Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  Forty-seven of the things-they'd been delivered fifty, but there was simply no way of fitting fifty on to the top platform of the old gate tower, there just wasn't room, and if only people would take the time to measure up for a job before starting, it'd make life so much easier for the poor sods who had to do the actual work-eventually sat in their cradles overlooking the road, like elderly wooden vultures waiting for something to die. In theory they were adjustable for windage and elevation-you made the adjustments by knocking in a series of little wedges until you'd got the angle, but you just had to look at it to know it wouldn't actually work in practice-and the range was supposedly up to three hundred yards. Word was that the Duke had upped the order to two hundred, proving the old saying about fools and their money, not that it was actually his money, when you stopped and thought about it.

  The installation crews finished their work, stood shaking their heads sadly for a while, and went away. Tomorrow they had the equally rotten job of fetching up the arrow things to shoot out of them. Stupid. It wasn't like there was going to be a war anyway, not now that this Valens character was in charge of the Vadani. Another rich bastard who spent all his time chasing pigs. What they all saw in it was a mystery.

  Just as it was beginning to get dark, Ziani Vaatzes climbed up the long stair and stood on the top platform for a while. He'd come to inspect the scorpions, set his mind at rest, but instead he looked down at the road, dropping steeply away into the valley.

  It was a great pity, he thought, and if there had been any other way he'd have taken it. But he'd had no choice, no more than a dropped stone has a choice about falling. He hadn't started it. It wasn't his fault.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Captain Beltista Eiconodoulus of the First Republican Engineers-the title was, he felt, meaningless, since the unit had been arbitrarily formed only three days ago-was afraid of maps. Something inside him went cold when a superior officer summoned him and unrolled one. We're here, the enemy is over here, this is the road, here are the mountains, bit of rough ground between here and here; he would stand rather awkwardly and try and look eager and intelligent, but the fear would start to grow in his mind like an abscess under a tooth, until he could feel it with every heartbeat. The diagram became the focus of all the terrible possibilities that inevitably arise in a war-the mistakes, the enemy's superior knowledge or ability, the unforeseen and the negligently omitted, the things left undone and the things done to hurt and deceive. He felt as though he was looking at a sketch, such as artists make before they mix their paint and trim their brushes, a study for what was about to happen. Somewhere (that mess of brown rings representing mountains, that stipple of short lines signifying marshes, that bridge, that apparent plain) was the place where he would meet the contingency he hadn't prepared for or couldn't prepare for, and when he arrived there, as and when, there'd be confusion, terror, pain and death.

  'You'll take this road to begin with,' he was told. 'They call it the Butter Pass, for some reason. Follow it up as far as this ridge here, then branch off along this track-it's a bit rough, apparently, but they assure me it's fit for wheeled traffic; you might want to take bridging and road-building equipment just in case-and follow it round all the way up to here. You can then double back along this pass here, which'll bring you out north of the city. By then, our main expeditionary force will be here, Palicuro, and we'll be able to establish a line of communication and put you in the picture. That's about it for now. Questions?'

  He'd asked one or two, just to show he was smart and had been listening; but the map told him everything he needed to know.

  He went back to his tent, summoned his lieutenants, fired off a string of orders while the key points were still fresh in his mind. He hardly knew the men he gave the orders to, but if the recruiters back home and the Mezentines had confidence in them, he supposed they must be all right. He'd find out soon enough, in any case.

  Really, he told himself, I'm just a wagon-master, delivering goods. And there's the enemy to consider, of course, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. He steadied his mind with a series of tried and tested departure rituals. He carefully packed up his writing-desk, checking to make sure the paper-box was full and that there was a good supply of soot and oak-gall for making ink (running out of materials to write orders with in the middle of a battle would be a singularly stupid way to die, he'd always felt). He loaded his clothes, spare boots, books of tables and tolerances, food, bandages and medicines methodically into his pack. He checked his armour, joint by joint and strap by strap. Finally, he moved everything to the middle of the floor of his tent, in a neat pile, ready for the muleteers to collect and load. Twenty-seven years of soldiering and he was still alive and he hadn't caused a defeat or a disaster yet; if there was a reason for that (it was a question he remained open-minded about) it was probably attention to detail and the methodical approach.

  As soon as they were under way (he didn't like the look of the road; it was dusty, which obscured visibility, and the ruts and potholes were already beginning to gnaw away at the temper of his cart axles), he made a start on the next step in his customary procedure: to consider the purpose of his mission, and to make it as simple as possible, so he'd be able to keep sight of it. Fortunately, in this instance that was straightforward enough. All he had to do was deliver his cargo, one hundred and fifty Mezentine war machines, to the place on the map marked with an X. There was other stuff once he'd got there-unpack the machines, assemble them, tune them, assemble the carriages and the mobile platforms and install the machines on them-but he had a bunch of Mezentine civilians along to do all that, so his involvement would be limited, in effect, to nodding to them and saying, 'Go.' Once he'd done that, of course, there'd be new orders, but that'd be another day.

