Devices and Desires (72 page)

Not so good, then. He sat still, frantically trying to decide what to do, painfully aware that the battle had slipped away
from him, like a cat squirming out of a child’s arms. Common sense urged him to stay out of the fighting, but he was the Ducas,
and his place was in the thick of it. Muttering to himself, he pushed his horse into a half-hearted canter and, as something
of an afterthought, drew his sword.

A horseman was closing on him; not an Eremian, therefore an enemy. He spurred forward to meet him, but the rider swerved away.
Miel realized he was an archer, one of the Cure Hardy scouts. He pulled his horse’s head round, determined to be at least
a moving target, but the enemy was more concerned with getting away; he had his bow in his right hand and his left was on
the reins. Before Miel could decide whether or not to do anything about him, the archer slumped forward on his horse’s neck,
dropped his bow and slid sideways out of the saddle. His foot snagged in his stirrup-leather just as his head hit the ground.
His helmet came off and a tangle of long, dark hair flowed out like blood from a wound. He was being dragged. With each stride
of the horse his head was jerked up, only to bump down again and bounce off a stone or the lip of a pothole. After a few yards,
the horse slowed down; his foot came free from the stirrup, he rolled over a couple of times and came to rest. The side of
his head was white with dust, like a fine lady’s face-powder, blood blotting through it in a round patch, like blusher. The
stub of a broken-off arrow stuck out of his neck, just above the rolled edge of his breastplate.

Miel looked up. He’d forgotten that, as he was moving into position, he’d dismounted his own archers and sent them to command
the tops of the ridges that flanked the road. His own tactical skill impressed him. His archers were already in position,
and because the attacking cavalry had forced the enemy out of the way and over to the sides, they had a clear view with minimal
risk of dropping stray shots into their own men. If he’d planned it that way, it would have been a clever and imaginative
tactic. Planned or not, though, the archers had turned a potential disaster into the makings of a famous victory. The arrows
were driving the enemy back into the center of the canyon, where they were coming up against the Eremian cavalry; crushed
between arrows and lances, like ears of wheat between two grindstones, they were gradually being ground away. In the distance
he heard louder, shriller yells, from which he gathered that battle had been joined on the other side of the canyon.

It is incumbent upon the Ducas always to fight in the front rank, always to be the best…
Query, however: is the Ducas obliged to fight in the front rank even if nobody’s watching? The battle was coming along very
nicely without him, thanks to the timely intervention of the archers, and the sheer aggression of the horsemen. The charge
had long since foundered and lost all its momentum. The knights and lancers were no longer moving. Instead they were standing
in their stirrups, bashing down on the helmets and coats of plates of the enemy infantry, who were too tightly cramped together
to be able to swing back at them with anything approaching lethal force. With a considerable degree of reluctance, he pushed
his horse forward into the fighting.

It reminded him of a thrush cracking snail-shells against a stone. His fellow knights were whirling and swinging their swords,
flattening their delicately honed edges against the cheap munitions plate of the enemy footsoldiers. Even the swords of the
Phocas, the Suidas, the Peribleptus couldn’t cut into sixteenth-inch domed iron sheet. Farm tools or hammers would probably
have been more use, but noblemen didn’t use such things. Instead, they tried to club the enemy to the floor with their light,
blunt swords; it was perfectly possible, provided you hit hard enough and took pains to land your blows on the same spot.
Cursing the aimless stupidity of it all, Miel Ducas dug his spurs into his horse’s side and forced the poor creature into
a clumsy, unwilling canter.

