Evil for Evil (83 page)

“Not now,” Ziani said.

“Oh, just while we’re walking,” Daurenja replied cheerfully. “I’m sure it’s me being thick, and you can explain what I’ve
been missing in just a few words. Let’s see, now. You were talking about staves, like making a barrel; presumably you’re thinking
about butt-welding them around a mandrel. But —”

“You don’t want to take any of that too seriously,” Ziani said irritably. “I was just thinking aloud. On reflection, I’m fairly
sure it wouldn’t work.”

“Oh, I don’t agree. I think you’ve cracked it. But were you thinking about welding all the staves in turn, a separate heat
for each one, or trying to do the whole lot in one heat? Only there’s distortion to think about if you’re doing them piecemeal,
but if you’re going for simultaneous, you’d need to rotate the mandrel, which’d mean —”

Ziani stopped. “Why don’t you listen?” he said. “I’m not interested in helping you with this ridiculous idea of yours. I’ve
heard about what happened to your last business partner.” Daurenja pulled what he guessed was supposed to be an appeasing
face, but he ignored it. “If I were you,” he went on, “I’d clear out now, while you still can. Piss off back to the Cure Doce,
or Lonazep. Or the Mezentines, if you really admire them so much — if you’re Cure Doce by birth, that makes you a neutral,
they’ve got no quarrel with your people. Go away, and leave me alone.”

“I don’t think so.” Daurenja looked faintly disappointed, maybe a little hurt. “Thanks to you, I’ve made myself very useful
here. They need me. I’m afraid you can’t just chuck me out if and when you feel like it, I’m working directly for the Duke
these days. Besides,” he added, “things have changed rather a lot in the last half-hour, haven’t they?”

“What do you mean?”

Daurenja sighed. “I happened to see my friend Major Nennius just now,” he said. “I don’t think he saw me; he was preoccupied,
a job he was doing. Not,” he added quickly, “that I blame you. Had to be done, I can see that quite clearly; you had no choice.
But I don’t think Duke Valens would be very happy if he knew about how it had come about, if you get my meaning.”

It was that kind of fear that chills you to the bone; not the heart-stopping kind that forces all the breath out of you, or
the immediate physical danger that loosens the bowels and the bladder. In spite of it, Ziani found he could keep quite calm.
“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Of course you do,” Daurenja said indulgently. “And I appreciate it’s not something you feel like discussing, especially out
here in the open where people might be eavesdropping. We’ll have a nice long chat about it some time, when we’re both of us
not quite so busy. I will say this, though: you’re a clever man. False modesty aside, I’ve always reckoned I’m quite smart,
a cut above everybody else I’ve ever come across — you’ve got to believe that, haven’t you, or how can you justify doing the
difficult, nasty stuff ? But I can see, compared to you I’m crude and ignorant. You could say, I am to you as the Vadani are
to the Mezentines. Uncouth, you could call it. Unsophisticated.” He smiled warmly. “I knew you were the right man for me to
tag along with; I knew it when I first heard about you. A man after my own heart, I thought. I mean, look at what you’ve achieved,
and practically nothing to work with. And look at you now. Leading the Vadani to join up with the Cure Hardy and change the
entire world; and all so you can go home. Quite apart from the skill of it, the sheer scope of your vision is magnificent.”
He shook his head. “I know this sounds corny as hell, but I’m really proud to know you, Ziani Vaatzes. Today of all days;
when it all started to come together, I mean.” He shrugged. “Look,” he went on, “I can tell you’re not really in the mood
for talking about lap-welds and expansion coefficients; we’ll leave it for another time. I hope you don’t mind me saying my
piece, by the way. Only, my principle’s always been, be open with people, tell them what you think. That’s got to be the right
way, hasn’t it?”

He smiled again and walked away.

Eight days of blundering through potholes and ruts. Intermittent rain; the carts bogged down twice, once in a mudslide, once
in the bed of a shallow river that wasn’t on the map and hadn’t been mentioned by any of the guides. Food running low; rations
had to be reduced by a third; fodder for the horses a worse problem. A mild outbreak of some kind of fever, which killed a
dozen or so civilians. Ahead of them, the mountain range; beyond that, the edge of the desert. No sign, yet, of the Mezentines.

