Colours in the Steel f-1

by K. J. Parker

  He’d known for the last half-hour that he was going to die. Defeat is a gradual thing; it begins with the apprehension that things could be going better, develops into the perception that the situation is not favourable and that action must be taken to redress the balance; then, gradually, the emphasis shifts from they would appear to have an advantage to we might still win this if we pull something special out of the hat. Then, one by one, the possibilities for salvation are cancelled, until a point is reached where the brain acknowledges that realistically there can only be one outcome. After that, it scarcely matters whether the vanquished party fights bravely to the last or stands still and allows itself to be slaughtered. If they fight on, it’s for revenge (or spite, at any rate), or the instinctive feeling that falling in battle is somehow preferable, in some strange way better for you than being made to kneel in rows until someone yanks your head back by the hair and cuts your throat. And, even at the end, there’s a misguided glimmer of hope. The beating of the heart and the action of the lungs are a comforting prevarication, giving an impression of options being kept open.

  The enemy came on for the fifth time; and as the Prefect shouted the order to form lines, his voice was weary. Before this night, he wouldn’t have believed it was possible to feel tired during a battle; there would always be the rush of excitement and terror that would damp down the pain in the arms and knees, compensate for the shortness of breath and the pain of wounds and injuries. Well; the first four times, possibly. The fifth and last time, no. Perhaps when the outcome is so patently obvious, the body can no longer make the effort.

  Why haven’t they used archers to clear us off? he wondered. True, it was dark, not enough light to make out individual targets; but a line of men jammed close together on the walkway presented a target any archer could hit with his eyes shut. There were various possible explanations; archers more urgently needed elsewhere, run out of arrows, an unimaginative captain or an intimate-combat fetishist. Made no odds, really.

  As the enemy came in – walking, not running, which gave the whole thing an unnaturally calm, almost serene feeling – the Prefect tightened his grip on his sword-hilt and promised himself he’d do his best, this being his last opportunity. All his adult life he’d dealt in honour and service, the way a furrier deals in furs or a vintner in wine. On his lips the terms had had specialised political meanings, and he’d long since stopped thinking about what the words stood for in the world at large. Now, unfortunately a little bit too late, he’d been granted a little gleam of insight; service is what makes you stand in the line when nobody would try and stop you if you ran away, and honour is what’s left when every other conceivable reason for staying there has long since evaporated.

  Oh, well, here we go. A man loomed up out of the darkness, a shape under a leather cap, an arm thrusting with a halberd. The Prefect parried, realised the thrust was a feint, found it was too late to do anything about it. Now he was slumped against the parapet, still alive but suddenly too weak to move. The man had moved on, stepping over him and preparing to engage the next man who got in his way; he was no longer concerned with the Prefect, who was as good as dead and therefore no longer a factor needing to be taken into account.

  I don’t think I’m going to be all right this time.

  I wonder if…

  I…

  It’s going to be all right-

  It had been close. Another ten minutes or so and the enemy would have rounded them up like sheep in a pen; but the counterattack by Ceuscai’s men (who must have finally cleared the wall, or else they wouldn’t be here) had come, not perhaps at the last moment, but fairly close to it. Now the enemy had fallen back; they’d lost fewer men and inflicted an alarming amount of damage, but the important part of it was that they’d been forced to retreat. In effect, it was an admission that they could no longer defend the landward side of the lower city. Which meant, in turn, that if Ceuscai’s people now controlled the wall, all exits from the city apart from the docks were cut off. The number who could escape through the docks was strictly limited by the number of ships and the space available on them, and the rest had nowhere to go but uphill. It’s going to be all right.

  Temrai wrapped a strip of cloth around the cut on his arm, using his teeth to draw the knot tight. It was a scratch, nothing more; the jagged edge of a damaged shield, dragged across him in the squash as they bundled through the hole in the wall. So far, he hadn’t come within arm’s length of the enemy, and for that he was extremely grateful.

