by K. J. Parker
‘I thought you said this stuff was rubbish,’ he commented. ‘More trouble than it’s worth, you told me.’
Loredan frowned. ‘Maybe I exaggerated,’ he replied. ‘Get a fire going, then come and give me a hand.’
He lifted the big axe down from the cart and tested its edge with his thumb. It felt dull, and he licked it over with the stone before slipping off his coat and squaring his shoulders for the first stroke.
‘I can’t get this fire to light,’ the boy complained. ‘Everything’s damp.’
Loredan sighed. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it after we’ve done this. Got your axe? Right, you go round the other side and try and match me cut for cut, try and keep it even. And for pity’s sake watch what you’re doing with that thing. Take it steady, don’t go wild.’
He adjusted the position of his hands on the axe, left hand at the bottom of the handle, right hand just under the axe-head, then fixed his eyes on where he wanted the blow to fall and swung. The shock of impact jarred his shoulders and he felt an uncomfortable twinge in his back, warning him to ease off a little.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ he grunted. ‘Your turn.’
The boy swung; typical boy with a big axe, wanting to show how strong he was. It was a wild, flailing swing, and he missed, hitting the tree with the handle of the axe rather than the blade. Needless to say, the head snapped off, whistled past disconcertingly close to Loredan’s elbow and landed in a patch of nettles.
‘Idiot,’ Loredan said indulgently. He remembered doing exactly the same thing himself when he was just a kid; younger than this boy, of course - by the time he was the boy’s age he really had known everything there is to know about felling a tree, instead of merely thinking that he did. ‘Go and find the axe-head.’
‘It went in the nettles,’ the boy replied.
‘I know.’
He carried on cutting, swinging the axe in a slow, economical rhythm, letting the weight of the head do all the work. After twenty or so strokes he moved round to the other side and evened up the cut; then he started again a quarter-circumference round, until he’d cut through to the core on three sides. He paused and leant on the axe-handle.
‘Found it yet?’
‘No.’
‘Gods, you’re slow, it’ll be dark soon,’ he said. ‘Come on, leave that and fetch the ropes.’
Together they roped the upper branches and made fast to what was left of the cottage’s doorframe. ‘Keep back,’ Loredan warned. ‘And don’t get under my feet.’
He finished the job then; and when he was all but through, the weight of the tree ripped away the last few splinters of heartwood and the trunk jerked sideways, came up against the restraint of the rope and slid off the stump, coming to rest more or less where Loredan wanted it to be.
‘That,’ he said, stepping back, ‘is the proper way to fell a tree. If you’d been paying attention, you might have learnt something useful.’
‘You told me to look for the axe-head,’ the boy replied. ‘Anyway, what’s the big deal about cutting down trees? You just hit them till they fall over.’
Loredan breathed out slowly. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Get the saw. There’s still just about enough light left to make a start.’
The boy yawned and fetched the long two-man bowsaw, and together they trimmed off the axe-cut point of the log, leaving a flat circle with the growth rings clearly visible.
‘That’ll do for today,’ Loredan said. ‘We’ll leave the next stage till tomorrow; that’s the important bit. Now find that axe-head while I light the fire.’
‘My arms are all stung,’ the boy pointed out mournfully.
‘Use the hook to cut back the nettles,’ Loredan said patiently. ‘Then you’ll be able to find the axe, and you won’t sting yourself.’
The boy grunted. ‘You might have told me that earlier,’ he said.
Loredan looked up from the pile of kindling and smiled. ‘I was hoping you might have worked that one out for yourself,’ he replied. ‘Get a move on, we haven’t got all night.’
They came an hour after sunset; five long black ships with their masts down, making almost no sound as they slipped through the two rocks that stood in the mouth of the cove. It was a fine piece of seamanship, bringing five warships through a narrow gap at twilight, and it was done with confidence and efficiency.
