The Proof House

by K. J. Parker

  ‘Oh, shut up, Ran.’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t know that.’ Votz shrugged. ‘The people out there on the streets believe all that stuff is true, and really, that’s what matters. Do you want them stealing your ship and taking your money off you at spearpoint? Might as well ask the Empire back again and have done with it.’

  ‘All right,’ Venart sighed, ‘you’ve made your point.’ He slumped back in his chair, looking wretched. ‘Just out of interest,’ he continued, ‘do you and your chums in the Ship-Owners’ have any constructive, practical ideas about how to get some food? Or haven’t you got around to the finer points yet?’

  Votz clicked his tongue. ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, ’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, we have.’

  ‘All right. If I’m your new Crown Prince, the least you can do is let me in on the secret.’

  ‘Simple,’ Votz said. ‘It stands to reason, if Gorgas Loredan went to all that trouble to help us get rid of the Imperials –’

  ‘Have you any idea why—?’

  ‘- Then he won’t be averse to selling us a few ship-loads of grain and salt pork, especially if the price is right. And Tornoys is in the right direction, away from the Empire; we’ll have to sail pretty close to Shastel, of course, but if we’re in a convoy that shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Venart conceded. ‘But he gives me the creeps, that man. I’m not sure why, he just does.’

  ‘Well, that’s your problem. While we’re there, I fully intend to talk to him about hiring a few of those crackerjack archers of his; another thing we’re definitely going to need is some sort of militia, and since none of us know squat about the trade, it’d be a good idea to hire someone who can teach us.’

  Venart closed his eyes. ‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Exactly who did you have in mind for this army of yours?’

  ‘Well, us, of course,’ Votz replied patiently. ‘And it’s not an army, it’s a militia. Quite different.’

  ‘All right, it’s different. But by “us”, do you mean us Islanders, or us Ship-Owners, or what?’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to put weapons into the hands of the Guild, if that’s what you mean,’ Votz replied, as if explaining to a small child that fire is hot. ‘I mean us, the responsible adult male population of the Island. We don’t need those layabouts in the Guild; I mean, when the fighting was on, where were they? Cowering in a lock-up. Fat lot of good they were, until we came along and turned them loose.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Venart muttered. ‘First you want a government, then an army, now you’re planning a civil war. This state of yours is growing faster than water-cress. All right,’ he added quickly, ‘spare me the reasoning. I agree, yes, it does seem like ordinary common sense to be able to defend ourselves if we’re likely to have the provincial office coming after us any time soon. Though to be honest with you,’ he continued, frowning, ‘if they do decide to come back, I can’t see that we stand a chance. We were lucky the last time, and they were disgracefully complacent. I think fighting them once they’ve got their act together really would be asking for trouble.’

  ‘Really? So what would you suggest?’

  Venart stood up and turned to look out of the window. ‘Leaving,’ he said. ‘Packing up everything we can move, setting sail and putting as much sea between us and them as we possibly can.’

  Votz glared at him. ‘You’re joking,’ he said.

  Venart shook his head. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I think it’s an inspired idea. We aren’t farmers or manufacturers, we’re traders; most of us spend as much time on our ships or abroad as we do at home. If ever there was a – a nation that could afford to up sticks and sail away, it’s us. If the worst comes to the worst, we could simply live on the ships, keep moving about like nomads.’

  Votz grinned unpleasantly. ‘Like King Temrai’s lot, you mean. Oh, yes, guaranteed absolute safety, no need to worry ever again.’

  ‘That’s on land. It’s the ships that make it different.’

  ‘Until they start building ships of their own.’ Votz stood up too. ‘Running away isn’t going to solve anything; we’ve got to make a stand and fight. And if we’re going to fight, where better than here? We’ve got a superb natural fortress, even better than Perimadeia was. We’ve got a fleet of ships, which they haven’t.’ He grabbed Venart by the shoulder and turned him round. ‘We can win this,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Venart replied. ‘And since you’ve just made me the head of state—’

  ‘That’s the thing about heads, they can come off.’

  At first Venart looked startled; then he giggled. ‘Oh, come on, Ran,’ he said, ‘don’t be so bloody melodramatic. Government, army, civil war and palace coup, and we haven’t even told anybody else about it yet.’ He pulled away and grinned. ‘Just think what fun we could have if there were three of us playing.’