  ‘All right,’ he said, raising his voice to make himself heard. ‘Heads of companies to me, now. Captains, you’ve got five minutes to sort yourselves out and then we’re moving on. Anybody seen Bosadai? No? Oh, right. In that case, you two are in charge of arrow supplies; get some squads organised to pick up what you can find and pass them around.’

  The heads-of-companies meeting was short and to the point. Now that the hard work had been done, it was almost time to wrap it up; in fact, by the time the carters had returned to camp, loaded up the stuff and come back, it ought to be time. And then it would be finished.

  Loredan stepped forward, putting his weight on his front foot and lunging. The other man was off balance and couldn’t have made an effective parry even if he’d known how to. The first seven inches of the blade went in just below his throat, in the gap where the collarbones meet. He slid off the blade and dropped, making way for the next one.

  It’s all very well killing people, but we’re losing this. They weren’t just coming in twos and threes; the flow was continuous, and as soon as one went down there was another behind him and two squashing through on either side. Loredan stopped using the thrust and switched to slashes only; less risk of getting the blade stuck, and what he wanted was wounded men still on their feet and impeding the scrum rather than more corpses getting in his way and upsetting his balance. No place for finesse or precision in a ruck; hard swipes off the back foot, keep the blade moving fast, as close to the body as possible to make it harder to parry effectively, and, if possible, hit them around the face and neck, where it hurts and frightens most.

  Dimly he was aware that the man next to him in the line had gone down, which meant his right side was exposed. He stepped back three paces, covering his retreat with a powerful slash that connected with something soft. He realised that he was resigned to the fact that the counterattack, which was more or less their last realistic chance, wasn’t going to happen now; the wall had definitely fallen, so even if they did somehow push the enemy back down the hill, all that’d happen would be that ultimately they’d be enfiladed by archers on the wall, pinned down and surrounded. The plain truth was that there were too many of the enemy now inside the city for his forces to push out again.

  Without knowing why, he ducked. As he did so, a poleaxe flashed over the top of his bent neck, slicing the air just where his chin would have been. He estimated where the poleaxe-user must be and lunged at that extrapolated spot, dropping on one knee as he did so just in case the other man had a friend. The blade went into something; he twisted it sharply to the left and freed it, then moved smartly right out of the way of a lance-thrust. He was getting left behind again, which wouldn’t do at all. From his kneeling position he sprang backwards, taking a chance on landing cleanly, and made it. As he landed he swung his sword again, feeling a jarring shock as it rang on a helmet.

  Up the hill, then; and once they started on that road they might as well call it a day. Even if they were able to get the second-city gate closed and manned the wall, it’d only be a matter of time. They’d be penned up in a smaller, less advantageous siege, with no prospect of supply or eventual relief. The best they could hope to achieve by holding the second city would be slightly more favourable terms of surrender.

  Then to hell with this, Loredan said to himself; nothing more I can do, so let’s just see if there’s a hope in hell of getting through to the docks and out of here.

  Easier said than done. It wasn’t just a matter of
deciding he didn’t want to play any more; he still had to find a way through the attack and round the hill. Quite possibly he’d left it too late, in which case he might as well lower his sword and get it over with. But that went against the grain, somehow; it was offensive to all the instincts he’d acquired over a decade in the legal profession. It would be tantamount to throwing the fight.

  There was only one way he could think of, and if it didn’t work he was finished. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly spoilt for choice. First he let fly with a broad sweep, very hard and slightly wild; it connected, sure enough, and while the other man was plunging about in panic with half his face carved off, Loredan dropped to his knees, his face only a few inches above the mat of corpses and nearly corpses. He found himself looking into the eyes of a man – one he’d just seen to? Quite possibly, no way of knowing, and did it matter? – who was still just about alive, his eyes wide in a horrified stare, his lips moving without sound, as if he was trying to pass on some tremendous revelation about death. Loredan crawled over him, first a hand on his face, then a knee, and then onwards, scrabbling and slithering over the dead and dying-

  – This is adding insult to injury, Bardas. Bad enough to be facing the greatest of all horrors, alone, frightened and in pain, without having some uncaring stranger kneeling on your face while you’re at it-

  – For what seemed like hours, with shuffling feet and knees kicking and banging into him, stepping over his head, treading on his outstretched fingers. Still, it had to be done, and so long as nobody looked down, so long as they assumed he was just another nearly dead man wriggling about underfoot, there was a chance he might even get away with it.

