The Belly of the Bow

by K. J. Parker

  ‘Highly likely, I’d say,’ Bimond Faim said, through a mouthful of rye bread.

  ‘I think so too,’ Gannadius replied. ‘In fact, I have an idea that’s something to do with how this link works; literally, a meeting of like-thinking minds. But that’s just theory. I know Alexius thinks what I just told you is true.’

  The silence that followed was distinctly uncomfortable.

  ‘All right,’ said Mihel Bovert, his thick brows furrowed. ‘As scientists and philosophers, we’ll take your word for it that you’ve verified your findings in an acceptable manner, at least for now. Obviously, the next question is what we do about it.’

  Faim looked up from his plate. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Mihel. You aren’t seriously suggesting we should base policy on this magical nonsense?’

  Bovert shook his head. ‘That’s not up to us,’ he said, ‘it’s up to Chapter. If you’re asking me whether we should pass this information on to Chapter, then I think I have to say yes, we should.’

  ‘Leave me out of it, please,’ someone else said hastily. ‘I really don’t like the mental image I’m getting of what our esteemed Separatist colleagues are going to say when we tell them we want to rethink the war because some - excuse me, Doctor - some foreign self-proclaimed wizard has been hearing distant voices in his head.’

  ‘There’ll be bite-sized bits of our credibility scattered between here and Tornoys,’ growled Bimond Faim. ‘We’ll be lucky if any of us gets so much as a junior fellowship ever again.’

  Bovert smiled. ‘There’s ways and ways,’ he said. ‘Jaufre,’ he continued, turning to the young man on his right, ‘you play chess with Anaut Mogre’s son, don’t you?’

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘Splendid. Go round there now, spin him some yarn about having fallen out dreadfully with your uncle or me, and by way of a terrible revenge on us, tell young Mogre we’ve got vital information about the war but we’re keeping it hushed up for faction reasons. You don’t know what the information is, of course, you just know it’s terribly important, and we’ve all been locked in a secret meeting for the last couple of hours. If you’re quick, we’ll get the summons to Chapter in about an hour and a half, just time to finish dinner and digest.’

  Bovert’s prediction was reasonably accurate; two hours later he was getting to his feet in a packed, bad-tempered Chapter.

  ‘Essentially,’ he said, ‘what Anaut’s just said is true. I have received what could be important news about the war, and I haven’t told anybody. The reason is, I don’t believe a word of it.’

  On the Separatist benches, Anaut Mogre didn’t seem to be aware of his closeness to the mouth of the trap. ‘Perhaps this assembly ought to be the judge of that,’ he said. ‘Be so kind as to share your news with us.’

  Mihel Bovert was only too happy to oblige. ‘So you see,’ he concluded after making his report, ‘I really didn’t feel justified in troubling this assembly with a cock-and-bull story based on magic and mysticism, when even the magician himself isn’t sure the message is actually true.’ Redemptionist laughter; awkward silence on the Separatist side. They knew they were now going to have to believe officially in Doctor Gannadius’ inspiration - it was that or agree with the Redemptionists, and admit they’d wasted everybody’s time calling the Chapter - and demand that action be taken based on it. If the crisis turned out to be a false alarm, they’d be ridiculed for believing in magic. If the crisis proved to be real, the Redemptionists wouldn’t find it hard to snatch the credit for sending the reinforcements, since it was their man, at their dinner-party, who’d obtained the vital information. It was time for quick thinking.

  ‘I’m a scientist,’ said Anaut Mogre. ‘And one of the most important things in science is being able to admit you don’t know. I admit, I don’t know whether to believe in this magic story or not. For all I know, it could be meaningless babble, or a true vision, maybe something in between. Personally, I’ve always preferred to keep an open mind about this whole applied-philosophy issue, as anybody who heard my keynote address at Convocation last year will confirm. But what I’d like you all to consider is this. If there’s no crisis and we send another army, what’s the worst outcome? We look idiots - I look an idiot, as do my colleagues on this side of the chamber - the army comes home again, no harm done. Now, suppose we ignore this message and there really has been a disaster on Scona? Worst outcome: we lose the war. Colleagues, in this case I’d far rather be humiliated than justified, because I’d really like this all to be a hoax or a mistake, I really want to find out that my cousin Sten and his army are safely in one piece and getting on with the job in hand. But if there’s the slightest chance otherwise, I say send an army, and I don’t care who hears me.’

