Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  Much to his displeasure, he'd come to the conclusion after exhaustive debate that he had no alternative but to follow the same route as his predecessors, up the Butter Pass and on to the main road as far as Palicuro. After that, he had options, or at least alternatives, but he declared that he intended to keep an open mind until he reached Palicuro. After a slow start, due in part to a brisk and unseasonable cloudburst, he picked up speed in the middle and late afternoon, and was on time for his first scheduled rendezvous with the Cure Hardy at nightfall.

  The scouts had very little to say for themselves. They claimed to have ridden a full day ahead of the edge of the search zone Melancton had assigned them, and to have seen no sign of the enemy, with or without war engines. Melancton was highly sceptical about these assertions, but had no choice but to rely on them and press on. The logistical support he'd insisted on before starting out was all in place, but he nevertheless wasn't inclined to dawdle and risk running short of supplies, thereby courting the same sort of disasters that had done for Beltista Eiconodoulus. Regrettably, this meant that he couldn't afford to wait for the artillery, which was making heavy weather of the road up the mountains and was believed to be at least half a day behind schedule. After a certain amount of soul-searching, he resolved to press on regardless. Artillery dismantled and packed on wagons wouldn't be any use to him if he was ambushed by scorpions in a narrow pass; in fact, they'd compound any disaster by falling into the hands of the Eremians. By keeping the artillery separate and behind him, he hoped to guard against that particular nightmare above all others.

  The next two days proved that the Cure Hardy were reliable informants. For reasons best known to themselves, the enemy had failed to take advantage of two perfect locations for ambushes, both of them narrow bottle canyons through which Melancton had no option but to pass. This omission played on his nerves more than a clear sighting would have done; to an army already lacking in self-confidence, the enemy is never more unnerving than when he's invisible. Resisting an almost overpowering urge to slow down, wait for the artillery and build redoubts to hide in until he found out exactly what the Eremians were up to, he pressed on. During the course of the next two days the scouts reported two possible sightings of lone Eremian horsemen, apparently watching the army from a distance of several miles. Of an army or scorpions, they'd seen no trace. The next day, they rode right up to the outskirts of Palicuro, and reported back that the village was apparently deserted.

  Once again, they were proved right. In fact, Palicuro was more than deserted; overnight it had been burned to ash and charcoal and the village cistern had been fouled with the proceeds of the village's muckheaps and middens. Melancton had known better than to rely on being able to find food for his men and forage for his horses there, but he was disappointed nevertheless; as a result he'd have enough to get to Civitas Eremiae, but if the Mezentines wanted him to dig in under the walls for a siege, they'd have to send him a large supply train. Otherwise he risked the indignity of the well-fed defenders throwing their crusts and cabbage waste to his men out of pity.

  Dispatches containing these observations arrived unexpectedly on the desk of Lucao Psellus early one morning, at a stage in his career when he'd pretty much convinced himself that his fellow commissioners believed he was dead, or had retired to the suburbs to grow sunflowers and keep bees. He'd given up trying to find out what was going on, or what they wanted him to do. Nobody was ever available to talk to him, his memos went unanswered, and copies of reports and minutes had stopped coming a long time ago. He nearly wept with joy to know they still remembered who he was.

  With the dispatches was a curt note requiring him to expedite the supply train as requested. That he could do. It would involve a careful balancing of the three basic elements out of which all administration is ultimately formed: time, money and fear. Not many people, even full-time professional Guild officers, really understood the complex and fascinating interplay between these three monumental forces, but Psellus had been experimenting with them in different combinations and ratios for years, like a methodical alchemist. At last they'd given him a job he could do.

  Of the unholy trinity, the most fundamental is money, since nothing can happen without it. Accordingly, he walked across two quadrangles and up and down six flights of stairs, and surprised his old friend Maniacis in the payments room, where he was working at his chequerboard.

