The Proof House

by K. J. Parker

  The prefect tilted his head back and gazed at the ceiling. ‘ “Lord, confound my enemies; or, if Thou must confound my friends, grant that I may be their salvation.” Do you know, the older I get, the more I appreciate Deltin; but he’s wasted on the young, and one must have something to look forward to.’

  The administrator nodded. ‘So,’ he said, ‘that’s that settled. This is turning out to be a productive morning. Now, if we can only devise some way of rebuilding Perimadeia after all, we’ll have earned our lunch.’

  The prefect opened his eyes and looked at him. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You have an idea.’

  ‘Just an outline,’ the administrator replied, ‘slowly taking shape in my mind’s eye. And no, I don’t propose sharing it with you quite yet. After all, it wouldn’t do to disclose it until I’m certain it has merit, otherwise I’ll jeopardise my reputation for resourceful and imaginative thinking.’

  ‘That’s fair,’ the prefect conceded with a wry grin. ‘But you do have an idea. Or an idea for an idea.’

  The administrator made a small gesture with his hands. ‘Always,’ he said. ‘But I try to be like a careful doctor: I make sure my mistakes are buried before anybody sees them.’

  The messenger set out that afternoon, with orders to reach Captain Loredan as quickly as possible. It was imperative, he was told, that he get to the captain before he had a chance to react to the news of the disaster. This was a matter of the utmost importance to the well-being of the whole Empire.

  What the dispatcher meant by that was: get a move on, don’t dawdle or stop to pass the time of day with any old friends you may happen to meet, no sight-seeing or shopping, no detours to deliver private letters or trade samples. But the dispatcher was an eloquent man with a forceful turn of phrase, and the messenger was young and rather conscientious. As a result, he set off in a cloud of dust, a map stuffed into the leg of his boot and three days’ rations bouncing against his back in a satchel.

  There seems to be a law of nature that the more one hurries, the more ingeniously circumstances contrive to slow one down. He made excellent time as far as the Eagle River ford; but the river was in spate, the first time in thirty years it had flooded in the dry season, which meant he had to retrace his steps and head upstream to the Blackwood bridge. But the bridge wasn’t there; some idiot had been robbing stones from the base of the nearside pillar, and the whole thing had slumped quietly into the river one fine morning, damming it up just long enough to accumulate a sufficient body of water to saturate the sandhills on the nearside bank when eventually the blockage was swept away. In consequence the Blackwood ford was impassable as well, something the messenger found out the hard way when his horse went in up to its shoulders in the newly created quagmire. He tried in vain to get the wretched creature out for the best part of a morning before abandoning it and setting out on foot for the nearest of the border outposts to the south.

  By this stage he was almost out of his mind with rage and frustration, so he was immensely relieved when he came across a small caravan of mixed Colleon, Belhout and Tornoys merchants taking a short cut to Ap’ Escatoy. It took him a further two hours of almost lethal frustration to persuade them to accept a provincial office assignat in payment for a horse, even though he knew he was paying nearly double what the animal was worth – it was just his luck that the only decent horse for sale belonged to a Belhout who, belonging to a nation who steadfastly refused on moral grounds either to read or to write, had extreme difficulty in relating to the concept of paper money. In the end he had to use his assignat to buy gold from a Colleon jeweller, at fifteen per cent over standard, with which to pay the Belhout; but the jeweller would only sell him gold by the full ounce, which meant he had to buy three quarters more than he needed . . . By the time he was back on the road, he was a day and half a night behind schedule, and still on the wrong side of the Eagle River.

  But he still had his map; so he sat down under a wind-twisted thorn tree with a piece of string for measuring distances, and looked for an alternative route. He found one readily enough; he could carry on following the west bank of the Eagle until it became the north bank, thereby avoiding the need to cross it at all. That was also a much more direct route, which would allow him to make up nearly all the time he’d lost provided he could keep up a good rate of progress. The problem was that it took him within an hour’s ride of Temrai’s fortified camp.

