Colours in the Steel f-1

by K. J. Parker

  The book went on to offer suggestions for the safe handling of the compound; after being mixed, it should be stored in stone jars covered with freshly scraped rawhides, and the men who handled it should have their clothes and gloves impregnated with talc; to ignite it, use a torch on the end of a very long pole, and stand well back…

  Also contained in the book were clear and concise instructions as to how to annihilate enemy armies by smashing clay models of them with a mallet; how to create panic by blotting out the sun by means of incantations; how to supplement your own depleted army by bringing the recently dead back to life using secret charms and arrowroot. It was not considered to be required reading for aspiring young officers, and was generally only taken down from its shelf by young novices who’d heard there were pictures of naked women in one of the later chapters.

  Nevertheless, once he’d found out what naphtha was and where it could be bought, he’d set a team of engineers to experiment with mixing the stuff, trying different quantities and purities of ingredients. The results had been startling; so much so that he was tempted to try and find the book again and have a go at some of its other recommendations.

  Throwing the stuff from catapults had turned out to be impractical. The jars had an alarming tendency to shatter at the moment of release, setting fire to the engine and showering its crew with blazing potsherds. With this in mind, he hadn’t even tested the small stones wrapped in impregnated cloth. Instead, he’d ordered the Quartermaster to buy up all the raw materials his department could lay its hands on, and commissioned the potters to produce tall thin-walled jars with high, narrow necks that could be stuffed with rag and set on fire; one of which he was now frantically trying to keep hold of while an engineer touched a lighted torch to its neck.

  ‘Ready,’ the engineer said, as the rag flared up and started to burn ferociously a few inches away from his face. Cursing, Loredan hoisted the jar up onto the battlement, held it out into space and let go.

  ‘Next,’ he said.

  Suddenly, the crew of one of the rafts seemed to be wearing fire.

  From head to foot they were alight, like torches. Screaming, they barged into each other, slipped up, fell over, scrambled to their feet, still burning. Everything they touched caught fire, or was already alight. Some were consumed almost at once, dropping as black man-shaped cinders into the flames that danced on the deck of the raft. Others launched themselves into the water, went under and came up still burning. A few were still alive as they scrabbled onto the adjacent rafts, whose crews jabbed at them with spears and fended them off with raft poles, only to find that the fire had spread and was now flaring up around their feet. Meanwhile, more pots were being dropped from the walls; as they smashed they spread more fire, splashing the stuff everywhere so that the surface of the water was covered in hissing flames.

  The ladders caught fire and toppled back onto the men below; the crews of the rafts that weren’t alight yet were furiously hacking at the cables, trying to cut the bonds that held the manmade island together and pole away before the fire reached them. Flames licked up the walls, almost reaching as high as the battlements. Swirling clouds of black smoke rose and hovered over the scene, so that from his place on the high ground Temrai could only catch intermittent glimpses of fire and movement to help him interpret the sounds that were coming from the river, the screams and shouts and crashes.

  It was like some visible plague spreading uncontrollably, and the men on the bank kept the raft crews from coming ashore, afraid that the contagion would spread. Men were diving off the rafts, swimming a few yards underwater and coming up to find their heads emerging through a horizontal curtain of fire that kindled their wet hair and dripped down their faces, scorching out their eyes and being sucked into their lungs as they panted for air. Some of the archers had started shooting at the rafts, either to put the burning men out of their misery or to stop them coming ashore. More pots were falling, although the rafts they fell on were already on fire; when these shattered, all their contents lit up at once, creating great gusts of swelling, billowing flame that rose high in the air. Steam rose and met the clouds of smoke, until a translucent curtain closed the spectacle off like the flap of a tent.

