by K. J. Parker
Next he pulled off his coat, sopping wet from the afternoon’s sudden downpour, and reached for his second best; an old friend, shabby and frayed but nicely moulded to his body by years of close association. Not the most appropriate attire for an audience with the Prefect, but he didn’t exactly care too much if he got fired. His shirt and trousers were wet too, but he couldn’t be bothered to change them. The heat of the fire in the reception room of the Prefect’s palace would dry them off soon enough.
A quick drag of a comb through his hair; that would have to do. Now then; he’d open his present, and then he’d have to go.
It didn’t take a genius to work out what was inside the cloth wrappings; a narrow, heavy bundle roughly two and a half feet long containing something metal. Someone had sent him a sword. He could do with one, sure enough. It was embarrassing for the Deputy Lord Lieutenant, the officer commanding the defences of Perimadeia, to be the only man on the wall with an empty scabbard swinging from his belt. He slit the string with his knife and peeled away the cloth; then sat quite still for a moment, staring.
A genuine Guelan. More than that; a genuine Guelan broadsword – there were only about five of them still in existence – rather than the more common but still murderously valuable law-swords that the great smith had made his reputation with. Yet a Guelan it undoubtedly was, he knew that before he drew the short, heavy blade from the scabbard and found the distinctive and uncopiable marks on the ricasso. No one had ever made military swords like the great Liras Guelan. Other makers’ imitations were dull abortions, fit only for chopping wood or opening barrels. Nobody before or since had hit on that precise harmony of weight and balance that made it the next best thing to perfect, for single- or double-handed use, cutting or thrusting.
There was a special skill to using them, so the legend went (and for the first time, as he held the sword in his hands, he realised it was no fairy tale); if you tried to use it like an ordinary sword, the weight of the blade and the proportions – long handle and short blade – would defeat you. The harder you tried, the more effort you put into it, the more sluggishly the weapon would handle. But if you used the weight rather than fighting to overcome it, then the sword would seem to guide itself, adding its own force to the blow in apparent defiance of all the laws of physics. A Guelan broadsword, they said, should be allowed to fight for you; it knew exactly what it was doing, and all the wielder had to or should do was hang onto the blunt end and watch the fun.
Bardas Loredan had his doubts about people who waxed lyrical over lethal weapons; even so, he felt he could make allowances in this one rather exceptional case. All his working life, it went without saying, he’d wanted one (though it wouldn’t have done for work, being outside the prescribed dimensions for legal use), and now here one was, its weight firm but not oppressive against the muscles of his upper arm, like a pedigree falcon deigning to sit for a time on his wrist.
This must have cost a fortune. He remembered the letter. Not wanting to put his marvellous new possession down, even for a moment, he fumbled awkwardly to break the seal and open the folded paper.
Bardas-
I assume you got my message and the letter that followed it, so obviously you don’t want to see me. I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ll understand if you don’t want to accept this from me (though you’d be a damn fool not to; you wouldn’t believe the trouble I had tracking one down, and when I found it the owner didn’t want to sell). Take it, though; it can’t be blamed for the sins of the giver, and you’ll find a use for it, I’m sure. I’ve told it to keep you safe; that’s why it had to be a Guelan – aren’t they supposed to have minds of their own? Try not to break this one.
With my love,
Gorgas Loredan.
Bardas Loredan looked at the letter, then at the sword, then back at the letter, then back at the sword. Weapons, he knew, are ambivalent, capable of doing good or evil, or both, or both together, incapable of knowing or caring about the use to which they’re put. The same, Loredan reflected, is true of the lawyer, the man who fights and kills for a cause not his own in the name of justice. The weapon in his hand and the skill that hand imparts to the weapon decide right and wrong, good and evil; but the stronger and quicker on the day prevail over the slower and weaker, and if a moment before the fight the defendant had taken over the plaintiff’s brief and vice versa, it’s hard to believe that the outcome would be different. Maybe that’s what I’ve become, Loredan thought, or maybe that’s what I’ve been all along; a weapon in someone else’s hand, created to kill and do damage, either for good or for evil depending on whose hand I happen to be in. And the Guelan – aren’t they supposed to have minds of their own? – perhaps it means something, arriving precisely now, when I’m the advocate instructed on behalf of the city of Perimadeia, entrusted with its defence and the righteousness of its cause.