  He considered the risks. If he arrived late, going on what the dispatcher had told him, he might as well not arrive at all. One man alone, riding fast; if he dumped his mailshirt and helmet and wrapped his cloak round his head, riding a horse with a Belhout saddle and harness, he reckoned he could pass for a Belhout himself. The worst that could happen would be that he’d be caught, and the message would never get there – no worse than if he arrived late. Looked at the other way round, if he didn’t go this way, he’d most certainly be late, whereas if he took the risk, there was a reasonable chance he’d get there, and in time. From that perspective, he didn’t really have a choice.

  He was a messenger, not a diplomat or a historian or a scholar interested in abstruse facts about remote tribes; so he couldn’t be expected to know that a small element among the plains tribes had a long-standing grudge against the Belhout, arising out of a half-forgotten feud about a disputed well.

  The scouting party that ran him down, after a long and exciting chase that lasted well over an hour, brought back his head and stuck it up on a pole on the embankment they were working on at the fortress, until Temrai saw it and made them take it down. It wasn’t until some time later that the letter came to light, when the scouts were sharing out the dead man’s possessions; the man who received it took it home to his wife and told her to use the parchment to patch a hole in his wet-weather trousers. She couldn’t read either, but she happened to know that the three-headed-lion seal meant provincial office, and nagged her husband until he took the letter to his gang-boss, who took it to the head of his section who took it straight to Temrai. When Temrai read it he became angry, then very quiet.

  ‘Marvellous,’ he said, when they asked him what the matter was. ‘They order Loredan to leave us alone, and we have to go and intercept the letter. Any more intelligence coups like that, and we’re finished.’

  He explained what had happened, and read out the relevant part of the letter. Nobody said anything for a long time.

  ‘What if we forwarded it on?’ someone suggested. ‘Close up the seal with a hot knife; maybe nobody would notice it’s already been opened.’

  Temrai laughed. ‘Give the provincial office some credit,’ he said. ‘Imperial couriers have to know five different levels of security code, a different one for each class of message. If they can’t give the right code when they hand over the message, they’re strangled on the spot and the message is assumed to be a fake. Imperial seals are painted with lacquer after the wax has cooled; if you try to doctor them with a hot knife, the lacquer burns and makes a mess of the seal. I’ve even heard it said that for important messages they use a special kind of ink that changes colour once it’s been exposed to light, so even if you get hold of a duplicate seal they’ll know at a glance if the letter’s been opened. No, we’ve done enough damage for one day, let’s not make it any worse by giving him reason to think we’re up to something.’ He rolled up the letter, put it back in its brass tube and let it fall to the ground. ‘If I were a superstitious man, I’d probably give up now. Opinions, anybody?’

  ‘We could forget all about making a stand,’ said Sildocai, the hero of the recent victory. ‘If building this fortress makes them think we’re staying put, then it’ll have done its job. Meanwhile we pack up and slip away in the middle of the night, head north, try to get across the mountains before they catch up with us. They’d have to be crazy to follow us after that. Don’t dismiss it out of hand, Temrai. I know, it’s horrible country the other side of the mountains, cold and wet and bleak – that’s why nobody lives there, it’s
not worth invading. But if we go, we’ll still have some sort of a life. If we stay here, we’ll probably die. As decisions go, I’d say that’s an easy one.’

  ‘It’s what we were planning to do,’ someone else pointed out, ‘when we left the City plain. We all agreed on it then. Nothing’s really changed since.’

  Temrai shook his head. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘The difference is, Loredan and his army are just the other side of the Swan River; if we try to run away, he’ll catch us. We’ll be fighting out in the open; we won’t be able to use the trebuchets.’

  ‘But we outnumber them,’ Sildocai pointed out. ‘And let’s face it, we’ve just proved that our horsemen can make monkeys out of their heavy infantry. That’s assuming they catch us, which isn’t certain by any means.’

  ‘They’ll catch us,’ Temrai said. ‘Count on it.’

