Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  Not Lauzeta, he decided. Maybe that was a good thing, maybe not. The Lauzeta, who wore long coats of hardened leather scale and conical helmets with nasals and aventails, were clever, imaginative fighters; tremendous speed and flexibility based on innate horsemanship and constant practice.

  This lot, on the other hand, wore coats of plates over fine mail, and their rounded helmets had cheek-pieces and articulated neck-guards. At a guess, that made them Partetz or Aram Chantat; he knew nothing about either sect beyond the basics of fashions in armour, and he didn't want to think about how the secret of the safe passage had penetrated right down to the far south. At least they'd be one or the other, rather than both. The Partetz and the Aram Chantat hated each other even more than the Auzeil, the Cler Votz, the Rosinholet or the Flos Glaia. On balance, he decided, he'd rather they were the Partetz.

  They were, of course, the Aram Chantat. Their demands were simple: four hundred thousand gold thalers, or two million in silver, and five hundred horses, at least half of them brood mares. Delivery (their interpreter spoke tolerably clear Mezentine, with a firm grasp of the specialist vocabulary of the extortion business) within three days, during which time the raiding party would be left to forage at will; once payment had been made, they undertook to leave Vadani territory within a week, causing no further damage (provided that they were kept supplied with food, wine and fodder for the horses). Nobody said anything about what would happen if the demands weren't met. No need to go into all that.

  Valens replied that he'd think it over and send his answer before daybreak. The horsemen watched him go, then vanished.

  'So,' Gabbaeus asked, after they'd ridden halfway back to the camp, 'what are you going to do?'

  'I'm not sure yet,' Valens answered.

  Back at his camp, he sent for the people he wanted to see, and put guards on the tent door so he wouldn't be disturbed. Just after midnight, most of the staff officers left. Two riders were sent back on the road to Civitas Vadanis. Their departure wasn't lost on the Aram Chantat scouts, who reported back to their leaders. Around three in the morning, they saw a great number of watch-fires being lit on the far side of the camp, where the horse-pens were, and sent word back to Skeddanlothi to prepare for a sneak attack at first light.

  The messengers never got there. They were intercepted by the Vadani light cavalry, dismounted and covering the left flank, and efficiently disposed of. An hour later, the scouts sent another message to say that the heavy cavalry had mounted up and ridden due west, which they took to mean a wide encircling movement. Valens let them through. They reached Skeddanlothi an hour and a half before dawn. He drew up his forces in dead ground below his camp, facing west, to surprise the heavy cavalry when they arrived.

  They never did, of course. What the scouts had seen was the horses being led away by their grooms. The heavy cavalry, also dismounted, came up on the east side of the camp and launched a sudden, noisy attack that took the Aram Chantat reserves completely by surprise. Someone had the presence of mind to send riders to the main army on the west side, who came scrambling back just in time to be taken in flank and rear by the light cavalry and the infantry.

  It was still a tricky business. The Cure Hardy were on horseback, Valens' men were on foot; it was still too dark for accurate shooting, and the coats of plates and mail took some piercing. Valens told his archers to aim for the horses rather than the men, and sent up his infantry to engage Skeddanlothi's personal guard.

  If the Cure Hardy had been huntsmen, they'd have understood what Valens was up to; let the dogs face the boar, while the hunters come at it from the side. Valens led the infantry himself, because they were going to have to face the boar's tusks. As always on these occasions, as soon as he'd given the word to move up he found he was almost paralysed with fear; his stomach muscles twisted like ropes and he wet himself. But it was his job to stay three paces ahead of the line; if you don't keep your place, nobody knows where you are, and you're liable to come to harm. At the same time as he was forcing his legs to move, he was struggling to hold the full picture in his mind: movements of men and horses, timings, closures and avoidances. Forty yards across open ground in the pale, thick light, and then someone stood out in front of him, a man who wanted to kill him. He let go of the grand design and concentrated on the job in hand.

