by K. J. Parker
On the bench beside him he saw a scrap of paper. It was a rough sketch of a mechanism-power source, transmission, crankshaft, flywheel; a few lines and squiggles with a charcoal stub, someone thinking on paper. One glance was enough for him to be able to understand it, as easily as if the squiggles and lines had been letters forming words. Outside the city walls, of course, it'd be meaningless, just hieroglyphics. A mechanism, a machine someone was planning to build in order to achieve an objective. He thought about that. A waterwheel or a treadmill or a windlass turns; that motion is translated into other kinds of motion, circular into linear, horizontal into vertical, by means of artfully shaped components, and when the process is complete one action is turned into something completely different, as if by alchemy. The barbarians, believers in witchcraft and sorcery, never conceived of anything as magical as that.
He thought for a while, lining up components and processes in his mind. Then he slid off the bench, washed his hands and face in the slack-tub and headed across the yard to the office.
As he walked in, a clerk perched on a high stool turned to peer at him.
'Any work going?' Ziani asked.
The clerk looked at him. 'Depends on what you can do,' he said.
'Not much. Well, I can fetch and carry, sweep floors and stuff.'
'Guild member?'
Ziani shook his head. 'Left school when I was twelve,' he said.
The clerk grinned. 'Good answer,' he said. 'We're all right for skilled men, but we can always use another porter.' He shook his head. 'Crazy, isn't it? There's Guildsmen sat at home idle for want of a place, and the likes of you can walk in off the street and start immediately.'
'Good,' Ziani said. 'What's the pay?'
The clerk frowned. 'Don't push your luck,' he said.
Nice clear directions brought Ziani to the shipping bay. The factory made farm machinery-ploughs, chain and disc harrows, seed drills-for export to the breadbasket countries in the far south. How they got there, very few people knew or cared; the Mezentines sold them to dealers, who took delivery at Lonazep, on the mouth of the estuary. Ziani had never been to Lonazep, but he knew it was outside the walls. After five hours lifting things on to carts, he was asked if he fancied volunteering for carriage duty.
The answer to this question, in every factory in the world, is always no. Carriage duty means sitting on the box of a cart bumping along rutted tracks in the savage wilderness outside the city. It pays time and a half, which isn't nearly enough for the trauma of being Outside; you sleep in a ditch or under the cart, and there are rumoured to be spiders whose bite makes your leg swell up like a pumpkin.
'Sure,' Ziani said.
(Because the sentries at the gates would be looking for a Guildsman on his own, not a driver's mate on a cart in the long, backed-up queue crawling out of town on the north road. When a particularly dangerous and resourceful fugitive-an abominator, say, or a guard-killer-was on the run, they'd been known to pull the covers off every cart and scrabble about in the packing straw in case there was anyone hiding in there, but they never bothered to look at the unskilled men on the box. Guild thinking.)
God bless the city ordinance that kept annoying heavy traffic off the streets during the day. By its blessed virtue, it was dark when the long line of carts rolled out of the factory gate and merged with the foul-tempered glacier inching its way towards the north gate. Heavy rain was the perfect finishing touch. It turned the streets into glue, but as far as Ziani was concerned it was beautiful, because a sentry who has to stand at his post all night quite reasonably prefers to avoid getting soaked to the skin, and accordingly stays in the guardhouse and peers out through the window. As it turned out, they showed willing and made some sort of effort; a cart six places ahead in the line was pulled over, while the sentries climbed about on it and crawled under it with lanterns. They didn't find anything, of course; and, their point proved, they went back inside in the dry. Ziani guessed the quota was one in ten. Sure enough, looking back over his shoulder once they were through the arch and out the other side, he saw the third cart behind them slow to a halt, and lanterns swinging through the rain.
'You're new, then,' said the driver next to him. He hadn't spoken since they left the factory.
'That's right,' Ziani said. 'Actually, this is my first time out of town.'
The driver nodded. 'It sucks,' he said. 'The people smell and the food's shit.'
'So I heard,' Ziani said.