  It was, in its way, a beautiful thing; an enormous oak table, the sort that kings and barons in the barbarian countries would sit at to feast and drink, whose surface was inlaid with thousands of juxtaposed bone and ebony plates, all of them exactly the same size, about an inch and a half square. At the end of each row was a number, a multiple of ten. At the narrow end of the table sat Maniacis, a pile of wax tablets in front of him, a wooden pot at his elbow, a miniature rake with a long thin stem in his hand. Whenever he needed to make a calculation, he took small silver discs, like coins, from the pot and started laying them out on the squares of the bottom row to represent units. As soon as four squares were covered, he flicked them back with his rake, scooped them back into the pot and put one counter on the line between the bottom and the second row, to represent five units. The second row was tens, the third hundreds, while counters placed on the line dividing second and third were fifties. Mostly he would start a calculation slowly and carefully and gradually build up speed as he progressed, until his fingers were moving with extraordinary speed and the raked-back counters jingled and tinkled like a man running in scale armour. The counters were good silver, ninety parts fine, and stamped with the word TREASURY on one side and an inspiring scene from the history of the Republic on the other. New sets were issued every year, at which point the old sets were recalled and sent to be melted down, though the considerable number that reached the cabinets of avid counter-collectors suggested that the calling-in procedure wasn't absolutely watertight.

  Psellus waited until his friend had his hand full of swept-up counters, then coughed. Maniacis dropped the counters, looked up and called him something.

  'Now then,' Psellus replied, and grinned. 'You can't say that to me, I'm here in my official capacity'

  'Is that right.' Maniacis scowled at him. 'In that case, triple what I said with spikes on. Your precious Necessary Evil's been running us ragged for weeks.'

  Psellus frowned. 'Lucky you,' he said. 'They aren't even talking to me. I don't know what I've done to upset them, but they've cut me right out. I've been sitting counting the bricks in the wall.'

  'Oh.' Maniacis looked at him thoughtfully. 'So, what're you here bothering me for?'

  Psellus perched on the edge of the table and picked up a counter. On the reverse, a nude fat woman of indeterminate age was presenting a muscle-bound warrior with a garland apparently woven from turnip-tops, while in the background smoke rose from a distant mountain. Underneath was the legend The Eremian threat averted. He raised an eyebrow and put it back where he'd found it. 'A bit previous, surely,' he said.

  Maniacis shrugged. 'Not pure silver, either. Don't suppose you noticed, but where it rubs on the table, like the edges of the laurel crown and the chubby bird's tits, the copper's starting to show through. Last year's issue were called in early and we got these instead, a week ago. They were supposed to go into service as part of the grand victory celebrations, but…' He shrugged. 'That's how tight things are,' he said. 'We needed the silver, so we pulled the old ones early and put these ones out ahead of time. Tempting providence if you ask me, but there it is, there's a war on.'

  Psellus wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. 'I had no idea things were so bad,' he said.

  'Oh, they aren't really,' Maniacis said with a sigh. 'Really, it's all to do with cashflow and housekeeping. The money's mostly there, but we're under orders to try and keep to within this year's budget. If we start breaking into next year's money, it looks very bad in Assembly. So, to tide things over, we're having to scratch about for loose change to bridge the gap.'

  'I
see,' Psellus said. 'How's it going?'

  Maniacis shook his head. 'We lost the battle some time ago,' he said. 'So now we're having to borrow money from foreigners; the merchants, banks in the old country, even the Cure Doce. We'll pay it all back as soon as the new fiscal year starts, of course, but they'll screw us rotten for interest. That's politics for you. Your bloody Foundrymen, running scared of the Drapers.'

  'We didn't start it,' Psellus replied automatically. 'Well, anyway, I'm here to make things worse for you. We've got to expedite supplies for the new army, so I'm here on the scrounge.'

  Maniacis clicked his tongue. 'Not sure I can help you,' he said. 'How much do you need?'

  When Psellus told him, he opened his eyes wide and blinked.

  'I know,' Psellus said. 'It's a lot of money'

  Maniacis rested his chin on his fingertips and thought for a moment. 'There's no way I can raise that much just by fiddling the books,' he said. 'Either we borrow it from the savages or you'll have to go to Assembly for a levy'

  'Can't do that,' Psellus said immediately. 'For one thing it'd take too long. For another-like I said, I'm out of touch, but I can't see it getting through without blood on the floor.'

