Hardway

by David Pilling

  The door swung open and the orderlies entered, followed by a slight figure in an orange robe. Like all his brethren, this one was entirely bald, and his placid face wreathed in an eternal smile.

  “Don’t get too close, sir,” said the man with the injured wrist, stopping at a respectful distance from Dusek’s bed. “He’s dangerous. I reckon we should tie him down until he learns some manners.”

  Dusek turned his head to look at the orderly. He could see the man clearly, every line and pucker of his pale, disagreeable features, the marks of grease and dirt on his white smock, the vivid red marks on his injured wrist. Clearest of all was the naked hostility in the orderly’s red-rimmed little eyes, bloodshot with lack of sleep and too much late-night ale. A touch of murka, too, if Dusek was any judge.

  He raised a hand to his face, over where his eyes used to be. The outline was still there. It appeared that Dusek’s restored vision could see through flesh.

  “What am I doing here?” he demanded gruffly, unwilling to let anyone know his secret just yet.

  The priest stepped forward. His expression had changed to one of benevolent concern, and Dusek braced himself for an onslaught of compassion.

  “A troop of city watchmen found you lying unconscious under the Eye,” said the priest. “At first they thought you were dead. Much was their grief and lamentation.”

  His voice was calm and mild, almost androgynous in its lack of what Dusek termed manly fibre. Others might have found it soothing, but the old man thought it akin to being bleated at by an anxious sheep.

  “Horseshit,” he grunted. “Everyone on this accursed rock has been praying for my death ever since I got there. Or should have been. After all, I tried to destroy them.”

  The priest smiled fatly. “We don’t hold grudges on Hardway, General. You know that. This is where grudges come to die. A troop of watchmen found your pulse, very faint, but it was there, and carried you all the way down the steps to the Sanatorium. At considerable annoyance and discomfort to themselves. You should be grateful.”

  Dusek snorted. “Fuck off. They should have left me to die, or cut my throat. That’s what you do to an enemy.”

  He was play-acting now: the cantankerous old soldier, unwilling to accept a shred of kindness or solace from anyone. It was a role he had tuned to perfection these past twelve years.

  The priest was too canny to fall for it, and possessed of infinite patience. “Leave us, please,” he said, waving the two orderlies out of the room. They looked at him incredulously.

  “Are you sure, sir?” said the uninjured one. “That’s one mean old bastard you have to deal with. Given half the chance, he would spring up from that bed and wring your neck.”

  The priest glanced wryly at them. “Forgive me,” he said, “if I am not convinced of the protection you can offer. Don’t worry about me, gentlemen. Go and have some supper. And get that wrist looked at.”

  He shooed them out, and they departed with reluctance, muttering darkly and casting suspicious looks at the patient.

  “Now, then,” said the priest once he had pushed the door shut, “perhaps we can talk sensibly. Allow me to introduce myself, General. I am Brother Harm. I have often seen you walking about the city, and consider it a great honour to talk with you at last.”

  “Go to the hells,” snarled Dusek. He had settled back to study the ceiling, and was taken unawares when Brother Harm suddenly padded closer and waved his hand inches over Dusek’s face.

  Instinctively, Dusek’s head followed the movement of the hand.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” said Brother Harm, taking a step back and pulling at his lower lip. “Very interesting,” he added after a long moment, during which Dusek lay tense and still. “I noticed you turn your head to look at the orderly when we came in.”

  “I heard the door open,” Dusek said gamely. “I’m not fucking deaf as well as blind.”

  “Agreed. I would say you are neither. But how? A man with no eyes cannot regain his sight through any natural process. Sorcery, then. Have you been consorting with sorcerers, general?”

  “Of course not. There are only two living sorcerers in the known world, and they live thousands of miles from here. Anyway, I tell you that I cannot see. My sight was burned out twelve years ago, and I have lived in darkness ever since.”

  Brother Harm clucked his tongue. “Please, General. I am a practical man and have no time for such pity-me theatrics. There are many other patients here who require my attention. Unlike you, very few have been given their own ward to recuperate in.”