They disembarked quickly and quietly, every man knowing what to do, then their officers marshalled them into two parties and led them up the beach. There was nothing to hear, no clinking of armour or weapons or creaking of straps, no talking or careless footfalls. From where he lay, Gorgas couldn’t see well enough to count them, but he put the number at over two hundred, possibly as many as two hundred and fifty. A substantial force for a simple foreclosure, except that no foreclosures were simple any more.
‘There’s more than we expected,’ whispered the man at his side. He sounded frightened, which was how it should be.
‘We can handle them,’ Gorgas replied softly. ‘Now shut up and keep still.’
Brave words, he said to himself; odds of nearly three to one aren’t good business. He glanced up the hill towards the farmhouse; there was a light burning in the tower, as he’d ordered, and the path from the beach led straight up to the front gate. Logically they’d follow the path until they were maybe a hundred yards from the stockade and then split up, one party to the front, the other round the back. That’s what he’d have done. There weren’t that many options; it was a relatively simple job.
The raiders were hard to see against the rocks that crowded the sides of the path, and Gorgas could make them out only because he knew what he was looking for. It would have been much simpler to have taken them there, with the rocks for cover, but the line would have been too extended; he couldn’t have engaged all of them at once and the rearguard might have made things unpleasant for him if they kept their heads and didn’t run. Besides, if they were expecting an ambush, that was the obvious place for one.
The leader of the first party was passing the stone Gorgas had measured off as his fifty-yard mark. He could see them rather more clearly now, there were recognisable arms and legs and heads instead of a dark moving blur. It was, he realised, all rather like still-hunting deer in the forest when he was a boy. The trick was to be patient, to wait for the last possible moment before standing up and shooting, but with the proviso that the longer you waited, the greater the risk of spoiling the whole thing with a careless sound or movement. There was a small, fine irony there: he’d always been the impatient one, anxious to get it over with and shoot as soon as the animal was within range. Just as well he’d learnt his lesson.
The last man was clear of the rocks, and they were still moving at a smooth, unhurried pace, unaware that there was anything wrong. Probably, if they were experienced men, they were feeling a little surge of relief now that they were clear of the rocks, where an ambush might have been waiting. Between them and their objective, the ground was open and level. They’d be reckoning they were as good as home and dry.
Gorgas stood up and called, ‘Loose!’ at the top of his voice.
He’d chosen his ground well. The path ran along the crest of a slight ridge, so slight that you’d hardly notice it, but just enough to give his men sufficient angle to shoot up towards the path without the risk of dropping arrows among their own people on the other side. At fifty yards, even in this light, there was no excuse for missing, and he’d seen to it that his men could shoot. The first volley was gratifyingly effective.
The enemy leader was down, so there was no one to give the immediate orders that might have made a difference. Instead, most of the raiders froze, not knowing what to do, plenty long enough for a second volley. Gorgas realised his own first arrow was still on the string. He picked a man at random, looking at him down the arrowshaft as he drew back with his right hand, pushed forward with his left; then, as his right forefinger brushed the corner of his mouth he relaxed his right hand and let th
e arrow fly. He didn’t stop to see where it went; the enemy was still holding, but he could hear their officers shouting - Left wheel, about face, keep the ranks together! - and there was no time to lose if he wanted to keep the initiative. They were one volley ahead of the game already, which had probably gone some way towards reducing the numbers problem. He shouted, ‘Go!’
It was an awkward business, that clash of arms in the darkness. The man he came up against must have taken him for one of his own, because he turned to meet him with his shield lowered, started to say something but never got the chance to finish. Gorgas shot him from about four feet away, and he could hear the arrowshaft snap under the force of such a close impact. The man went down without a sound, and Gorgas looked around quickly. He could no longer tell friend from enemy himself, which was disconcerting. He quickly nocked another arrow and started to flex the bow, ready to make the last pull and push to full draw as soon as a target presented itself. In the event, he didn’t have long to wait. Someone barged towards him, presumably an enemy, certainly too close to take risk. He opened his chest into the strain of the bow, and something snapped.
