Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  Vaatzes looked at him and grinned. 'No problem,' he said. 'For what little it's worth, I'm absolutely positive you haven't done anything wrong. Also for what it's worth, I'd like to thank you for everything you've done to help me. Without you, I don't know what I'd have done. I wish I could repay you somehow, but I can't.' He stood up. 'I wish there was something I could do.'

  'Don't worry about it,' Miel said.

  Don't worry about it, he'd said; Ziani thought about that as he walked home. Technically, it was absolution, which was probably what he'd gone there to obtain. Query, however: is absolution valid if it's obtained through deceit, fraud and treachery?

  Irrelevant; he didn't need the Ducas' forgiveness, any more than he'd have needed it if he'd been pushed off a ledge and fallen on him, breaking his arm or leg. In that case, he'd have been no more than a projectile, a weapon in the hand of whoever had pushed him. There are all sorts of ways in which people are made into weapons; what they do once they've been put to that use is not their fault. A man can't work in an arms factory unless he believes in the innocence of weapons.

  As he cleared the lower suburbs and approached the wall, he became aware of a great deal of activity; a great many people walking fast or running, not aimlessly or in panic but with an obvious, serious purpose. Some of them were hurrying up the hill, towards the centre of town and the palace. Most of them, however, were coming down the hill, heading for the wall or the gate. Fine, he thought; something's about to happen, we're about to get under way at last. He allowed himself a moment (there might not be another opportunity) to consider his feelings, which he'd learned to trust over the years. He realised that he felt, on balance, content. A great deal was wrong about what had happened and what was about to happen, but he was satisfied that he bore no blame for any of it. His part had been carried out with proper, in some respects elegant, efficiency; and he was reasonably confident that it would all come out right, barring the unforeseen and the unforeseeable. He checked progress achieved against the overall schematic. There was still a long way to go, but he'd come a long way already. Most of all, everything was more or less under control. Suddenly, without expecting to, he laughed. The Eremian workers at the factory had an expression, good enough for government work, meaning something like, by no means perfect, but who cares, it'll do. It had always annoyed him when he'd heard them using it; right now, however, it was entirely appropriate. Very soon now, by the sound of it, there'd be plenty of government work on both sides of the city wall. He, of course, preferred to see things in terms of tolerances; what could and could not be tolerated in the context of the job that needed to be done. By those criteria, he'd passed the test and could go home with a quiet mind.

  Orsea arrived at the wall expecting to see one of his nightmares. Instead, he found the seventh infantry drawn up in parade order, and the captain saluting him.

  'What's happening?' he asked.

  'They've started to climb the road,' the captain told him. 'Come and see for yourself.'

  Jarnac Ducas joined him on top of the gatehouse tower. Preoccupied as Orsea was with thoughts of the end of the world, he couldn't help noticing that Jarnac's unerring dress sense had chosen exactly the right outfit for the occasion: a coat of plates backed in blue velvet over a shirt of flat, riveted mail; plain blued-steel arm and leg harness; an open-face bascinet with a mail aventail; simple mail chausses over strong shoes; workmanlike Type Fifteen sword in a plain leather scabbard. Is there, Orsea wondered, a book where you can look these things up: Arms and Armour for Formal Occasions: a guide for the well-dressed warrior. He wouldn't be the least surprised, he decided, if there was.

  'Nothing either way as yet,' Jarnac told him. 'See down there, you can just make them out.' (Jarnac pointed; Orsea couldn't see anything.) 'That's their heavy artillery, the stuff we really don't know anything about. According to the Mezentine fellow, Vaatzes, they could have engines that could drop five-hundredweight shot on the walls from about halfway up the road; which'd be a disaster, obviously, we'd have to send out a sortie to deal with them and that'd be simply asking for trouble. But, apparently, the platforms and carriages for that kind of engine are too wide or too fragile or something to be set up on the road-because of the gradient, presumably-so it's possible they won't be able to use them at all unless they stop halfway up and spend several days building a special platform. Nothing to stop them doing that, of course, unless we're brave enough or cocky enough to send out a night sortie. Alternatively, they could drag the heavy artillery round the back of the city and set it up roughly where the advance party of scorpions was supposed to be-where it would've been if we hadn't intercepted it, I mean. In fact, that's the only scenario we can think of which'd explain why they wanted to station scorpions there in the first place: to lay down a suppressing barrage to cover them while they get the heavy engines set up. Of course, you'd expect them to change the plan because of what happened, but you never know, they may decide to press on regardless. Basically, it's too early to say anything for certain.'

