The Two of Swords, Volume 1

by K. J. Parker

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” he shouted at the porters. “Get me down there, quick.”

  There’s always so much mess after a battle: so many bodies, so many damaged men, so much ruined property scattered about. All things being equal (which they rarely are) the priorities are to see to your side’s wounded, then the enemy’s; strip and bury your dead, pile up and count the opposition; retrieve as much equipment as you can, though usually time, supplies and patience run out long before then, and the job is left to the private sector—first on the scene, the locals (if any), until they’re chased off by the professionals, who follow the wars at a safe distance and bring their own carts. Ideally, by the time they’ve finished up and set off back to the nearest town big enough to host an auction, there should be nothing left but graves, ashes, trampled crops and the hoof marks of the cavalry.

  When both sides are in a hurry to get away, it’s not like that. A quick skirmish for the wounded, leave the dead; it takes an hour for the crows to figure it’s safe, they’re canny birds with a highly developed system of reconnaissance, more than capable of recognising live humans from half a mile off. To start with, they come in singly, gliding in on the wind, banking and turning into it to brake, dropping with wings outstretched, touching down and waddling; then twos and threes, then by the dozen; they circle, for choice pitch in nearby trees to make a leisurely assessment before committing themselves; when at last they settle, they cover the field like black snow, and you can hear them a thousand yards away. Then the first human scavengers show up, and the crows rise like angry smoke, yelling abuse at the interlopers. It takes a minute or so for the last reluctant stragglers to lift up and flap away—they know their place in the pecking order, but they don’t feel obliged to be gracious about it.

  If there are no humans, of course, they can take their time. They don’t do much of a job. Too much meat is inaccessible under steel and leather, mostly they only get faces and hands—hair is useful, of course, during nesting season—and they’re comparatively slow feeders. They don’t get much help from other birds, foxes, the lesser vermin, nor do they do much to keep the flies off. Generally speaking, they leave a worse mess than they find. In those parts where jackals, kites and vultures are the predominant carrion species, it’s a different story, but they’re not often seen north of the Seventy-third Oasis.

  Eight days after the battle, Senza came back. He left his escort on the far side of the Hammerhead and climbed the narrow path alone; he knew what he wanted to see, and the picture would be delicate, fragile; one ill-judged movement would spoil it. From the top of the rock he looked down and read the view below him like a book.

  From the distribution and feeding patterns of the crows, which he’d taken great pains not to disturb, and from the smell, he gathered that nobody had been there for at least five days. The black stains the crows made on the brown and green would have told him the narrative of the battle as clearly as any despatch, if he hadn’t known it already; the places where men had fallen thickest, the paths traced by stragglers and fugitives cut down by pursuers, the windrows of dead men shot by archers as they charged, or enfiladed as they advanced and retreated—dogs can read the past by smell, Senza could do the same thing by reading crows. It came from long practice.

  When he’d seen all he needed, he walked down towards the place where he’d fought his brother. The tents, he saw with surprise, were still there; Forza’s men must have left in a tearing hurry, and it seemed reasonable to assume that nobody had been in charge. Forza would never have left the tents behind unless he’d been driven forcibly from the field, which Senza knew for a fact hadn’t been the case. He retraced his own movements, stepping over the guardsmen who’d died to save him (eyeless now, cheekbones showing through lacerated skin) and poked about in Forza’s tent for a while. The maps and papers had gone, but the table, chair and bed were still there. Under the pillow, where he knew it would be, he found three small painted wooden panels, hinged with leather straps to make a triptych. He unfolded them, and saw for the first time in fifteen years the fire god in glory, attended by the greater and lesser seraphim. It had always stood on a shelf above the hearth; his mother nodded to it every time she passed, the reflexive dip of the head you accord to neighbours you meet in the street. He stood and stared at it for a very long time; fancy meeting you here. Then he took off the scarf he wore to keep his armour from chafing his neck and wound it six times round the boards; then he turfed junk out of his coat pocket until the bundle fitted snug and safe. A voice in his head told him that the battle had been worth it, just for this. He knew that was terribly wrong, but he couldn’t deny his own belief.