He saw the enemy. Things weren’t going well with them. Tidemarks of dead bodies showed where they’d tried to scramble up the
slope to get at the archers, only to find out by trial and error that it couldn’t be done. Instead, they’d tried to go back,
and that, presumably, was when they’d discovered that the other end of the canyon was blocked. There were thousands of them,
all the scouts had agreed on that, but just now their vast weight of numbers was working against them. Jammed together as
their flanks cringed away from the archers, most of them were useless to their commander; they were a traffic jam, obstructing
the passage of orders and intelligence from one end of the canyon to the other. It occurred to Miel that if he’d only had
another couple of thousand men, he could probably kill enough of them from this position to end the war. But that wasn’t the
case; and at any moment, the sheer pressure of men trying to get away from the spearhead of knights wedged into their center
would explode up the canyon sides and flush away his archers, albeit with devastating loss of life… Entirely against his will
and better judgment, he spared a moment to consider that. Ever since childhood he’d trained with weapons, as a nobleman should;
he’d fought with the quintain and the pell, sparred with his instructors, shot arrows into targets both stationary and moving.
In due course he’d put the theory into practice, against the Vadani, in what proved to be the last campaign of the war, and
afterward in border skirmishes and police actions against brigands and free companies. All his life he’d learned to fight
a target — a wooden post wrapped in sacking, a sack dangling from a swinging beam, a straw circle with colored rings painted
on it, an exposed neck or forearm, the gap beside the armpit not covered by the armor plates. It hadn’t ever worried him,
until now. He paused to consider how deeply troubled he was, now that he was in command, and all these deaths and mutilations
were by his order and decision. It troubled him, he discovered, but not enough.

Devastating loss of life; the sides of the canyon could be covered with dead men, packed close enough together that if it
rained, the dust wouldn’t get wet, and it’d still only be three thousand dead, maybe four, and that wouldn’t be enough to
end the war or even affect it significantly. It was an extraordinary thought; he could litter the landscape as far as the
eye could see with the most grotesque obscenities he could imagine, and it wouldn’t actually matter all that much, in the
great scheme of things. He considered the duty of the Ducas, and the beneficial effect on morale that the sight of their commander
in the thick of the fighting would have on his men, and thought, to hell with that. He’d had enough. What he needed most of
all was a horn-blower.

What he got was a couple of Mezentines. Two infantrymen who’d squeezed and wriggled their way past, through, under, over the
heaped corpses of their friends were running toward him, yelling what he assumed was abuse. Dispassionately, he assessed them
from the technical point of view. Their defenses consisted of kettle-hats, mail collars and padded jacks reaching just below
the waist. They were armed with some form of halberd (were those glaives or bardisches? He ought to know, but he always got
them mixed up). Calm, determined and properly trained in the orthodox school of fencing they’d be formidable opponents, worthy
of six pages of detailed drawings and explanatory text in the manual. As it was, they were a chore.

He rode at them, pulled left at the last moment, overshot the neck with a lazy thrust and severed the appropriate vein with
a long, professional draw-cut. He felt blood on his face, which saved him the bother of turning his head to look. He could,
of course, let the other man go, but that would be failing in his duty. He stopped his horse, dragged its head round and rode
down the second man, hamstringing him with a delicate flick of the wrist as he passed him on the right. As chores went it
hadn’t exactly been arduous, but he felt annoyed, imposed upon; he was a busy man with a battle to stop, and he didn’t have
time for indulgences.

He found a horn-blower and ordered the disengage followed by the withdrawal in good order. The horn-blower looked at him before
he blew. The effect was immediate. The archers vanished from the ridgetops, the knights and lancers wheeled and cantered away,
leaving the butchered, stunned enemy staring after them. Pursuit, he knew, wouldn’t be an issue. He asked the horn-blower
if there was a recognized call for “back the way we came.” Apparently there was.

Back into the cover of the trees, back down the deer-trails they should have taken the first time, back to the forest road,
and they were safe. The archers joined them almost immediately. Their captain rode over and announced that his losses were
fewer than twenty killed, a handful injured. Miel thanked him and rode on; he hadn’t actually thought about it, or asked for
a similar report from the captains of the knights and the lancers. That reminded him that he hadn’t given any thought to the
fate of the other half of his army, the men who’d blocked the far end of the canyon. Before he could ask anyone or send a
scout, they appeared out of the trees in front of him. He could see riderless horses being led by their reins — how many?
A dozen? Twenty? But their captain seemed in good spirits.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Wonderful,” Jarnac replied, his voice comically muffled as he lifted off his helmet. “Couldn’t have gone better if we’d rehearsed
it with them beforehand. Your end?”

Miel nodded. “I think we should get out of here,” he said. “I’m not inclined to push my luck any further today.”