'So why'd you volunteer?'
'I don't know, really,' Ziani replied. 'Suppose I always wondered if it's really as bad as they say'
'It is.'
'Well, now I know.'
The driver grinned. 'Maybe next time you'll listen when people tell you things.'
A mile out from the north gate the road forked. Half the traffic would stay on the main road, the other half would take the turning that followed the river past the old quarries down to Lonazep. Ziani's original plan had been to try and get himself on a ship going south, maybe even all the way down to the Gulf, as far from the Eternal Republic as you could go without falling off the edge of the world. Seeing the scrap of paper on the bench in the storeroom had changed all that. If he went south, it'd mean he was never coming back. Instead, he waited till they stopped for the night at Seventh Milestone. The driver crawled under the tarpaulin, pointing out that there was only room for one.
'No problem,' Ziani said. 'I'll be all right under the cart.' As soon as he was satisfied the driver was asleep, Ziani emerged and started to walk. Geography wasn't his strong suit, but as soon as the sun came up he'd be able to see the mountains across the plain, due west. Going west meant he'd be away for a while, maybe a very long time, but sooner or later he'd be back.
Chapter Three
As soon as Duke Orsea realised he'd lost the battle, the war and his country's only hope of survival, he ordered a general retreat. It was the only sensible thing he'd done all day.
One hour had made all the difference. An hour ago, when he'd led the attack, the world had been a very different place. He'd had an army of twenty-five thousand men, one tenth of the population of the Duchy of Eremia. He had a commanding position, a fully loaded supplies and equipment train, a carefully prepared battle plan, the element of surprise, the love and trust of his people, and hope. Now, as the horns blared and the ragged lines crumpled and dissolved into swarms of running dots, he had the miserable job of getting as many as he could of the fourteen thousand stunned, bewildered and resentful survivors away from the enemy cavalry and back to the relative safety of the mountains. One hour to change the world; not many men could have done such a thorough job. It took a particular genius to destroy one's life so comprehensively in so short a time.
A captain of archers, unrecognisable from a face-wound, ran past him, shouting something he didn't catch. More bad news, or just confirmation of what he already knew; or maybe simple abuse; it didn't greatly matter, because now that he'd given the order, there was precious little he could do about anything. If the soldiers got as far as the thorn-scrub on the edge of the marshes, and if they stopped there and re-formed instead of running blindly into the bog, and if they were still gullible enough to obey his orders after everything he'd let them in for, he might still be relevant. Right now, he was nothing more than a target, and a conspicuous one at that, perched on a stupid white horse and wearing stupid fancy armour.
It hurt him, worse than the blade of the broken-off arrow wedged in his thigh, to turn his back on the dead bodies of his men, scattered on the flat moor like a spoilt child's toys. Once he reined in his horse, turned and rode away, he acknowledged, he'd be breaking a link between himself and his people that he'd never be able to repair. But that was self-indulgence, he knew. He'd forgone the luxury of guilt when he bent his neck to the bait and tripped the snare. The uttermost mortification; his state of mind, his agonised feelings, didn't matter any more. It was his duty to save himself, and thereby reduce the casualty list by one. He nudged the h
orse with his heels.
The quickest way to the thorn-hedge was across the place where the centre of his line had been. His horse was a dainty stepper, neatly avoiding the tumbled bodies, the carelessly discarded weapons that could cut a delicate hoof to the quick. He saw wounded men, some screaming, some dragging themselves along by their hands, some struggling to draw a few more breaths, as though there was any point. He could get off the stupid white horse, load a wounded man into the saddle and take his chances on foot. Possibly, if there'd only been one, he'd have done it. But there wasn't just one, there were thousands; and that made it impossible, for some reason.
Orsea had seen tragedy before, and death. He'd even seen mess, great open slashed wounds, clogged with mud and dust, where a boar had caught a sluggish huntsman, or a careless forester had misjudged the fall of a tree. He'd been there once when a granary had collapsed with fifteen men inside; he'd been one of the first to scrabble through the smashed beams and fallen stone blocks, and he'd pulled two men out of there with his own hands, saved their lives. He'd done it because he couldn't do otherwise; he couldn't turn his back on pain and injury, any more than he could stick his hand in a fire and keep it there. An hour ago, he'd been that kind of man.