  Fighting six hundred enemies in four dimensions over thirty-five acres is one thing; fighting one man within arm's length is something else entirely. Someone had told him once, the first thing to do is always look at the other man's face, see who you're up against; once you've done that, keep your eyes glued to his hands. Whether it was good advice or not Valens wasn't sure, but he followed it anyway, because it was the only method he knew. On this occasion, the other man was big and broad, but the look on his face and the puckering of his eyes told Valens that he'd been asleep and wasn't quite awake yet. He had a spear in his right hand and a round shield on his left arm; he was maybe inclined to hide behind the shield, conceding distance and therefore time. It was therefore essential that the other man should attack first; this, however, he was annoyingly reluctant to do, and a whole second passed while the two of them stood and looked at each other. That wasn't right; so Valens took a half-step forward, just inside the other man's reach; he recognised the mistake, but he wasn't watching where Valens put his feet. He lunged, spear and shield thrust forward together in a semi-ferocious hedging of bets. Valens stepped forward and to the right with his back foot-a fencing move he'd learned from the tiresome instructor when he was a boy-grabbed the back rim of the shield with his left hand and twisted as hard as he could from the waist. His enemy was a stronger man but he hadn't been expecting anything like that; he stumbled forward, and Valens stabbed him in the hollow just below the ear, where the ear-flap of the helmet left a half-finger-width of gap. The whole performance took less time than sneezing, and not much more effort. The dead man's forward momentum pulled him obligingly off Valens' sword, so that a half-turn brought him neatly back on guard.

  That would've been a good place to finish; a well-planned, controlled encounter, practically textbook. Instead, he found himself facing two men with spears, at precisely the moment when someone else way off to his right shot him in the shoulder with an arrow.

  It skidded off, needless to say, without piercing the steel of the pauldron. But he wasn't expecting the impact-about the same as being kicked by a bullock-and it made him drop his sword. His first thought was to get his feet out of the way of the falling sharp thing; he skipped, found he was off balance from the impact of the arrow, and staggered like a drunk. One of the two Cure Hardy stabbed him in the pit of the stomach with his spear. Again the armour held good, but he lost his footing altogether and fell over backwards, landing badly. All the breath jarred out of his lungs, like air from a bellows, and he saw his enemy take a step forward; he could visualise the next stage, the foot planted on his chest and the spearpoint driven down through the eyeslot of his helmet, but instead the other man stepped over him and went away. Some time later, thinking it through for the hundred-and-somethingth time, he realised that his opponent had assumed the spear-thrust had killed him.

  He lay still and quiet while men, enemies and friends, walked and ran around and over him; someone trod on his elbow, someone else stepped on his cheek, but his helmet took the weight. He knew he was too terrified to move. He'd seen animals behave in exactly the same way: a hare surrounded by four hounds, crouching absolutely still; a partridge with a broken wing, dropped by the hawk after an awkward swoop, lying in the snow with its eye two perfect concentric circles. Someone had told him once that predatory animals can only see movement; if the quarry stays still, they lose sight of it. He hoped it was true, because he had no other option.

  Some time later, a hand reached down and pulled him up. His legs weren't working and he slumped, but someone caught him and asked if he was all right. The voice was Vadani, not the intonation of someone addressing his Duke; he muttered, 'Thanks, I'm fine,' and
whoever it was let go of him and went away.

  He shook his head like a wet dog and looked up. Directly in front of him the sun was rising; in front of it he could see a smaller, thinner fire rising from a Cure Hardy tent. There were many men in front of him, only a few behind, and most of the bodies on the ground, still or moving slightly, were Cure Hardy. Valens wasn't a man who jumped to conclusions, but the first indications were hopeful. Probably, they'd won.

  In which case-he scrabbled in his memory for the shape of the battle-in that case, the dismounted cavalry should by now have stove in the enemy flank, allowing his infantry to roll them up on to their camp, where the heavy cavalry should have been waiting to take them in rear. That would be satisfactory, on the higher level. More immediately relevant, the enemy survivors and stragglers would tend to be squeezed out at either end, and once they were clear of the slaughter they'd turn east, which was the direction he was facing. He turned round, but he couldn't see anybody coming toward him. That was all right, then.

