by K. J. Parker
Zonaras frowned. ‘I’ve got a lot on right now,’ he said.
‘All right, I’ll shoe the mare. Now get on; remember, Captain Mallo, going to Ap’ Escatoy, at the Charity and Chastity. You think you can remember that?’
‘Course.’
After he’d gone, Gorgas leaned against the desk and scowled. If anybody was capable of messing up a simple job, it was Zonaras. On the other hand, Zonaras riding to the Charity and Chastity in Tornoys and drinking himself stupid was the most natural thing in the world, a regular event these last twenty years, a sight so familiar as to be practically invisible.
Before he left the study, Gorgas paused in the doorway and looked up, as he always did, at the mighty and beautiful bow hung on two pegs over the top of the frame. It was the bow Bardas had made for him, just as he’d once made the ink-horn cover and the little copper sand-shaker and the folding three-piece box-wood ruler, which had been with Gorgas wherever he’d gone (it got broken in Perimadeia while he was there; he’d kept the pieces and, years later, had the best instrument-maker in the City put them back together again, with the finest fish-bladder glue and tiny silver tacks so small you could hardly see them; he’d had a rigid gold and silver case made for it at the same time, to make sure it didn’t get broken again).
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hoping to force Temrai into giving him an opportunity, Bardas kept up the bombardment for three days without changing the settings; he described it to his staff officers as ‘planishing the enemy’. They didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but they could see the reasoning behind it. The major obstacle was still the disparity in numbers; if they could force Temrai into an ill-advised sortie, they had a chance of killing enough men to bring the odds to within acceptable parameters. It was sound Imperial thinking, and they approved.
Nevertheless, the Imperial army was feeling the strain. A third of the halberdiers and pikemen had to be kept standing to at all times, in case Temrai launched a night attack; another third were fully occupied quarrying and hauling stone shot from the nearby outcrops (and the supply of useful rock was dwindling rather quicker than Bardas had allowed for); he’d had to detail two troops of cavalry to help the artillerymen. The troopers were disgusted at this reduction in status, while the bombardiers complained bitterly about cack-handed horse-soldiers doing more harm than good; the trebuchets themselves were starting to shake apart after so much continuous use, and Bardas found he was alarmingly low on both timber and rope, neither of which were available locally. He’d already given the order to break up the newly built siege towers for timbers and materials (but it didn’t look like they’d be needed now, and the hide coverings could be scavenged to make up more pavises, when he could spare a few carpenters from trebuchet maintenance).
It was just as well he had Theudas to help him; he had plenty of soldiers, but only a few competent clerks, and most of his work seemed to be drawing up rosters and schedules, allocating materials, updating stores manifests, the sort of thing he could do if he had to but which Theudas actually seemed to enjoy.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ the boy told him. ‘If I can help kill Temrai with a notebook and a counting-board, he’s as good as dead already.’ Then he launched into a highspeed résumé of the latest daggers-drawn dispute between the chief carpenters of number-six and number-eight batteries over who had a better claim to the one remaining full keg of number-six square-head nails—
‘Deal with it,’ Bardas interrupted with a shudder.
‘No problem,’ Theudas replied cheerfully.
Bardas smiled. ‘It’s good to see you’ve found something you can actually do,’ he said. ‘You were a pretty rotten apprentice bowyer.’
‘I was, wasn’t I?’ Theudas shrugged. ‘Still, everybody’s good at something.’
Two men met in a shed on the outskirts of the sprawling Imperial supply depot at Ap’ Escatoy. It was dark. They didn’t know each other.
After a short interval during which they studied each other like cats, one of them reached under his coat and pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth. ‘Special delivery?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, that’s me.’ The other man reached for the bundle. ‘I hope you know where it’s supposed to be going, because I don’t.’
‘It says on the ticket.’ The first man pointed at a scrap of paper attached to the thin, coarse string that held the bundle together.
‘All right,’ the other man replied, frowning. ‘So what does it say?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t read.’