  Many things crossed Temrai’s mind as he watched; among them the thought that someone in the city had read the same book he had, and the slight consolation that the reserve secret weapon he hadn’t yet had time to develop properly could, quite evidently, be made to work.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Right,’ said Loredan, wiping talc from his hands, ‘that’ll do. Get the rest of that stuff back to the stores, and for gods’ sakes be careful with it. You two, casualty lists. You and you, inventory of engines still operational or capable of being repaired. You, organise clean-up and get these dead people out of here. Garantzes-’ He paused. ‘Anybody seen Garantzes? Last time I saw him-’

  Someone made a gesture, a finger across his throat. Loredan scowled.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. No time now to ask how it’d happened, whether he died bravely in defence of his city or just lost his balance and fell off the wall; the engineer would still be dead later on, and he could deal with it then. ‘In that case, where’s Faneron Boutzes? Still alive? Good, because you’re now Chief Engineer. I want a report of structural damage to the walls and how soon it can be patched up. If anyone wants me, I’ll be in Council.’

  Miraculously, someone had found time to clear the head of the stairs, and he managed to get down them without falling over. If he could somehow persuade his feet to carry him up the hill and through the second-city gate to the chapter house, he’d reward them by sitting down. It had been one of those days.

  We came close, but we’re still here. Didn’t make fools of ourselves. And tomorrow is another day.

  It was a very strange feeling to walk through the city in the middle of the afternoon and see nobody in the streets. Where were they all? There were lots of houses in the lower city of Perimadeia, but somehow Loredan had always suspected that there weren’t enough of them to accommodate all the thousands of people he was used to seeing in the streets. Subconsciously he’d somehow assumed that they worked it by shifts; the day people came home about the time the night people went out, and somehow they shared living quarters.

  A few courageous souls were starting to poke their noses through the shutters. A solitary wheelwright had opened the top door of his shop, and was ostentatiously planing a spoke held in a wooden vice. As he passed through the silversmiths’ quarter he heard voices from behind the closed door of a tavern he’d been to a few times. A few dogs wagged tails and sniffed here and there; a horse trailed its reins slowly through the overflow of a blocked gutter.

  He passed another tavern, a favourite. They served good cider, not cheap but not too expensive, and a wicked half-distilled sweet wine that left you asking complete strangers who you were and where you lived. Probably just as well it was shut. Am I allowed to go into taverns? he wondered. Is it in order for the Commander-in-Chief to pop in to a boozer for a quick one on his way home from the war? Probably not.

  Ah, well. There’d be something to drink when he got to the chapter house (mustn’t start thinking of it as home). And possibly even food, maybe a place he could lie down and get some sleep. All of those things would be nice, except that tomorrow was another day.

  When he arrived at the chapter house, he found the place almost deserted. There were a few clerks, people who had specific jobs to do and no time to stop and chat. He asked where everybody had got to; the Prefect, the Lord Lieutenant, the heads of department. The clerk looked up, shrugged and said he didn’t know; some of them may have gone down to the harbour early so as to avoid the mad rush for a place on a ship, some had hurried away when word came through that the rafts had been dealt with – gone to their offices, presumably, to deal with matters of importance. The others, for all he knew, might well have gone off to celebrate. After all, it had been a victory, hadn’t it?

  Loredan’s
brows furrowed. Victory? What’s that? Well, he supposed you could call it that.

  ‘So nobody needs me for anything?’ he suggested.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the clerk replied guardedly, obviously unwilling to take responsibility for giving the Commander-in-Chief the rest of the day off. ‘I’m just making copies of these minutes, like I was told to.’

  ‘Right,’ Loredan said. ‘If anybody comes looking for me, tell them I’ll be in my quarters.’ That sounded sufficiently military, he decided.

  A wave of relief hit him as he pushed open the door of the room in the gatehouse where he’d been sleeping since the emergency began; also a feeling of anticlimax, and guilt, of course, for skiving off when there was undoubtedly work he should be doing. None of them lasted very long, however. No sooner had he put his back to the stone ledge than he was fast asleep.

  Loredan never remembered his dreams after he’d woken up, so that was all right.

