The Proof House

by K. J. Parker

  Theudas’ frown grew deeper. ‘I didn’t know there was going to be a war,’ he said.

  ‘Of course there’s going to be war,’ said one of the other men, the one who’d been playing the pipe. ‘Because they’ve taken Ap’ Escatoy at last. Now they’re coming after us.’

  ‘Or Shastel,’ the third man interrupted.

  ‘Or Shastel,’ agreed the piper. ‘Which is why we need to make an alliance with the wizards. Nobody else is going to help us, after all. Nobody else is left.’

  Theudas handed the jug to the piper, hoping nobody would notice he hadn’t drunk any of what was in it; cider, he suspected, and he’d always hated cider, ever since he was a boy. They’d drunk nothing else in Perimadeia, and now the plainsmen had taken to it as well. ‘What’s this you’re making?’ he asked, hoping to change the subject.

  The men looked at each other. ‘Oh, come on,’ one of them said, ‘it doesn’t really make any odds. Besides, anybody with an eye to see can look at it and tell for themselves. It’s a trebuchet,’ he went on. ‘Like the ones we made when we took the City. Same design, in fact; well, they worked all right then, so let’s hope they’ll work just as well against the Empire.’

  ‘A trebuchet,’ Theudas repeated. He could remember the day the trebuchets had appeared; the day the plainsmen appeared under the walls, on the other side of the narrow channel, with their barges of pre-shaped timbers, and all the noise and bustle of assembling the engines. Nobody had known what to make of them, whether they were a joke or a threat or both. ‘And this is because of Ap’ Escatoy,’ he added.

  The man who’d played the guitar-like thing nodded. ‘Because of that bastard Loredan,’ he said. ‘He thinks long, that bastard.’

  ‘Loredan? You mean Bardas Loredan?’

  The guitar player nodded. ‘Planned the whole thing, everybody knows that. Went away after the Fall, joined the Empire, took Ap’ Escatoy for them so they’d come after us next. He’s the one we should be looking out for. Gods, he must hate us a lot.’

  There was an awkward pause. Then the man who’d been singing said, ‘Well, fair enough. It was his city we burned down, of course he wants to get even.’

  ‘But we burned it down because of what he did to us,’ the piper answered. ‘Him and his uncle Maxen. That’s why Temrai had to do it. And now he’s come after us again, only this time he’s got the Empire with him. He won’t rest easy till he’s killed us all, you’ll see.’

  Theudas looked down at the ground. Irrational; but he had the feeling that if they saw his face, they’d know. Also, he had a terrible, painful feeling of guilt – the things they were saying about Bardas, who wasn’t like that, they were making him sound like the angel of death or something and he wasn’t, he was a quiet, lonely man who just wanted to keep out of the way of trouble – but trouble would keep following him around, like a dog sniffing the trousers of a sausage-seller. But he knew that the last thing Bardas wanted was to get even, and that none of it was his fault.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, standing up. ‘Thanks for the drink.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said the banjo-man. ‘And hey, calm down. He hasn’t got us yet. And he won’t, you can count on it.’

  ‘I know,’ Theudas said, and walked away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Well,’ said Gorgas Loredan, ‘you’re pretty quiet. What do you reckon?’

  Poliorcis thought for a moment. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘Very green.’

  ‘Green,’ Gorgas repeated. ‘You know, I’d never thought of it like that before. Yes, it’s certainly green all right.’

  The rain was slowing up; just a summer shower, more or less a daily occurrence at this time of year in the Mesoge. Rain dripped in fat splodges from the thatched eaves of the old linhay they’d taken shelter in; a typical Mesoge building, half derelict, probably been that way for a hundred years, probably be in more or less the same shape a hundred years hence. A little stream of muddy water trickled through the open doorway, across the floor and away into a damp patch in the far corner. Even inside, the walls were green with moss.

  ‘So,’ Gorgas went on, ‘that’s all there is to it, really. My work on Scona was over, I’d done my best, things hadn’t worked out the way I’d planned, but there was no point going all to pieces over it. So I came home.’

