by K. J. Parker
The way station was a perfect white cube that shone like silver. It grew bigger and bigger as they got nearer; when they were close enough for Daxen to get a sense of perspective, he realised it was larger than the Blue temple back home. It was built of what they called army stone—you mixed sand and water and some sort of powdered rock from a special mountain in Thyrnessus, and you could pour it in huge moulds like molten brass and it set hard like fired clay. It wasn’t used any more, since Thyrnessus was in the East, but the refineries where it was ground into powder were just over the border in the West; presumably the method was written down somewhere, but nobody seemed to know it. Close up, it wasn’t actually white but a sort of light grey.
Deserted, of course; but the enormous tank was three-quarters full of clean water under its heavy wooden shutters, and five long sheds built into the eastern wall were packed tight with hay, old but still good. The only thing that appeared to be missing were the station’s four doors—according to specification, five inches of six-ply oak, cross-grained to resist battering, fitted with four hinges each weighing a quarter of a ton. No sign of any doors, which made the building useless as a defensive position. Prexil decided that they’d been stolen by the savages and broken up for firewood and scrap; he advanced no explanation for the fact that the hay was still there. There was no sign that anyone had been there recently, but the charcoal cellars had been filled to capacity, which wasn’t scheduled for another three months.
“We might as well stop over for a day,” Prexil said, “maybe even two, get ourselves back into shape, that sort of thing. It’s going to be bad enough when we get home telling everyone that we’ve achieved absolutely nothing. I don’t want us marching into Erithry in this state.”
True enough, the army didn’t shine and gleam like it did when it set out, and the military put so much stock in things being shiny. Now they were on the road again, it would be no more than five days to Erithry, and Prexil would have to march his army through the Lion Gates, with crowds watching. A parade-ground soldier, he’d called himself. No wonder he’d been so irritable lately.
There was an empty cellar next to the charcoal stores. It was wonderfully, gorgeously cool, and if you left the trapdoor open there was plenty of light to read by. Daxen announced that he had despatches to write, and left them to it.
That night, for the first time he could remember, Daxen was actually warm. He had two charcoal fires, one on either side of him. He was a little nervous at first—the Emperor Glycerian, returning in triumph from the Second Jazygite War, had died in his tent, asphyxiated by the fumes from a charcoal stove—but after an hour or so he found he was still alive, so it was probably all right. Someone had found an amazing treasure in a remote storage room: a palm’s width thick with dust, nine barrels of fermented cabbage, a little bit cottony on top but perfectly good otherwise, and four barrels of salted herrings. That, and all the water you could drink. Someone had tentatively suggested that really they ought to share it with the men, but someone else had pointed out that the ration would be one thin strand of cabbage and a pinhead of herring each, which would just be a waste. Rank, they decided, had its privileges. General Ixion always said that, and the men respected him for it. Besides, only the officers and two quartermaster-sergeants knew about it, so that was fine.
A day spent polishing things had a marvellous effect. When they set out the next morning, thirty-nine thousand men marching smartly in step, they made the ground shake, and the sun blazed on their sand-burnished spearheads like the epiphany of the fire god. It did occur to Daxen that the flash would be visible for miles around, cancelling out the absence of dust cloud that came with using the road, but he couldn’t see that it mattered any more. On the road, five days from Erithry, at the head of a mighty army with polished boots and shiny buckles—an undefeated army, let’s not forget, since you couldn’t call the sneak attack a defeat; he thought about that, in his capacity of formulator of policy for the Kingdom of Blemya. Now that he’d seen the desert for himself, he could judge these issues sensibly. There was absolutely no point, he knew now, in a punitive expedition. The fall of Seusa had been a tragedy, but the simple, heartbreaking fact was that a city out in the middle of the desert was unsustainable. Seeing the road, the way station, had made him understand, the way no written report ever could. In order to rule the desert, you had to be able to build things like the road and the stations, works that even the gods would hesitate to undertake, and the stations had to be garrisoned. The old empire had been able to do that sort of thing, for a while, a short while, until the sheer weight of its obligations tore it in half. It had done it by bleeding the people white, confiscating their sons and sending them off to be soldiers, rounding old men and women up like sheep and forcing them to build roads at slave wages. Seusa—he’d never been there, but by all accounts it had been a fine city, in its day—simply wasn’t worth all that. When the nomads calmed down and wanted to start trading again, they could come to Erithry, and have only themselves to blame for the extra journey. Meanwhile, if they wanted the desert, they could have it, with watercress garnish on a bed of wild rice.