For a moment he wasn’t sure what had happened. Something had hit him hard, in the face and the pit of the stomach simultaneously, and his fear told him the enemy had taken him and he was done for. But the man he’d been about to shoot had brushed past him, gone on a few paces and suddenly fallen; and then Gorgas realised that his own bow had broken at full draw, and the two ferocious blows he’d taken were the two limbs of the bow striking him. He swore joyfully, at the same time gloriously happy to be alive and furious that his favourite bow was broken. Why would it do that after all these years? he demanded angrily as he let go of the handle and fumbled for his sword. Of all the rotten luck . . .
Someone was standing directly in front of him, no more than a foot or so away. Gorgas pulled out his knife - the damned thing snagged in the sheath, nearly didn’t come out - and stabbed quickly. The other man gave a little sigh and folded up, his own weight pulling him off the knife. As he slid to the ground, Gorgas saw that he was an enemy.
When he looked round again, he realised it was over. There were men with torches running down the slope from the stockade - his reserves, too late and not needed. Just in time he remembered to give the order to disengage, before anybody mistook anybody else for an enemy. That, he realised as he stepped over the body of the man he’d just killed, had probably happened a few times in the course of the evening’s events; but in the dark nobody else would know, there’d be no point worrying about it. These things happen.
The torchlight showed him a sight he could be well satisfied with. About seventy of the enemy had dropped their weapons and sat down as soon as they’d realised they’d been had; the rest of the raiders were dead, most of them taken out in the first two volleys. He’d lost seven killed and a score or so injured, only a handful seriously. There was one man with an arrow through his lung; he wasn’t going to make it and that was unfortunate, since none of the raiders had carried bows. He noticed another man whose face had been cut open from the cheekbone to the lip, so that his cheek was peeled back to show his teeth and jaw. There were enemy wounded too, but the Bank’s policy was quite clear there and saved him the trouble of making a decision.
‘All right,’ he said in a loud voice, ‘looks like we’re all through here. We’ll get some sleep and bury the bodies in the morning.’ He looked round and found the young clerk he’d been next to before the ambush. ‘Get the wounded up to the farm, organise some clean water and bandages. You’d better put them in the main house. The rest of us can go in the long barn.’
The young man nodded and hurried away. He looked very shaken, appropriately enough for a kid after his first taste of combat, and having something to do would help take his mind off things. Gorgas knelt down and picked up two pieces of stick joined by a waxy string.
‘That’s your bow,’ said a voice above his head. He nodded.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The bitch snapped on me right in the middle of things. Pity, I’d had it years.’
The other man, a senior clerk who worked in his office, sat down on the ground beside him. ‘It went off all right,’ he said.
‘Can’t grumble,’ Gorgas replied. ‘Except for this. I’d better go and talk to the farmer. After all, that’s what we’re here for.’
He stood up and walked away, taking the broken bow with him. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself just to throw it away.
The farmer and his family were in the main house, the man piling up wood on the fire, his wife fussing round another man with a slight but messy scalp wound, while the children scampered about the place with jugs of water, blankets and strips of linen torn for bandages. Gorgas suddenly found he wasn’t in the mood for being praised and thanked, but the whole point of the exercise had been to show these people that he could protect them, so he had to go through the motions, say the right things - it was nothing, a pleasure, that’s what we’re here for, time we showed those bastards they can’t do that kind of stuff any more. He was good at it, usually. Tonight, though, he just wanted to wash and go to sleep, and in the morning go home to his own house and family.
‘We owe you everything,’ the farmer’s wife was saying, ‘everything. We’ll never forget what you’ve done for us, risking your lives and . . .’
‘That’s all right,’ he replied, perhaps a trifle curtly. ‘Like we told you at the beginning, it’s all part of the service. You just be sure and tell your neighbours.’ He remembered something. ‘Now then,’ he went on, ‘we’re going to need some ground to bury the bodies. If it’s all right by you, we’ll dig the grave there, where the fighting was. My men want to be on their way, we’d rather not spend time in the morning ferrying corpses about.’