The other man sighed. ‘Give it here,’ he said. He felt the package curiously. ‘Feels like a stick. You got any idea what’s in here?’
‘No.’>
‘Your work fascinates you, doesn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
The next morning, someone stole a horse from the couriers’ stable, using a forged requisition. He was believed to have left in the direction of the war. Nobody could be spared to go after him, but a memorandum was added to the incident log, so that the matter could be dealt with later.
Temrai had got out of the habit of keeping his eyes open. There hadn’t been much point the last few days (how many days? No idea). There was nothing to see except dust, which clogged your eyes and blinded you anyway, to the point where it was easier to keep them shut and rely on your other senses for finding your way about. His hearing, on the other hand, had become an instrument of high precision, to the point where he could tell from the noise it made coming down almost exactly where the next shot was going to pitch. This method proved to be ninety-nine per cent reliable, the only serious exception being the shot that landed a few feet above him on the path, dislodging a great mass of rock and rubble and burying him.
That’s strange; I thought you had to die first. He opened his eyes, but there was nothing to see. Hands, legs, head, nothing he could move; breathing was just about possible, but so difficult and time-consuming that it constituted a full-time occupation. It’d be all right, though; they’d come and dig him out in a minute or so.
Assuming, of course, that they knew where he was, or that he’d been buried at all. Now he came to think of it, there was no reason to believe that anybody had been watching when the hill fell on him; seeing your hand in front of your face was something of an achievement, thanks to the dust. How long would it take them, he wondered, to notice that he wasn’t there any more? Even if they missed him almost immediately, it wasn’t exactly an instinctive response to say, Hey, we can’t find Temrai, he must be buried alive somewhere. He thought of the number of times he’d gone looking for someone, failed to find them and given up in a temper, assuming they didn’t want to be found.
‘It’s all right,’ said a voice beside him. ‘They’ll find us. We’ve just got to be patient and try to stay calm.’
Temrai was surprised, but pleased. He couldn’t remember seeing anybody near him when the hill came down (but thanks to the dust, that was hardly conclusive). ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
The voice laughed. ‘Never better,’ it replied. ‘Nothing I enjoy more than being stuck in a hole in the ground under a few tons of dirt. I find it helps me unwind.’
The voice was familiar – very familiar, in fact – but he couldn’t quite place it. So familiar that asking, Excuse me, but who are you? would be embarrassing. ‘Can you move at all?’ he asked.
‘No. How about you?’
‘Not so as you’d notice.’ It was odd, Temrai reflected, that he could hear the other man so clearly, as if they were sitting opposite each other in a tent. Maybe the human voice carried well through dirt; he didn’t know enough about such things to be able to form an opinion. ‘Maybe we should shout or something,’ he said, ‘let them know we’re here.’
‘Save your breath,’ the voice said. ‘You’ll just use up the air. I keep telling you, don’t worry about it. They’ll come and dig us out. They always do.’
That last remark was strange, but T
emrai was too preoccupied to dwell on it. ‘Where do you think the air is coming from?’ he asked.
‘Search me. Just be grateful it’s coming from somewhere. And that you don’t have one of those irrational fears of confined spaces – though what’s irrational about being afraid of confined spaces I really don’t know. I remember once I was trapped down a tunnel with a man who was that way; gods know how, but he’d managed to keep it under control for years and years, and then when we had the roof cave in on us, it all seemed to burst out of him. He died, actually; he got so frightened his heart stopped beating. Sorry, that’s not a very cheerful anecdote; but it makes the point – the main thing is to stay calm. Can you smell anything?’
‘What? No. I mean, nothing unusual. What sort of thing?’
‘Garlic,’ the voice replied. ‘Probably just my imagination. Oh hell, my legs are going to sleep. Nothing like a few tons of spoil to cut off the flow of blood.’
Temrai could feel the muscles of his chest tiring from the effort of lifting the weight of the earth every time he breathed in. ‘Look, shall we just try shouting?’ he said. ‘I’d rather have a go and risk running out of air than just lie here.’