  He reached a point where there were feet but no more dead bodies, and decided it was time to stand up. He did so, and found himself face to face with a clan warrior, a kid of about sixteen who stared at him in horror as if he’d just shaken hands with the occupant of a freshly made grave. Loredan treated him to a knee in the groin and moved on, slipping sideways between two others and then-

  – Out of the battle, as far as he could tell. Nobody was looking round at him, let alone following. He stood still to catch his breath, then hurried at a fast trot for the cover of an archway.

  Maybe it’s going to be all right. Perhaps; too early to tell, though. Anyway, the next bit’s the easy part.

  He peered into the darkness behind the archway. Now then; this leads to an alley which runs up behind the old fruit warehouse and comes out opposite the pin-makers’ courtyard; turn right there past the chisel-grinders’ row, carry on as far as the tavern with the barmaid with the unfortunate squint, then left down the plane-makers’ arcade as far as the junction with the westernmost ropewalk, alleyway to the left, straight down that, should come out just behind the customs sheds.

  He hadn’t gone more than twenty yards into the darkness when his foot caught on something and he went sprawling. He landed on his side, jerked his knees up, pushed against the alley wall and was on his feet again in just over a second, with his sword in a classic two-handed guard. Whatever he’d just tripped over groaned.

  Options: kill it in case it follows, leave it or investigate. While he was deciding, it groaned again. Ah, the hell with it, Loredan muttered under his breath.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he said.

  No reply except another low moan. Wondering what in gods’ name he thought he was doing, he sheathed his sword, stooped and put out a hand. He felt a face; smooth, soft, a girl or a young boy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered.

  ‘Arrow,’ the voice replied.

  ‘Can you get up?’

  Groan. Loredan sighed. This was a complication he really could do without.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  Somehow he got its arm round his shoulder, then straightened his back and knees and lifted. It wasn’t very heavy; almost certainly a girl by the feel, which maybe explained a little why he was doing this extremely rash thing.

  ‘Now walk,’ he said. ‘Please. If you don’t, I’m going to have to dump you.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said. ‘Difficult.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘If it was easy, everyone’d be able to do it, and where’d be the point in that? All right, I’ve got you. Try and hold on if you can.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘All right, then, be difficult. But I’m warning you-’

  ‘Can’t,’ the girl repeated. ‘No fingers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No fingers-’

  No fingers, no fingers. Who did he know in this city, young girl, skinny, no fingers?

  Oh, for crying out loud-

  Gorgas Loredan knelt behind the stairs that led up to a gallery of shops, waiting for the men to go by. There were about twelve of them – in other words, too many – and they had a wagon. He considered jumping on, hoping they wouldn’t notice in the dark. No, forget it, not feeling lucky. The wagon, he noticed, was piled high with barrels.

  To his intense annoyance, the procession halted about ten yards away from where he was hiding. The escort – they were close enough for him to confirm that they were plainsmen – lit torches from the lantern that swung from the side of the wagon and set about investigating the surrounding area. Gorgas began to feel decidedly nervous, and he had made up his mind to run for it and hope they were too busy to follow him when they stopped poking about and, splitting up into pairs, began to unload the barrels.

  The idea of a quick sprint was still appealing. True, there was an archer sitting on the driver’s bench with an arrow nocked and ready, but it seemed a reasonable assumption that his function was primarily defensive. No advantage to be gained by wasting valuable arrows taking pot shots at fleeing civilians in bad light. He made up his mind to start running on the count of five.

