Evil for Evil (38 page)

He forced them out of his mind, like a landlord evicting tenants, and fell asleep listening to the scuttling of mice.

12

"I had a letter from my man at the silver mine," Valens said, making a point of not looking Ziani in the eye. "He says they're finished there now, all sealed up. He says the men have been told the mine's been put out of commission for good. I hope he was lying."

Ziani didn't say anything, and Valens didn't look at him.

"Anyhow," Valens went on, "the idea is, the first thing the Mezentines are likely to do is round up as many of the mineworkers as they can. Our people will tell them the mine's useless, and with luck they'll believe it and give up. Meanwhile, I've sent the men you trained to do the same at the smaller workings. Do you think they'll be able to manage?"

"I expect so," Ziani said. "They seemed perfectly competent." Valens shrugged; he was fairly sure that Ziani was watching him. "Doesn't matter," he said. "By our calculations, it won't make business sense for the Republic to work the smaller mines, what with the overheads they'd be facing. One good thing about fighting a war against businessmen, we can do the same sums they do, which means we can more or less read their minds."

"The Republic won't bother with them if they can't make a profit," Ziani said.

"Which means the government won't be able to kid the opposition into a full-scale occupation purely on commercial grounds," Valens said. "I believe that surviving this war is very much about not fighting it, if that can be arranged. If there's nothing here for them—no city to sack, no mines to take over, no people around to kill—where'd be the point? Of course," he added, "that's just my guess at how they think. I imagine Guild politics is a bit more complicated than I'm making out."

"I wouldn't know," Ziani said.

Valens leaned forward, planting his elbows on the desk. "You're too modest, I'm sure."

"Really." Out of the corner of his eye, Valens saw Ziani turn his head away. "I believe what you and the others have been telling me about factions among the Guilds and so on, but most of it's news to me. That sort of thing doesn't tend to trickle down to the shop floor."

"Oh." Valens rubbed his eyes. He was tired, and these days he found talking to the Mezentine rather trying. "Well, it's the best intelligence we've got, so let's hope it's accurate. Now then. Moving on; literally, as well as figuratively. My wedding's been brought forward a month, now that the mines have been sorted out. I want to be in a position to start the evacuation as soon as possible after that. You told me you had some ideas on the subject, but you were all coy and secretive about it." Now he turned his head and looked Ziani in the eye. "If it's going to need preparation and materials, I'd better know about it now."

"Fine," Ziani said. His face was blank, and he didn't move at all. "The thing is this. I'm no strategist, but as I understand it, your idea is to keep your people on the move, out of the way of the Mezentine soldiers."

"That's right."

Ziani nodded slowly. "I can quite see the thinking behind it. Show them a clean pair of heels, they'll soon get tired of chasing after you, spending money, with no victories to write dispatches home about. The opposition—that's the term you were using, wasn't it?—they'll make capital out of the fact that nothing much seems to be happening and the bills keep rolling in, and either they'll overthrow the people who are running the war or else force them to back down."

"You're skeptical about that," Valens said.

Ziani smiled. "You've been teaching me things about how my country is run that I never knew before," he said, "so who am I to tell you anything? But while I was involved with the defense of Civitas Eremiae, I did learn a bit about the Mezentine military. Bear in mind: the soldiers and the men commanding them aren't my people. They're foreigners, recruited a long way away across the sea. We have the same color skin, and my people originally came from there, but they're nothing like us at all. They're the ones who are in charge of running the war out here; they report to my people, who pay them, or decide to stop paying them."

"I see," Valens replied. "But it's still not their decision, ultimately." Ziani shrugged. "If I was the commander of the army," he said, "I'd want to get results, as quickly as possible, to justify my employment and make sure I got paid. I'm not a lawyer, but I bet you the mercenaries' contracts aren't just straightforward. There'll be performance-related bonuses, or targets that have to be met, or financial penalties. We have them in all our other contracts with foreigners, all designed to keep them on their toes and make sure they do their best for us. I imagine it's the same with the soldiers."

"No doubt," Valens said. "What's this got to do with the evacuation?"

"Simple," Ziani replied. "Don't underestimate them; they're motivated by the hope of making a lot of money and the fear of not getting paid. And they have a lot of cavalry."

Valens nodded slowly. "You're saying they'll come after us."

"And a cavalry division can move a hell of a lot faster than a convoy of wagons," Ziani said. "Don't imagine you can lose them in the mountains; they'll track you, or they'll get hold of stragglers or people who decided to take their chances and stay behind, and get what they want to know out of them. They'll find out where you are, and their cavalry will come after you. Now," he went on, frowning, "I know that your cavalry is very good indeed."

"Thank you," Valens replied without expression.

"It's also a fact," Ziani went on, "or at least I believe it is, that there aren't all that many of them. Now I'm sure every Vadani is worth ten Mezentines in a fight, but that's not the point. You're outnumbered; your cavalry can be drawn off by diversions while they attack the wagons. If they do that, they'll have their quick, cheap victory, and you…" He shrugged. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be melodramatic. I'm sure this thought has crossed your mind too." Valens' turn not to say anything.

"This," Ziani said, and he seemed to grow a little, "is where I think I can help. My people will assume that if they can get past your cavalry, they can dig in to a soft target."

"They'd be right," Valens said.