The farmer clearly didn’t like the sound of that, and Gorgas could see his point; it was fallow right now, but the battlefield was a good flat strip of land that probably yielded a decent crop, far too valuable to waste. He suppressed a grin, thinking of what his father would have said if someone had suggested burying a couple of hundred bodies in their back two-acre. ‘That’s settled, then,’ he said. ‘We’ll see to it in the morning. No need for you to bother.’
The farmer looked at him and said nothing. He could read the man’s eyes, the thought of having to go back and dig up two hundred graves, load the mouldy remains into a boat and tip them out in the sea. Days, even weeks of work before the patch would be ready for the plough, when they should be harrowing for the winter barley. He was right, it wasn’t fair. ‘On second thoughts,’ he said, ‘why don’t we cart them down to the sea for you? It’ll be no trouble.
The farmer’s face brightened and he nodded; a man of few words, clearly. His wife made up the balance with a further gush of gratitude. Gorgas stifled a yawn and went out to the barn.
Maybe they’re used to this sort of thing, he thought, as he walked across the courtyard. The place was recognisably a farm - every inch of space used for something, nothing for show, everything for a purpose - but it wasn’t like the farms among which he’d grown up. The stockade of twelve-foot stakes, the thick walls and massive gates, a fortified tower instead of a farmhouse; as if the life wasn’t hard enough already. Why did people do this sort of thing to each other? Pointless question; it’s the way things are here. They must like it like this. He suggested as much to his friend the senior clerk.
‘I don’t think so,’ the clerk replied. ‘They’re just used to it, that’s all. Amazing what you can grow up not noticing, just because it’s always been there. Our farm wasn’t much different from this. A lot bigger, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘we were a good family. But the same basic shape - perimeter, except ours was stone, and we had a gatehouse as well as a tower. Once, back in my great-grandfather’s time, we were besieged for six days.’ He sounded proud of that; Gorgas didn’t follow it up.
‘Stupid way to live,’ Gorgas replied, snuggling his back into a heap of straw. ‘Wouldn’
t suit me, anyway.’
‘What, the farming or the fighting?’ The clerk smiled. ‘Can’t be the fighting, because that’s what you do. And didn’t you tell me once you were raised on a farm?’
Gorgas yawned. ‘Either is fine,’ he replied. ‘It’s the two together that’d get to me. I mean, how can you face ploughing and harrowing and planting every year when you know there’s a good chance some bastard’ll come along and set fire to it before you can bring it in? You’d go crazy thinking about it.’
The clerk shrugged. ‘Pests are pests,’ he replied amiably. ‘You get mice, rabbits, rooks and pigeons, and you get soldiers. You bring in what’s left. You make allowances and budget accordingly. And if you lose the lot one year, you increase your borrowing and start again.’ He frowned and looked away. ‘That’s how it all started,’ he said quietly, ‘and how it’s gone on. Just as well there’s people like us who’re prepared to do something about it.’
‘Quite,’ Gorgas replied, rolling onto his side. ‘And now I think I’d like to get some sleep, if it’s all the same to you.’
The clerk grinned. ‘You’re upset because you bust your nice bow,’ he said. ‘Which is fine,’ he added. ‘I can understand that.’
Gorgas thought for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I am. Like I said, I’ve had the thing for years, ever since I was a boy. My brother made it for me, as a matter of fact.’
‘Which one? You’ve got so many.’
Gorgas smiled. ‘I’ve made some good shots with this bow in my time,’ he said. ‘Got me out of trouble more often than I care to think. And in it, too; but that wasn’t the bow’s fault, just mine.’ He collected the broken limbs and held them up to the yellow light of the oil-lamp. ‘Went in the belly, would you believe,’ he said. ‘There, in the layer of horn, that’s where the crack started, right up through the wood into the sinew.’
‘Really,’ said the clerk, bored. ‘Well, that’s just . . .’ He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Gorgas put the remains down beside him and tucked his hands behind his head.