  She’d left her trunk behind; he went out, picked up a sword from the ground and used it to lever open the lid—the hasp was mighty strong and he bent the sword blade before the hinge pin finally gave way. His sister-in-law had good but expensive taste. At the bottom of the trunk he found a small bundle of letters, in his brother’s handwriting. He grinned and pocketed them, for later.

  Now, then. If Forza had been badly hurt, wouldn’t they bring him in here and lay him down on the bed until someone found the doctor? He examined the blanket for traces of blood, but there weren’t any. Likewise, the first thing you’d do for a wounded man would be peel off all that armour—yes, but they’d take that away with them regardless of the outcome, just as they’d taken the maps, though not her trunk; true, but they’d have stripped off the arming coat as well, probably other bits of clothing too, and there was nothing of the sort lying on the ground or on the bed. A dead body, though, you’d just load that up as it was and cart it away, once you were sure there was nothing that could be done. Or maybe he was jumping to conclusions. Maybe he was thinking too much like Forza—organised, efficient, intelligent. Suppose you were some captain or lieutenant, horribly stuck with command as your general lies at your feet groaning and bleeding, and (not being a military genius) you have no idea at all what the military genius leading the opposition has in mind; you’d get the chief and his wife out of there as soon as possible; maybe you’d have the residual trace of wit to grab the maps and papers, but not the personal stuff. You most definitely wouldn’t know what was under the chief’s pillow. All you’d be able to hear would be the voice in your head screaming get out of there, which you would obey implicitly, without hesitation.

  Ambiguous, therefore; maybe he’s dead, maybe he isn’t. Fairly safe to assume that, at the moment of the army’s departure, Forza wasn’t in command; potentially fatal to assume that he wasn’t in command now, and racking his brains to figure out what his kid brother would do next. If I was him, he thought, I’d send back a half-squadron, at the very least; tell them to hold off still and quiet so as not to disturb the crows; as soon as the crows get up, go in there fast. Would Forza guess that he’d be here? Yes, because he was here, and Forza knew him so well. In which case—

  He ran out of the tent and looked round; half a squadron would kick up dust, unless Forza had ordered them to go on foot for that very reason. He couldn’t see movement of any sort, anywhere. Which proved nothing. Time he wasn’t there.

  As he ran back up the path, he realised: come what may, if Forza was alive, he’d have sent someone for the painting, and probably his wife’s letters, if he knew about them (he’d know). The absolute certainty of it hit him like a hammer; he stopped dead, unable to take a single step. Dead, or just possibly in a coma—no, because she’d know what he kept under his pillow, she’d know it had to be retrieved at all costs; no reason to believe she was dead too. He felt utterly weak and helpless, as though he’d just had a stroke. Forza—

  Suddenly into his mind came an image of the Basilica at Vetusta, the biggest and most magnificent man-made structure in the world. Four generations of labourers had worked on it, he’d read somewhere; great-grandfather, grandfather, father, son, their whole lives spent on that one extraordinary piece of work—masons, carters, carpenters, smiths, brickmakers, plasterers, architects, paint
ers, sculptors, all of them trades that traditionally run in families, like soldiering or ruling empires—until one day, one clearly defined, absolutely different day, someone took a step back, looked up, down again at the plans; nodded his head, probably, and declared that it was finished, and everyone could go home. A moment of triumph—the greatest achievement of the human race, brought to a magnificently successful conclusion—but also, for the fourth-generations achievers, the end of the world, everything they’d ever known over, done with and gone, their purpose fulfilled, their experiences obsolete; a frontier post on the border between present and past. A week later, they’d all have scattered far and wide, building cowsheds. Hereditary trades; family businesses. Like, say, the Belot brothers, purveyors of fine carrion to discerning crows everywhere.

  Self-pity; because if a job’s worth doing, do it yourself.

