Evil for Evil (77 page)

He hesitated. Vaatzes' wonderful strategy of moving fortresses was posited on the assumption that the arrows wouldn't run out. But they'd been shooting for two days and a night, and their splendid supply of ammunition was strewn out behind them like litter on the road; no chance to go back and pull arrows out of the dead. Two more shots and that was that.

Where the hell were all these Mezentines coming from? It was like rooks or pigeons over decoys, on a really good day, when they never stop coming in. He'd had days like that; they seemed to materialize in midair, as if they generated spontaneously somewhere in the distance. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Vaatzes had been thinking in terms of occasional running battles with maybe two or three squadrons at a time, not a whole division, or two divisions; hundreds, not thousands. He realized he was drawing and aiming at a Mezentine riding parallel to his wagon. Only two shots left; he made his arms relax.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the cart that had been there all morning had disappeared, at some point, when he wasn't watching. Another one; he'd tried to keep a count at first but he'd lost track. A dozen, maybe, that the enemy had managed to stop and overwhelm (a dozen that he could see from where he was). The losses hadn't registered with him any more than the kills had done. Quite simply, he was worn out, like the deer that stops because it can't run anymore. Well: if they were out of arrows, two shots wouldn't make any difference one way or another. He nocked, found a target and loosed. At ten yards, you'd be hard put to it to miss. One left, and then the Mezentines could swarm all over the carts like flies on cowshit for all he could do about it. Relieved of duty on grounds of exhaustion.

He scanned for a target. A Mezentine captain, standing up in his stirrups and shouting orders; a sitter, too easy if this was pleasure rather than business. Since it was the last shot, he allowed himself a little indulgence, and shot him through his open mouth.

And that was that. He unstrung his bow before putting it down, since keeping a bow strung when not in use ruins it. He'd die and be discarded as perishable and useless, but the bow was a very good one, valuable. It'd bring the looters a good price and serve its next owner well, if properly looked after. Then, wearily (let's go through the motions and get it over with), he dragged his sword out of the scabbard. It was the hanger he'd been given by the grateful trader, in commemoration of that skirmish whose name he'd forgotten. If there was any poetic justice in the world, he'd bear it to victory through extraordinary feats of courage and slaughter. Unlikely. He stood up, wavered a little until he found his balance, and looked around. He wasn't the only one who'd run out of arrows. The carts all around him were heaving with Mezentines, like maggots in spoiled meat. Without the arrows to keep them off, they were having no trouble blocking and stopping the wagons, pulling down the drivers and fighters. He turned his head, and realized with a spurt of cold terror that the cart had stopped and he was alone on it—a moment ago there'd been a driver and two other archers, but either they'd been killed or they'd jumped down and run away. He felt disappointed. Somehow he'd never imagined himself dying alone, among strangers.

There was a hand on the top edge of the iron plate; four fingers, like worms or grubs. The instinct that moved him to slash at them was disgust, something like a fear of spiders or slugs. He chopped the fingers off, and felt his blade jar on the iron plate. There goes the cutting edge, he thought; oh well. Next came a head and shoulders. He saw a pair of wide-open eyes staring at him in horror; he misjudged the swing a little and sliced off just the scalp, like taking the top off a boiled egg. Enough to make whoever it was lose his grip on the iron plate, at any rate. As good as a kill, in context. While he was doing that, another one had his upper body and one knee on the top of the plate. That one he hit in the face, cutting into the bridge of the nose, and the cheeks on either side. The next one was over and into the cart before he'd finished with the last one, but he just had time for a short jab before the Mezentine found his balance. Sloppy; the point went in through the hollow between collarbone and shoulder, and it was lucky he had the presence of mind to follow up with a kick in the groin, which doubled the Mezentine up and made him stagger, trip against the edge of the plate and fall backward off the cart. The next one hit him on the knee before he was even ready.

