The Proof House

by K. J. Parker

  They’d attacked without warning; a distant hiss, like oil in a hot frying pan, and a quite lovely pattern of arrows rising against the noon sun, like a large flock of doves put up off a stubble field. It had taken him a few moments to work out where the arrows were coming from – a fold of dead ground between the column and the opposite ridge of the valley. This was advanced archery, shooting extreme-range volleys at a target they couldn’t even see, something the provincial office’s auxiliary bowmen didn’t have the skill or the confidence to do. For the rest of the column it had been terrifying, heartstopping, this business of being killed by an enemy you hadn’t even seen. In Bardas’ case, it only made him slightly nostalgic for the mines.

  He looked around for Estar but couldn’t see him. Nobody seemed to be giving orders, and the patient, disciplined ranks of Imperial infantry were standing still, like carthorses in heavy rain. Damn, Bardas thought. He stepped forward out of line and started shouting military stuff like Left wheel and Dress to your front, the sort of thing he’d learned in Maxen’s army and thought he’d forgotten. The Imperials weren’t like Maxen’s men, though; they were a joy to drill, smart and precise, men who didn’t just obey the words of command but actually believed in them, as if they were the holy words of some religion. It was unnerving, this total and unthinking obedience, with all its connotations of responsibility and trust. Don’t say I’m getting involved again, Bardas thought resentfully; but unless somebody got these men out of the line of fire, there would be avoidable deaths and injuries; Estar nowhere to be seen, the other officers standing by as faithfully as the men. The blood had reached his collar-bone; the lapel of his habergeon was soaking it up like a sponge, and the sharp edges were cutting more deep, thin slices, precise as the leaf-thin blades of the cooks’ knives as they dressed out the sheep. Almost proof, but not quite; a small puncture hole on the outside, a series of bloody gashes within.

  He’d brought the army out of column into line, and gave the order to advance. For this sort of situation the Imperial writers on the art of war recommended a manoeuvre they called the ‘hammer and anvil’: invite the enemy to concentrate their fire on an apparently suicidal infantry advance, the main body of the army apparently walking directly into the hail of arrows (but that’s what armour’s for) while wings of cavalry and light infantry hook round the back and drive the enemy headlong on to the men-at-arms’ pikes. It was a sound enough tactic provided you could rely on your cavalry officers to do their job. Bardas had seen them move off as soon as he started to turn the line, riding away from the enemy before describing a wide arc and appearing unexpectedly behind them. On this ground they’d have to ride all the way round to the other side of the far ridge if they wanted to stay out of sight. It’d be a long time before they were in position, which meant the armoured infantry were going to have to stay out in the rain getting soaked. It was a wager, the lives of thousands of men riding on a bet, their archers against our armourers. Welcome back to the proof house, Bardas Loredan; we knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away.

  What the hell had become of Colonel Estar? Common sense suggested that he’d gone down in the first volley of arrows, though Bardas hadn’t seen him fall. It was inconceivable that he’d run away. He was, after all, a Son of Heaven, and even Bardas Loredan needed to believe in something. If Estar was dead – things like that don’t happen, commanders-in-chief of mighty armies don’t die in the first volley of the first battle they fight in. But if he was dead (and Maxen died, remember) command of the army would pass to Sergeant Loredan, until such time as another Son of Heaven arrived from Ap’ Escatoy. The thought made Bardas shudder.