  Someone-a Vadani infantryman in a hurry-shouted at him, but he didn't catch what the man had said. Immediate dangers; mostly from Cure Hardy knocked down or wounded, if he got in their way. His people would, of course, notice sooner or later that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. Battles had been lost at the last moment because a general had been killed, or was believed to be dead. Wearily, and worried about the pain and weakness in his ankle (he'd turned it over when he fell), he started to run after the main body of his men. He went about five yards, then slowed to an energetic hobble.

  It was just as well that someone recognised him. There was shouting, men turning round and running toward him, like the surge of well-wishers who greet an athlete as he crosses the finishing line; as though he'd done something wonderful, just by still being alive. 'What happened to you?' someone roared in his ear, as overprotective hands grabbed and mauled him. 'Are you all right? We thought-'

  'I'm not. What's happening?'

  'Like a bloody charm. Rolled them up like a carpet.'

  Suddenly, Valens found that he no longer cared terribly much. 'That's good,' he said. 'What's the full picture? I've been out of it.'

  Someone made a proper report; someone else kept interrupting, with conflicting but mostly trivial information. Valens tried to summon the clear diagram back into his mind, but it was crumpled and torn, he couldn't put it all together. For some reason, that ruined any feeling of accomplishment he might have had. Not like a hunt, where you have the tangible proof of success, dead meat stretched out on the grass. There were plenty of dead bodies, but in war they aren't the point. Success is vaguer, more metaphysical. Perhaps for the first time, Valens admitted to himself that he found the whole business revolting, even a relatively clean victory, as this appeared to be. His mind slipped on the idea, because war was his trade, as the Duke of the Vadani; but he felt a phrase coalesce in his mind: given the choice between killing animals and killing people, I'd rather kill animals.

  The fighting was still going on, bits and pieces, scraps of unfinished business; but that could all be left to sergeants and captains. He allowed information to slide off him, like water off feathers. Then someone said: 'And we got the chief, Skeddanwhatsit.'

  Valens looked up; he was being escorted back to the camp by half a dozen men whose names he ought to know but couldn't remember offhand. 'Fine,' he said.

  'He's back at the camp.'

  It took Valens a moment to realise that they meant the man was still alive. Now that was interesting. 'Good,' he said. 'I'll see him in an hour. Find an interpreter.'

  'He speaks Mezentine,' someone said. 'Quite well, actually.'

  Catching them alive; that was an interesting idea. Worth the effort, because you could talk to them, and learn from them. He remembered the conversation he'd had the previous day, riding to the parley. 'Find that young clown Gabbaeus and fetch him along,' he said. 'He was dead keen to meet a real Cure Hardy.'

  Nobody said anything for long enough to make words unnecessary. Pity; the boy was a second cousin, and he remembered him from years back (from before It happened, before Father died and everything changed; why is it, Valens wondered, that I tend to think of that time as real life, and everything that's happened since I became Duke as some sort of dream or pretence?). He made a resolution to have Skeddanlothi's throat cut, after he'd finished chatting with him. Barbaric and unfair, but so was his second cousin getting killed in a stupid little show like this.

  Once they'd brought him to his tent, they left him alone for a while (he had to shout at them a bit, but they got the message). Slowly, taking his time over each buckle and tightly knotted point, he took off his armour. It was a ritual; he had no idea what it meant or why he found it useful. As usual, it had taken a degree of abuse. The middle lame on the pauldron that had turned the arrow was bent, so that the unit no longer flexed smoothly; if he'd tried to strike a blow, it'd probably have jammed up. The armourer would fix it, of course, and he'd have a word or two to say about the fit. There was a small dent in the placket of the breastplate where that man had stuck him with his spear. A couple of rivets had torn through on the left cuisse. It pleased him to be able to shed his bruised steel skin, like a snake, and have his smooth, soft, unmarked skin underneath. The simple act of taking off forty pounds of steel is as refreshing as a good night's sleep, inevitably makes you feel livelier; each limb weighs less, takes less effort to move; it's like being in water, or suddenly being much younger, fitter and stronger. Each shedding of the skin marks a stage in growth, even if it's only death avoided one more time; each time I get away with it, he thought, I really ought to come out of it a deeper, wiser, better person. Shame about that.