  The general consensus in the courtyard after Chapter was that being sent to Scona with a further three thousand men was a fitting punishment for Anaut Mogre for not seeing that one coming a mile off; if he was truly the best the Separatists had, then pretty soon the balance of power was going to undergo a significant shift. But as far as the war went, regardless of Anaut Mogre’s ineptitude, sending another army was no bad thing; after all, another three thousand men couldn’t do any harm, and there was an outside chance that, purely by coincidence, they might do a power of good.

  When Bovert and his party returned home, they were much more polite to Gannadius and kept pouring him drinks he didn’t want; on the strict understanding, they added, that his vision was really a gigantic hoax, and he’d been talking through his rear end. Prophets, they gave him to understand, were fine by them, just so long as their prophecies were guaranteed to be false.

  In the heat of the battle, Gorgas couldn’t help smiling. When asked by his sergeants what was so very amusing about being attacked on three sides by a greatly superior force on unfavourable ground, he simply shook his head and said it was a personal thing.

  They’d had the misfortune to come upon Avid Soef just as he was emerging from the Baudel marshes; his men were exhausted and in bad order, scattered and confused and caked with mud that made their boots almost too heavy to lift, and in consequence he stood still and resolutely refused to attack. As far as Gorgas was concerned, this was a serious problem. Even with Sergeant Baiss’s company added to his own, he still had no more than four hundred men, as against Soef’s two thousand, so he was in no position to launch an attack. On the other hand, he really didn’t want to wait around in open country, with the Baudel marshes in front of him and the Baudel river behind him, not knowing whether yet another army of two thousand-odd halberdiers might suddenly appear behind him and cut off his retreat. All he could think of was to try the harrassment tactics that had worked so well in the mountains, and see if he could lure Soef after him into the equally treacherous wetlands to the west or the north. The trouble was that if he did that, he’d have to go there too, and in the mud and ooze of the bogs he’d lose the mobility that gave him his killing advantage. At least here on the level Baudel plain his men could outrun the halberdiers as far as the river. He set about trying to provoke an attack.

  Soef, however, didn’t want to know. As the first sparse line of archers strolled up the field towards him, he ordered general retreat and fell back on Sheepridge, a rocky hog’s back that provided a natural rampart behind which his men could take cover. If Gorgas wanted to get a shot, he’d have to come within twenty yards; too close for comfort even for light-footed archers against dog-tired halberdiers.

  Baffled, Gorgas withdrew to his previous position and ordered his men to dig trenches, cut and hammer in stakes. It was, he reckoned, a matter of nerve and patience. The bottom line was that Soef was the invader, the one whose mission it was to seek out and destroy the enemy; eventually he was going to have to mount an attack whether he liked it or not. For one thing, sooner or later the halberdiers would run out of food; it would turn into a siege without walls. As for his fear of another Shastel army, he had no reason to suppose there was such a thing loose on the island. The fact that he hadn�
��t known about Soef didn’t necessarily mean that the enemy had an infinite supply of soldiers wandering around the place. He would sit tight and wait; and, since by retreating to the ridge Soef had obligingly added another hundred and ten yards to the distance his men would eventually have to cross in the face of Gorgas’ archers, he didn’t mind.

  Whether he’d overestimated or underestimated his enemy, he could never be sure. Whether the force that suddenly materialised forty yards from his right flank in the middle of the night was a daring sneak attack or a foraging party that had got hopelessly lost and blundered into his pickets thinking they were halberdiers didn’t really matter; the important thing was that they burst into Gorgas’ camp with only a few shouts and screams for warning, and it was too dark to shoot. Gorgas woke up from a dream he couldn’t remember, with a crick in his neck and a headache, already aware that something was wrong. He stuffed his feet into his boots (either his feet had grown or his boots had shrunk, but he’d never before had so much difficulty doing such a simple thing), grabbed his coat, his quiver and the new, the wonderful bow, and thrashed his way through his tent-flap.