  Here was an interesting problem, an examination question in the art of command. To reach the enemy they were having to march down a steep slope. It was essential that they keep in line; but the sheer weight of the armour on which everything depended was making them tend to hurry, almost to the point of breaking into a run. Bardas was having to drive his heels into the dry, crumbling turf just to keep his balance. In his mind he could clearly see the ludicrous image of an army in full plate tobogganing down the slope on their backsides, skidding and crashing into each other, tumbling head over heels into a tangled heap of steel and flesh – that was just the sort of thing that happened in a war, it was the way disasters came about and wars were lost. In a moment of great clarity he could see it, as if it had already happened; a mighty trash-heap, like the pile of pieces that had failed proof (men as well as armour that had failed proof; welcome home), with the plainsmen standing on the top of the little rise shooting at will into the mess and laughing so hard they could scarcely draw their bows. The image was so strong that it was almost impossible for him to distinguish between it and what he could actually see. He shouted back to his officers, invisible behind him, to keep the line, to slow down the advance – well, anybody could say the words, but turning the words into action, making the words come true, was a job for a real commander; he could only hope that there were a few of those in the ranks behind him. The arrows weren’t helping, either; they were on the skyline now, shooting down at almost their maximum reverse elevation; the arrows were glancing off the artfully angled surfaces of the plate and skidding away in all directions, smacking sideways into the faces and bodies of the fourth and fifth ranks. There was nothing to be done about them, they had to be ignored, as if they were horseflies on a hot day. The one thing the line couldn’t do now was stop and go back; if they tried that, they’d be tumbling down the slope in no time.

  There was nothing for it but to trot the last few yards. A few men did go down, and each man that fell took two or three with him, with a thump and a crash like an accident in a smithy. No time to see to the fallen, they’d have to sort themselves out if they were still capable of doing so; there were living men pinned down under dead men, he knew, like miners trapped by a cave-in, and there they’d have to wait, depending on the general, on Sergeant Loredan, to win the battle and survive; otherwise they’d stay there till they died, or until the scrap-metal people came with their sharp knives to collect the spoil and skin the carcasses. Never should have let command fall into the hands of an outlander. Obvious recipe for disaster. He could hear them saying it now.

  They’d managed to get down the slope; now came the tricky part. They didn’t have far to climb, but the gradient was steep and there were enemy soldiers at the top of it. This isn’t on; if I’d wanted to work this hard I could have stayed on the bloody farm. It was worse than carrying the grain-sacks up the ladder to the loft, or manhandling heavy timbers up scaffolding. With every step he was sure his knees would burst or the muscle would break out through the back of his calf; he could feel his muscles taking damage (this isn’t very clever, Bardas, you’ll do yourself an injury) and the thought of having to fight someone if he did manage to scramble up to the top was enough to make him laugh out loud. If they wanted to fight him, they’d have to help him up the last few yards, as if he was an old man, getting tottery on his pins.

  The sound the arrows made as they deflected off the plate was extraordinary, a whistling scream of frustration. Not that all of them were being turned; because they were being shot at from above, the angles were all wrong, there were flat spots where an arrow could strike fair and square. Every man shot took two or three more with him as he toppled backwards and rolled down the hill (if the enemy had any sense they’d be rolling rocks and logs) and that wasn’t helping either. The pace had slowed right down, it was as if time had stopped (the arrow coming towards him) and there was still nothing he could do except force himself to climb another step, then another. Just breathing was next to impossible now. This is how battles are lost, this is how disasters happen; the trash-heap, the pile of parts that failed proof.

  He was staring directly at a pair of boots. They were old boots, scuffed, one toe mended. I had a pair of boots like that once, he thought; and just as he remembered the dead man he’d taken them from after a battle on the plains, the owner of the boots kicked hi
m in the forehead. That was a mistake, too; boots not sturdy enough to go kicking steel with. In spite of everything, Bardas couldn’t help grinning – no breath to laugh with, can only grin – as he heard the howl of pain. Then (he could still only see as far as the man’s knees) he lunged upwards with his pike, the bloody heavy piece of kit he’d lugged all this way and might as well use, and cut the howling short.