  There was a brisk cool wind, which was a mercy; Bardas remembered all too well how quickly the midday heat of the plains could drag a man down before he even realised it. Fortunately the army of the Sons of Heaven had been recruited in many places, most of them far away, nearly all of them hotter than this. At the point where he collapsed in a sweaty heap, at least half his men would still be snuggling into their cloaks and blowing on their hands.

  The sun had already whisked up a fine heat-haze out of the river, smudging the sharp edges of the fortress until it looked vague and ill-defined, like the background in a painting. The sunlight burned on the water like some kind of incendiary; he could still see the red glare when he closed his eyes.

  ‘All done?’ he asked. The engineer nodded. ‘Very well.’ He positioned himself behind the cocked arm of the trebuchet and looked over it at the distant fortress. It was all very still and quiet, as if the world was waiting for him to make a speech. ‘I hereby declare this war open for business,’ he said. ‘In your own time.’

  The engineer nodded, once to him and once to the artilleryman with his hand on the slip. The artilleryman jerked hard on the rope and the arm reared up into the air like a man suddenly woken up in the middle of a dream; the long square-section beam bowed under the inertia, straightened and stopped hard as it reached the point of equilibrium, the counterweight lurching wildly on its cradle beneath. With a crack like a slingshot, the rope net gave the stone roundshot a final, crucial flick and fell away –

  (‘Here goes nothing,’ muttered the engineer.)

  - While the projectile rushed with absurd speed up into the air, dwindled into a black dot, slowed to a stop, hung in the air for a moment and started to come down –

  (‘Let’s see what they make of that,’ said the chief bombardier, grinning. ‘If they’ve got any sense, they’ll ask if they can move their fort a hundred yards back.’)

  - And pitched, with a sound like a child’s face being slapped, in the river. The dazzling white fire was punctured, like a sheet of steel shot through with an arrow.

  ‘Told you it’d drop short,’ sighed the bombardier. ‘All right, up five and try again.’

  Upgrading the counterweights had been Bardas’ idea; after all, Temrai had done the same thing, building trebuchets that outranged their counterparts on the City wall. Now he had at least fifty yards of clear ground over his enemy (his counterpart; himself in a previous revolution of the wheel); he could hit them and they couldn’t hit him back. The further along the rack you travel, the greater the stress; the greater, too, the mechanical advantage.

  ‘Number-two engine, elevation up five,’ the engineer called out. ‘Make ready.’

  An artilleryman turned a handwheel, a ratchet strained and clicked. ‘Ready.’

  ‘Loose,’ the engineer said; and the arm bent, straightened and threw. ‘Damn,’ the engineer added, as the shot scuffed a cloud of dirt out of the bare rock of the slope, ‘now the windage is off. Number-three engine, elevation up four, bring her across left two. Make ready.’

  At this distance, of course, it was an exercise in skill,
the scientific application of force to a precise spot on a virgin plate. One tap to begin with, to start off the bowl; start at the edges, work your way round the outside, gradually move inwards to the point where the dishing needs to be deepest; that’s the way to force stress into the workpiece.

  ‘On the money,’ said the chief bombardier. ‘All right, let’s keep them there or thereabouts; that’s –’ he laid his knife alongside the lead screw; like all good artillerymen’s knives, it had a precisely calibrated scale engraved on the blade ‘- let’s see, that’s twelve up from zero, six across left. Each of you loose three, mark your pitches and adjust for zero.’

  When each trebuchet had shot three times, and the bombardiers had made the necessary corrections to compensate for the slight differences in cast and line of their respective engines, the bombardment fell into a pattern. Bardas recognised this phase; it was the stage when the hammer bounced off the work, up and down in its own weight (like a trebuchet, weight and counterweight), with the craftsman’s left hand moving the workpiece into position under the hammer. One blow doesn’t impart the desired stress; many blows, a controlled, continuous hammering and pounding, are needed to impact the material into strength. ‘It’s a shame there’s all that dust,’ the chief bombardier lamented, ‘I can’t see a damn thing. For all I know, we could be dropping them all in the same hole.’