  “I didn’t ask for special treatment,” Dusek said stubbornly. “I never asked for anything. Everything I had, I took. What I am now, I deserve.”

  He couldn’t prevent the note of self-pity creeping in, and had to dig his nails into his palms to prevent a tear sliding down one weathered cheek. This damned priest and his bleating little voice was starting to get to him.

  “Stick it, shaveling,” he said harshly. “Don’t try and play your tricks on me. Save it for the peasants.”

  “No tricks,” Brother Harm replied, “just curiosity.”

  He moved away from the bed, tapping his cheek thoughtfully. “Sorcery,” he mused. “Or an act of the Gods. Let us consider the latter. Why should the divinities of the Celestial Sphere concern themselves with you?”

  “For the last time…” Dusek began, and stopped as the priest spun around with panther-like speed. Naked steel flashed in his hand and stabbed down at Dusek’s heart.

  The general’s hand shot upward and caught Brother Harm’s wrist in an iron grip. His other hand seized a handful of the priest’s robe and dragged him down until their faces were almost touching.

  “Try that again,” he hissed, “and I’ll twist your balls off and stuff them down your throat.”

  “You may as well,” said Brother Harm, winking slyly, “for all the use I make of them.”

  His levity caught Dusek off-guard. Lithe as an eel, he was able to wriggle out of the General’s grip and retreat to the far side of the room.

  “We need conduct no more experiments,” he said, tucking his dagger back into a recess of his robe. “So now will you stop trying to play me for a fool, General, and tell me what happened at the Eye?”

  Dusek knew when he was outmanoeuvred. He sighed. “I had a pain in my head,” he said quietly. “It grew worse, until I could stand it no longer and fainted. When I woke up, I was in this shithole and could see again. That’s it.”

  Silence reigned as Brother Harm digested this. “I must inform the Abbot,” he said finally. “He is at a meeting of the City Fathers.”

  “What are those old farts meeting for?” demanded Dusek.

  Brother Harm hesitated. “There have been some developments,” he said. “Rumours from our agents in the Old Kingdom and Calisse. The Dragon and the Grey Queen are said to be casting covetous glances in our direction.”

  Dusek sat bolt upright and swung his bony legs off the bed. Like all the patients in the Sanatorium, he wore a thin nightshirt. The orderlies had taken away his clothes.

  He still had his stick. Either out of respect or negligence, they had left it leaning against the wall beside the door.

  “I’m not staying here a moment longer,” he said, seizing the stick and swishing it through the air. Since they took his eyes, he had wielded no other weapon. Now his sight was restored, he could see it clearly: a stout four-foot length of yew, carved for him by one of the fletchers of the city garrison, strengthened by six strips of iron.

  “Where will you go?” asked Brother Harm. “Back onto the streets? I don’t think that is a good idea. Stay in the House of the Celestial Sphere for a while. My brothers shall make you welcome.”

  “Bugger that,” rasped Dusek, pointing his stick at the priest. “I’m coming with you to the Circle.”

  There was nothing Brother Harm could do or say to persuade him otherwise, short of summoning the orderlies, and Dusek made it clear that he relished the pros
pect of a brawl.

  Thus Dusek strode out of his private ward and through the large, well-lit dormitory where the other patients were housed, with Brother Harm trailing behind him.

  Never comfortable with discretion, Dusek had decided to throw caution aside and let the world see the miracle that had been granted him. There was scarcely a soul inside the city who didn’t know who him, and the invalids in the neat rows of beds briefly forgot their woes as he marched past.

  He lifted his stick in cheerful greeting to the pale-faced, gawping invalids. An ancient marching song rose to his lips. Dusek hadn’t thought of it for years—it was part of his long-buried past—but now the words flowed effortlessly.

  “I ran away from home and became an infantryman,

  “I bared my arse at the enemy and away he ran,

  “I was paid in salt and curses and ate beef from a can,

  “And my feet went marching on, on, on…”

  When he reached the last ‘on’ his voice rose to a roar. He grinned at the cluster of orderlies that had come scuttling through a side-door to investigate the noise.