An hour out from the way station, and someone pointed out that the dust clouds were still there.
“Bastards,” Prexil said. “Why don’t they just give up and go home? Still, I guess it’s their way of seeing us off the premises. Next time—” That was Prexil’s new phrase, next time. Daxen decided not to disillusion him. He felt sorry for him, in a way. But, all things considered, he’d done a pretty fair job. A minor honour, he thought, and a good pension, and let’s not dwell on the petulance and the shouting.
“We ought to send out the cavalry,” said a junior captain, Heuxo, or Geuxa, something like that. “We owe those devils a surprise visit, after all.”
Daxen winced. To his relief, Prexil laughed off the idea, though there was an edge to the way he spoke. Later, he said, “You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t resign my commission after all. I mean, it seems a bit weak, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but your injury—”
“Oh, that.” Prexil laughed. “Amazing how quickly I’ve got used to it, though I still catch myself reaching for things and wondering why I can’t get hold of them. No, that shouldn’t be a problem. I mean, look at Nausaiga.”
Daxen had no idea who he was talking about. “That’s a good attitude,” he said. “If you like, I’ll put a word in for you with central command.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want a desk job,” Prexil said firmly. “One thing this experience has taught me, I have a genuine vocation, leading men on the front line. It was a bit shaky to start with, admittedly, but I believe I’ve learned an awful lot. I’m sure that’s what I ought to be doing, particularly now that I’ve got this special insight into the savages.” He paused for breath, then went on, his eyes positively shining, “When we come back and give the bastards the kicking they deserve, I want to be in on it. You will make that possible, won’t you?”
“Leave it with me,” Daxen replied, making a mental vow to get Prexil transferred to Supply at the earliest opportunity.
They stopped at another station—a small one, just a well and a shed, for the messenger service—to sit out the noon heat; they’d made such good progress on the road that they could afford small indulgences. Daxen was sitting in the shade writing official despatches when he overheard two soldiers talking. There’s another one, said a voice—he couldn’t see them from where he was sitting. What do you reckon that’s in aid of? A different voice said he didn’t know. How long’s it been there? Don’t know, I wasn’t looking. Bastards, said the first voice, without any special degree of rancour, and it suddenly occurred to Daxen that they might be talking about the enemy, any comment concerning whom was always rounded off with an epithet, like grace at dinner. He’d been assuming they were talking about kites or buzzards. Another one, he thought. He got to his feet and came outside. For a moment, as usual, he was blinded by the glare. Then he looked at t
he skyline. Three dust clouds, same as always. He felt a certain degree of relief; then he realised that from where he was standing he wouldn’t be able to see the dust cloud to the south, because the building was in the way. He walked a dozen yards further and looked back past the corner of the shed. A fourth dust cloud.
“Oh yes.” Prexil didn’t seem too concerned when he pointed it out, five minutes of anxious searching later. “So there is. I wonder what the buggers are up to now.”
Don’t you think we should—Daxen stopped himself saying it. Do what? “Where did they come from?” he said.
Prexil shrugged. “Up the road, maybe, and then launched off cross-country. That’d explain why we didn’t see them before. Not that it makes any odds. It’s just a last bit of aggressive display, like peacocks. You know, my uncle had one of those green ornamental pheasants once, cock bird, mad as a hatter. Every time he walked down the lime avenue in the park, this stupid bird would come charging up at him, pecking his legs, fluttering up and scratching at him with its spurs. He’d boot the bloody thing like a football and back it’d come, madder than ever; and when he got to the end of the avenue, which was like the border of this bird’s territory, he’d look back and there it’d be, perched on a fence rail, head held high, positively glowing with triumph at having seen him off. Fox got it in the end, of course. Anyway, that’s what they’re doing, they’re seeing us off. Savages set great store by that sort of thing, you know.”