  Two and a half hours later, he came round to find someone waggling his foot backwards and forwards. ‘Wake up,’ he was saying. ‘Everybody’s looking for you.’

  Gods, but I wish that just for once somebody would talk to me as if I was something other than a hired entertainer. ‘Go away,’ he grunted. ‘Be with you in a minute.’

  ‘The Prefect wants to see you, now,’ the man replied. ‘It’s important.’

  Loredan toyed with the idea of kicking him across the room, but he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength. Virtually every joint in his body had seized like a rusted hinge. ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘Do I get to wash my face and hands first, or have I got to go along looking like something found on a sausage-maker’s midden?’

  ‘Urgent is what I was told,’ the messenger replied. ‘And that was an hour ago. Come on.’

  As threatened, the Prefect wasn’t happy about having been kept waiting. He’d chosen to meet Loredan in one of the side cloisters that radiated away from the chapter house like the spokes of a wheel, and when Loredan got there he was pacing up and down with a ferocious scowl on his face.

  ‘I’m not blaming you,’ were his first words. ‘I know the situation was grave, and I believe you were doing what you thought was best for the city. But it’s caused the most awful uproar on the political front.’

  Loredan sat down on a stone lion and held up his hand. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but what are you talking about?’

  The Prefect looked at him as if he’d caught him asleep in class. ‘This magic-fire weapon of yours,’ he replied. ‘I’m afraid we’ve played right into the opposition’s hands by using that.’ He gave Loredan a reproachful look. ‘If only you’d given me some warning, at least I could have paved the way, done some groundwork at grass-roots level.’

  ‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  The Prefect glared at him. ‘This fire stuff. They’re saying you shouldn’t have used it like that. Partly because it’s magic, and that’s a red rag to a bull as far as the Rationalist lobby are concerned. Mostly, though, they’re saying it’s inhumane. By using it we’re acting like savages ourselves. They’re talking about implications, possible reprisals. I’m afraid you’ve really stirred up a hornet’s nest in Council.’

  Loredan opened his mouth; but there wasn’t any point saying the things he could get away with saying. He closed it again and sat still.

  ‘I’ve done my best,’ the Prefect went on. ‘They wanted an outright ban, but we’ve compromised on the position that we won’t use the stuff again without formal advance authority from the Council, and then only in certain rigidly defined… Where do you think you’re going?’

  Wearily, Loredan sat down again. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘let me have a wash and get something to eat. I think I need to throw up, and that’s hard to do on an empty stomach.’

  The Prefect made a faint tutting noise that could easily have cost him his life under different circumstances. ‘I was rather hoping you’d be sensible about this,’ he said. ‘After all, we’ve had our differences before now, but you’ve done a good job over the last few days and I was hoping I could spare you this, not to mention the embarrassment it’ll cause us.’

  Loredan tried to find a few last scraps of patience, but there wasn’t any left. He got up slowly and started to walk away.

  ‘I’m relieving you of your command,’ the Prefect said to his back. ‘Effective immediately. I’m sorry, but this witchcraft business on top of that fiasco with the cavalry raid-’

  Loredan turned round. ‘You agreed to that,’ he said. ‘You agreed it was necessary to take out their engineers-’

  ‘Not that one, the other one. Before they even got here.’ The Prefect folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I think the only way out of this shambles is to bring the trial forward to the earliest date acceptable to the prosecution. Then, assuming you win-’

  ‘Trial?’ Loredan looked blank. ‘What trial?’

  The Prefect looked as if he was about to lose his temper. ‘Your trial, man. For culpable negligence in your handling of the raid. If I can, I’ll try and persuade the Prosecutor’s Office to add on these new witchcraft charges so that it can all be dealt with in one go.’ He sighed. ‘It won’t be easy, since strictly speaking they’re different jurisdictions, but in the circumstances they might agree.’