  He bumped head-on into a halberdier. Luckily, he was pressed right up close against Gorgas so that his halberd was jammed across his chest. With a great effort the halberdier shoved him away, which gave Gorgas a chance to jerk an arrow out of his quiver and hold it out in front of him, just handy for the halberdier to impale himself on as he rushed forward. The amazed look in the man’s eyes as he flopped to the ground said I didn’t expect that more eloquently than words ever could.

  The camp fires were little islands of light; beyond them there was nothing but noise and invisible movement. Gorgas nocked another arrow on his string and stepped nervously out of the light, trying to think what the hell to do. All around him were confused single combats, men shoving and kicking and slashing at sounds, shapes, partial evidence of movement. Someone ran past him, about five yards away; before he knew it, he’d swung the bow up, reached forward with his left hand and let the string pull off his loosing fingers. He had no idea if the shot had gone home, or who he’d been shooting at; reflex, his old, reliable, get-out-of-trouble-quick reflex, faster than thought, which had shaped his entire life. Before he could nock another arrow, someone else collided with him from behind, treading on the back of his knees and sending him sprawling. He managed to avoid landing on the bow but lost his grip on it; he rolled sideways and jumped to his feet. The man, whoever he was, didn’t recover so quickly. Gorgas reckoned he could make out the shape of a man on his hands and knees, and kicked hard at where the head should be. His toes jarred on heavy plate, painful in spite of the thick toecaps, and whoever it was grabbed his ankle and threw him. He landed on his left shoulder, and his floundering left leg cracked into something half soft, which could have been a man’s face. The grip on his ankle relaxed; he slid his hands along the ground to help push himself up, and felt something under his left hand, either a bow-handle or a halberd shaft. The shape was rearing up, so he flipped onto his back and kicked up at it with both heels. That seemed to have some effect and the shape collapsed backwards, giving him time to scramble up with the halberd (which means he’s the enemy, what a relief) and lunge with it towards the other man’s last known position. Nothing there but empty air.

  He stood still for a moment, and realised that he was waiting to see what happened - bad idea, bad idea. It also dawned on him that the nebulous, undecided duel he’d just fought had left him more frightened than he’d ever been in his life before. No good, he thought, unless he did something quickly it was going to turn into a disaster, a massacre.

  Do something. Quickly. Do what?

  There were lights coming; in the distance - was that Sheepridge over there? He’d completely lost his sense of direction - in rows, like an army marching with torches or lanterns. The likeliest explanation was Avid Soef and the rest of the two thousand, coming to finish the job, in which case the only sensible thing he could do was run away and hope nobody killed him, deliberately or by mistake, while he was at it. One thing for sure; those lights couldn’t mean anything good. Better to run away on general principles, while he still had arms and legs and eyes, the full working capital he’d managed to bring with him from the Mesoge. As usual, Niessa had been right; he had nothing to stay here for.

  Trumpets were blowing. Do we use trumpets for signalling? I can’t remember. No, we don’t. Avid Soef is giving an order.

  There was movement all round him, but there was a pattern to it; men were leaving the camp, steaming away towards the lights and the noise. Avid Soef is recalling his men. ‘Hold your ground!’ he heard himself yell - to his own side, presumably, not the enemy; hell, they wouldn’t obey him anyway. Why would Avid Soef be pulling out when he was winning the battle, the war? Maybe he doesn’t know he’s winning. Maybe he thinks his men are getting slaughtered, and this advance with lights and trumpet-calls is a desperate attempt to rescue them. The thought was so amusing that he laughed out loud.

  ‘Make for the centre of camp,’ he shouted. ‘Form ranks, and don’t move!’ It was worth a try, he supposed. He had no way of knowing how much of an army he had left, four hundred men or twenty - gods damn it, but what a difference the absence of light makes, it changes everything, turns us from demigods into buffoons, makes it possible for two opposing nations each to lose a war in the course of half an hour.