  ‘What you’re saying doesn’t make sense,’ someone else objected. ‘We’ve just won a great victory, right? And – no disrespect to Sildocai here – we’re all agreed that if anything it’s made our position a damn sight worse. Suppose we hold still here and somehow we manage to beat off Loredan’s attack; marvellous, they’ll send another army – that’s as well as this enormous bloody army that Loredan’s supposed to be waiting for. It’s pointless; for every one of them we kill, we get three in his place. Are you suggesting we kill every adult male in the Empire? Even if we could, there’s so many of them our children would be old men before they were through with it. We can’t win; and if you can’t win, you either give up or try to run away. Let’s at least try to run away, Temrai, while we still can. We’ve got nothing to lose.’

  Temrai shook his head, without stopping to think. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We stay here. If we run away across the mountains, he’ll follow us. He’ll always be there. We’ll fight him here, and we’ll win; then we’ll decide what to do next.’ He frowned, as if trying to hear something. ‘They know that if he fights us here, he may lose – that’s why they tried to stop him. So we’ll do what they don’t want us to do; first rule of war, that is.’

  Sildocai looked up in surprise. ‘You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? A moment ago, the letter not getting through was a disaster.’

  Temrai smiled. ‘I’ve had a few minutes to think about it,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s an opportunity; it just looked like a disaster until I had a chance to get the skin off it. No, they specifically said in the letter don’t engage the enemy, we can’t risk any more defeats. You said yourself a moment ago, we outnumber them. Loredan will be attacking a defended position with inferior numbers. We can win this.’

  ‘Have we actually established that he’s going to attack?’ somebody asked. ‘I wouldn’t, for the reasons you’ve just stated.’

  ‘Of course he’ll attack,’ Temrai replied. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t have written and told him not to. No, he’s coming, and that’s good. We’ll beat him, and then we’ll go.’

  ‘You’re wrong—’ Sildocai started to say.

  Temrai held up his hand. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘That’s all you’ve got to do. I know I can beat him; I’ve done it before, when the odds were against me. I can do it again. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.’

  After that, there didn’t seem to be much point continuing the discussion.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘It’s an awkward one, and no mistake,’ said the engineer, scratching his head. ‘You can see where they’ve dug a canal to bring the river round the other side; they’ve made it into an island, effectively. Suppose we bridge the river; there’s a stockade tight up against the water – well, we can breach that with our artillery – assuming they let us, they’ve got more engines than we have and better ones, too – and then we’ve got the cliffs to get up. There’s only the one path and that’s going to be no fun at all with all those gates and traps. But say we get up the path to the plateau; there’s two more stockades, out of range of our artillery so we can’t lay down a barrage first, and then – assuming we get that far – a straightforward pitched battle on the top where they’ll outnumber us at least three to two, depending on how many we’ve lost getting that far. If you want my considered opinion, forget it.’

  The wind was fierce and fresh on the hilltop they were standing on. At this distance, the fortress looked beautiful, with the sun glinting on the water.

  ‘It can be done,’ Bardas replied. ‘I know it can be done, because he’s done it.’

  The engineer frowned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t follow.’

  Bardas pointed. ‘You see that?’ he said. ‘That’s as close as he could get to a replica of the City; he’s effectively rebuilt Perimadeia, right here on the plains. And whatever else that might be, it’s as clear an admission of defeat as you’ll ever want to see.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ the engineer said doubtfully. ‘I never saw Perimadeia. All I can tell you is, it’s as near as dammit the perfect use of position and resources. Besides,’ he added, ‘wasn’t the only reason the City fell because some bastard opened the gates?’

  Bardas shook his head. ‘It should have fallen before that, only I cheated.’ He sat down on a rock, picked a stem of grass and chewed it. ‘We’ll start with a bombardment, all around where they’ve got the swing-bridge; we’ll bring up siege towers and – what do you call them, those roofed-over sections, like the tops of wagons, made out of hides stretched over hoops?’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ the engineer said.

  ‘Anyway,’ Bardas went on, ‘them; there’s a blind spot, see? If we concentrate our artillery and knock out the trebuchets covering the point, and then bring them forward to take out the defences on the path—’

  ‘But he’ll just bring up more engines,’ the engineer objected. ‘Take ’em to bits, carry ’em round, put ’em back together again; they’ll have it down to a fine art by now, being a nomadic people and all.’