He wasn't aware of falling, or moving at all, but he was kneeling, and a Mezentine was standing over him, swinging a sword with both hands. He gave up, then noticed the opening and remembered he was still holding the hanger. His fencing instructor would have said it served the Mezentine right for taking too long over his stroke (you don't need to cut hard, just hard
enough)
. The stab in the pit of the stomach was really just a prod, rushed and halfhearted, but it got the job done; a pass, but no medal.

Valens remembered that he'd been hit; then he remembered that it didn't matter, because he was wearing his leg armor. He stood up and looked down at his knee. The cop was creased but not cut through, not bent enough to jam the hinge. A Mezentine reared up in front of him but he killed him easily; so much so that, a moment later, he couldn't remember a thing about him, what it had taken to dispose of him or how he'd fallen.

He looked again. Another hand was tightening its grip on the edge of the plate. Then he thought: there's no point to this. Let them have the stupid cart; time to leave. He glanced over his shoulder, to where the other cart had been but was no longer. If there was nothing left to fight for, why fight?

The jump down was further than he'd remembered. He landed awkwardly, yelped stupidly as his ankle buckled under him; painful, but it still worked in spite of his clumsiness. The Mezentine on the cart was looking down at him, apparently unaware how lucky he was that he still had all his fingers. Valens grinned at him and ran. Not very far; too cluttered. He could see no moving carts, just still ones crawling with the enemy. There were dead people everywhere he wanted to put his feet (so much
mess;
how would anybody ever get it all cleared up?). He stumbled and hopped, trying to get across the track and up the steep slope on the other side, where horses couldn't follow him. The enemy didn't seem to notice him; since he wasn't a cart, he wasn't important. No other Vadani running away; apparently they'd all held their ground and died where they stood. Well, good for them. A Mezentine on a cart tried to reach out and swipe at him, but his cut fell a good six inches short; an afterthought, not a serious attempt on his life. He ignored it and kept going, not stopping until he'd pawed and crawled halfway up the slope; at which point he suddenly discovered that he was too exhausted to go any further.

From where he was he had a splendid view, as from a grandstand; best seat in the house, fitting for a Duke. He could see maybe two dozen carts, stationary, some with horses still in the shafts, some empty, some garnished with bodies, two overturned. If there were any Vadani still alive down there he couldn't see them, and where had all those Mezentines got to, the unlimited supply of targets there'd been a moment or so ago? Four, five dozen, no more; they were standing up on the carts, or slowly, wearily climbing down, like farmhands getting off the haywains at the end of a very long day. They looked tired and wretched; he remembered that feeling, the miserable emptiness after another routine victory, another difficult hunt with nothing edible to show for it. Nobody was bothering to look up. They plodded as though every muscle and joint in their bodies ached. He almost felt sorry for them. Fifty yards away, directly below him, an officer was shouting: fall in, regroup, form into columns. They obeyed sullenly, clearly wishing he'd shut up, or at least stop yelling at them when they were tired out. The officer started counting heads, then gave up. They were having trouble catching some of the horses; he knew that too-tired-to-play-games feeling, when you'd rather lose the horse than take another step.

It was a very strange feeling, to still be alive after the defeat. It wasn't a possibility he'd considered; naturally he'd assumed that if they lost, he'd be killed in the fighting. The thought of being left over at the end had never occurred to him. Now even the enemy were turning their backs on him; he wasn't valuable enough to them to be worth climbing a bit of a slope for.

Somehow, he figured that the esteem of the Perpetual Republic was something he could learn to live without. Other things—other people—might be harder to dispense with. Just suppose he was the only survivor (the only coward who ran away). The last Vadani duke. The last Vadani.

That wasn't a concept he was prepared to hold still for. He scrambled to his feet—one of the Mezentines saw or heard him, looked up, shouted, pointed, but his friends didn't seem interested—and scuttled along the side of the slope, using his hands as much as his feet, grabbing at tufts of heather and couch grass to stop himself from sliding and losing his balance. From the top of the slope, he'd have a better view.