It must have cost him a fortune… Yes, and over the years he’s cost me; maybe somehow he’s been using me, along with all the others, though I can’t imagine what for. It’s been his actions that have governed everything I’ve ever done, since that day beside the river when he left me for dead and took away the life I should have had. If he thinks he can buy me with this-
But a Guelan broadsword; it wasn’t answerable for the sins of the giver, just as the lawyer isn’t responsible for the acts of his client. Above all, they’d told him when he took his oath at the enrollment ceremony, an advocate fights for justice, and justice is his only client. And a sword cuts skin and flesh for the man who swings it; and a man is a sword in the hand of his own circumstances, the things that have happened in the past that have made him what he is and their consequences in the present that he must address and deal with. Taking this from his brother wasn’t all that different from taking the sword of the man he’d just killed on the floor of the courthouse. He’d earned it, in that sense; and once it was his, its past no longer mattered.
Gods, I’d make myself believe anything just to be able to keep this thing. It’s worth more than I ever earned in ten years in the racket. And what the devil does he mean ‘all my love’?
Loredan suddenly remembered the meeting he was late for. It was by a conscious act, no mere instinct of haste, that he unbuckled his belt, threaded it through the double loops of the scabbard-frog and drew it tight again; and in that instant he rejected the comfort that lay implicit in the excuse, I was only ever following instructions; they made me do it; it wasn’t me. Bardas Loredan, a Guelan broadsword; weapons of such quality and antecedents with minds of their own…
Well, well, he said to himself as he slammed out of the small, cold room and ran down the cloister towards the chapter house, if in the end I had to sell my soul, better keep it in the family than flog it off cheap to the charcoal people. But that thought didn’t resolve the matter; a final decision would have to be deferred until he had more time to consider it, and if possible more data.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘I’d feel happier if I had the faintest idea what’s going on,’ Ceuscai muttered. The dim moonlight made the cloud of his chilled breath glow, as if his words had somehow frozen in the cold of the night. ‘The first one was bad enough. And I didn’t like this one at all.’
Beside him, crouched under the cover of a wagon, Temrai watched the torches burning on the bridgehouse tower, and shivered a little. ‘Probably some family thing,’ he replied, ‘about which we neither need to know nor particularly care. My only worry is that it’s some kind of trap.’
‘Bound to be,’ said the man on Temrai’s left. ‘Honestly, it smells like last year’s cheese. Enemy General’s brother comes and tells you he’s going to open the gates and lower the drawbridge at midnight – Gods, Temrai, what else do you believe in? The old woman with the basket of winds? The tooth fairy?’
Temrai scowled, though nobody could see him. ‘If it looks at all dodgy we won’t go,’ he said. ‘But if this trap of yours involves opening the gates and lowering the drawbridge, then it’s my kind of
trap.’
‘They could have all sorts waiting for us; boiling oil, pitfalls, engines, a whole company of archers loosing off point-blank-’
At the very least, Temrai said to himself. If the first hundred men through the gate get more than ten yards in, I’ll be highly astonished. But that’s all budgeted for under Acceptable Losses. We could lose a thousand in the first ninety seconds and still be doing better than anticipated…
‘Hello,’ Ceuscai whispered. ‘Look.’
‘I’ll be damned,’ said somebody else further down the line. ‘The gate’s opening.’