  “Thank you for your kindness,” he cried, “but General Dusek is fit and well again, and will take up no more of your time.”

  One or two of the braver orderlies started forward to bar his path, but Brother Harm waved them back. The main door was ahead of him, a nailed and timbered portal of polished dark wood. Dusek kicked it open with his bare foot, toughened by decades of marching.

  “I’ll be back for my clothes!” he yelled as he stepped outside, “so don’t think of selling them!”

  Brother Harm squeezed through the door after him.

  “If I didn’t know better, General,” he panted, struggling to keep up with Dusek’s long-legged stride, “I would say you were deliberately making an exhibition of yourself.”

  Dusek ignored him. The darkness of years was falling away, replaced by golden light and an overwhelming euphoria. Whatever lay behind the miraculous restoration of his sight—no doubt it was all some foul trick—he was determined to wallow in joy while it lasted.

  He looked around, drinking in his surroundings. The Sanatorium was a long building with a tiled and gabled roof, attached to the exterior western wall of the House of the Celestial Sphere. It opened out directly onto the street, a wide, cobbled avenue that led south to the docks and north to the Circle.

  Dusek swung north, exulting in the feel of cold, rain-washed cobbles under his feet, the wind blowing in from the sea and whipping his white hair about his head like mist.

  “I gave in to a wager, and kissed the sergeant’s wife,

  “He yelled and cursed her for a whore and cut me with his knife,

  “I took the scar in anger and will carry it all my life,

  “And my feet go marching on, on on…”

  He marched forwards along one of the poorer areas of the city. Beggars and homeless urchins and other unfortunates gaped in astonishment as he marched past, followed by the anxiously smiling figure of Brother Harm.

  By the time they reached the end of the street, which opened out onto Hardway’s wide central plaza, they had acquired a following. A dozen or so ragged street children had formed up in single file behind the general, swinging their arms and shouting along to his song with gusto.

  The ragged procession marched into the plaza, a vast square at the heart of the city, dominated by a central forum that housed the market.

  Its vaulted roof was supported by rows of squat stone pillars and daily echoed to the babble of thousands of voices, dialects and languages from all over the world.

  Hardway had become a major port and trading centre. Whatever men desired, the traders like to boast, could be bought and sold in the Great Market. Some of the more ambitious hucksters were even trying to think of ways of bottling the air and selling it at a premium.

  Today the market was as busy as ever, thronged with merchants from every corner of the planet. Their rich clothing contrasted vividly with the soiled rags and cheap finery of beggars and hawkers, hucksters, pimps, pardoners, cut-purses and street entertainers, the usual flotsam and jetsam of the market, all doing their best to earn, scrape or pinch a living.

  The market’s raucous babble dipped slightly as Dusek and his procession appeared. None had ever seen the old blind general like this before, striding confidently instead of tapping with his cane, the veil that hid his empty eye-sockets ripped away to reveal his shame.

  “The old bugger’s gone mad at last!” cackled Scab Bess, one of Hardway’s most notorious whores, her plump face slathered in cheap rouge to hide the pox-marks. “He thinks he’s off to war again!”

  “Hail to the General!” she squawked as Dusek and his motley retinue marched past. “Hail to the great conqueror! Bring our lads safe home!”

  Her cry was taken up by other whores and street toughs. Very quickly the plaza rang to the sound of Dusek’s name. The cheers were ironic, yet tinged with a little resentment. There were those inside Hardway who lacked the generous spirit of the City Fathers, and had not forgotten that Dusek was once their mortal enemy.

  Dusek cared little. He marched straight through the plaza, the crowd of merchants parting before him in a rustle of costly furs and silks, on his way to the Circle. A few from distant lands refused to stand aside for this bizarre scarecrow figure, whom they assumed to be some local clown or jester. These he treated to shrewd blows with his stick, and left them in heaps, groaning and clutching their private agony.