  The next step was, of course, to plan a daily routine. He'd found that if you broke the day up into small pieces, it was easier to control (hardly a startlingly new discovery, but as far as he was concerned, it was one of the great truths of human existence); accordingly, he preferred his days dismantled into units of one hour. He could hold an hour comfortably in his mind without straining. Sometimes he wondered who'd invented the hour. A genius, whoever it was; the hour was a perfect tool for handling and controlling the world, ranking alongside fire, the wheel and the axe.

  These exercises kept his mind engaged and unavailable for worry and panic as far as the first night's stop, at which point he was able to hand over to fatigue, which put him gently to sleep until an hour before first light, when his day began. That first hour of the day was essential, as far as he was concerned. It bore the weight of the rest of the day like an arch. In it, he woke up, drew up his duty rosters and assignment schedules, studied his map and his intelligence reports; all the components of the armour that would protect him against chaos and failure.

  The final stage of his early-morning procedure, and the one that always caused the most amusement to his subordinates, involved the rolling of two densely woven rush mats around a green half-inch stick, which fitted upright into a slot in a heavy piece of board. Mats and stick together simulated perfectly, so he'd been reliably informed, the human neck, viewed as an objective for the swordsman. If he performed the cut neatly and accurately each time, he could get three days' cutting practice out of each mat, but he was a realist and always made sure he had a plentiful supply. He was, after all, a soldier; which is a euphemism for a man who kills other men by slashing at them with a sharp edge.

  Because his men didn't know him well yet, he didn't attract an audience for cutting practice on the first morning. Information travels quickly through an army, however; by the third morning, he performed a distinctly botched cut in the presence of two lieutenants, two sergeants, half a dozen enlisted engineers and the captain of muleteers, all of whom had managed to find legitimate reasons for calling on him a quarter of an hour before the scheduled start of the daily briefing. He no longer minded. He didn't object to being laughed at behind his back, so
long as he had control of the subject matter.

  'You should try it,' he chided a young lieutenant whose face he didn't like, although he was probably the most competent of the junior staff. 'Warms up the muscles, helps concentration, good mental and physical discipline. In fact, I'd make it compulsory if we could source enough mats.'

  The lieutenant had the inherent good sense not to reply, and Eiconodoulus wished he could remember what the man was called. He was razor-sharp when it came to faces, but a martyr to names. He hoped there'd be time to learn them all.

  It was a rather fraught meeting; mostly his own fault, because they'd reached the point where they had to turn off (according to the map) but there was no sign of the track they were meant to follow. Everything else was there, as duly and faithfully recorded: a slight horn in the mountain wall, and under it a gully, the perfect place for a track, except there wasn't one.

  'Maybe it's an old map and the road's just got a bit worn away,' suggested one of the lieutenants (big, square man with a short beard, too old to be a lieutenant, too ineffectual to be promoted, but reasonably bright nevertheless). 'It's surprising how quickly a track can heal up, if you see what I mean. But-'

  Eiconodoulus shook his head. 'I've been and looked,' he said. 'While you were still asleep,' he added, unnecessarily and untruthfully. 'There never was a track there, which means either the map's wrong or we're in the wrong place. You,' he went on-not being able to remember names meant he'd got a reputation for brusqueness in all his previous commands; mostly, he'd found it helped. 'Take a dozen men on horses and go and have a look. Ride on about five miles, see if you can see any sign of this bloody track. You, take half a dozen on foot, go and see if your friend here's right and there was a track there. Don't take too long about it.'

  Oddly enough, both scouting parties reported back within minutes of each other. No, there wasn't a turning further up the main road. No, there hadn't ever been a track in the gully under the horn. Eiconodoulus could feel the world tightening around his head like a sawyer's clamp, but at least it wasn't totally unexpected.

  'Fine,' he said, as the scouts waited for the miracle they obviously expected him to be able to perform. 'My guess is, whoever made the map looked at that gully and assumed there'd be a track down it. In any case, that's the direction we've got to go in, and we don't have any choice. Lucky we brought the road-building stuff.'

  Hardly luck; he'd been ordered to bring it. But they needn't know that. Let them assume it was his own resourcefulness and foresight. They seemed happy enough. They had confidence in him. Probably they'd asked around when they heard who they were being assigned to, and men who'd served with him in other campaigns had told them, you'll be all right, he's eccentric and a bit of a bastard, but he'll get you home again. He'd worked hard for that reputation, so that over the years the lie had gradually started to come true. Anyway, he knew how to lay a road quickly and with the minimum of materials. Just to cover himself, he sent a messenger back to headquarters: No sign of track, am building road, anticipate three-day delay, will advise. That put it rather well, he felt.

  Mostly it was digging, with pickaxes, crowbars, mattocks and shovels; get the big rocks out of the way and use them to fill the big holes. The further he went, the more certain he became that there was indeed a track, probably just over the lip of the first rise up ahead, somewhere in that basin of dead ground. As he stared at the hillside beyond he was sure he could see the line of it, a very slight contrast in colour, like an old scar. In which case, what had happened was that the map-makers knew there was a track around here somewhere-maybe they were coming along it from the other direction-but through sloppiness or lack of time they didn't bother to survey the link from it to the Butter Pass, just assumed that it followed the convenient gully. It annoyed him to think that they were probably dead by now (it was an old map) and so they'd never be officially found out and reprimanded.

