Evil for Evil (64 page)

No such luck. They looked away, shook their heads, tutted, sighed; can’t patch up splintered frames, got to cut out the busted
timber and replace it with a new one. Could try letting in a patch, but that’d take time; could try wrapping the split in
rawhide, but couldn’t promise anything; nailing on battens would be as good as anything; bolting them on would be better;
could try it, but it probably wouldn’t work. Could’ve told you this’d happen if you go boring holes in frames. No help at
all.

His father would have had them all strung up, as an example to all tradesmen who failed to work miracles on demand. Instead,
he thanked them for their time and told them he was sure they’d do their best. Then he went to look for Mezentius.

“We can’t stay here,” Mezentius told him. “Far too close to the border. They’ve been sending patrols out along the river valleys
below Sharra for some time; quite likely they’ve got watchers on the Sow’s Back by now. Maybe they already know we’re here.
If we stay put, you can make that a certainty.”

Infuriating to hear your own depressing thoughts echoed by someone else. “I don’t think it’s as bad as all that,” Valens lied
to himself. “Even if they’ve seen us already, they’ve got to report back, gather their forces …”

“There’s a full squadron stationed at the Unswerving Loyalty, last I heard. Probably double that by now.”

“Well, we can handle two squadrons. And it’d take them two days to get here.” Mezentius’ frown expressed entirely justified
skepticism, which Valens ignored. Am I turning into Orsea? He panicked for a moment. “And suppose they do come? I don’t know
about you, but I’d have no worries at all about fighting off a cavalry attack here, on a rocky hillside. They couldn’t ride,
they’d have to dismount and fight as infantry. In fact, I’ve half a mind to stay here and see if they do come. The sooner
we start this war …”

Mezentius was staring at him. He closed his eyes, as if trying to wash the image out of them.

“That bad?” he asked.

“It’s understandable,” Mezentius replied; he could hear the restraint in his voice. “The strain’s getting to all of us, and
now this stupid thing with the carts …” He shook his head. “If you want my considered opinion, I would prefer not to engage
the enemy right now.”

Valens took a deep breath. “Agreed,” he said. “Not now, or ever. But certainly not now.” He stood up. “I’ll go and plead with
the carpenters a bit more, see if I can fire up their imaginations. And please, ignore what I said just now. I’ve been talking
to my wife. It’s not good for me.”

Mezentius laughed, but nervously. “Understood,” he said. “Good luck with the carpenters. Did you find out where that bloody
Mezentine’s got to, by the way?”

When he reached the broken wagons, he found the carpenters standing round looking sad. They explained that they’d thought
about it some more, and they were pretty sure that nailing on battens wasn’t going to work, so there didn’t seem much point
in starting.

Valens swallowed his anger. He was getting used to the taste of it. “Try it anyway,” he said.

They explained how the damage should be repaired, by removing the entire damaged timber and replacing it. They could more
or less guarantee that that would work; however, it would probably take several days, even if they had suitable material,
which they didn’t. They could go up the mountain and look for ash trees of the right size and width, though ash didn’t usually
grow well in this soil; that wouldn’t really help, however, since green timber would be far too weak, and they’d be wasting
their time. But if that was what Valens wanted them to do …

He smiled. “Let’s try the battens,” he said.

They nodded silently. He could tell they were waiting for him to go away, so they could carry on standing about looking miserable.
“I’ll stay and watch, if I won’t be in the way,” he said. “I like watching craftsmen at work.”

It didn’t take them long. They unshipped lengths of batten, cut pieces to size and nailed them on. The horses were brought
up and backed into the shafts. The wagons began to move. The sound of the battens cracking was audible ten yards away.

“Oh well,” Valens said. “We tried.”

The carpenters explained that they’d been pretty sure it wasn’t going to work. However, they would give it some thought and
try to come up with something else.

Some junior officer he didn’t know brought him the inventory he’d asked for. Over a third of the column were bow-waisted or
half-lock. He gave up the idea of abandoning them and trying to distribute their loads among the rest of the carts. He thanked
the officer and went back to the coach.

“Have you solved the problem?” she asked.

“No.”

She nodded. “How many … ?”

“About a third.”