Daxen couldn’t help grinning. “Why didn’t he just pull its neck?”
“What? Oh, my uncle. No, he got quite fond of the stupid creature, said it was a true hero. Boamund he called it, after the fellow in that poem. He got a scratch off it that went bad and he was quite ill for a bit, but even after that he always took a pocketful of grain with him. You’ve got to admire courage, haven’t you? It’s the supreme virtue.”
No, Daxen thought. “I think we ought to start doing the night-watch drills again,” he said, “just to be on the safe side. Don’t you think?”
Prexil looked dubious. “We can if you like,” he said. “But really, we’re practically home now, I honestly don’t think there’s going to be any trouble.”
Daxen made an excuse and left him, and went in search of the quartermaster. “I want a sword,” he said.
The quartermaster looked at him as though he was mad. “Sir?”
“A sword. I haven’t got one. I haven’t got a weapon of any kind.”
“Sir.” The quartermaster walked slowly across to a mule, quietly browsing its nosebag under a towering pile of bags, sacks and boxes. He levered the top off a crate with a small jemmy and took out something wrapped in oily yellow cloth. “This do you, sir? It’s just a Type Fourteen, ordinary issue. Get one of the men to clean it up for you if you want.”
The cloth stank of rancid fat. “Yes, please.”
“Sir. Bring it to your tent tonight, if that’s all right.”
By the time it arrived, bright and shiny, with a few grains of the sand it had been scraped clean with still lodged under the crossguard, the sky was already dark. Daxen gave the sword a quick glance and stuffed it under the bed. What on earth do you think you’re going to do with that? he asked himself, and no sensible reply came. The greasy leather of the scabbard had left marks on his hands. He wiped them off on his sleeve.
Only three dust clouds the next day: behind, and on either side. The one in front had vanished. Prexil grinned and said it proved his point. Daxen contemplated pointing out that the disappearance could only mean one of two things. Either the enemy unit was sitting still out there in the desert, which was suicide unless they were crowded round another unrecorded oasis (this close to Erithry? Unlikely) or else they weren’t kicking up dust because they were heading down the road, straight at the army. He decided not to say anything. The road, after all, was straight and flat from here to the city. If an enemy force was approaching, they’d see it in good time. Also, despite his own irreproachable logic, he didn’t think a hostile army was coming at them. They were, after all, only two days from the city, close enough for a fast rider to call out the city garrison and get back with a flying column of cavalry in time to play a useful part. If the enemy wanted to fight, why had they left it so late? In spite of himself, he was more and more inclined towards Prexil’s crazy pheasant theory—an odd way to conduct a military campaign, but it did have the significant merit of having succeeded.
Instead, he suggested sending messengers ahead to the city, and Prexil agreed. They’d need a day or so to prepare, after all; forty thousand unexpected guests would be something of an imposition, even for a city as large and prosperous as Erithry. The messengers set off at a merry gallop, and Daxen watched them till they were out of sight. He felt as though there was now an invisible rope, by which they could pull themselves to safety out of the desert. The last time he’d been in Erithry was—what, fifteen years ago? In a different life. His uncle had a house there. He remembered it as a huge, empty white building, so cool inside it was practically cold, with an open cloister with a carp pool; he’d stolen bread from the dinner table to feed the fish, but he hadn’t actually liked them much. The quick, almost savage way they snapped up the bread pellets was mildly disturbing, and afterwards he’d had nightmares about a sea monster. That, of course, was the year his brother was killed, so events from that time tended to stand out in his memory. The best thing about Erithry, of course, was that there’d be despatches and letters waiting for him there; and in a lining, or written very small on the back or in the margin of something, there’d be a few words from her. Maybe that was what he’d had in mind when he visualised the invisible rope.