  ‘Witchcraft,’ Loredan repeated. ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m glad you do,’ said the Prefect sharply. ‘Anyway, if we can bring the date forward, then – assuming you win, as I said – we’ll be in a position to reinstate you in a week or so, provided the Council can be made to agree. I trust you appreciate the fact that I’m sticking my neck out for you, Loredan. You’d do well to remember that the next time you choose to take the law into your own hands.’

  Loredan thought for a moment. ‘If I’m relieved of command,’ he said, ‘does that mean I can go home?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ the Prefect said. ‘You can do what the hell you like, provided you vacate your office and sleeping quarters within the next three hours; and, of course, you lose your right of attendance to Council meetings. We’ll need to know where you can be reached, of course, in case the Council want you for any reason. If you’d take my advice, I suggest you get back to work at your fencing school, get yourself in shape and on form for your trial. If you were to lose that it’d reflect very badly on us. Very badly indeed.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that,’ Loredan said, and walked away.

  ‘I think we should go home now,’ someone said.

  There were four new faces at the council of war in Temrai’s tent, and he didn’t know the names of two of them. He shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Temrai.’ Uncle Anakai leant forward and laid a hand on his arm. ‘It was a disaster. We were comprehensively beaten. We’ve lost the rafts, the ladders and the battering ram, not to mention just over fourteen hundred killed. Carrying on simply isn’t an option if you want to remain as chief of this tribe.’

  ‘We’re staying,’ Temrai said quietly. ‘We’re carrying on until we win. That’s all.’

  ‘Temrai.’ His aunt Lanaten, seventy years old and nearly blind, knelt painfully beside him. ‘There’s no need. You’ve done your best, nobody will blame you for not doing what isn’t possible. Perimadeia can’t be taken, it’s protected by magic. You can’t fight the gods.’

  ‘Magic be damned,’ Temrai grunted, his eyes closed. ‘That wasn’t magic, it was a recipe out of an old book. I read the book myself. But they weren’t making the stuff while I was there, of that I’m certain.’

  ‘A book?’ someone queried. ‘You mean it’s something people can make, not magic at all?’

  ‘Of course,’ Temrai said. ‘It’s just naphtha, pitch and sulphur. Why do you think I’ve been buying up every jar of the filthy mess I could lay my hands on?’

  Uncle Anakai’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You think you can produce this fire-oil?’ he said.

  ‘Of course. Anybody can mak
e anything if they’ve got the knowledge and the tools. It’s just a matter of trial and error till we get the proportions exactly right.’

  ‘So we could use it against them,’ said someone else. ‘Are we going to?’

  Temrai nodded. ‘Yes, eventually,’ he said. ‘When we get to that stage. More to the point, I know how we can protect ourselves against it in future rather more effectively than we did today. It’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘Temrai, fourteen hundred people died today.’ That was Ceuscai, sounding angry; he’s starting to presume a bit too much, Temrai said to himself. ‘That’s more than die in a year under normal circumstances.’

  ‘We’re at war, Ceuscai. People get killed in a war, it happens.’

  ‘Not like that they don’t.’ Ceuscai was definitely angry now. Temrai remembered that he’d been in charge of the archers, he’d have had a first-class view of what happened on the rafts. Even so, he was speaking out of turn. ‘Temrai, I don’t care if it wasn’t witchcraft, people believe it was witchcraft and you’re not going to be able to change their minds. You’ll lose them, Temrai. It’s not something they can be expected to do, take on the gods, everything they believe in. For pity’s sake, man, you ought to be able to see that for yourself.’

  Temrai stood up. ‘This council is dismissed,’ he said abruptly. ‘And now I’ve got work to do, and so have all of you.’

  When they’d gone he sank down onto the bed, his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms wrapped round them, his eyes wide open. He felt like a man who’s stared directly into a bright sun; there were flashes and splodges of hot colour on the surface of his eyes, even when he closed them. The effect of staring at the sun fades sooner or later; but these colours came from the light of the burning rafts, and he doubted that he would ever be rid of them.