A horseman came thundering up behind him. His first thought was that the enemy cavalry was on to him, but the rider slowed and called out his name; his name and his stupid title.
He recognised the voice. 'Miel?' he yelled back.
Miel Ducas; he'd never have recognised him. Ten years ago he'd have traded everything he had for Miel Ducas' face, which seemed to have such an irresistible effect on pretty young girls. Now, though, he couldn't see Miel's nose and mouth through a thick splatter of dirt and blood.
'There's another wing,' Miel was saying; it took Orsea a heartbeat or so to realise he was talking about the battle. 'Another wing of fucking cavalry; reserve, like they need it. They're looping out on the far left, I guess they're planning on cutting us off from the road. I've still got six companies of lancers, but even if we get there in time we won't hold them long, and they'll chew us to buggery.'
Orsea sighed. He wanted to shrug his shoulders and ride on-he actually wanted to do that; his own callous indifference shocked him. 'Leave it,' he heard himself say. 'Those lancers are worth more to us than a regiment of infantry. Keep them out of harm's way, and get them off the field as quick as you can.'
Miel didn't answer, just pulled his horse's head round and stumbled away. Orsea watched him till he was out of sight over the horizon. It'd be nice to think that over there somewhere, screened by the line of stunted thorns, was that other world of an hour ago, and that Miel would arrive there to find the army, pristine and unbutchered, in time to turn them back.
Orsea still wasn't quite sure what had happened. Last night, camped in the middle of the flat plain, he'd sent out his observers. They started to come back around midnight. The enemy, they said, was more or less where they were supposed to be. At most there were sixteen thousand of them; four thousand cavalry, perched on the wings; between them, ten thousand infantry, and the artillery. The observers knew their trade, what to look for, how to assess numbers by counting camp fires, and as each one reported in, Orsea made a note on his map. Gradually he built up the picture. The units he was most worried about, the Ceftuines and the southern heavy infantry (the whole Mezentine army was made up of foreign mercenaries, apart from the artillery), were camped right in the middle, just as he'd hoped. His plan was to leave them till last; break up the negligible Maderi infantry and light cavalry on either side of the centre, forcing the Mezentines to commit their heavy cavalry to a long, gruelling charge across the flat, right down the throats of his eight thousand archers. That'd be the end of them, the Bareng heavy dragoons and the lancers. If a tenth of them made it through the arrow-storm, they'd be doing outstandingly well; and then Orsea's own lancers would take them in the flank, drive them back on their own lines as the wholesale roll-up started. In would come the horse-archers from the extreme ends of the line, shepherding the Mezentines in on their own centre, where the Ceftuines would've been standing helplessly, watching the world collapse all around them. By the time the fighting reached them, they'd be hemmed in on all sides by their own defeated, outflanked, surrounded comrades. The lancers would close the box, and the grand finale would be a long, one-sided massacre.
It had been that, all right.
A deep, low hum far away to his left; Orsea stood up in his stirrups, trying to get a better view, but all he could see was dust. He couldn't even remember which of his units was over that way now. Every part of his meticulously composed line was out of place. When the disaster struck, he'd tried to fight back, pulling men out of what he thought was the killing zone, only to find he'd sent them somewhere even worse. He didn't understand; that was what made him want to sob with anger. He still didn't know how they were doing it, how the bloody things worked; all he'd seen was the effects, the clouds and swarms of steel bolts, three feet long and half an inch thick, shot so fast they flew flat, not looped like an ordinary arrow. He'd been there when a volley struck the seventh lancers. First, a low whistling, like a flock of starlings; next, a black cloud resolving itself into a skyful of tiny needles, hanging in the air for a heartbeat before swooping, following a trajectory that made no sense, broke all the known rules of flight; then pitching, growing bigger so horribly fast (like the savage wild animals that chase you in dreams), then dropping like hailstones all around him; and the shambles, the noise, the suddenness of it all. So many extraordinary images, like a vast painting crammed with incredible detail: a man nailed to the ground by a bolt that hit him in the groin, drove straight through his horse and into the ground, fixing them both so firmly they couldn't even squirm; two men riveted together by the same bolt; a man hit by three bolts simultaneously, each one punched clean through his armour, and still incredibly alive; a great swathe of men and horses stamped into the ground, like a careless footstep on a flowerbed full of young seedlings. Just enough time for him to catch fleeting glimpses of these unbelievable sights, and then the next volley fell, two minutes of angle to the left, flattening another section of the line. He couldn't even see where the bolts were coming from, they didn't seem to rise from the surface of the earth, they just materialised or condensed in mid-air, like snow.