  ‘You’ll just have to make sure they don’t get the chance,’ Bardas replied. ‘And it oughtn’t to be a problem. There simply isn’t enough room to put in enough engines where they need to go. His mistake is, he’s gone for a circular ground-plan. He can have as many engines as he likes around the other two hundred and forty degrees of the circle, but they won’t be any danger to us because the angles are wrong.’

  The engineer thought for a minute or so. ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘If we can get in tight to the river, the engines on the plateau’ll all be overshooting. Yes, I can see it now.’ He grinned. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t think of that.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Bardas stood up. ‘He was rebuilding Perimadeia, but he’s made it too small, too cramped-up; and the angles are wrong. He’s forgotten about the bastions I built out from the old wall, specifically to allow us to enfilade them and stop them doing what we’re going to do now. You see,’ he went on, climbing into his saddle, ‘that’s what comes of living too much in the past – you make unnecessary difficulties for yourself.’

  The engineer hauled himself clumsily on to his horse and sat for a moment, catching his breath. ‘I hope you’re right,’ he said. ‘So what happens as and when you do make it to the top? There’s still more of them than us.’

  ‘So what?’ Bardas stood up in his stirrups for a last look at the fortress. ‘I was winning battles against superior numbers of these people when you were still playing with clay soldiers. You worry too much, that’s your problem. How soon can you have my siege towers and—’

  ‘Mantlets?’

  ‘That’s the word. Mantlets. How long?’

  The engineer stroked his beard. ‘Three days,’ he said. ‘And I mean three days, so don’t go telling me they’ve got to be ready in two.’

  ‘Three days will be fine,’ Bardas replied. ‘Just make sure you do a good job.’ He sat down again and turned his head away, but in his mind’s eye he could still see the shape; the encircling moat, the three levels – he knew it was an illusion, but he felt as if he was home again after a long and exha
usting campaign, that first thrilling glimpse of the City. Which was strange, because in all the time he spent there, he’d never once thought of it as home, just as somewhere he happened to live.

  ‘I had a friend,’ he said – he knew the engineer wasn’t really interested, but he wasn’t bothered by that – ‘who was a philosopher, or a scientist, or a wizard; I’m not sure he knew himself what he was. But he used to reckon that there are these crucial moments in history, when things can go one way or another, leading to entirely different outcomes; identify one of these moments, he believed, and you can control it.’ He lifted his feet out of the stirrups and let them swing. ‘I’ll be honest with you, I thought the whole business was a mixture of rather idiotic mysticism and the glaringly obvious. Come to that, I still do. But just suppose there’s something in it; what are you supposed to make of it when you seem to be getting the same crucial moment, over and over again? If he was still alive, I’d be interested to hear him talk his way out of that one.’

  The engineer shrugged. ‘If you’re asking my opinion on a point of mechanics,’ he said, ‘I’d say that you’re talking about a camshaft.’

  Bardas opened his eyes a little wider. ‘Explain,’ he said.

  ‘Simple, really.’ The engineer tied his reins in a knot and tucked them under the pommel of his saddle, to leave both his hands free for making explanatory gestures. ‘The cam,’ he said, ‘is an absolutely basic, fundamental piece of design; it turns your standard rotary movement –’ (he drew a circle in the air) ‘- into a linear movement –’ (he drew a straight line) ‘- which is obviously very important, right? Because all your sources of power, your prime movers – waterwheels, say, or treadles – they’re repetitive, so they describe a rotary movement, a circle going round and round for ever. Your cam, which is nothing more than a link attached to one point of the circle, turns that into a straight-line push. Add a simple ratchet and you don’t have to be a genius to have your wheel, endlessly going round and round the same axis, slaved to give you a progressive linear movement, such as pushing something along. It follows that the bit that does all the work, makes the connection, is the link between the wheel and the workpiece. If I was your mate, the philosopher, I’d be looking for a camshaft.’