  He was right. They found the track a day and a half later. Just out of curiosity, he sent scouts back along it, and they reported back that it did indeed come out on the Butter Pass, about ten miles before the mouth of the gully. They'd probably have seen it quite easily if they hadn't been relying on the map. Eiconodoulus tucked the thought of that away in the back of his mind, in his private store of other people's notable failures, to be relished properly at leisure.

  It wasn't much of a track, after all that fuss. At times, Eiconodoulus wondered if he'd have been better off cutting his own, because there was a much more suitable lie about a hundred yards further up the slope. Clearly these hills had never been grazed-sheep are much better surveyors than humans when it comes to finding the easiest path-and whoever had laid this track in the first place must've been blind, or at any rate short-sighted. Every time a cart bottomed out in a hole or a hub graunched against a half-buried rock he winced, expecting to hear the crisp crack of failing wood or the brittle note of snapping iron. There would be worse places to be laid up mending a busted cart-it was open enough to allow him to see an approaching enemy in good time-but he had food and water to consider. They were going to be several days later than anticipated, and this wasn't land you could live off. He knew better than even to consider ditching the carts and going back, leaving Mezentine war engines lying about for the enemy to find. If the worst came to the worst… Now he came to consider it, he didn't know what he should do. Nobody had told him; destroy the engines before the enemy could get hold of them, yes, but the wretched things were made of steel, so they wouldn't burn, and he didn't have the tools to cut them up. The most he could do was bend them out of shape, but that'd take a long time and a lot of effort. He should have been briefed on that point. More negligence.

  Well, he'd just have to complete the mission successfully, then. So much clearer when you simplify.

  On the fourth day, young Lieutenant Stesimbracus-the one he didn't like, the competent one-came back from scouting looking unusually cheerful. He'd found, he said, the other track marked on the map, the one which had been supposed to cross the one they were on at a place marked as 'cairn', except there were no cairns. Not being able to find it was more than a trivial annoyance. The missing track was a link between their path and another running parallel to it, which happened to be the frontier between Eremian and Vadani territory. Obviously it was important not to cross the border inadvertently. Likewise, they could reasonably assume that they wouldn't be attacked from that direction, since the Eremians wouldn't dare trespass on Vadani land. The last thing the Eremians would want would be a war on two fronts.

  'It's annoying, though,' Stesimbracus said. 'The path on the Vadani side's a much better road; straighter, and properly made up. We could save a day, and cut back here'-he jabbed a finger at the map-'and precious little chance of getting found out, because we're a long way away from any of their manned outposts. Also, there's a river down in a goyle on the other side.'

  Eiconodoulus scowled. Neither of the streams marked on the map had been there, and although they'd found one that wasn't marked, that had been two days ago, when they weren't so worried about the water running out. They'd been relying on the imaginary streams believed in by the map-makers.

  'You know better than that,' he said. 'If we go blundering about down there and run into a Vadani unit, you don't need me to tell you what could happen. In fact, you'd better pass the word around: nobody is to cross into Vadani territory for any reason whatsoever. Got that?'

  'Sir.' Stesimbracus was wearing that kicked-puppy look he found so intensely annoying. 'May I ask, what are we going to do about water?'

  'Use it sensibly,' Eiconodoulus answered briskly. 'We've got enough, so long as we don't waste it. You'd better talk to the quartermaster about that.'

  It got worse. Just after noon on the fifth day they reached the top of a low ridge, only to find a completely unexpected combe dropping away at their feet. Eiconodoulus' first reaction was fury; competent scouts should've found it and told him, it should've been on the bloody map. He got off his
horse, walked up to the lip and looked at it as though it was a personal affront.

  You couldn't get a cart down there. The other side perhaps, going up again; but going down would be suicide. He turned his head left and right. The bloody thing seemed to go on for ever, it'd take days to go round it, assuming there actually was a way round. Combe; canyon, more like. The downward slope was studded with boulders, and he was prepared to bet that the dust and gravel wouldn't give a firm footing. Final mockery: there was a substantial stream, practically a river, gurgling cheerfully away at the bottom of it. All the water in the world, but he couldn't get at it.

  He sulked for an hour, pretending to study the map, while scouts went out to see if there was a way round. Of course not. On one side the canyon went away straight until it faded out of sight, a very long way away. The other side wasn't even worth exploring. He was fairly sure there would be a crossing-point quite close, a trail zigzagging down, or a hole in the wall. It had to be possible to get through on the other side, because that was where the Vadani road ran, and of course he couldn't go there.

  Nothing for it. They'd have to cut a road of their own, just enough to let them take the carts down, unloaded, without the horses; then back up to the top, collect the dismantled war engines and carry them down on their backs. Three days? Be realistic, four. Plenty of water, of course, but food was going to be a serious problem. Half-rations; the men were going to love that. Finally, just in case that wasn't enough to be going on with, he'd lost his precious visibility. Standing on the lip and looking round, he could see at least a dozen places where an enemy unit could sneak up on him and attack with little more than a quarter of an hour's notice.