  That seemed to cover the situation pretty well, though Orsea felt he ought to be asking penetrating questions to display his perfect grasp of it. But the only thing he really wanted to know was whether, at some point between now and the start of the actual assault, Jarnac would be slipping off home to change into something else; or whether he'd got a full wardrobe of different armours laid out ready in the guard tower. He wished he didn't dislike Jarnac so much, particularly since he was going to have to rely on him; that made him think of Miel, which had the effect of freezing his mind. 'Carry on,' he heard himself say.

  He toured the walls, of course, and anxious-looking officers whose names tended to elude him jumped up and saluted him wherever he went. They pointed things out to him, things he couldn't quite make out in the distance-high points where the enemy might put observers or long-range engines, patches of dead ground where a whole division could lurk unseen, secret mountain trails that could be useful for raids and sorties-and he knew that he ought to be taking it all in, building each component into a mechanism that would serve as a weapon against the enemy. But there was too much of everything for his mind to grasp. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was slowly seizing up, as fear, shock and pain coagulated and set inside him. The enemy would build their platform and their engines would grind down the walls at their leisure, smashing Vaatzes' hard-earned, expensive scorpions into rubbish before they'd had a chance to loose a single shot. When that task had been completed to their perfect satisfaction, the enemy would advance, entirely safe, to the foot of the wall; their scorpions would clear away the last of Jarnac's defenders, the ladders would be raised, the enemy would surge in like a mighty white-fringed wave; and all the while, Miel (who could have saved the city) would watch from his tower window, and Veatriz would watch from hers; maybe they'd be watching when he was killed, maybe they'd see him fall and be unable to do anything…

  Part of the torment was knowing that there was still enough time. He could send a runner to the captain of the East Tower; Miel could be here beside him in a few minutes, to forgive him and take over and make everything all right again. But he couldn't do that; because Miel had betrayed him, Miel and Veatriz-the truth was that he didn't know what it was they'd done, or how Duke Valens came into it; all he knew was that he could never trust either of them again, and without them he was completely useless, a fool in charge of the battle of life against death. It was like the nightmares he had now and again, where he was a doctor about to perform surgery, and he suddenly realised he didn't have the faintest idea what he was supposed to do; or he'd agreed to act in a play but he hadn't got round to learning his lines, and now he was due to go on in front of a hundred people. The officers carried on telling him things he ought to know, but it was as though they were speaking a foreign language. We've had it, he thought; and his mind started to fill up with images of the last time, the field of dead men and scorpion bolts. It's all my fault, he told himself, I'm to blame for
all of it; nobody else but me.

  Once the tour of inspection was over, he went back to Jarnac's tower and asked him what was happening. Jarnac pointed out the heavy engines-he could see them for himself now-being dragged up the slope by long trains of mules. Ahead of them trudged a dense mass of men; the work details, Jarnac explained, who'd be building the platform for the engines.

  'I see,' Orsea said. 'So what should we be doing?' He could see a flicker of concern in Jarnac's eyes, as if to say what're you asking me for? 'Well,' he said, 'as I mentioned earlier, we have the option of launching a sortie. We can try and drive off the work details, or kill them, or capture or destroy the heavy engines. It's our only way of putting the engines out of action before they neutralise our defences-assuming, of course, that they're capable of doing that. We've never seen them in action, or heard any accounts of what they can do, so we're guessing, basically. But if we launch the sortie, we'll be taking quite a risk. To put it bluntly, I don't think we'd stand any more of a chance than we did the last time we took on the Mezentines in the open. Our scorpions can't give us cover down there, and we'd be walking right up to theirs; and even if you leave the scorpions out of it completely, we'd be taking on their army in a pitched battle. I don't think that'd be a good idea.'