  He was heading towards The Circle, the official and traditional centre of Hardway’s government. It stood on the crest of the round, man-made hill that loomed above the plaza, on the site of the old governor’s residence from the prison colony days. The first independent governor, Alexei, had ordered the residence torn down and the stone used to build Fort Alex and the Circle itself.

  As its name suggested, the Circle was a hollow ring of stone arches that ran around the perimeter of the hill. It stood some twenty feet high and had no roof. The City Fathers who met on the plateau inside were required to endure any weather, fair or foul, for the duration of the council. They were also required to stand, for there were no seats or tables inside the ring. Any man who could no longer endure the verbal hack and slash of politics while being buffeted and soaked to the skin by tempestuous weather, or the mere physical strain of standing for hours on end, was obliged to resign his office. Thus, so Alexei reasoned, the City Fathers would always be men of sound mind and body.

  A set of white marble steps cut into the side of the hill led from the plaza to the Circle. Dusek proceeded smartly up them, glorying in the sights of the world that had been denied to him for so long, and the ease with which he moved. The creeping aches and arthritic pains that had so plagued him were quite gone. Every ageing muscle and sinew felt as though some benevolent god had greased and polished it, allowing Dusek a spryness he had not known for decades.

  “I been a soldier for thirty years, my life has been a feast,

  “I seen the jungles of the distant south, the mountains of the east,

  “I been a fighter, a lover, a liar and a beast,

  “But my feet go marching on, on, on…”

  Dusek’s procession swelled as he moved; the citizens of Hardway loved a good piece of street theatre and this was as good as it came. More people tagged on to the rear of Dusek’s procession. Someone banged a cymbal in rough time to his song, while another tootled on a reed pipe. Others clapped their hands and bellowed along to the chorus in hoarse, cracked voices.

  The Circle was usually unguarded during council meetings—another of old Alexei’s methods for keeping the City Fathers honest—but today three men sat playing dice beside the central arch.

  Dusek didn’t know them, but he knew the look: scarred, hard-faced slabs of muscle, doubtless hired by one of the Fathers to guard his worthless skin. Big fists and thick arms from pounding their fellow men into pulp, soft bellies from swilling the ale they drowned their consciences in.
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  One in particular was huge, a veritable man-mountain. He was more alert than his comrades. Suspicion gleamed in his piggy little eyes as he watched the strange procession marching up the steps.

  Dusek halted on the top step and threw up his hand. He grinned as the noise behind him died down with almost military precision.

  “What’s all this?” the big man grunted, planting his massive fists on his hips. “There's council in progress. Must not be disturbed.”

  “You must be Strongarm,” said Dusek, “one of Tulgan’s henchmen. I’ve heard a lot about you. Now I get to look at you. Lucky me.”

  Strongarm looked him up and down. His was not the most expressive of faces—Dusek thought it resembled a pig that had gone fifteen rounds with a prize-fighter—but his eyes flickered, and a muscle in his heavy jaw gave a twitch.

  “Turn around and crawl back to your garret, you old freak,” he said harshly. “The same goes for the rest of you. Go home before me and the boys get angry.”

  The herd of citizens clustered behind Dusek suddenly looked very hangdog.

  “Sorry, Strongarm,” chorused the hucksters, whores and clowns.

  “Sorry, Strongarm,” piped the urchins.

  “Sorry, Strongarm,” said Brother Harm.

  “Get out of my way, you fat bastard,” said Dusek.

  A gasp of horror rippled through the crowd. Strongarm’s little eyes almost popped from their sockets as the impossible words reached his ears. No one spoke like that to a man of his size and strength and bristling aggression. Not unless they wanted to end up carrying their ears home in a box.

  “Don’t think you heard me, old man,” he said, licking his thick lips. His great ham of a face filled with angry blood, and his pendulous fists started to twitch on the end of their long, ape-like arms.

  Dusek nonchalantly balanced his stick on his shoulder. “The tribesmen of the Carados Mountains were about your size,” he said in a conversational tone. “Great big hairy buggers they were. Ate nothing but mutton and beans. You could smell them from miles off.”