Ziani smiled. "I borrowed a book from your library," he said, "I hope you don't mind. It was called
The Art of War
or something like that; actually, I think there was a mirror in the title. All the books in your library are called the mirror of something or other. I suppose it's a convention. Anyway, not important. The book said, always attack your enemy's strengths and invite him to attack your weaknesses. I reckoned that sounded pretty stupid until I thought about it. Really, it's just simple common sense. He won't expect you to attack where he's strong, so you attack on your terms. Likewise, if you know where he's going to attack you, because you've drawn him into it, you can be ready for him, with a few surprises. Now I come to think of it, that's how the Ducas defended Civitas Eremiae."

The name made Valens look up. "Really?" he said.

"Absolutely. Their strength was their artillery; we attacked their artillery with ours. Our weakness was being pinned down in one place, where they could use their machines against us; we let them come right up to the city, exactly what they wanted to do. I still believe we'd have beaten them if someone hadn't betrayed us. We'd beaten them where they were strong, you see; we'd let them do exactly what they wanted, and then turned round and slaughtered them."

Valens looked at him for a moment. "You know," he said, "I'm sure I must have read that book, but obviously I didn't get nearly as much out of it as you did. What's your idea?"

Ziani straightened his face until it was completely at rest. "What they'll want to do is attack your wagons. I say, let them. Don't be obvious about it, of course. Send out your cavalry, have them do everything they can to keep my people away from the wagons. But expect them to fail."

Valens breathed out slowly through his nose. "With you so far," he said. "Then what?"

Ziani was getting visibly more animated; Valens could have sworn he was swelling, like a bullfrog. "Ask yourself: if my people were in your position, what would they do? Facing the danger of being engaged out in the open by enemy cavalry?"

"I imagine they'd dream up some ingenious machine or other."

"Exactly. Which is what I've done." Ziani was smiling, pleased with himself. "Not machines as such, because anything too complex would take too long to build, and we haven't got enough plant and machinery, or enough skilled people. No, what I had in mind was this." He reached in his pocket. "Here're some sketches that ought to give you the general idea. Of course they aren't to scale or anything." Valens frowned, and looked at them. "Carts," he said.

"Ordinary carts, yes. That's an important point, because of the time pressure. We need to be able to modify what we've already got, rather than building from scratch."

"Carts with…" Valens paused, looking at the sketches. "This is all a bit far-fetched, isn't it?"

The flicker of annoyance on Ziani's face came and went very quickly. "I don't think so," he said. "What do you do if you want to protect a man from weapons?

You put him in armor. Sixteen-gauge wrought-iron sheet; that's about a sixteenth of an inch. You know what level of protection you can expect from it, that's what your helmet and your breastplate and all that are made out of. It'll turn arrows at anything but short range, it'll stop cuts from swords and axes. It's not exactly light, but when you're wearing your armor it's not so heavy you can't move almost as easily as you can without it. Look, we can't carry stone ramparts around with us, or palisades of tree trunks; what we can do is use the wagons themselves as walls. Each wagon has an iron sheet bolted to one side; half of them on the left, the other half on the right. Think of it as each wagon carrying a shield. When the enemy attacks, they do what infantry do: line up, form a shield wall. Instant fortifications. Your cavalry opponents lose all their advantages of mobility and impetus; suddenly they're reduced to being foot soldiers trying to storm a fortress, except they haven't got any siege equipment—no battering rams or scaling ladders or pavises. They can run up and try and climb over, if they're keen enough, but I don't suppose they'll be stupid enough to try it twice. Then, once you've driven them off, you span the horses in again and carry on with your journey as though nothing had happened."

Valens sat and stared at the sketches for a long time. "We're talking about every cart in the duchy," he said at last. "There's not enough sheet iron in the whole world."

Ziani laughed. "Please," he said, "trust me to understand about material procurement. I used to run a factory, remember. That's the real beauty of the whole scheme. Sheet iron is just iron you heat up and bash until it's spread out flat and thin. You don't need trained smiths or engineers, just a lot of strong men with hammers."

"The miners," Valens murmured.

"Strong men used to hammering." Ziani nodded. "And badly in need of something to do. As for iron; well, even simple rustic folk like yourselves use iron for practically everything. You build a dozen big furnaces, say—bricks and clay, nothing complex or time-consuming—and you cook up all the iron tools and furniture and fittings and stuff you don't actually need to take with you on the journey—all the things you were planning on abandoning for the Mezentines to loot, basically; you melt it and pour it into great big puddles, what we call blooms, and then your ex-miners and your soldiers and anybody who can swing a hammer bashes it out into sheets. I'll need a few competent men to cut the sheets and fit them, of course, but that's about it as far as skilled tradesmen go. As for how long it'll take; that'll depend on how many people we can get on it." Valens said nothing for a long time. "Fuel," he said at last. "You'll need a hell of a lot of coal or charcoal or whatever it is you use."

"All of which you've got," Ziani pointed out, with more than a touch of smugness. "Stockpiled, at the mines. I've taken the liberty of having an inventory made of the supplies you've got available. I think there'll be plenty. Even if the whole idea is a complete failure, at the very least that's one more resource the Mezentines won't be able to load up and take home with them."

That made Valens smile. "Business thinking," he said.

"I'm a Mezentine," Ziani replied. "Cost out everything before you start, know where your supplies are coming from so you aren't taken short halfway through the job, and try not to waste anything. Oddly enough, there's nothing about that sort of thing in your art-of-war book. Maybe that's because you really do think of it as an art, rather than a trade; you expect it to be financed by wealthy amateur patrons, instead of running to a budget."

Valens laughed. As he did so, he realized that the man he was facing was essentially a stranger, someone he hadn't talked to before. Maybe, he thought, it's simply the confidence of an expert in his element; but that wasn't all of it, by any means. The other thing the Mezentines were famous for, he remembered: they were reckoned to be born salesmen.