The interruption didn’t seem to have bothered her. “In that case, you have only one option. You must remove the armor from
the affected vehicles. Of course, this will seriously compromise your plan for using the carts as a mobile fortress. You can,
of course, put some of the undefended carts in the middle of the formation and so shield them from attack, but —”

“Not all of them,” Valens said. “Which means there’ll be a great big weak patch somewhere in the wall, which we’ll have to
defend some other way. We could concentrate the cavalry and men-at-arms —”

“To some extent.” In other words, forget it. He wondered if she was enjoying his failure, but it didn’t seem likely. Any sort
of pleasure seemed beyond her completely. “You would be better advised to move out as quickly as possible, and head directly
for my people’s territory. At least you can be sure that the Mezentines won’t follow you into the desert.”

“We aren’t going anywhere near the desert.”

“You have no choice.”

He left without replying. Outside, he stood for a moment and looked at the line of halted wagons. People were standing about
in groups, talking quietly or not at all. Horsemen rode up and down the line, carrying messages, inspecting, relaying orders.
They were worried, but it was all under control; they knew he could be trusted to sort things out. To be trusted, relied on,
even loved; he felt the pain of it deep inside, the way a man with an arrowhead buried too deep inside to be extracted feels
it every time he moves. I’ve killed them, he thought, just like Orsea killed the Eremians: for duty, for love.

“Is there anything I can do?”

He turned his head, and just then, in his mind, it was like looking into a mirror. “Orsea,” he said. “I’m sorry, I was miles
away.”

“I gather there’s some problem with the carts,” Orsea said. He had that stupid, sad look on his face, that preemptive admission
of guilt that made Valens want to say,
It’s all right, this time it’s not your fault.
That would be a lie, of course, since it
was
Orsea’s fault they were here; Orsea’s sense of duty, compounded by Valens’ love. “Can’t Vaatzes suggest anything? It should
be right up his street, this sort of thing.”

“Vaatzes isn’t here.” Valens didn’t want to snap, but he couldn’t help it. Orsea had been born to be shouted at. He was wearing
the fashionable long-toed riding boots that were useless for walking in; they made him look like some rare breed of marshland
bird. “He’s disappeared, and so’s his assistant. But we’re working on it.” He scowled. “You don’t happen to know anything
about woodwork, do you?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Me neither. Useless, aren’t we?” He laughed. “Oh, we know lots of stuff: how to train hawks, how to run a
council meeting, the correct way to address an ambassador, how to use archers to cover an infantry advance. Pity that a few
bits of broken wood can screw us up completely. I don’t know.” He turned away; the sight of Orsea’s face made him want to
lash out. “Maybe we should just jump on our horses and ride away, leave the rest of them to sort it all out for themselves.
They couldn’t be worse off without us than they are already.”

“That’s not true,” Orsea said; he sounded bewildered, like a child who sees his parents arguing. “You’re good at this. You
can deal with it.”

If it had come from anybody else, he might have tried to believe it. “My wife thinks we should dump the armor and make a run
for it, head for her territory, the Cure Hardy.” He stopped, as though there was something wrong with his mouth. “She thinks
we’d be safe there. A lot of us would die trying to cross the desert, but not nearly as many as we’d lose if we carried on
with the original plan.” He turned sharply and looked Orsea in the eye. “What do you think? Is that what you’d do, in my place?”

Orsea seemed to shrink back, as though Valens had hit him. “I’m the last person —”

“Yes, but I’m asking you. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Valens felt the energy seep out of himself. “Well of course you don’t, you haven’t got all the facts. I’m sorry. I just don’t
feel like making a decision like that.”

“I can understand,” Orsea said.

You more than anybody.
“In fact,” Valens said, “we’re not going to do anything of the sort. Which is stupid, because I have an unpleasant feeling
it’s the right thing to do; but I’m too weak to make the decision, so we aren’t going to do it.” He looked past Orsea, at
the line of carts. “I’m going to send on the carts that don’t have the problem, and keep the damaged ones here until they
can be fixed properly, by cutting out the broken bits and fitting in new ones. I’m told it could take a day or so to find
suitable timber and as long again to do the job, but that can’t be helped. We can’t afford to abandon that many wagons, so
they’ll have to be fixed, and we’ll have to try and protect them in the meantime.” He breathed in, as though he was making
a speech. “It’ll mean dividing the army, and there’s not enough to defend both units, so I’ll split the archers and foot soldiers
up between the two parts of the convoy, and send the cavalry out to look for the enemy. If they come for us, the cavalry can
engage them in the open, try and stop them getting here. If we get away with it, we’ll all meet up somewhere and carry on
as before. How does that sound?”