  'Quite so.' Maniacis shook his head. 'With so many workers taken out and put on war work, production generally's right down the drain. That's not all; all the available shipping's tied up ferrying men and supplies, so goods are piling up in the warehouses with no ships to carry them. If we don't deliver, we don't get paid. This war's bloody terrible for business, which is the exact opposite of how it was supposed to be. If I was a Foundryman, I'd be looking for heads to roll on my management committee.'

  'Be that as it may,' Psellus said sharply, 'looks like you'll need to raise a loan. How long's that going to take?'

  Maniacis shrugged. 'Not very long, actually,' he said. 'Just so happens, we've negotiated a line of credit with our new best friends, just in case things look like they're getting out of hand. Luckily they have plenty of money and their interest rates are not at all bad.'

  Psellus caught something in his friend's tone of voice. 'There's a catch, isn't there?'

  'Depends how you look at it,' Maniacis replied, with a humourless grin. 'The way we're viewing it in this department, there isn't a problem, but we can see how other people-you lot, for instance-might not like it very much. Which is why we haven't got around to telling anybody yet.'

  Something dropped into place, and Psellus winced, as though he'd turned his ankle or cut himself. 'It's the Vadani, isn't it?' he said. 'That's who you're borrowing all this extra money from.'

  Maniacis looked at him. 'You're perfectly at liberty to speculate,' he said. 'I'm not saying anything. But if you want money for your grocery bill, I'd be obliged if you kept your face shut and your wild guesses to yourself.' He looked away and said to the wall: 'One thing the Vadani have got plenty of is silver. All they've got to do is dig it out of the sides of the mountains. The bad thing is, we've run projections of what the final cost is likely to be, once we've taken Civitas Eremiae and finished the mopping-up. I won't bore you with details, but it's going to be tight. So much so that I don't see us being able to pay back these emergency loans next year or any time soon. In fact, unless we get lucky and find treasuries stuffed with gold and silver in the ruins of Orsea's palace, we're going to be in hock to our new best friends for a very long time. Now I don't understand politics, I'm proud to say, so I don't have to bother my silly little head about the implications of that. Instead, I can leave it to the likes of you, so you can start planning ahead. I seem to remember an old proverb about holding a wild boar by its bollocks; holding on is no fun at all, but letting go would probably be worse.' He sighed, leaned back, stretched. 'Let me have a formal writ of requisition as soon as you can,' he said. 'While you're doing the paperwork, I'll talk to my bosses and we can get everything set up. You know,' he added sourly, 'if only your precious Guildsmen had put locks on your office windows, none of this mess would've happened in the first place.'

  General Melancton received the news that the supply train had been dispatched and was on its way with a mixture of relief and scepticism. He'd been taught in war school that fighting on two fronts is a bad thing, and of the two enemies he currently faced, the Mezentine Guilds worried him slightly more than the Eremians. He was, after all, allowed to kill the Eremians, assuming he could get close enough without being shot to ribbons by the artillery the Perpetual Republic had assured him he'd never have to face. Also, he felt confident that he could predict how they were likely to behave. The Guilds, on the other hand, were something he couldn't begin to understand. The one thing he knew about them was that if it suited them to do so, they'd strand him in the mountains without supplies or send him to his certain death without a second thought. It was a shame the savages were so poor; on balance, he'd far rather be fighting for them.

  He sat in his tent studying the map. The ill-fated Captain Eiconodoulus had told him a few things about Mezentine cartography before they'd shipped him back home, and Melancton was inclined to take the captain's word over his employers'. This meant that he was obliged to rely increasingly on his scouts, the Cure Hardy light cavalry. He'd have preferred a company of properly trained surveyors from home, but there wasn't time to send for any; and the Cure Hardy possibly because they were nomads and therefore used to constant and painstaking reconnaissance, seemed to be doing a perfectly adequate job. It didn't matter at all that he didn't like them much; and he only disliked them because he found them more or less impossible to understand, even though they spoke quite passable Mezentine. But he couldn't figure out what they wanted; why they were here, risking their lives on behalf of him and his employers. Money didn't seem to interest them, in the same way fish aren't interested in music. They weren't here for the glory, he was pretty sure of that. In his time in the military he'd come across men who went to the wars simply because they liked to fight, but the Cure Hardy took great and laudable pains to avoid the enemy. Therefore they remained a mystery, one of very many, and that bothered him, on the rare occasions when he had time and leisure to dwell on it.

