, in a desperate emergency, just how useful money can be. I see now why people prize it so highly.

  “I’ve got to go away,” I told her, “on business. Won’t be too long. When I get back, I think we should get married.”

  She looked at me. “Are you completely mad?” she said.

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  Her face was as pale as milk. Inhuman, cross between an angel and a corpse. “One, they won’t let you. Two, you don’t want to marry me. Three, what on earth makes you think I want to marry you? Or anybody, come to that. Four—”

  “You should rest now,” I said. “We’ll talk about it when I get home.”