  Fighting. Well, we know where we are with that. At least it’s something I know how to do. Following up the slight momentum of the thrust he hauled himself the last step or so on to the crest of the rise, managing to step over the dead man who’d pulled the pike out of his hands with his stomach. As he lurched forward someone hit him across the shoulders (wasting his strength, trying to bash on the junction of pauldrons, backplate, gorget) but Bardas didn’t have the time or the energy to deal with him; he walked past as if ignoring a drunk in the street, and his whole body heaved as he drew in a breath – it caught in his throat, it was like trying to swallow a whole apple. Some fool was bouncing an axe off the top of his helmet; that one didn’t last long – all Bardas had to do was lift his arm and let it fall in its own weight, allow the mass of vambrace, cop, pauldron and gauntlet to force the sword blade down through bone and flesh, the armour doing all the work, the man inside having little to do with it. It’s happened, Bardas thought, as he wrenched his sword free from the severed collar-bone, the armour’s grown round me and sealed me in, like the rings of a tree; only the outside, the steel part of me, is alive.

  They tried various tests – swords, spears, axes, even big stones and heavy clubs, but they couldn’t make the armour fail proof. They weren’t in the same league as Bollo and his big hammer when it came to crushing and bashing sheet metal. Their flesh and bone, on the other hand, was no good at all; the whole batch failed to pass, apart from a few pieces that were withdrawn from the test at the last moment. When the session was over, there was the big trash-heap he’d been seeing all along, the pile of arms and legs and heads and trunks and feet and hands that hadn’t succeeded in passing proof. Little wonder, now that he saw them close to; they were made of some material other than steel, which was crazy.

  When the cavalry finally deigned to show up there was nothing left for them to do. It was clear they weren’t pleased about it, or about finding that they were now under the command of an outlander infantry sergeant. Their captain turned out to be a Perimadeian by the name of Olethrias Saravin. Bardas tried to turn over command to him, but to no avail. ‘Not bloody likely,’ Saravin said. ‘You made a hash of it the last time you fought these people, now’s your chance to put things right.’ There didn’t seem to be any point arguing with him, so Bardas let the matter drop and ordered him to take out three companies and scout ahead, this time (if at all possible) keeping an eye out for any substantial numbers of enemy archers that might be roaming about the place. Saravin galloped off with a very bad grace, and Bardas gave the order to pitch camp for the night.

  They found Estar’s body and brought it to him. There wasn’t a mark on it, apart from a few footprints. By the looks of it he’d fallen off his horse and given himself a heart attack trying to get back up again, unassisted, in full armour.

  ‘We could try the Honour and Glory, I suppose,’ Eseutz Mesatges suggested. ‘Shouldn’t be too crowded at this time of day, and they do a passable fish soup.’

  Vetriz nodded. She wasn’t particularly bothered where they sat down so long as they sat down; she’d made the mistake of wearing her new sandals (hard leather straps and two-inch heels, as required for the nomad-caravan look) before breaking them in properly, and the straps were cutting into her like a bowsaw.

  The fish soup turned out to be mediocre, not helped by the fact that the cooks had left the mussels and oysters in their shells –

  ‘Which is supposed to denote freshness and back-to-essentials simplicity,’ Eseutz commented, ducking a floating mussel under the surface of her soup and watching it bob up again, ‘but as far as I’m concerned it means the cook thinks scraping shellfish out of their armour is a rotten job – a view I wholeheartedly share, let me tell you. The really sordid part is, you end up with a great big trash-heap of bits of discarded shell on the edge of your plate, which really isn’t the sort of thing you want to be looking at while you’re eating.’

  Vetriz smiled distractedly; she had something of a headache, and she wasn’t really in the mood for Eseutz Mesatges. ‘Leave them, then,’ she said. ‘Just eat the soup.’

  ‘What, and waste stuff I’ve paid good money for? Not likely.’ Eseutz grimaced and ripped apart a mussel. ‘Worst of all is those little pink beetle-things, all curled up in a ball like a dead woodlouse. I defy anybody to prise one of those things open without a crowbar and a big hammer.’

  Somebody Vetriz thought she knew had just walked in; she caught sight of the back of a bald head, a pair of broad shoulders. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m really not hungry. I think I’ll go home now.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Eseutz said. ‘Look, if you really don’t like the fish soup, we’ll order something else. What about the curried mutton?’

  ‘Really,’ Vetriz said, rather more loudly than she’d intended to, ‘I’m not hungry.’