  A page came in, properly diffident, and left behind a plate of bread and cheese and a big jug of water. He'd forgotten the cup, but Valens grinned and drank from the jug, putting the spout in his mouth and swallowing. He ate the cheese and most of the bread, instinctively moved his hand to sweep the leftovers on to the floor for the dogs-but there weren't any, not here-and put the plate down on the bed. His ankle was throbbing, but he knew it was just a minor wrench, something that'd sort itself out in a day or so. His shoulder and arm would be painful tomorrow, but they hadn't stiffened up yet. He got to his feet and went to find the prisoner.

  They had him in a small tent in the middle of the camp; he was sitting on a big log, which Valens thought was odd until he saw the chain; a steel collar round the poor bastard's neck, and the end of the chain attached to the log by a big staple. Someone brought him one of those folding chairs; he gauged the length of the chain and added to it the fullest extent of the prisoner's reach, put the chair down and sat on it. Two guards stood behind him.

  'Hello,' he said. 'I'm Valens.'

  Skeddanlothi looked at him.

  'My people tell me,' Valens went on, 'that I won the battle, and that your lot have been wiped out to the last man.' He paused. The other man was looking at him as though he was the ugliest thing in the world. 'I don't suppose that's strictly true, there'll be one or two stragglers who'll have slipped outside the net, but they won't get far, I don't suppose. If it'd help, we've counted'-he took out a slip of paper he'd been given-'let's see, five hundred and twenty-three dead, seventy-two captured; if you're fond of round numbers, I make that five unaccounted for. If you like, you could tell me how many you started the day with, and then I'd know for sure.'

  Skeddanlothi didn't like, apparently. Valens hadn't expected him to.

  'We rounded up a few of your scouts the other day,' he went on, 'and they said you came out here to steal enough to get married on. Is that right?'

  No reply; so he leaned back a little in his chair and gave one of the guards some instructions. The guard moved forward; Skeddanlothi jumped up, but the guard knelt smoothly down, grabbed a handful of the chain and yanked hard. Skeddanlothi went down on his face, and the guard pressed his boot on his neck.

  'Keep going till he says something,' Valens called out. 'He's no bloody u
se if he just sits there staring.'

  It was quite some time before Skeddanlothi screamed. Valens had the guard apply a few extra pounds of pressure, just to convince him that he couldn't stand pain. Then he asked the guard to help him back on to his log, and repeated the question.

  'Yes,' Skeddanlothi said; he was rubbing his neck, not surprisingly. 'It's the custom of our people.'

  'To win honour and respect, I suppose,' Valens said.

  'Yes.'

  'Presumably,' Valens went on, 'most of the time you raid each other-the Aram Chantat against the Partetz, the Doce Votz against the Rosinholet, and so forth.'

  This time, Skeddanlothi nodded.

  'That's interesting,' Valens said. 'To most of us, you're all just Cure Hardy. We don't think of you as a lot of little tribes beating each other up. To us, you're hundreds of thousands of savages, penned in by a desert.' He paused. 'Why do you fight each other like that?'

  Skeddanlothi frowned, as though the question didn't make sense. 'They are our enemies,' he said.

  'Why?'

  It took Skeddanlothi a moment to answer. 'They always have been. We fight over grazing, water, cattle. Everything.'

  Valens raised his eyebrows. 'Why?' he said. 'By all accounts, it's a huge country south of the desert. Can't you just move out of each other's way or something?'

  Skeddanlothi shook his head. 'Most of the land is bad,' he said. 'The cattle graze a valley for three years, the grass stops growing. So we have to move away until it comes right.'

  'On to somebody else's land,' Valens said.

  'Land doesn't belong to anybody,' Skeddanlothi said, 'it's just there. We drive them off it, they have to go somewhere else. When it's all eaten up, we have to move again. Everybody moves.'

  Valens thought for a moment. 'You all move round, like the chair dance.'

  Skeddanlothi scowled. 'Dance?'

  'We have this children's game,' Valens explained. 'The dancers dance round in a ring, and in the middle there's a row of chairs, one for each dancer. When the music stops, everyone grabs a chair. Then one chair gets taken out, and the dance starts again. Next-time the music stops, everyone dives for a chair, but obviously one of them doesn't get one, so he's out. And so on, till there's just one chair left, and two dancers.'