‘By all means,’ replied the voice indulgently. ‘After all, it might work. Forgive me if I don’t join you, though. I’m concentrating on my breathing and I don’t want to lose the rhythm.’
Temrai tried to shout; but the volume of sound he managed to produce was pitiful, more like a cat yowling, and dirt was getting in his mouth. He managed to spit most of it out and swallowed the rest. The effort involved was shattering.
‘I’d give it a rest if I were you,’ the voice advised him. ‘Either they’ll find us or they won’t; just for once, accept the fact that there’s nothing you can do. Relax. You could try meditating.’
‘Meditating?’
‘Seriously. A philosopher I used to know taught me how to do it. Basically it’s all about ignoring your body, making yourself forget it’s there. Of course, the philosopher reckoned it was all about merging your consciousness with the flow of the Principle, but you don’t have to bother with that stuff if you don’t want to. I use it to make myself go to sleep when I’m fidgety.’
‘All right,’ Temrai said dubiously. ‘But I don’t think going to sleep would be terribly clever right now. We might forget to breathe, something like that.’
‘You don’t have to go to sleep, that’s just one of the options. You can also use it to cope with pain, for example, like if you were laid up somewhere with a broken leg.’
‘All right,’ Temrai repeated. ‘How do you do it, then?’
The voice laughed. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ it said. ‘Easy enough to do when you know how, but hard to put into words. You’ve got to convince yourself that your body isn’t really there; bit by bit’s easiest. I usually start with my feet and work up.’
Temrai could remember thinking. No, I don’t think I’ll bother with that; and the next thing he felt was a surge of panic, flaring and quickly subsiding, when he realised that he didn’t seem to have a body any more. But the sensation was pleasant, exhilarating even; he was breathing, but he couldn’t feel the crushing weight of the earth or the pain in his chest. Nor did he have an oppressive sense of being in any one place (how tiresome that would be, to be in only one place at a time; he could vaguely remember what it had been like, and couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to cope with it all these years) –
‘Feeling better?’
‘Much,’ Temrai replied. ‘I must see if I can remember how to do this once we get out of here.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘Like a head,’ Temrai replied. ‘A head without a body. But it’s all right. In fact it’s better. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ the voice said. ‘It’s one of the more useful things I’ve picked up in the course of a somewhat adventurous life.’
‘Really?’ Temrai couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or shut. ‘I could get to like being just a head,’ he said.
The voice laughed; it was definitely familiar, almost disturbingly so. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ it said. ‘You never know who’s listening. Favourite saying of my father’s, that was. He was a very superstitious man, in some respects. Not that it did him much good, of course, but that’s another story.’
Temrai had an unpleasant feeling that he knew whose the voice was; except that it wasn’t possible. At least, it was possible, but highly unlikely. ‘Excuse me asking,’ he said, ‘but who . . . ?’
And then he could hear something overhead; he felt himself fall back into his body (his painful, awkward body) like a boy falling out of a tree. There were voices, muffled and far away, and the scrape of metal in dirt, a ringing noise as a shovel-blade fouled a stone. He tried to call out, and realised that his mouth was full of dirt and he couldn’t make a sound.
‘Temrai?’ someone said. ‘Yes, it’s him, over here. I think he’s dead.’
‘We’ll see about that. Gods, I could do without this fucking dust.’
They had to go slowly, for fear of cutting him up or breaking his bones with their picks and shovels. For a long time he wasn’t able to see anything, even though he was sure his eyes were open. He had the worst headache he’d ever had in his life.
‘It’s all right, he’s alive,’ someone called out; and a trebuchet shot pitched nearby, sending a tremor through the ground. ‘Gently now, he may have broken bones. Temrai, can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ Temrai said, spitting out the words along with a lot of dirt. ‘And please don’t shout, my head’s splitting.’