  Poliorcis nodded. ‘With an army,’ he said. ‘And seized power. And set yourself up as a – excuse me, I don’t mean to sound rude, but it’s an awkward concept to put the right word to. King’s not right, somehow, and warlord has such dreadful connotations. Military dictator, perhaps—’

  Gorgas smiled. ‘Prince,’ he said. ‘That’s how I like to think of myself, anyway. Prince of the Mesoge. You’re right, it’s not big enough for a kingdom. I thought about duke, but that has overtones of being somebody’s subordinate.’ He yawned, then bit off another mouthful of cheese. ‘So I guess that makes this a principality. Seems suitable to me, in terms of scale. Bigger than a county, smaller than a country; what do you think?’

  ‘Whatever,’ Poliorcis replied. The barrel he’d been sitting on all this time was wet, too (everything was wet in this – this principality). ‘Now, I’ll be straight with you, the thing that I couldn’t understand was why you met with so little resistance. Please, don’t take this the wrong way—’

  Gorgas waved away the niceties of diplomatic language. ‘No problem,’ he said with his mouth full.

  ‘Thank you; but for a – oh dear, vocabulary again – for an adventurer like yourself to come barging in, with only a few hundred soldiers to back him up, and take charge of a country that’s never really had a ruler or a government before: you must admit, it’s enough to make one curious. But now I’ve seen it for myself—’

  Gorgas nodded. ‘Apathy,’ he said. ‘Or you could call it being fatalistic, or demoralised (except that suggests there was a time when they were all moralised, and there wasn’t, far as I know); basically, it’s not giving a damn one way or another. You see,’ he went on, breaking up a strip of dried meat with his fingers, ‘all this lot, ever since it was first settled, the whole country was planted out as estates by rich City families – Perimadeians, absentee landlords, naturally – and the poor bloody peasants who actually grew stuff and lived here, we were only ever tenants, or hired men; no tradition of owning the land, you see. I suppose the City bailiffs were the government, which is to say that they’d come round and tell you what to do and you’d do it; not that they bothered us much, we didn’t see them from one year’s end to the next. Apart from that, we just got on with things.’

  ‘Quite,’ Poliorcis said. ‘And the sort of things governments do – courts of law, for example, justice—’

  Gorgas laughed. ‘Weren’t any. Didn’t need any. You’ll have noticed, there’s no towns, no villages even; just farms. And on every farm, a family. If there’s any ruling to be done, the farmer does it, same as he does everything else.’

  ‘I see.’ A rat scuttled across the floor, stopped, looked at Poliorcis critically, as if he was a picture hung slightly crooked, and vanished behind a barrel. ‘And disputes between neighbours? Feuds, presumably, and long, drawn-out petty bickering.’

  ‘That sort of thing,’ Gorgas said. ‘Usually quite harmless; and if not, well, nobody else’s business. Besides, mostly there just wasn’t the time or the energy.’

  Poliorcis shook his head. ‘So,’ he said, ‘the only question that’s left is, why should anybody want a place like this?’

  ‘It’s my home,’ Gorgas replied. ‘And when the City fell, there was a gap; no more landlords, no shape to anything. People like to know where they stand. It’s one of the things that makes life possible.’

  Poliorcis didn’t feel like replying to that. ‘I think I’ve seen enough,’ he said. ‘And the rain’s eased off. Shall we go back to Tornoys?’

  ‘I was thinking we might go to my farm,’ Gorgas replied. ‘It’s quite close. We can stay there tonight, and go back to Tornoys in the
morning.’

  ‘Very well,’ Poliorcis said. ‘Is there anything to see there?’

  Gorgas shook his head. ‘It’s just a farm,’ he replied. ‘My brothers look after it while I’m away. They’ve always been there, you see.’

  There was something that Poliorcis couldn’t quite place, but he saw no point in making an issue of it.

  Half an hour’s ride from the linhay they came to a bridge, or the remains of one. The middle of the three spans was missing.

  ‘Damn,’ Gorgas said. ‘We’ll have to double back to the ford.’ He frowned. ‘It’s a nuisance, this sort of thing. Somebody needed some blocks of masonry, so they broke up the bridge. I’ll have to send someone to fix it.’

  At the ford there was a gibbet, with a body hanging from it. Gorgas didn’t comment, and Poliorcis didn’t feel like asking. The body looked as if it had been there for a couple of weeks.