“Excellent,” Orsea said; and the sad thing was, he meant it. Just the sort of thing he’d have done himself, which was why
the maps of Eremia weren’t accurate anymore, showing a city that had ceased to exist. I’ve made the wrong choice, Valens told
himself; I know it, and I don’t seem to care. I think we’ve lost this war.

As soon as Valens let him go, Orsea hurried away to continue his search for a bush. Not an easy thing to find on a barren,
rocky hillside; but his rank and his natural diffidence made it impossible for him to pee with the whole Vadani nation watching
him.

No bushes, as far as the eye could see. A few stunted thorn trees, but their trunks were too thin to stand behind. In the
end, he had to settle for a large rock, which only screened his lower half. His relief was spoiled by the fact that a sharp
wind had got up while he was talking to Valens. It blew piss back onto his trouser leg. One of those days.

Alfresco urination was one of the things he hated most about traveling with a large number of people. It had bothered him
when he led the Eremian army, casting a huge, disproportionate shadow over each day. He knew why: he was sure the men would
laugh at him. Pathetic.

He’d finished, and was lacing up the front of his trousers, when he heard voices behind him. He panicked until he was quite
sure it was nothing to do with him.

A small, two-wheeled cart — a chaise, he decided, mildly ashamed of his precision in trivia — was rolling down the slope,
passing along the line of the halted convoy as though such sights were too commonplace to be worth noticing. A ridiculous,
fussy little cart, with thin, spindly wheel-spokes like crane-fly legs, and a brightly colored parasol perched over the box;
on which sat a huge man and a tiny blond woman in a red dress. Orsea stared for the best part of two minutes, the ends of
his trouser-laces still in his hands. It wasn’t just the incongruity that stunned him. Somehow, perhaps by the confident way
she perched, with a large carpet bag clutched in her lap, she gave the impression that she was normal, and it was the Vadani
nation who were making a spectacle of themselves. He couldn’t begin to understand why the stupid little cart’s wheels didn’t
crumple up and blow away in the wind like chaff every time they rolled into a pothole.

A cavalry officer in full armor, red campaign cloak, tall black boots gray with dust, shuffled forward to meet her. Too far
away to see the look on his face, but Orsea could guess. The sort of look a twelve-year-old boy would wear if his mother showed
up while he was playing with his friends. The woman in the red dress leaned down to ask him something. He looked round for
a while, then suddenly pointed. It was a moment before Orsea realized the man was pointing at him.

He remembered, and dropped the laces. Probably too late. The woman was climbing down from her seat — the officer’s arm was
stretched out for her to steady herself by; you can’t beat the cavalry for manners, no matter how bizarre or desperate the
situation. Orsea watched as she came bustling straight at him; he looked over his shoulder, but there was nobody standing
behind him.

“Are you Duke Orsea?” Her voice was high and sharp; someone who never needed to shout, even in a high wind.

“That’s right. I’m sorry, I don’t think I —”

She reached in her bag and pulled out a small linen pouch, about the size of an apple. “Your wife ordered some potpourri,”
she said, pointing the pouch at him as if it was some kind of weapon. “It’s all right,” she added, “it’s paid for.”

He stared at her for a count of five before saying, “You came all the way out here to deliver
that?
”

She laughed; a sound like a fox barking. “No, of course not. I’m on my way from Calva to the sheep-fair at White Cross. But
they told me at the Unswerving Loyalty that the Vadani court was on a progress, or going camping or something. I guessed you’d
be with them, so here I am.”

Potpourri. Dried flowers and leaves and bits of lavender and stuff. As he dug in his pocket for money for a tip, he could
hardly believe what he was hearing. Surely, when the world came to an end, and the Vadani were facing certain death, things
like that simply ceased to exist. It wasn’t possible for the world to contain war and potpourri at the same time.