Evil for Evil (49 page)

The ugly, spidery man had seen them too; he swung round from the hip to face them, holding out his half-a-spear as though bracing himself to receive a charging boar. Immediately, Valens understood; it was all in King Fashion, after all. He turned his horse's head and rode away, forcing himself not to look back.

The lancer who detached himself from the pack of three to come after him hadn't seen the breakaway maneuver he'd used on the first Mezentine he'd killed, so the ploy was worth risking again, and succeeded quickly and efficiently. Even so, time was very tight. Valens wheeled round, almost too scared to look, but it was all right, just about. One lancer had charged Vaatzes' man, who'd dropped on one knee, spear-butt braced against his foot (pure King Fashion), and allowed the lancer's horse to skewer itself through the chest. That left one Mezentine to be the boar engaged with the pack. Valens rode in on him from the side and cut half through his neck before he'd figured out what was going on. Then there was just the unhorsed Mezentine on the ground; he was dazed from the fall, and probably never knew what hit him.

But it was all a waste of time, Valens realized, as he looked up again and took in the shape of the engagement. Hardly anybody left alive, apart from a full dozen Mezentines, taking a moment or so to form up and surround them. A little spurt of anger at the unfairness of it flashed through Valens' mind. He'd done his best—done pretty well, in the circumstances—but he was going to lose anyway, in spite of his efforts. If only there'd been time, he'd have complained to somebody about it. The Mezentines had completed their ring; all they had to do was close it up in good order and they could finish the job without further loss or fuss. Instead, they seemed to be hesitant about something. What, though? One man with a toy sword and a freak with a sharp stick? Maybe he was missing something. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw the most beautiful sight.

(Perhaps, he thought later, that was how she felt, when the Vadani cavalry swooped down through the fire and slaughter at Civitas Eremiae to carry her to safety. He doubted it, somehow. She'd only have seen the disgusting spectacle of killing, too horrible for her to differentiate between heroes and villains. He, on the other hand, could feel ecstatic joy at such a sight, because he knew it meant that his enemies were going to die and he wasn't.)

One platoon of the household cavalry; only thirty men, but enough to make all the difference in the world. They were standing to a furious gallop; Valens sketched it all out in his mind, and found that there would be time for the Mezentines to close in and kill her, and him, but only if they couldn't care less about being slaughtered a moment or so later. The fact that they were hesitating told him what decision they were going to make, whole seconds before they made it. They wheeled and galloped away. All over.

Valens felt the strength empty out of his body as the pain broke through. He struggled to draw a breath; he thought, I've been cut up before now, this is something else, but he couldn't think what. His mind was clogging up, with pain, with repressed fear, shock, all manner of nuisances and all of them the more intense for having been kept waiting, like petitioners left for too long in an anteroom. He looked at her, and the blank horror in her face was too much to bear. She's disgusted just looking at me, he realized, and he could see why. It was not what he'd done, but how he'd done it—quickly, with the smooth efficiency and minimal effort that comes only from long practice. Whenever she saw him now, she'd see the slaughterman.

The hell with that, he thought resentfully—he could feel himself starting to slide off the horse, but it was too much effort to fight for balance. His mind was almost clotted now, but something was nagging at the back of it, shrill, like the pain of toothache. He remembered: his wife. Was she dead or alive? As if it mattered. A shift in balance, and the ground was rushing up to meet him. It hit his shoulder and hurt him, but it was too big to fight.

Someone was standing over him, telling him something. His eyes hurt.

"Syra Terentia and her two daughters, Lollius Pertinax, Sillius Vacuo and his wife, and they cut off their daughter's arm at the elbow…"

He struggled to place the voice. All he could see was light, and a blur. "What's the…" he heard himself say, but he didn't know how to finish the question.

"Sir?" Ah, Valens thought, someone who calls me
sir
. Not many of them whose names I know. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"Nolentius Brennus, sir," the voice said. "Captain of the Seventh Company, Household Cavalry." A short, nervous pause. "Sir, do you know what's just happened? Can you remember?"

The temptation, wicked and seductive, was to lie back and pretend to be asleep; but no, he couldn't do that. The young soldier was scared, on the edge of panic and, very probably, in charge.

He needed his duke's help. "Yes, it's all right," Valens muttered, opening his eyes wide and making an effort to resolve the blur into the soldier's face. Never seen him before: a long, thin nose, weak mouth and a round bobble for a chin. If anybody's having a worse day than me, Valens thought, it'll be this poor devil. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't take any of that in. This is the casualty list, yes?"

"Yes, sir." He saw the young man—Brennus, he knew the family but not this particular specimen—take a deep breath, ready to start the whole painful rigmarole over again. He felt sorry for him, but it had to be done.

"First things first," Valens said. "The Duchess. Is she…?"

"She's fine, sir. At least, as well as can be expected."

"Her uncles?"

The fear in Captain Brennus' eyes made the words superfluous. "Both dead," he said. "They died defending the Duchess, but they had nothing to fight with."

"Yes, all right. Who else?"

The cataract of names. He wasn't counting; the list seemed to go on forever. There'd be two he'd never heard of, then three he'd known since he was a boy, then another stranger, then another old friend or cousin. Carausius was dead; that shocked him so much he missed the next five names.

"Orsea?" he interrupted.

"No, sir. Both he and the Duchess survived."

Valens nodded, and the recital continued. Orsea had survived—well, of course he had, it went without saying. The sky could cave in and flatten the earth, mile-wide fissures could open and gobble up the city, but Orsea would survive, somehow or other. "What about Ziani Vaatzes, the engineer? Did they get him?" Captain Brennus shook his head. "No, sir, he was the one who raised the alarm. If it hadn't been for him…"

Valens groaned; he hadn't meant to, but the pain popped up suddenly and ambushed him. "What sort of a state am I in?" he asked.