There was indeed a slight change in the texture of the shadows under the bridgehouse tower. Temrai caught his breath. In a small fraction of a second, he would have to give the order to move forwards if he wasn’t to miss the opportunity. Once the order was given, there was a strong possibility that his forces might actually enter the city and begin to do the job. Once they were in, just suppose it all started to go according to plan; a detachment to storm the tower and seize the engines, stopping them from bombarding the causeway; two more to force the towers on either side, cutting communications on the wall and preventing the defenders from shooting down into his people as they came through the gate; a strong force to establish a bridgehead just inside the gate; then, assuming the city’s main relief force hadn’t arrived yet (three minutes into the operation, four if there was any resistance on the wall), a push outwards following the foot of the walls, with the aim of encircling the relief force when it appeared and cutting it off from retreat into the maze of streets and squares. If the plan worked, the city would be carved like an animal’s carcass fresh from the spit, divided into manageable portions that the various detachments could easily digest.
Temrai had envisaged the attack as being something like netting rabbits at night on the plains. First, get between the grazing rabbits and their burrows before they see or hear you, and set up the nets. Then show the lights and make the noise, sending the quarry darting back towards safety, right into the instrument of their destruction. Then, methodically and at one’s leisure, pull them struggling from the nets and stretch their necks. It had all seemed straightforward enough, put like that.
Once the order was given, he’d no longer be in control. Always assuming he’d ever been in control to begin with.
‘Here we go,’ he said, edging forward with his elbows until his head was clear of the wagon. ‘Best of luck, everyone. See you in Perimadeia.’
Gorgas Loredan stepped over the body of one of the guards and put his weight on the capstan handle. The drawbridge was massive; made deliberately so, in order that one man on his own wouldn’t be able to lower it. He felt the strain wrenching the muscles of his chest and back; fairly soon the weight would take over, and he’d need to let go and jump clear to avoid being knocked flying by the spinning handles of the windlass. At that point, it’d be beyond his capacity to undo what he was now doing; a few inches more, and Perimadeia would inevitably fall.
He stopped and took off the quiver that hung across his back; the baldric was galling his shoulders, and was one more thing for the windlass poles to catch in once the point of no return had been reached.
Arguably, that point had come and gone many years ago.
He’d shot down all the guards he could see; there had been four, which agreed with the observations he’d made over the last few nights of careful watching. If the plainsmen played their part, and were ready and waiting on the other side, there ought to be men inside the city within the next six minutes; their irruption would be his opportunity to slip away, head for the harbour and the ship he had standing by. If things worked out, he’d be well out to sea by the time the city knew it was dying.
Suddenly he felt the handle pulling away from him, its downward surge greater than his own strength. He let go and stepped back hurriedly, and the windlass began to turn of its own accord. The sound it made, a sort of chattering whir, seemed horribly loud in the still night – They’ll be able to hear that in the second city, he thought, you’d have to be dead not to hear it and guess what was going on. He let the moment linger in his mind; the last chance gone, the instant when the suicide feels the stool slip out from under him, or knows he can’t regain his balance on the parapet. In a way it was a comfort; oh, well, too late to do anything about it now, so what’s the point of worrying? The windlass spun like the wheel of a ship out of control; quite literally out of his hands now.
Job done; successful; no spear in my ribs or arrow in my back. Time I wasn’t here.
Just for once, I got it right.
A scoop of shadow grew dense in front of him and became a man; a guardsman, on his way to relieve one of the watch. He was running, staring, not even interested in Gorgas Loredan. Let him go by; no point in picking a fight at this stage of the proceedings.
The guardsman noticed him, hesitated, stopped running just long enough to yell to him. ‘Somebody’s opened the gate! Get help, quick!’ Then he disappeared into the shadows, just as the drawbridge reached the end of its chains, bounced and found its level. There were torches approaching in the distance, where the shadows of eaves overhanging an alley darkened the night. On the wall, someone called out. Suddenly there were men under the arch of the gate, running in, spreading out. An arrow hit the guardsman and he dropped dead to the ground.
Time I wasn’t here.