As he watched the bolts fall all around him, he couldn't understand why he was the only one left alive, or how they could aim so precisely to kill everybody else and leave him alone. But of course they could. They could do anything.
That was when he'd given his one sensible order, just over an hour ago. A few minutes later, the volleys stopped; there were no coherent bodies of men left to shoot at, and the Mezentine cavalry was surging forward to begin the pursuit and mopping-up. So hard to judge time, when the world has just changed and all the rules are suddenly different, but his best guess was that the disaster had taken ten minutes, twelve at the very most. You couldn't boil a pot of water in that time.
Just a simple steel rod, pointed at one end; he reached out and pulled one out of the ground as he rode. You could use it as a spit; or three of them, tied together at the top, would do to hang a pot from over the fire. They stood up out of the ground, angled, like bristles on an unshaven chin, and there were far too many to count. It'd take weeks just to come round with carts and collect them all up-did the Mezentines do that, or did they leave them, as a monument of victory and a warning to others, till they flaked away into rust? He could imagine them doing that, in this dead, unused plain, which they'd shot full of pins.
I'd have liked just to see one of their machines, he thought, as a sort of consolation prize; but I guess I haven't done anything to deserve that privilege.
He looked back over his shoulder, to see how close the Mezentine cavalry was; but they weren't closing. Instead, they seemed to be pulling back. Well, he could understand that. Why risk the lives of men, even paid servants, when you've got machines to do the work? They'd made their p
oint, and now they were letting him go. So kind of them, so magnanimous. Instead of killing him, they were leaving him to bring the survivors home, to try and find some way of explaining what had become of the dead. (Well, there was this huge cloud of steel pins that came down out of the sky; and the dog ate my homework.) They were too cruel to kill him.
At the thorn hedge, he found what was left of his general staff; twenty out of thirty-six. His first reaction was anger; how could he be expected to organise a coherent retreat without a full staff? (So what are you going to do about it? Write a strongly worded letter?) Then it occurred to him that he wasn't ever going to see those missing faces again, and there was a moment of blind panic when he looked to see who was there and who wasn't. Key personnel-four out of five of the inner circle, but the missing man had to be Faledrin Botaniates; how the hell am I going to keep track of duty rosters without Faledrin? The others, the ones who weren't there, were-The shame burned him, he'd just thought expendable. He forced himself to go back and repeat the thought. It'd be difficult, a real pain in the bum, to have to cope without them, but a way could be found. Therefore, they were, they'd been, expendable.
There, he'd thought it; the concept he'd promised he'd never let creep into his mind, now that he was the Duke of Eremia. That coped off the day's humiliations, and he was right down there with all the people he despised most. Fine. Now he'd got that over with, it might be an idea to do some work.
They were looking at him; some at his face, some at the blood trickling through the joints of his leg-armour. He'd forgotten all about it.
'What happened to you?' someone said.
The scope of the question appalled him for a moment; then he realised it was just his stupid wound they were talking about. 'Friendly fire,' he said briskly. 'I guess I'm the only man on the field who got hit by one of our arrows.' He started to dismount, but something went wrong. His left leg couldn't take any weight, and he ended up in a heap on the ground.