"Well, sir…" Brennus hesitated. "Maybe I should get the doctor, he can tell you more."

Valens felt his chest tighten. "That bad?"

"No, sir. I mean—"

"Oh for crying out loud. Am I going to die, or not?"

It was almost amusing to see Brennus pull himself together. "You got a bad cut to your left arm; they've stitched and dressed it, but there may be some permanent damage. The arrow—"

Valens' eyebrows shot up. "I was hit by an arrow?"

"Yes, sir."

"I never even noticed. Where?"

"In the right thigh," Brennus said, his voice wavering. "The shaft was already snapped off when the surgeons treated you; they had to cut it out, but they don't think there'll be any lasting effect."

Valens smiled. "Is that it?"

"Concussion," Brennus said, "from the fall. They were quite worried, because you were unconscious for so long."

"Was I?" Valens pulled a face. "Well, I wouldn't know about that, I've been asleep." That seemed to bother Brennus a lot; was he supposed to laugh at the Duke's feeble, scrambled-brain jokes, or should he ignore them? Best, Valens decided, if I don't make any more. "So apart from that I'm all right?" he said.

"The doctors said you shouldn't even think about getting up for at least two days," Brennus said apprehensively, obviously anticipating a storm of angry refusal. Valens nodded.

"Suits me," he said. "For one thing, it feels like I've pulled every muscle in my body." He winced, remembering some of the things he'd done. His own worst enemy and all that. "All right, then," he said briskly, "who's in charge? It doesn't sound like there's many of us left."

He didn't like the pause that followed; not one little bit. "It's you, isn't it?" Valens said.

Brennus swallowed something. "I was the duty officer," he said, as though admitting that he'd planned the whole thing, suborned by Mezentine gold. "I've sent messages to the divisional commanders, someone ought to be here before sunset, but until then I suppose, theoretically…"

Valens smiled. "You carry on," he said. "You appear to be doing a fine job." He paused, then added, "Is anybody at all left out of the civil administration? Anybody higher up than, say, a permanent secretary?"

It was meant as one of those jokes he'd resolved he wouldn't make, but then there was another pause. Valens frowned. That wasn't good.

"I see," he said. "In that case, I'm putting the military in charge until we can get everything sorted out. You're it, in other words."

Brennus looked as though he'd just been sentenced to death by bastinado. "Like I said, sir, I've notified the divisional commanders, I'm sure one of them'll be here very soon, and then…" Pause, while he pulled himself together again. "I've given orders to close the gates, and I've sent out patrols; there's no sign of the enemy in a ten-mile radius of the city. What else should I be…?"

Valens closed his eyes. "If I were you," he said, "I'd leave it at that. Just concentrate on keeping everybody calm and quiet until the army gets here. I'm sure you can manage—every confidence."

He could feel himself sliding away into sleep; no reason why he shouldn't. "The Duchess, sir," Brennus was saying. "Should I—I mean, would you like to see her now?"

Valens opened his eyes and smiled. "No," he said, and went back to sleep.

The next time he opened his eyes, it wasn't thin, pale Captain Brennus.

"Mezentius? Is that you?"

The familiar face of his chief of staff grinned down at him: the point of a hose and two small, pale eyes in a shrubbery of beard. "This is a right mess," he said. Valens tried to raise himself on one elbow. Not his brightest idea ever. "When did you get here? What time is it?"

"About ten o'clock in the morning, and around midnight," Mezentius replied.

"Since when I've been chasing round looking for something to do, apart from inspecting dead bodies. That young Guards captain's done a good job, by the way. I'll have him for the Seventh when you've finished with him."

Valens nodded. "Everything's under control, then."

"In the circumstances." Mezentius was frowning. "I told the Seventh and the Fifth to get here as soon as possible, but we've had patrols out, no sign of any more of them. It's looking like a single raiding party who knew exactly who they were after and where to find them. Which," he added quietly, "is rather more disturbing than a full-scale assault, if you care to look at it that way. You've heard the casualty list?" Valens nodded. "It hasn't really sunk in," he said. "But the impression I got was, nobody's left except me."

"More or less," Mezentius replied, and the way he said it made Valens wince.

"I've talked to all the survivors who're up to answering questions; basically, nobody on our side made a fight of it except you and that weird engineer, the one who looks like some kind of insect."

Valens had forgotten about him. "That's right," he said. "Did he make it?"

"A few cuts and bruises," Mezentius replied. "Twisted ankle. Fought like a maniac, so I gather. Amazing, really. He didn't strike me as the type, the one time I met him."

"Go on," Valens said.

"Well," Mezentius continued, "apparently he came charging up just as one of the bad guys was about to take out Duke Orsea; he jumped up, dragged Orsea off his horse at the last moment, grabbed the lance out of the bad guy's hands and stuck him with it; then Orsea's wife came rushing over, apparently she'd seen Orsea go down; four of them close in on her, but this Daurenja holds them off single-handed, does for two of them—did one of them with his teeth, apparently, bit his throat out like a dog. Then more of them join in, and then you showed up, and you know the rest. No, it sounds like the engineering department pretty well saved the day, one way and another. Oh, and the uncles as well, I expect you've heard about that. The rest of the embassy's kicking up one hell of a fuss, as you'd expect." Valens kept his sigh to himself. "What are they saying?"

"Well, they're still on our side," Mezentius said, with a crooked grin. "The old chap was the one I spoke to. Basically, he wants to wipe the Mezentines off the face of the earth. Man after my own heart, really."

"That's good," Valens said. "It's always good to have something in common with your in-laws. I suppose I'd better see him."

Mezentius shook his head. "I've told him you're fragile as an egg and not to be disturbed for at least a week," he said. "Only way I could keep him from bursting in here and waking you up."