Noise below him; thudding and voices, shouts. He paused, nearly lost his foothold, took a moment to steady himself before looking down. By then, the picture had changed. The road was flooded with horsemen; not Mezentines, because the few of them still on their feet were trying to scramble back onto the carts, out of the reach of the swords and lances. His old friend the Mezentine officer was yelling again, urgent, angry and terrified. His voice stopped dead in midsentence. From where Valens stood it was just a confused scuffle. He was a good hundred yards up; all he could see was horses, the tops of heads, too much movement to make sense of. No good at all. The shale under his foot gave way and he let himself slither on his back, until a chunk of rock against the sole of his boot stole his momentum. He jumped up, overbalanced, caught himself and looked down.

He'd missed it; all over, while he'd been fooling about in the dirt. No Mezentines to be seen; not live ones, anyway. Most of the Vadani had gone as well; he caught sight of a dozen or so disappearing over the lip of the slight rise that cut off his view. More shouting from that direction; the counterattack was still going on, but moving at a rate he couldn't catch up with. He struggled down the rest of the slope to the road. A cavalry trooper, dismounted, looked up sharply as he slid and crashed into view; stared at him for a moment as though he had two heads.

"What the hell's going on?" Valens shouted. "Yes, it's me," he added, as the trooper's mouth fell open. "What's happening?"

But the trooper didn't seem able to speak, even backed away a step or two, as if facing a ghost. For crying out loud, Valens thought. "Who's in command? I need to talk to him, now."

The trooper lifted his arm and pointed, back down the road, to where the noise was coming from. Another man stepped up beside him. He didn't seem able to speak, either. What was wrong with them?

"Fine," he snapped, "I'll go and look for myself." There were horses standing nearby, but he'd seen the Mezentines try to catch them and fail; he really wasn't in the mood for recalcitrant animals. His knee was starting to ache where it had been clouted by the Mezentine, and the bottom edge of the greave was galling his instep. On the other hand, he thought, I could sit down on this rock and wait for whoever's in charge to come to me.

He wasn't kept waiting long. Over the lip came a column of riders; dusty, bloody but unmistakably Vadani. They rode with the same utter weariness as the victorious Mezentines had done, not so long ago. He recognized the officer riding at the front, though offhand he couldn't remember his name.

"What happened?" he asked again.

This time he got a reply. "I think we got them all," the officer said. "Near as makes no odds." He stopped his horse and flopped out of the saddle, landing heavily and wincing at the stiffness in his knees. "Strangest thing. Who'd have thought mercenaries would've held their ground like that?"

For a moment, Valens couldn't make any sense of what he'd just heard. "You mean we won?"

The officer's turn to look blank. "Well, yes," he said. "It took us a while and it got a bit grisly at the end, when we thought they were going to run for it but they didn't. But I don't think there was ever any doubt about it, not since that Eremian lunatic lost his rag and started laying into them."

"What Eremian?"

The officer shrugged. "I don't actually know his name." Someone next to him leaned down from the saddle and muttered something. "That's right," the officer said, "Jarnac Ducas. Great big bloke, never talks about anything except hunting." At that point it must have occurred to him that Valens had missed something important; he stood a little straighter and became a trifle more soldierly. "It was when the Mezentines stopped Duke Orsea's coach," he went on. "At least, they blocked it and cut the reins, but they didn't try and board it. But then this Ducas turns up—defending his duke, I guess, he seems that sort of man. Anyway, he went at it like you wouldn't believe. He'd got hold of one of those poleaxe things; not much finesse about it, but a lot of energy. I saw it myself; hell of a thing. He was pretty much cut to ribbons by the time they brought him down, and by then the tide had more or less turned. Colonel Brennianus rallied best part of a squadron of the household division, and we sort of snowballed from there. He didn't make it, unfortunately; neither did the Eremian. Otherwise, we came out of it pretty well. It was only here, in the middle, that things got out of hand."