He found a pretext for talking to Mesajer, the cavalry commander. Either he was very forgiving or thick-skinned as an elephant; he seemed not to have noticed the appallingly rude way Prexil had treated him—all that had changed once they reached the road, but even so. Maybe he was so used to it he hadn’t noticed. Daxen considered apologising, but decided that would only make matters worse. Instead, he’d asked around and discovered that Mesajer was a theatre buff, mad keen on the Drula, the Sunifex brothers and musical comedy generally. Couldn’t be better. Nothing breaks the ice like a shared passion, especially if it’s one of which other people don’t necessarily approve.
“People don’t believe me when I say I’m a Drula fan,” Mesajer said. “I guess they think it’s odd, a tribesman with a penchant for mildly satirical social comedy. They reckon I should be into epic poetry and falconry. Or maybe they think I’m aping the tastes of my betters.”
Daxen winced slightly. “The hell with people,” he said. It was a quotation, and made Mesajer grin.
“Quite,” he said. “I wonder, did you see Coloxa as Vissanio in The Girl with Only One Shoe?”
“Wish I had,” Daxen replied fervently, “but that was before my time. The bit with the lobster—”
“Desert lobster,” Mesajer corrected him, and he laughed. “You had to be there,” Mesajer went on. “I was thirteen. My mother and my aunt took me for my birthday. I laughed so much, I can remember how much it hurt. I couldn’t breathe, like drowning.”
So that was all right. A man who liked Drula and had seen Coloxa do the desert lobster scene could no more betray the Kingdom than fly in the air, even if he did have a faded blue tattoo on his neck, just peeping out over the pauldron of his cuirass. Daxen wished he knew what it meant; interpreting them was a complex matter, so he understood, which was why the craze for tribal tattoos among young aristocrats with intellectual pretensions tended to cause so much quiet amusement in the cavalry officers’ mess. But you couldn’t just point and ask for a translation, unless you wanted to cause mortal offence—
Eventually, reluctantly, he steered the conversation round to other topics. True, the indigenous tribes of Blemya were related to the desert people—in the same way, Mesajer said, that wolfhounds are related to wolves; common ancestry, radically different viewpoint. Yes, it was hard not be offended sometimes,
and, yes, there was always the sense of being different, even when the Settler talking to you was one of your closest friends. The dog analogy was, in fact, quite apt. A lot of men love their dogs, admire them, are proud of them; love them more than their wives and sons, are really only happy when in their company, weep inconsolably when they die. But dogs are dogs, and people are people. That said—Mesajer grinned—if it wasn’t for people, dogs would still be wolves. Dogs, he felt sure, were well aware of that, as they curled up in the rushes in front of the hearth.
Daxen was mildly shocked by that, which Mesajer found amusing.
Two hours into the next morning’s march, they came over a slight rise and saw Erithry. They saw it as a white blur surrounded by a green penumbra, the vineyards and market gardens that flourished along the irrigation canals dug by Ceuphro IV two hundred years ago. The white was the glare of marble, the local material, cheaper than sandstone; every stable, warehouse and outside privy was built of it. By noon, they could make out the faint pink of the better-class districts, where the masons had used the celebrated Erithrean Rose from the quarries in the northern suburbs. The messengers hadn’t come back yet. There was no sign of any large body of men on the road ahead of them, or any dust rising from either side of it; the three clouds were, however, still keeping perfect station, behind them and on either side. Prexil found that offensive, so close to the city. As soon as they were back, he said, he’d send out cavalry patrols to shoo them away. Daxen made no comment, and his silence wasn’t noticed.
Nobody really started to worry until they reached the fourteenth milestone, where there was a way station. It was deserted—it should’ve been manned—and the haylofts were empty and the tank was dry. There was no sign that anyone had been there recently, though a sandstorm would have covered any tracks completely, and there was three inches of sand on the road at that point. Prexil sent out scouts. A few sharp-eyed men at the front of the column said they might have seen movement, as of large bodies of men, in the fields to the north-east of the city. Nobody else could make out anything of the kind, however, and the illusion was put down to overexcitement.