  Jarnac stopped talking and looked at him; so did a dozen or so other officers, waiting for him to decide. He could feel fear coming to life inside them (the Duke hasn't got a plan, he can't make up his mind, he's useless, we're screwed). He knew he had to say something, and that if he said the wrong thing it could easily mean the destruction of the city.

  'Fine,' he said. 'No sortie. We'll just sit it out and wait and see.'

  The silence was uncomfortable, as though he'd just said something crass and tactless, or spouted gibberish at them. I've lost them, he thought, but they'll obey my orders because I'm the Duke. Their excellent loyalty would keep them from ignoring him and doing what they thought should be done, what they knew was the right course of action; they'd fail him by loyalty, just as Miel had failed him by treachery. Ah, symmetry!

  But he'd given the order now; fatal to change his mind and trample down what little confidence in him they had left. Amusing thought: here was the entire Mezentine army coming up the mountain specially to kill him, well over thirty thousand men all hungering for his blood; even so, in spite of their multitudes, he was still his own worst enemy.

  Jarnac cleared his throat. 'If it's all right with you, I'd like to run the scorpion crews through a few more drills,' he said. 'We've got time, I'm fairly sure, and-'

  'Yes, do that,' Orsea snapped at him. 'I'll get out of your way, you've got-' He didn't bother to finish the sentence. He headed for the stairs. People followed him; he ought to know who they all were, but he didn't. He had no clear idea of where he was going, or what he was going to do next.

  In response to his urgent request for technical advice, they brought him a man called Falier, who was apparently the chief engineer of the state arms factory. It seemed logical enough. This Falier was in charge of building the machines, so presumably he'd know how they worked and what they were capable of doing.

  Falier turned out to be younger than he'd expected; a nervous, good-looking, weak sort of man who'd probably agree with everything he said. General Melancton sighed, told him to sit down and offered him a drink.

  'The heavy engines,' he said. 'The-what are they, the Mark Sixes. How far will they shoot?'

  The man called Falier looked at him as if he didn't understand the question. 'Well,' he said slowly, 'it all depends. I mean, for a start, how heavy a ball are you using?'

  Expect the worst of people and you won't be disappointed. 'I don't know,' Melancton said with studied patience. 'You tell me. What weight of ball will give me maximum range?'

  Falier was doing sums in his head. 'A two-hundredweight ball will carry six hundred yards,' he said, 'at optimum elevation, assuming the wind's not against you. But,' he went on, 'I can't guarantee it'd be effective against that sort of masonry; not at extreme range.'

  'I see.' Melancton sighed. 'So what weight of ball do I need to use?'

  'Well,' Falier said, 'a five hundredweight'll go through pretty much anything.'

  'Excellent. And what's the extreme range of a five hundredweight?'

  Falier shrugged. 'Two hundred yards,' he said. 'More if you've got a following wind, of course.'

  'That would be well inside scorpion range, from the city wall.'

  'Oh yes.' Falier nodded enthusiastically. 'Especially shot from the top of the wall there. Actually, it's quite a sophisticated calculation, where the point of release is higher up than the point of impact. It's all to do with the rate of decay of the bolt's trajectory, and the acceleration it builds up on its way down. The variables can make a hell of a difference, mind.'

  Falier, in other words, didn't know the answer to his question; so he thanked him and got rid of him, and resolved to build his siege platform at four hundred and fifty yards. If the balls dropped short at that range, they'd just have to move up a bit closer and build another platform. Embarrassing; but with any luck, all the witnesses to his embarrassment-the hostile ones at least-would be dead quite soon, and so it wouldn't really matter terribly much. He gave the order, then left his tent and walked a little way up the road so he could watch the building detail at work.