  No confirmation, of course. He led the army back across the border, expecting to find messengers waiting, but there weren’t any. He hadn’t said anything to the men, but he had an idea that the shrewder ones were guessing pretty close to the truth. There was a buzz of excitement on the march and around the camp; we’re going all the way this time, it’ll all be over by midsummer—as though something was about to begin, rather than everything had just ended. The senior staff kept quiet, waiting for an announcement.

  They stopped for three days at the old fort at Stroumena, ostensibly to wait for supplies. On the third day, when Senza had given up and was getting ready to move on, a breathless young lieutenant told him five horsemen were approaching the camp, escorting a covered chaise. He didn’t actually use the words Imperial courier service, but he didn’t need to. He was grinning.

  Senza watched them from the top of the observation tower. He saw a big man in a blue hooded cloak get out of the chaise; there was something familiar about him, though Senza could only see the top of his head. There was a woman with him; she got out, handed him a satchel with the ends of a couple of brass despatch rolls sticking out, then got back into the chaise. Two of the riders started to follow the blue-cloaked man, but he sent them back and set off across the courtyard. Definitely something familiar about the way he walked; an aggressively long stride, impatient, a man very much aware of the value of his time. So much to do, and only me capable of doing it. He disappeared through a gateway, and Senza drew back from the window. Ridiculous, he thought. What on earth would he be doing here, middle of nowhere, in a war zone?

  He heard footsteps running up the spiral stairs, and then there was a guardsman in the doorway, with a look on his face like someone who’s just seen God coming out of the drapers’ on the corner. “It’s him, sir. Oida. Wants to see you.”

  “I’ll come down,” Senza said.

  Oida was in the small courtyard, sitting on a mounting block. He’d taken off the cloak and draped it over his knees, like an old lady with a carriage rug. He was examining a scuff on the side of his boot. He looked up and smiled. “Hello, Senza,” he said.

  Senza felt his left hand clench tight; he relaxed it before it was noticed. “Oida,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to entertain the troops,” he said.

  Senza managed not to say the first words that sprang to mind. “It was very clever of you to find us,” he said, “seeing as how we didn’t tell anyone we were coming this way till we reached the border.”

  “Pure serendipity.” Oida beamed at him. “I just happened to be in the neighbourhood, and someone told me you’d shown up out of the blue. As luck would have it I don’t have to be anywhere special for a day or so; I thought, why not? Do my good deed for the week and see my old friend Senza. Any chance of a drink, by the way? I’m gasping.”

  Senza didn’t say anything for four seconds. Then: “Of course,” and he turned and started to walk. He went fast, trying to make Oida break into a trot, but with those great long legs Oida could keep up with him at a stroll. Senza didn’t like tall people. By some cruel quirk of fate, he’d been surrounded by them all his life; he was exactly average height, but he’d always felt short, and bitterly resented it. Oida was a head taller than Forza had been. There was simply no excuse for something like that.

  Four or five hundred years ago, when the fort had been a monastery, the monks had made a walled herb garden. Somehow it had survived, though now it produced fresh salad for the officers’ mess. There was a small free-standing stone building in the north-eastern corner, where the cellarers had once dried and cured medicinal herbs; it was cool even when the sun was high and still smelt faintly of rosemary and cumin, though these days it was mostly used for storing eggs. There were three carved oak chairs, a cupboard and a massive table scored with knife cuts, and a door you could lock from the inside.

  Senza opened the cupboard and took out a brown glass bottle and one horn cup, which he filled three-quarters full. Oida took it and drank about half. Senza pulled a face. “I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,” he said.

  Oida laughed. “Your loss,” he said. “They try and make it in the West,” he said, “but it’s a poor imitation. Someone told me it’s the wrong sort of bees.”

  Senza shrugged. “Bees are bees, surely.”

  “You’d have thought so, but apparently not.” He reached across the table for the bottle. “They make a passable imitation in Charattis,” he said, “but it’s a sort of browny treacly colour and rather too sweet for my taste. Cheers.”