  He’d reached four when two of the plainsmen rolled their barrel into a shop doorway and flushed out a pair of children, a boy and a girl, approximately six and ten respectively. They had the native common sense to run in different directions; but the archer swivelled round on his bench, followed the girl and shot her through the kidneys at about twenty yards, then drew and nocked an arrow in a single flowing movement and hit the boy square in the middle of his neck at close on forty yards, just as he was about to reach the safety of the alleyway Gorgas had been planning to use himself. By the time he’d looked back at the wagon, the archer had nocked another arrow and was looking round for something to loose it at. One of his companions muttered, ‘Shot!’ under his breath; the rest seemed to take it all in their stride and carried on with their work.

  Running for it wasn’t such an inviting prospect any more. Gorgas swore under his breath. Time was getting on and he had things to do and a long way to go. He also had a rough idea of what was in the barrels; if he was right, there would soon be yet another unwelcome complication.

  The men nearest to him deposited a barrel no more than ten yards from where he was hiding, which made deciding what he was going to do that bit easier. The prospect was still galling in the extreme; he disliked doing the sort of thing he was now resolved to do even more than the type of people who tended to do it. Nevertheless; in extreme situations there comes a point when heroism is the safest and most logical course of action. As quietly as he could he wriggled up onto his haunches, pulled an arrow from his quiver (only three left; damn), held his bow out at a slant because of the confined space, with his head canted over to compensate; nocked, drew, held and loosed.

  Even in bad light it was a routine enough shot, and Gorgas was a perfectly competent archer. Even so, it was a great relief to him when the arrow went home, making that tchock! noise unique to a bodkin-head arrow in manflesh, and the plainsman toppled sideways off the box and onto the ground.

  Gorgas nocked another arrow as he stood up, fumbling a little and staggering as his cramped legs protested at the short notice. Only one of the other men had seen what was going on; and in the time between his seeing the sho
t and calling out to his mates, Gorgas was on his feet and moving well, to the point where he was nearer to the wagon than any of the plainsmen.

  He heard several shouts and a grinding noise (sword leaving scabbard) as he vaulted up onto the bench, dropped his bow and grabbed the long-handled whip from its rest. The wagon team were mules, of course; better than one-in-three odds that they weren’t going to budge, and that would be embarrassing. His luck was in, however, which made a pleasant change; even so, there was a man in the act of hauling himself up onto the tailgate by the time the mules moved off at a sharp trot. Without moving from his seat, Gorgas pivoted and lashed out behind him with the whip. He missed, but a couple of barrels chose that moment to fall over and roll against the tailgate, dislodging the one-man boarding party. Another plainsman grabbed one of the canopy stays and ran alongside holding it. Gorgas waited until he’d managed to hop up onto the running-board, his head nicely level with Gorgas’ toecap, before booting him off. By the sound and feel of it, he went under the nearside wheels, which served him right for trying too hard.

  He expected further efforts, but they didn’t happen, and before he knew it he was round the corner of the street and going well. From the lack of pursuit he gathered that the remaining carters had written the wagon off to experience and were getting on with their work; a hypothesis that was largely confirmed by a whoosh-boom behind him, a disturbance in the air and a red glow visible out of the corner of his eye. The effect was repeated a number of times before he was out of earshot.

  He’s got the recipe right, then, Gorgas said to himself. Not bad going for someone who’d been brought up to regard the wheel as the high-water mark of his people’s technological achievement.

  As he drove (north-west and downhill, as far as the streets would let him), he heard and saw a lot more of the same, and blessed his luck for putting him in the way of a clan wagon. One of the first things he’d done was stick the deceased archer’s cap on his head, and the parties of carters and soldiers he passed as he drove took no notice of him. They were all, needless to say, plainsmen; panic, fire and enemy soldiers had cleared this district of everyone who was capable of moving. The logic of it was probably what made him complacent, so that he stopped bothering to keep an eye out; with the result that he didn’t see a man slip out of an alleyway as he drove past and run up on the outside. The first he knew was when someone vaulted up onto the box, pushed him off the bench and grabbed the reins.