  The mercenary infantry were, of course, too well trained and high-class to dig earth and carry it back and forth in baskets; so he'd sent to Mezentia for brute labour, and they'd sent him five hundred assorted Cure Doce, Paulisper, Cranace and Lonazep dockside miscellaneous, at three groschen a day. Twenty groschen to the Mezentine foreign thaler, and it's a sad fact of life that you get what you pay for. The Cure Doce dug and spitted with a kind of steadfast indifference; the Paulisper didn't mind heavy lifting, but were generally drunk by mid-afternoon; the Cranace picked fights with the Paulisper over matters of religion and spectator sport; the Lonazeppians worked hard but complained about everything (the food, the tents, the Cranace's singing). In the event, it took them four days and nights on a three-shift rotation to build the platform. Melancton's most optimistic forecast had been six. The Eremians made no effort to interfere in any way, which he found strange and faintly disturbing. In their position he'd have launched sorties; even if capturing or wrecking the engines proved too difficult, scaririg the labour force into mass desertion would've been no trouble at all. An enemy who neglected such an obvious opportunity was either supremely confident or utterly resigned to defeat.

  On the fifth morning, he went up to the platform with Syracoelus, his captain of artillery, the engineer Falier and a couple of pain-in-the-bum liaison officers from the Mezentine Guilds, who'd been sent up to find out why the war hadn't been won yet. The early mists had burned away in bright, harsh sunlight; the heavy engines had been hauled up overnight and were already dug in, aligned and crewed for action. Four hundred and fifty yards away, the enemy looked like roosting rooks behind their turrets and battlements, the noses of scorpions poking out from behind each crenellation.

  Melancton and his party stood in silence for a while, looking up at the walls. Nobody seemed in any hurry to say anything, not even the usually unsilenceable Mezentines. Finally, Melancton said, 'Well, I suppose we'd better get on with it.' The engine crews hesitated, trying to figure out if that constituted a valid order to open fire. Melancton frowned, then nodded to Captain Syracoelus, who looked at the nearest engine-master and said, 'Loose.'

  He was being somewhat premature, of course; first they had to span the huge windlass that dragged down the engine's throwing-arm against the tension of the nested, inch-thick leaf springs that powered it. In the silence the smooth snicks of the ratchet sounded horribly loud (it was as though the city was asleep, and Melancton was worried they'd wake it up). A louder, meatier snick told him the sear was engaged and the engine was ready to be loaded; a wheeled dolly was rolled under a derrick which lifted a three-hundredweight stone ball off a pile; the dol
ly ran on tracks that stopped under a short crane, which lifted the ball into the spoon on the end of the throwing-arm. Men with levers rolled it into place and jumped clear. Syracoelus repeated his order; someone pulled back a lever, and the arm reared up, sudden and violent as a punch. Melancton could hear the throbbing whistle the ball made as it spun; at first it climbed, almost straight, so far that he was sure they'd overshoot the city completely. At the top of its trajectory it hung for a split second, the sunlight choosing that moment to flare off it, like an unofficial moon. Then it began to fall, the decay of the cast seeming to draw it in as if there were chains attached to it. He lost sight of it against the backdrop of the walls; heard the dull thump as it bashed into the masonry, saw a puff of dust and steam lift into the air and drift for a moment before dispersing. 'Elevation good,' he heard someone say, 'windage two minutes left'; another lever clicked and a sear rang like a bell, and that oscillating whistle again, followed by the thump and the round white ball of dust. The clicking of ratchets all round him was as busy as crickets in meadow-grass; men were straining at their windlasses, every last scrap of strength brought to bear on the long handles; voices were calling out numbers, six up, five left, two right; the distant thumps came so close together they melted into each other, and the whistles merged into a constant hum.

  Compassion wasn't one of Melancton's weaknesses, but he couldn't help wondering what it must be like on the wall, as the shots landed; if the thumps were so heavy he could feel them through the soles of his feet four and a half hundred yards away, what did they feel like close to, as they butted into the stones of the wall? Melancton had never been on the wrong end of a bombardment like this; an earthquake, maybe, he thought, or the eruption of a volcano. 'Keep it going for half an hour,' he heard himself shouting over the extraordinary blend of noises, 'and then we can see if we're doing any good.' (Half an hour, he thought as he said it; how long would half an hour seem under the onslaught of the whistling stone predators, swooping in like a falcon on a partridge? He knew the fluffy white balls of cloud were steam because someone had explained it to him long ago; when the ball lands, the energy behind it is so great that for a split second it's burning hot, and any traces of moisture in the target are instantly boiled away into vapour. How could you be on the receiving end of something like that and not drop dead at once from sheer terror?)