  Senza watched him drink in silence. He’d never seen Oida drunk, never. Alcohol just made him a more intense version of himself: cunning, ambiguous and so very, very annoying. “So,” he said, “what are you going to give them?”

  Oida yawned. “Oh, the usual,” he said. “A fine blend of sentiment and smut, with a few big, loud patriotic numbers at the end so they can all have a good roar. I like singing for soldiers, they’re appreciative and easily pleased.”

  Senza remembered some of the reasons why he’d never liked Oida. “Who’s the female?” he asked.

  Oida pulled a face. “Political officer,” he said.

  “Ah. Ours or theirs?”

  “Oh, yours. I’m not allowed to blow my nose without her reporting in triplicate to the Secretary General. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear someone in your government doesn’t trust me. Still, that’s what you get for being neutral, I suppose.”

  Senza grinned. “I’ve always meant to ask you about that.” He paused to rub his side; getting better, but it still ached all the damn time. “Later, maybe. Very kind of you to make time for us. Shouldn’t you be somewhere else, earning money?”

  “Yes,” Oida said. “But what the hell.” He drained what was left in his cup, looked at the bottle but didn’t move. “To be honest with you, I’m dying of curiosity. There’s this rumour going round.”

  “Oh yes?”

  Oida nodded. “They say you’ve killed Forza.”

  “Do they now.”

  “Indeed.” Oida was looking straight at him, and Senza realised he’d be a hard man to lie to. “Anything to it?”

  “You know, I’m not sure.” Senza waited; he didn’t actually know why. “I may have killed him, but I can’t confirm it. Actually, when you showed up, I was hoping it was Imperial couriers with something in the way of hard news.”

  “Sorry,” Oida said. “They say it was you and him, hand to hand.”

  “Well, wouldn’t that make a lovely story,” Senza replied. “But, yes, there was a bit of a scrap, my guards and his. It’s possible that he may have been killed. I nearly was. Complete balls-up, as a matter of fact, everything got completely out of hand. So, in answer to your question, I really don’t know.”

  Oida nodded slowly. “That’s interesting,” he said. “Presumably you’d know if he’s out of action from the way his troops are moving.”

  “If I knew where they were, quite probably, yes.”

  A truly irritating grin. “I might be able to help you there,” Oida said, and from his pocket he took a map, stiff parchm
ent, folded longwise. He laid it on the table and smoothed it out with the heel of his hand. “Some people I know reckon they saw a large body of men here—” He was pointing at a blank space in the middle of the map. “Not your lot, obviously, not the tribesmen or the Blemyans, because we know where they are. So, logically, it’s got to be Forza’s army. Headed north in a great hurry, my friends said.” He pushed the map across the table. “I don’t know if it’s any use to you, but there it is.”

  Senza realised he’d stopped breathing. “These friends of yours.”

  “Ah.” Oida looked away. “Strictly neutral,” he said, “just like me. But reliable. Obviously, you can’t take my word for it, but you can send some of your people up that way to have a look, if you want to. Here.” He stretched out his arm, rested his index finger on the map and scored a faint line with his fingernail. “There or thereabouts,” he said. “About five days ago, so you should be able to pick up the trail.”

  Senza stared at the map. He could see the faint furrow of Oida’s nail. “It’s terribly kind of you to tell me this,” he said, “but it’s not very—”

  “Neutral?” Oida beamed at him.

  “Not very, no.”

  “Mphm.” Oida leaned back in his chair. “My old mother used to say, there’s a time and a place for everything. Neutrality is wonderful when you don’t know which side is going to win. But if Forza’s dead—”

  Senza had picked up the map without knowing it. “He may not be, I just said.”

  “Indeed.” Oida massaged the side of his head with the tips of two fingers. “But—I’m no strategist, God knows, it’s a closed book to me, I’m just an entertainer. But if Forza’s alive, what the hell is he doing over there? I don’t actually know the region, but surely the only reason you’d be over that way would be if you were trying to get back home as quickly as possible; and I can’t see why Forza would want to do that.”