A village, Limes Vitae; Valens had heard about it, mostly because it was proverbially the last place on earth, the very edge
of the world. According to family legend, one of his father’s uncles had been there once, though why or what he thought of
it wasn’t recorded. It had sent a dozen light infantry to fight in the first war against the Eremians, and had last paid taxes
seventy-four years ago. If there was still a settlement there, and if they had food and hay, getting over the mountain was
possible. If not; well.

A few thin cattle on the stony plain bore witness to some level of habitation, as the carts ground up the road through the
foothills. A boy, who stopped to stare and was scooped up by outriders, confirmed that the village was still where it had
always been. There was food there; just enough to see the villagers through the winter, since it had been a poor year generally,
and the merchants who traded root vegetables and salt fish for hides and wool hadn’t arrived; there was some rumor about a
war somewhere. Hay? Enough for all the horses in the column? The boy didn’t want to commit himself on that, but the grown-ups
had been saying that hay would be short that winter.

Valens left the boy in the custody of a grim-faced woman who cooked for the soldiers, and summoned his general staff. Limes
Vitae, he told them, was unlikely to welcome them with open arms, and even less likely to offer to share its reserves. Accordingly,
since they couldn’t rely on being given, they were going to have to take.

Tactically, not very much of a challenge. Two wings of light cavalry moved into position on the far side of the village shortly
before dusk, taking great care not to be seen. At dawn, a double squadron of heavy cavalry advanced at a gentle pace along
the main road into the village. A shepherd raised the alarm; by the time Valens’ heavy dragoons reached the village square,
the place was deserted and the barns, cattle-pens, poultry runs and root cellars were empty. They made themselves at home
as best they could, eventually turning up a few barrels of wheat beer that had been too heavy to load in the hurried evacuation.
Nobly, they left half of the foul-tasting stuff for their colleagues in the light division, who rode in halfway through the
afternoon, escorting the villagers and the carts laden with the missing supplies, which they’d ambushed as planned on the
narrow road that led to the hidden valley the boy had told Valens about. Neat, flawless, bloodless, as a good operation should
be.

Valens sent Nennius to give the villagers a choice; they could leave their homes and join the column, or stay where they were
and starve through the winter. It didn’t surprise Valens very much to learn that they preferred, unanimously, to stay. He
couldn’t blame them. Their only contact with the central government within living memory was a callous act of theft, carried
out with all the precision and élan of the better class of professional brigand. So much for Valens the Good Duke.

A quick inventory of the supplies told him that the entire resources of Limes Vitae would supply the column, on half-rations,
for ten days. Two days to the edge of the desert; eight days across it, if the dead merchant’s diary could be relied on and
they managed to find the short cut. No need for a decision, now that turning back was no longer an option. Just to be sure,
he told Nennius to ask the villagers if they’d seen any Mezentines; black-faced men in armor on big horses. By their reaction,
the villagers must have assumed he was making fun of them.

Climbing the mountain proved to be far harder than anybody had anticipated. Valens had assumed it would be slightly but not
much more difficult than slogging up the slopes and scarps they’d tackled already; slow, painful climbing with occasional
halts to fill in and rebuild crumbled road ledges or bridge storm-streams running down the hillsides. The dead merchant had
managed it, with his team of mules. It had taken him two days.

Halfway through the first day, Valens realized why the merchant had used mules rather than a cart. Quite possibly there had
been a road there, once upon a time when the world was new. Now, however, there was a thin scratch that zigzagged across the
face of the mountain, the sort of line Vaatzes the engineer might have scribed on a piece of metal, rubbing in blue dye to
make it visible. No earthly chance of taking a cart further than the first mile.

At a hastily convened meeting of the engineering department, Valens asked urgently for suggestions.

“It’s a question of time,” Vaatzes said, and for the first time since he’d met him, Valens saw that he was worried. “Yes,
we could widen the road by cutting into the mountain; to a limited extent, we could bank up the other side with rocks. At
a rough guess, working flat out we could reach the top in under a month. In two days …” He shrugged. “Either we turn back
now, or we ditch the wagons, load what we can onto the horses’ backs and walk. I don’t suppose it’ll take us that much longer
on foot than it would’ve done if we could’ve taken the wagons, if that’s any consolation.”