Jarnac grinned at him. “Quite right,” he said. “It never does to be greedy, and the rest’ll keep for another day. I couldn’t
see it all, of course, but I’m fairly sure our score’s up into four figures. If only we’d brought another three squadrons,
we could’ve had the lot.”

Miel nodded and drew away from his cousin. He felt exhausted, angry and very sick. He cast his mind back to another massacre,
when the scorpion bolts had curtained off the sun and it had been Eremians rather than Mezentines carpeting the dirt. That
had been easier to bear, somehow.

The exuberance of his men had worn off by the time they reached the city; they were quiet as they rode in through the gate,
too tired to care about much more than getting out of their armor, washing off the smell of blood and going to sleep. Even
Jarnac (who’d insisted on riding beside him for much of the way) had stopped singing; instead he was whistling softly, and
Miel couldn’t make out the tune. There were a hundred and sixteen dead to own up to; mostly lancers, but of the twelve knights,
one was the younger brother of the lesser Phocas (a brash, arrogant boy whom Miel had always disliked). The guilt of a victory
is different from the guilt of a defeat, but no less depressing.

He gave the necessary orders to dismount, stand down and dismiss the army; a quick run-through his mental check-list, and
he concluded that he’d done everything that was required of him and the rest of the day was his own. He went home; the streets
were nearly empty, and there were only a few old women and drunks to stop and stare at the blood-spattered horseman in full
armor, plodding up the cobbled street with his reins long and his horse’s head drooping. Grooms were waiting at the gate to
help him down and take the horse inside. The housekeeper and one of the gardeners helped him out of his armor.

“Where’s Bucena?” the gardener asked; and Miel realized that he hadn’t seen Bucena Joac, his squire, the head gardener’s nephew,
since shortly before the ambush. He didn’t know whether the boy was alive or dead, so he couldn’t answer the question. The
two servants drew their own conclusions from his silence; they didn’t say anything, which made for an awkward atmosphere.
At any other time, Miel would’ve run out and looked to see if Bucena had come home; if not, he’d have found out what had become
of him before stopping to shed his armor or wash his face. Instead, he told the housekeeper, “I need a bath. Soon as possible.”

He fell asleep in his bath, and woke up shivering in the cold water. Someone was banging on the door, which wasn’t a suitable
level of behavior for the Ducas house. He demanded to know who was making that abominable noise.

It was the porter, and he had the butler, the sergeant and the housekeeper with him. Some men had come from the palace to
talk to the Ducas. They had a piece of paper with a big red seal at the bottom. Apparently, they wanted to arrest him.

The debate that followed the attack on Melancton’s expeditionary force was unexpectedly subdued, as if neither major faction
was sure what to make of it. Tactically, as the Drapers were quick to point out, it had been a disaster. Melancton had walked
into a trap and been utterly humiliated; the enemy had come and gone with hardly a scratch. Strategically, as the Foundrymen
immediately replied, it was something and nothing; the fact that the Eremians had committed so few men to the attack and had
withdrawn so quickly, neglecting opportunities for slaughter that could have been exploited at affordable cost, argued that
they had no stomach for the war and a deep-seated timidity that more or less guaranteed success to the invasion. The body-count
could be taken either way. The Drapers said that Melancton had wasted three thousand lives through sheer fecklessness. The
Foundry-men said that three thousand was still well within budget, given that the harrying attacks they’d anticipated as the
army advanced through the hostile terrain of Eremia hadn’t materialized; indeed, if the pre-invasion casualty estimates were
compared with actual reported losses, the invasion was comfortably in credit. Furthermore, the expeditionary force had been
left in full possession of the field, and had resumed its march on Civitas Eremiae. By virtue of forced marches, Melancton
had made up the lost time and was currently slightly ahead of schedule. Both sides were perfectly correct in their assertions,
and neither faction even tried to dispute the other’s arguments or statistics. A motion from the Clockmakers to dismiss Melancton
wasn’t even put to a vote, since (as Chairman Boioannes had pointed out in his opening remarks) there was no alternative candidate
for overall command of the expedition who would be acceptable to the men themselves. A motion of censure was passed by a narrow
majority, but it was agreed that it would be counterproductive and damaging to morale to publish it until the war was over
and safely won, at which point it would be irrelevant; accordingly, it was agreed that it should lie on the file indefinitely.