  ‘One thing I’ve got to do when I have the time,’ Gorgas said, as they rode over the ford, ‘is to have these roads made up. It’s pointless expecting people to do it themselves; all that happens is, they fall out with their neighbours over who’s responsible for which part. I gather you have expert road-makers in the Empire, people who do nothing else. I’d be interested in hiring a few.’

  An hour on from the ford, the road petered out in the middle of a crop of barley. It wasn’t much of a crop; the rain had beaten down flat patches, and the pigeons and rooks had come in and trodden down as much again. Gorgas sighed and rode down the middle until he came to a tall thorn hedge. There was a gate, but it was tangled up in thirty years’ growth of thorns and briars.

  ‘I thought it’d been a while since I last came this way,’ Gorgas said. ‘Now you see what I mean about proper roads.’ He jumped down from his horse and started slashing at the hedge with his sword; but the briars were too springy to cut. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to head back to the lane and go round through the farmyard. And while we’re there, I’ll give them a piece of my mind about this gate.’

  Poliorcis sighed. ‘As you like,’ he said. ‘I think it’s coming on to rain again.’

  It was dark by the time they came to what Poliorcis assumed was the farm; too dark to see anything except the silhouette of a roof and a vague smudge of branches against the sky. He heard his horse’s hooves clatter on a paved yard, and Gorgas shouting; a thin wedge of light spilled out as a door opened, very pale, yellow light, the sort that comes from thick lard and sparingly trimmed wicks. Certainly, the place smelt like a farm. As he got off his horse, he felt his feet splash in a puddle. He wiped rain out of his eyes with his sodden cuff and followed Gorgas towards the light.

  ‘There’s nothing grand about it,’ said Gorgas cheerfully, ‘but it’s home. Come on in, you’ll soon dry off.’

  Gorgas was right; there was nothing grand about it at all. The glow from the tallow-lamp was too dim to let Poliorcis see what he was walking on; it felt like old, sodden rushes, and it didn’t smell terribly nice. In the large room he’d been led into there was a large plain board table covered with wooden and pewter dishes, each containing a few scraps of crust or rind. Two men were sitting beside it, each with a big horn cup in front of him. They didn’t seem to have noticed he was there.

  ‘My brothers,’ Gorgas announced, ‘that’s Clefas on the left and Zonaras on the right.’ The two men didn’t stir, except to move their heads a little to stare at him, and then back at each other. ‘You’ll have to excuse them,’ Gorgas went on, ‘I expect they’re tired out after a hard day. It’s a busy time of year; we’re cutting reed down by the river and making up the cheese for the cider.’

  Still no reaction from Clefas and Zonaras. Poliorcis sat down on a three-legged stool and perched his elbows on a clear corner of the table. Gorgas was standing on a chair, getting something down from the rafters. ‘How’s the reed shaping up?’ he asked.

  ‘Bad,’ Zonaras replied. ‘Too wet. We’ll leave it a week, see if the river goes down, though with all this rain I wouldn’t count on it.’

  The thing from the rafters turned out to be a net bag containing a big round cheese coated in plaster. ‘Clefas, is there any fresh bread?’

  ‘No,’ Clefas replied.

  ‘Oh. Well, never mind, we’ll have to make do. Any cider in the jug?’

  ‘No.’>

  Gorgas sighed. ‘I’ll get some more from the cellar,’ he said, picking up the jug. ‘Won’t be a moment.’

  He seemed to be gone for a very long time, during which neither of his brothers moved perceptibly. When he returned, he had a solid-looking loaf under one arm and the cider-jug in his hand. ‘Fire could do with another log,’ he said, but nobody seemed concerned. It was cold, as well as damp. Gorgas was sawing at the loaf with his knife.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you wanted to see the Mesoge; this is about as typical as you’re likely to get. Here.’ He was holding out a plate with some bread and cheese on it. ‘I’ll get you a mug and you can have some cider.’

  ‘No, really,’ Poliorcis protested, but he was too late. There wasn’t enough light to see the cider by, but he could make out a little wisp of straw floating on the top. ‘You can sleep in my room,’ Gorgas went on. ‘I’ll muck in with Zonaras.’

  Zonaras grunted.

  ‘Well.’ Gorgas sat down and broke off a piece of bread, which he dipped in his mug. ‘This is home,’ he said. ‘Take it or leave it. Personally, I don’t think you can beat plain, old-fashioned Mesoge hospitality.’