  ‘Good point,’ Bardas said. ‘But let’s keep it up a while longer. I want them to feel the pressure.’

  So this is what it was like, Temrai said to himself, waiting for the next shot to fall. Well, now I know.

  The shot landed, a heartbeat late, making the ground shake. Because of the dust-cloud, he couldn’t see where it had pitched or whether it had done any damage; it was as bad as being in the dark. But he could hear shouting, implying an emergency – someone was giving orders, someone else was contradicting him; there was an edge of raw urgency to their voices that didn’t inspire confidence. Should have anticipated this, he thought. Didn’t. My fault, ultimately.

  He counted down from twelve, and the next shot pitched. He could feel where that one went (when you’re in the dark, the other senses adapt quickly) – presumably an overshot, strictly speaking a miss, but it felt like it had landed on one of the stores. I’d rather it was the biscuits than the arrows; we can eat broken biscuits if we have to. He started counting again.

  ‘Temrai?’

  Damnation, lost count. ‘Over here,’ he called out. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Me. Sildocai. Where are you? I can’t see a thing.’

  ‘Follow my voice, and keep your head down; one’s due any second now.’

  Another overshot; no prizes for guessing where it had gone either, as it sprayed sharp-edged chips of rock across the catwalk. ‘Their settings must be shaking loose,’ he observed. ‘They can’t see the pitches, so they don’t know they’re going high.’

  ‘I preferred it when they were on target.’

  ‘So did I.’

  Sildocai materialised in front of him, as if he’d been moulded out of the dust. ‘I’ve been down there,’ he said. ‘Since they started shooting high, I reckoned it was the safest place to be. They’ve smashed up four trebuchets and half a dozen of the scorpions, two more of each out of action for now but fixable. The worst part is, there’s a damn great hole in the path which we’re going to have to fill somehow. Otherwise we’re completely cut off from the lower defences.’

  Temrai closed his eyes. ‘Well, there ought to be enough loose rock and spoil,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to lay timbers to hold the loose stuff in, anchor them with pegs like you’re building a terrace.’

  ‘All right,’ Sildocai said, coughing. ‘When we’ve done that, what about hauling some of the engines up out of the way? They’re doing no good down there, just waiting to be smashed up.’

  Temrai shook his head. ‘No, we won’t do that,’ he said. ‘They’ll just bring theirs up closer. We need to shut those trebuchets down for a while, and if we can’t reach them with artillery, we’ll have to go over there and do it by hand.’

  Sildocai frowned. ‘I’d rather not do that,’ he said, ‘even with the light cavalry. It’s a bit too flat for charging down the enemy’s throat.’

  ‘We haven’t got any choice,’ Temrai replied, as another shot pitched, scooping up loose dirt and sprinkling it over their heads, the way the chief mourner does at a funeral (although it’s customary to die first). ‘We’re outranged. If we sit here and do nothing, they’ll flatten the whole thing.’

  ‘All right,’ Sildocai replied doubtfully. ‘But let’s at least wait until it gets dark and they stop shooting.’

  ‘What makes you think they’ll stop when it gets dark? I wouldn’t. If they fix their settings, they don’t need to see us in order to smash us up. They’re doing a pretty good job as it is, and this dust is as good as a dark night.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s only dusty over here. I’d rather not ride up on their archers in broad daylight, thank you very much. You may not remember, but there’s bright sunlight outside all this muck.’

  Temrai thought for a moment. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I’m not thrilled at the thought of having to sit through three more hours of this, but you’re right, we don’t want to do their job for them by making silly mistakes. Get a raiding party organised, and then put someone on making good that path. Nobody’s going anywhere till that’s fixed.’

  Sildocai scrambled away, trying to keep his head down below the level of the earth bank into which the stakes of the stockade had been driven. It meant scuttling like a crab, or a man in a low-roofed tunnel. Another shot pitched, but too far away to be a danger to him. Very erratic now, Temrai decided, but I don’t suppose they care; this is just to make us feel miserable. The damage is probably trivial, but this dust is starting to get on my nerves.