  Mercifully, someone got a fire going in the middle of the camp, enough light to see a few yards by. He had the sergeants call the roll; thirty men unaccounted for, presumed dead, and another sixteen cut up to a greater or lesser extent. The lights in the distance weren’t going back the way they’d come. Avid Soef was doing something, moving men about. He could hear trumpets and shouts, orders (but he couldn’t make out what they were). Patterns of light shuffled about all round the camp, while Gorgas sat on the ground holding his captured halberd and saying nothing, almost unable to think.

  It was a long night to sit through. In the first dimpsy half light, he sent men out to collect bows, arrows, weapons, helmets, whatever. The sergeants did most of the organising; for once, he didn’t want to be in charge. He had a theory - no more than that - about what Soef had been doing in the pitch dark; he’d been setting up an encirclement, moving his troops into position, setting up a trap that was almost as deadly and likely to result in victory as the unholy mess he’d pulled them out of the night before. Gorgas gave the order to form a square. Then someone brought him his bow.

  He recognised it while the man was still quite a few yards away; its white limbs seemed to shine in the thick coagulated light. The relief he felt as soon as he had it in his hands again was foolish, utterly illogical; it was like having a brother or a father or a son come and stand beside him, a cheerful grin and a hand on the shoulder, saying, It’s all right, I’m here now. He realised with alarm that the poor thing had been lying strung all night, and in the dew as well. He checked it over with the utmost care; no harm done, as far as he could see. So that was all right.

  Avid Soef attacked about half an hour after sunrise. His men walked up briskly, men going to work in the morning after sleep and breakfast. Gorgas’ army weren’t like that; they were still in the nightmare they’d dreamt last night, bewildered and scared, tense as a half-drawn bow.

  Tactically speaking, the position wasn’t good. Somehow or other, Soef had left the eastern side of the camp uncovered, but his men were advancing evenly on the other three sides, which meant that each division of his two thousand, less the ten or so who’d been killed in the night, were facing just under a hundred archers, forming two ranks of fifty, with the eastern side of the square standing idle. Quickly, Gorgas did the mental arithmetic; to wipe out two thousand men, each archer would have to make seven successful shots before the enemy reached them. To halt the advance and turn it back, maybe four successful shots, more likely five. At between a hundred yards and fifteen yards, against an advancing target, the acceptable ratio for archery training
in the butts was three hits out of five. Gorgas scowled, trying to do the maths - call it eight, nine volleys. In theory, there was time. Assuming, of course, that the enemy were content to lumber placidly forward into the arrow-storm.

  Can’t be bothered to think. Draw the bow. You wouldn’t have the bow if you weren’t going to win.

  He heard it creak as he drew the first arrow; but that wasn’t unusual with a new composite bow, just the sinew and the belly material getting used to taking up the strain. His arrows were all too long for it, given the way it stacked immovably at twenty-five inches, and the spine wasn’t right, because the first arrow fishtailed away to the left as well as overshooting; it was chance and the overcrowding in Avid Soef’s line of march that made the arrow pick out a man in the very back row of the column. Gorgas couldn’t see where he’d hit him, he only saw a break in the pattern, something slumping, a gap just discernible in the hedge of shouldered halberds. With a desperate effort, ignoring the pain in his fingers, he managed to draw the next arrow an extra inch, and allowed for paradox; at eighty yards he hit exactly what he’d been aiming at, a man on the end of a line. He could see the man drop to his knees, the man behind hopelessly trying to jump over him from a standing start, tripping on his shoulder and sprawling down, just avoided by the man behind him. He drew again, making the full twenty-five inches, dropping half an inch, aiming into the brown of the middle of the column. Before he was ready, the string scraped across his raw fingers and slipped away, sending the arrow up into the air and down like an osprey dipping for fish into some place in the army. Men were falling down in that part of the column, but he couldn’t be sure that any one of them was his, particularly. Only after the fourth shot did he steal a moment to look at the shape of the advance. They were still coming, but very slowly, picking their way through the dead and fallen like men in a bramble patch who have to keep stopping to unhook the thorns from their clothes and skin, rather than pressing onwards and feeling cloth and skin rip. By now they should have been running; but it’d have been like running in thick mud, to wade through the killed and the twitching. They were near enough to charge, to charge home and win the war, but their dead were like great dollops of mud clinging to their boots, slowing them up and draining their strength.