  Today, however, they had particularly interesting news. There was a path (maybe thirty years ago it could have been called a road, but a lot of heather can grow and a lot of dirt and rock can be washed away in thirty years) that appeared to lead round the side of the foothills of Civitas Mountain, bypassing the obvious place for a final pre-siege pitched battle; and as far as the scouts could see, this path was completely clear of the enemy. Melancton was a realist, with a healthy distrust of cleverness. Someone with pretensions to tactical genius would be thinking in terms of fooling the enemy into making a stand at the obvious place by feinting at it with cavalry and light infantry, while sending the bulk of his army round by the cunning path to take them from the rear and slaughter them like sheep. As far as he was concerned, that would be a first-class way to lose the war at a stroke; something would go wrong with timing or communications, he'd find himself losing the pitched battle through lack of numbers while his encirclement party walked straight into an ambush on the hidden path. He stroked his beard and scowled. He was getting too old to play games.

  He looked up. His chief of staff, Tachista Pantocrator, had arrived with the duty roster, which meant it was noon already and he still hadn't made up his mind. 'Tachista,' he said, 'if you were Duke Orsea, what'd you be most worried about?'

  Pantocrator thought for a moment. 'Losing,' he said.

  Not as silly an answer as it sounded. 'What's the most likely way you'd lose?' he asked.

  'Easy. Sheer weight of numbers.'

  Melancton nodded slowly. 'So you'd be thinking it'd-be nice to even things up by slaughtering a few thousand of the bastards before they even get to the city'

  'It wouldn't hurt.'

  'No. But we're contemplating what's losing you sleep.'

  'I see. Well, in that case, I'd be scared stiff of throwing away such advantages as I've got.'

 
That made sense too. 'And your best advantage?'

  'Geography,' Pantocrator replied immediately. 'Superb defensive site, impregnable walls, and now I've got something approaching parity in artillery.'

  'So if you're smart,' Melancton said, 'what're you going to do?'

  'Spend my time on the defences of the city, and laying in as much food and materials as I can before the siege starts.'

  Melancton smiled. 'And you're not going to risk wasting men in a field battle out in the open, when they'll be much harder to kill standing behind your wonderful city walls.'

  'I'd have to be stupid, wouldn't I?'

  'Of course. In that case, tell the scouts to check out a day's march along the main road. I don't think they're going to come out to play. I think they'll stay in the city and wait for us until we're at the foot of their rotten hill. What do you think?'

  Pantocrator shrugged. 'That's what I'd do, probably,' he said. 'But then, I lack imagination. You said so in my last assessment.'

  'Fuck imagination,' Melancton replied.

  Hardening steel was the real problem. They'd run out of ordinary plain iron too, but the city was full of the stuff, in various shapes and forms. With the backing of the Ducas, Ziani had organised platoons of soldiers with nothing better to do into browsing parties, scouring the streets for frivolous and non-essential ironwork-door-hinges, gates, railings, lamp-standards, fire-dogs, boot-scrapers, sign-brackets, anything that could be drawn down, jumped up or hammer-welded together to make up bar stock. Hardening steel, on the other hand, had always been a rare and expensive commodity. Cart springs were the obvious resource, but he'd already stripped the city bare of them; likewise pitchfork tines, spade and shovel blades, they were even prising perfectly good horseshoes off soundly shod hoofs just to feed the furnaces. As if that wasn't ridiculous enough, they were eking out the hardening steel by pattern-welding it into billets two to one with wrought iron, so that each twelve-by-three-by-three that went to be drawn through the plates into spring wire had been forge-welded, twisted, folded and welded again and again like the finest swords of ancient heroes. If you looked closely at the finished wire you could actually see the patterns-pool-and-eye, maidenhair, hugs and kisses. It was ludicrous and a truly desperate way of going about things, but they had no choice. Pattern-welded springs, though; if that wasn't an abomination, then the term had no meaning.