More arrows flying now; Gorgas could hear them hiss as they flew past. Behind him somewhere a window smashed. A brief burst of shouted speech, quickly drowned out by the hollow drumming of feet on the planks of the drawbridge. More shouts overhead, sword blades clashing four, five times. This is the first trickle of water appearing on the wrong side of the dam. Running out of time to get away. Time to move. Time I wasn’t here.
‘What’s happening?’ someone shouted. Gorgas saw whoever it was; a guardsman with a lantern who ran towards the shapes of men gathered around the gate. ‘What’s happening?’ he demanded of the first person he met, who drew a short sword and stuck it in him. More arrows hissing; they must be loosing blind, no light to see by. Just for once, I got it right. Out of my hands now.
There are ever so many orthodox reasons for bringing about the annihilation of a great city; revenge for some intolerable wrong; straightforward advantage, for example where a powerful and ambitious commercial interest decides that it would rather not repay the capital of the huge loan that threatens to strangle it; an overwhelming abhorrence for everything the city stands for; or simply because the grey of its walls clashes with the green of the grass and the blue of the sea. Some cities have been betrayed for the price of twenty acres of rocky pasture, or for love, or because they were there. Wise men in Alexius’ Order often debated the proposal that cities are by their very nature an abomination, a wart or growth that the body of the earth sooner or later heals of its own accord. Cities have been burnt to the ground by madmen, children playing with flint and tinder, and the hem of a curtain being blown into the open door of a bread oven by a gust of wind. Some cities have been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that workmen digging a ditch for a latrine will slice through a dozen crusts of masonry and ash, like the layers of a cake.
Gorgas Loredan had his own reasons, revenge and hatred and level-headed commercial acumen among them. More to the point, he was doing as he’d been told. All fair enough, for someone analysing the pathology of his actions. But Gorgas knew; he knew he was doing it for the best and most wholesome of reasons, for the same reason as everything he’d ever done since he’d left the Mesoge. For family.
Guardsmen were coming up, bringing torches and lanterns. One stopped and fell forwards. Others pulled up, stopped dead, swore under their breath and turned back. One of them will run to the second-city gatehouse to summon the Deputy Lord Lieutenant. He’ll grab his sword and his helmet and come running, shouting orders that nobody’ll be awake to catch. He’ll come running, straight into the oncoming enemy.
Gorgas Loredan drew a deep breath and started t
o run, not towards the harbour but up the hill. If he ran fast he might get there first, be in time to intercept his brother; it’s all over, I’ve got a ship waiting. A moment for the message to sink in; another moment, and, How did you know? Why’ve you got a ship waiting? Well, he’d deal with that when the moment came.
Behind him as he ran, more shouting on the walls; not city voices, not bewildered requests for information but signals and confirmations, anxiously waited for. An arrow hit the flagstones beside him and skipped, its movement like that of an eager dog at his heels. Irrelevant; no arrow was going to hit Gorgas Loredan tonight, because Gorgas Loredan has important things to do, he can’t be spared to make up the quota of first casualties. As he ran, his temples throbbed; what a time to have a headache, he said to himself, and tried to ignore it.
Someone grabbed Loredan by the shoulder and he woke up.
‘Come on!’ hissed the voice from behind the lantern. ‘They’re here. Some bastard opened the gate.’
Loredan blinked. His head was still full of sleep, and it hurt. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he mumbled. ‘Who…?’
‘The savages,’ the voice replied. ‘Come on, will you?’ They’re swarming all over the wall.’
Loredan stumbled off his bed and groped for his boots. ‘How did they get in?’ he asked. ‘Did you say-?’
‘Someone opened the gate. A traitor. There’s half a company of guards holding them at the pottery market, and that’s it.’
His feet didn’t want to go in the boots; his left heel was stuck about halfway down, and he couldn’t remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. He pulled the boot off and started again.
‘Has anyone called out the reserve?’ he asked. ‘And what about the district garrisons? Surely-’