“Your bloody trader —” Valens interrupted.

“If he could do it, I don’t see why we can’t,” Vaatzes replied. “I didn’t get the impression from reading the journals that
he was any sort of adventurer, blessed with superhuman strength and endurance. He regarded crossing the mountains as a chore
and a pain in the bum, but no worse than that.”

“Just suppose we do make it over the mountains,” someone said. “What then? I thought the idea was that the carts were going
to be our mobile fortress. And there’s shelter to think about.”

“The carts won’t go up the mountain,” Daurenja said. “That’s a plain fact, like something in mathematics you can demonstrate
by doing a calculation. If we go back down the mountain, we’ve got eight days and then we starve. No disrespect, but I can’t
see what there is to talk about.”

They left the carts. It wasn’t the most popular order Valens had ever given. The sight of the Vadani people struggling up
the road with enormous loads strapped to their backs, like city people out for a country picnic, would’ve been comic in a
different context. As a gesture of solidarity, Valens made the cavalry dismount and load supplies on their horses, an initiative
which at least had the merit of wiping the smirks off their faces. Cavalrymen dislike walking. Even then, it was a full-time
job to stop the civilians from dumping their packs as soon as the gradient started to get tiresome; they seemed to be under
the impression that there was more than enough food and forage piled up on the horses, and the Duke was making them carry
stuff up a steep hill as part of a monstrously inappropriate practical joke. On the first day there were ninety-seven casualties
— twelve deaths, sixteen broken legs, six non-fatal heart attacks and sixty-three debilitating sprains, falls and similar
injuries — and they lost the use of fourteen horses.

The second day was no improvement; the worst part of it being the realization that there was going to have to be a third day,
and quite possibly a fourth. This meant a further rations cut, which in turn led to a spate of nocturnal food looting, only
just short of a full-scale riot, which cost another seven lives. By noon on the third day, the death toll had passed fifty,
with three times that number of sick and injured incapable of walking. The soldiers were demanding to be allowed to jettison
their armor; a fair number hadn’t waited for permission, and the sun sparkled on a trail of abandoned metalwork marking the
column’s ascent, like the track of a snail. To check this before it got out of hand, Valens dressed in full armor to lead
the way, a gesture he bitterly regretted after the first half-hour as the arches of his greaves chafed his ankles into mince.

Just before dusk, someone told him that there was smoke in the valley below them. Since the only inflammable material on the
whole mountain was the carts they’d left behind two days before, the implications were disturbing enough to take his mind
off his aching feet for the last hour of daylight.

“It’s possible,” someone conceded at that night’s staff meeting. “We’ve brought horses up here, so I guess they could too.
Or maybe they’ve dismounted like we did; though in that case, I don’t see them catching us up in a hurry.”

“They won’t try and attack us on the mountain,” someone else asserted confidently. “They’ll wait till we’re over the top and
down on the plain. If they’re dismounted and leading their horses, they won’t have to try and catch us up; they can do that
as soon as they’re back on level ground again.”

“There’s no guarantee it’s the Mezentines at all,” someone else put in. “Could be scavengers, like the ones we ran into earlier.”

“Unlikely,” Nennius murmured. “We killed them all, remember? Besides, why bother to burn our carts?”

“No use to them without horses.”

“True, but why let everybody between here and Sharra know where they are?”

“The Mezentines would have a reason to burn them,” Nennius argued. “To stop us circling round behind them and going back to
them. They’ll want to be sure they’ve seen the last of those armor plates.”

“If the Mezentines want to attack us on the plain, I say let ’em,” someone else said. “The rate we’re getting through the
food and hay, we’ll be able to afford to remount the cavalry by then, so we can give them a fight. By the time we get down
there, they’ll be in no better condition than us. Worse, probably; they’ve had further to come without fresh supplies; they
won’t have found anything at Limes Vitae, that’s for sure.”