They lugged him out and put him on a plank; he couldn’t control his arms or legs, and they flopped off and hung over the side. ‘Was there anybody with you?’ one of them asked.
Temrai tried to smile. ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied.
But he was wrong; before they took him away, he heard them shouting to each other – over here, quick, yes he’s still alive. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.
One of the stretcher-bearers called out the question. ‘It’s the spy,’ someone answered. ‘What’s his name? Dassascai. You know, the cook’s nephew.’
Temrai frowned. ‘What did he say?’ he asked.
‘Dassascai,’ the bearer replied. ‘You know—’
‘The spy, yes.’ Temrai sounded confused. ‘Well, if it hadn’t been for him—That’s odd, I could have sworn it was someone else.’
‘I thought you said there was nobody in there with you.’
‘I was mistaken,’ Temrai said. ‘Look, make sure they take care of him, all right?’
They took care of him, as was only proper with someone who’d apparently saved the King’s life (though how he’d managed to do this wasn’t immediately obvious). They dug him out and carried him back to his tent; there were no broken bones, he’d be up and about again in no time.
An oddity, which nobody commented on, was the fact that when they pulled him out he was holding an arrow (just an ordinary Imperial-issue bodkinhead), and when they tried to take it from him he clung on to it as if his life depended on it.
One ship; not an armada or a flotilla, not a horizon crammed with sails, just one small sloop (square-rigged, primitive, limping into the Drutz after a tussle with a seasonal squall) bringing the provincial office’s envoy to the Island.
There was something of a show of strength on the quay to meet him; a platoon of the newly recruited Civil Guard; another platoon from the Ship-Owners’ even more recently recruited National Security Association; and a mob of cut-throats, thieves and housebreakers (by definition) from the Merchant Seamen’s Guild. The three rival units stood still and quiet, staring at the incoming ship and each other with loathing and distrust, while First Citizen Venart Auzeil (in a floor-length red velvet gown and a big wide-brimmed red hat; he’d refused point blank to wear the almost-crown they’d made for him out of bent gold wire and a few scraps of salvaged rabbit fur) nervously picked at a loose thread in his cuff and
wondered what was really going on. Flanking him were Ranvaut Votz (for the Ship-Owners’) and a certain Jeslin Perdut (for the Guild), both grimly eyes-front for fear of seeing the other and having to acknowledge their presence. Finally, there was a band – to be precise, two flautists, a fiddler, a rebec player and a girl with a triangle. Venart had no idea where they’d suddenly materialised from, but they looked so excited to be there that he hadn’t the heart to tell them to push off.
The ship nuzzled its way in, and a startled-looking man threw a rope across before scuttling away to the stern; something about the expression on his face suggested that the show of strength was working rather too well. Venart noticed this and, hoping to reassure the visitors, turned to the rebec player and muttered, ‘Play something.’ The band immediately launched into ‘Never More Will I See My True Love’ (the majority choice) and ‘The Sausage-Maker’s Dog’ (the favoured selection of the fiddler and the girl with the triangle) simultaneously. The resulting counterpoint was striking, but hardly calculated to reassure the apprehensive.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ muttered Ranvaut Votz loudly, thereby reinforcing Venart’s suspicion that the band’s presence had something to do with the Guild. ‘Tell them to stop that awful noise before it constitutes an act of war.’
Although he didn’t want to be seen to be taking sides, Venart turned the suggestion into an order, backed up by the full majesty of his office and the frantic waggling of his hands. When the noise had ceased, an extraordinarily tall, thin Son of Heaven emerged from the sloop’s small cabin and walked slowly to the prow, where he stood looking impatient.
‘A plank, quick,’ Venart hissed. Someone brought up a plank – actually, it was a long board for gutting fish, but it was the nearest suitable object – and the envoy came ashore.
‘I’m Colonel Tejar,’ he announced, with a tiny nod in Venart’s direction. ‘I’m here on behalf of the prefect of Ap’ Escatoy. I’d like to talk to whoever’s in charge here.’