  Several people looked round, including the man with the bald head and the broad shoulders. He looked at her for a moment, grinned, and walked away towards the table under the window. Vetriz sat back in her chair, feeling rather sick.

  ‘It’s not the fish soup, is it?’ Eseutz said.

  ‘No,’ Vetriz replied. ‘It’s not the fish soup.’

  Eseutz studied the retreating back for a moment. ‘It’s none of my business, right?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Vetriz said. ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Fair enough. If you’re really not hungry, do you mind if I pinch your bread?’

  Gorgas Loredan stopped and looked round until he saw what he was looking for. No mistaking those thin, hunched shoulders. He stepped up close and put his arm round them.

  Iseutz Loredan squirmed like a fish, then saw who it was and relaxed a little, though not completely. ‘Uncle Gorgas,’ she said.

  ‘I got your letter,’ he said, straddling the bench and sitting down beside her. He looked too big in such an ordinary place. ‘In fact, it reached me just as I was setting off for a meeting here. So naturally, I thought I’d offer you a lift.’

  Iseutz smiled at him. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he replied. ‘Really, I ought to have invited you over long before this, but I wasn’t sure how things stand with your mother and me. That soup looks good.’

  ‘You have it, then,’ Iseutz said. ‘It’s disgusting.’

  Gorgas shrugged. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘is it true you nearly killed that soldier? Left-handed, too. You really do have a gift for this swordfighting stuff, don’t you?’

  ‘Must run in the family,’ she said, expressionless. ‘So you know all about that, do you?’

  ‘Mphm.’ Gorgas had his mouth full of soup. He opened his lips and fished out two mussel shells, which he dropped on to the table. ‘Dirty trick, if you ask me. You see, I’ve got something they want, but they don’t want to pay my price – stupid if you ask me, because they really need what I’ve got and what I want will cost them nothing, but there you are. I imagine you and your mother were going to be their counter-offer. It’s a sad thing when you can’t try to do business with people like the provincial office without having your family kidnapped and held to ransom. If it wasn’t for the fact that they’ve still got your mother, I’d scrub round the whole deal and let them go to hell.’ He picked up the soup-plate and tipped the rest of the soup into his mouth.

  ‘I know about the deal,’ Iseutz said. ‘I wasn’t sure we’d be worth that much to you.’

  Gorgas frowned. He chewed for a moment, making a loud crunching noise, then swallowed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, ’ he said, ‘you’re family. Nothing’s more imp
ortant than family. But I got the better of them in the end – or I thought I did. I gave them the Mesoge.’

  Iseutz opened her eyes wide. ‘You did what?’

  ‘I handed it over to them, free, gratis and for nothing.’ He grinned. ‘The look on that oily bastard of an envoy’s face – well, he looked just like you look now, like he’d swallowed a doughnut and found it was a hedgehog. On reflection,’ he added, ‘it may be that they tried to grab you as security for the deal, in case I changed my mind. Anyway, whatever they did it for, it isn’t on. If they want their damned pirate they’ll have to give me Niessa and what I originally asked for. In fact,’ he added, frowning a little, ‘you’ve just given me an idea. This trip might turn out to be more useful than I’d thought.’

  Iseutz smiled. ‘Glad to have inspired you,’ she said. ‘Look, I don’t want to rush you or anything, but is this business of yours going to take awfully long, because I’d really like to be on my way as soon as possible. I’m sure all these soldiers have much more important things on their minds than stray prisoners, but they make me nervous.’

  Gorgas nodded. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘If there’s one thing the provincial office truly despises, it’s losing a prisoner. No, you’re right to be worried. The best thing would be to get you safely on board my ship and off this island. I’ll tell them to come back for me.’

  ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to be a nuisance or anything. ’

  Gorgas looked at her. ‘There’s no need to overdo it,’ he said. ‘Come on, you can be straight with me, I’m your uncle. I’m the one you spat at when you were in that prison on Scona. That’s why we get on so well together; we haven’t got any illusions about each other. It’s how it should be, between family.’