  Poliorcis reminded himself that he was a diplomat and said nothing; because he was decidedly hungry, he even nibbled at a corner of the cheese, which was very strong and rather disgusting. Gorgas was asking if there was any bacon left. There wasn’t.

  ‘Thatch on the trap-house needs looking at,’ Clefas said. ‘Won’t have time now till after we’ve got the hay in. If the reed doesn’t come to anything, we’ll have to buy in. That’s if anybody’s got any.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Gorgas said.

  ‘Got to move the apples out,’ Clefas went on. ‘Damp’s getting in; we’ll lose the whole lot otherwise. I haven’t got time,’ he added.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ replied Zonaras. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing all week, sitting on my hands?’

  Gorgas sighed. ‘I’ll send some men down,’ he said. ‘You just tell them what needs doing, they’ll see to it.’

  ‘What we need is someone to push the rooks off the laid barley,’ Clefas said. ‘I counted a hundred and four in there the other day. If it gets any worse it won’t be worth cutting.’

  ‘Hasn’t come to anything special anyhow,’ Zonaras pointed out. ‘Too damn wet. We need ten days’ clear sun before it’ll be anything like ready. We should have put the beans in there like I said.’

  ‘We had beans there last year,’ Clefas replied. ‘And we needed them in the top five-acre to put some strength back in the ground. Might as well plough them back in, the way they’re shaping up.’

  It was as much as Poliorcis could do to stop himself laughing; but Gorgas Loredan, self-anointed Prince of the Mesoge, was nodding his head sagely and looking grave; he’s playing the part of a farmer, Poliorcis realised, but he hasn’t quite got it right; he tries to think himself into all these various parts – farmer, prince, diplomat, hard-bitten professional soldier – but he never quite manages to get below the surface. I wonder who he really is. I expect he does, too.

  Gorgas’ room (the master bedroom, so he’d been informed, where Father used to sleep after Mother died) turned out to be a small loft, up a set of steps that were more like a ladder than a staircase. There was a bed, a mattress stuffed with very old reed, no pillow, one vintage blanket that had been carefully turned sides-to-middle round about the time Poliorcis had just started shaving (that would be back before Gorgas’ mother died, unless it was the handiwork of Niessa Loredan, before she got involved in international finance). Poliorcis peeled off his wet boots, swung himself on to the bed and pinched out the wick o
f the lamp. He could hear something pattering about on the roof – not rain, because nothing was dropping into the half-filled pans strategically placed around the room to catch the drips. Cats? Squirrels, if they come out at night? It could be rabbits – the eaves of the house backed into the low hill. Whatever it was, it made enough noise to keep Poliorcis awake, even though he was painfully weary.

  An alliance between the Empire and these clowns – it was ludicrous to think that he’d even considered it. At best, Gorgas had – what, a thousand men? Probably not that many, and how many of those would he be able to spare, being realistic, from the job of bullying and bashing his fellow peasants into line? It was a sad reflection on his own gullibility; he’d wasted time here, and most of what he’d found out was worthless. At best, he had an insight of sorts into this curious tribe, the Loredans, who’d somehow managed to involve themselves so deeply in matters that were significant enough to affect Imperial policy. As he shifted about, trying to find a level patch of mattress big enough to accommodate his back, he reflected on this strange phenomenon, trying to make sense of it.

  Niessa Loredan, for example; no longer relevant, but for a while she’d been dangerous enough to destabilise the Shastel Bank, and the piddling little army that she’d paid for and Gorgas had trained had killed a few thousand of the Order’s halberdiers (and every little helped, potentially). She was out of the picture now; and so, he was certain, was Gorgas; this peculiar little nest of bandits he’d scraped together for himself would keep the Mesoge depressed and unimportant for years to come – keeping it warm, so to speak, just in case it should ever suit the convenience of the provincial office to look this way. That in itself was unlikely – Tornoys might be a useful base for a squadron of galleys, if the Empire ever built up a proper fleet, as opposed to the disorganised clutter of hired and captured ships that was referred to in the supply ledgers as the Imperial Navy, but Gorgas palpably didn’t control Tornoys; if he tried to muscle in there, it would probably be the undoing of him.