  ‘No mucking about,’ Sildocai said, a stern, parental expression on his face. ‘The only thing we’re interested in is the trebuchets; cut the counterweight cables, then when the beam comes down cut the sling cables, and that’s it. Just this once, getting back in one piece is more important than killing flatheads, so no wandering off, no hot pursuit and categorically no looting. Understood?’

  Nobody spoke. By the look of it, his dire warnings had been largely unnecessary. Chances were they’d only volunteered in the hope of getting away from the dust for an hour.

  It was a typical plains moon, bright enough to cast shadows. That was good. From here he could see the camp-fires across the river, where they were going. Men sitting in the firelight don’t have good night vision, whereas his men would have had time to get accustomed to the dark; they’d be able to see the enemy, and the enemy wouldn’t see them. He gave the sign, and the winch crew started to wind the swing-bridge into place.

  Sildocai went first. It was tradition in his family, which had produced more than its share of commanders; so many, in fact, that it was remarkable that it had lasted this long. His own father had been killed fighting this same Bardas Loredan, shortly after Maxen died. His grandfather had also fallen in battle against the Perimadeians. His great-grandfather had gone the same way, though nobody could remember who he’d been fighting against. Four generations of brave leaders who always led from the front. Some people never learn.

  Getting there was no problem; just head for the nearest cluster of camp-fires until he could make out the trebuchets, silhouetted against the blue-grey sky. There was just enough wind to carry away the sound of the horses’ hooves on the dry grass. All in all, ideal conditions for a night attack; it was almost enough to tempt him into ignoring his own excellent advice and go looking for a fight, except that he didn’t want one. There’d be plenty of time for that sort of thing later; besides, his men were tired after a bad day divided between cowering under the dust-cloud and hauling dirt in buckets to fill in the hole in the path uphill.

  They did better than he’d expected; they were fifty yards from the nearest fire by the time someone saw them and shouted. Sild
ocai drew his scimitar, called out, ‘Now!’ and kicked his horse into a gentle canter.

  It started well. Understandably, the enemy ran away from the suddenly materialising horsemen, heading for the weapons stacks, away from the trebuchets, and nobody bothered the raiding party until they’d done some useful work among the trebuchets. That would have been a good time to quit.

  Sildocai was the first to cut a rope; it took him three attempts. It was almost comical. Somehow he’d pictured himself cleaving the rope with a single blow, slicing through the taut fibres almost without effort. Instead, he caught it at an awkward angle, jerked his wrist and nearly dropped the sword. He’d have been better off with a bill-hook or a bean-hook, a heavier, more rigid blade. His adventure nearly ended there; in his grim determination to hack through the rope he forgot that cutting it would result in a long, heavy piece of wood pivoting sharply downwards – the beam missed his shoulder by no more than a couple of inches, and startled the life out of him. Then, as he pulled his horse round, he found he couldn’t quite reach the sling on the other end; he had to jump off his horse, kneel down, saw through it with the forte of his sword blade, and then hop back up again (except that his horse was spooky and didn’t want to hold still, and he spent an alarming moment or two dancing beside a moving horse, one foot in the stirrup, the other dragging on the ground while he clung to the pommel of the saddle with one hand and tried not to drop his scimitar with the other).

  But he was a grown-up, he could cope; and he made a rather less messy job of the next two trebuchets. In fact, he was feeling confident enough to be toying with the idea of trying to get the things to burn when the enemy finally showed up. That was the point at which he should have let it alone and gone home to bed.

  The enemy didn’t want to be there, it was obvious from the way they advanced; crab-fashion, their halberds and glaives thrust out well in front, sheer terror on their faces. Urging them on were a couple of officers, beside themselves with fury, like apple-growers whose trees are being robbed by the village children, but not quite furious enough to lead from the front. The job was about half-done; Sildocai called the first and second troops to follow him, and kicked up his favourite slow canter – quick enough to have momentum but slow enough to maintain control. There wasn’t a line – the enemy were slouching towards him in a huddled bunch, the men on the ends trying to snuggle towards the centre – so he waved the second troop out wide left, and took the first troop wide right. The plan was to hit them hard in flank, turn them back on the camp in a confused mob so they’d get under the feet of any further, better-organised relief party. There was just about enough light from the camp-fires to see what he was about. It should have worked fine. It did –