The Proof House (40 page)

‘Of course. I didn’t mean to imply—’

‘That’s all right then.’ Dassascai pushed a little scrap of parchment into his hand and curled his fingers over it, squeezing so hard that Gannadius flinched. ‘I really appreciate this,’ he said. ‘Something like this could be good news for both our countries.’

Nation shall send ducks unto nation
, Gannadius thought. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Well, I’d better be getting on board; I don’t want to miss the boat.’

‘What was all that about?’ Theudas asked as his uncle joined him on deck. Theudas had reserved a place for them both among the coils of anchor-rope at the stern. ‘And what are you carrying a dead duck around for?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Gannadius replied. ‘I’m delivering it. Apparently it marks the dawn of a new era.’

‘Really? By the time we get there it’s going to smell awful.’

Gannadius dropped the duck into the hollow middle of a pile of rope and dumped his satchel down on top of it. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Four days old is the prime of life for a dead duck. Well, prime of death. Whatever. Stop looking at me like that, will you? It’s just a perfectly ordinary commercial sample. If it was a bit of carpet or a bag of nails, you wouldn’t think twice about it.’

Theudas sighed and squatted down on top of the rope. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Only this strikes me as a funny time to be sending trade samples from here to the Island, what with this war and striking camp and everything. You’d think they’d have other things on their minds.’

‘Apparently not.’ Gannadius leaned his back against the rail. He knew he was going to be seasick sooner or later, so being as close to the side as possible was a necessary precaution. ‘Nothing wrong with optimism,’ he continued, provided nobody expects
me
to invest money in it. It’s almost uplifting in a way, this faith in the future of his people.’

Theudas shook his head. ‘Either your man’s as mad as a hare,’ he said, ‘or they’re playing a funny joke on you. Either way, if I were you I’d chuck the thing over the side now, before it stinks the whole ship out and
we’re
the ones who get put over the side.’

‘Don’t be such a misery,’ Gannadius told him. ‘We’re finally getting out of here, aren’t we? I’d gladly festoon myself from head to foot with putrescent ducks if it meant getting away from here and back to civilisation. Not,’ he added, ‘that it was anything like I expected - well, for one thing we’re still alive, which is considerably more than I expected when we were squelching about in that foul muddy swamp, being chased by the provincial office. Actually, they’ve been extremely decent to us, according to their lights. Lugging about the odd dead waterfowl is probably the least we can do in return.’

‘Decent?’ Theudas looked at him with disgust. ‘You really don’t care any more, do you?’

Gannadius was silent for a long time. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that I do. Probably it’s because I wasn’t actually there - for the Fall, I mean; I didn’t see the same things you did. Oh, I know what I’ve been told; I believe it too, in a way. But all that happened to me, personally, was that I moved from the City to the Island, then from the Island to Shastel - where I’ve got a good job, people treat me with respect, and damn it, yes, I’m happy. I thought seeing all this again -’ He waved his arm in the direction of the ruined City, without turning his head ‘- would make it all different, make me start hating them again. But it didn’t, somehow. When I look at them now, all I can see is a bunch of people who are so worried by the threat of being invaded that they’re packing up their lives in barrels and sacks and moving on. Exactly what I did. Somehow, I can’t hate people who’re so like me.’

Theudas smiled grimly. ‘I can,’ he said.

‘Yes, but you’re young and full of energy.’ Gannadius shifted slightly; his back was getting uncomfortable, pressed against the rail. ‘When you get to my age, you’ll find it’s fatally easy to forget to hate all your enemies all the time; and once you’ve slipped up and not hated one of them, it makes it almost impossibly hard to hate the rest of them. You allow yourself to start thinking things like,
The ordinary people are all right, it’s their leaders who’re responsible for all the evil stuff they do
; and then one day you meet one of their leaders and he turns out to be almost human, and that’s a cruel blow, like a broken finger would be to someone who plays the harp for a living.’ He shifted his back again. ‘It was odd seeing Temrai,’ he said. ‘Reminded me of once when I was young and I saw a shark that had got itself caught up in some mackerel-fishers’ nets; they had it strung up by its tail, all stiff and dead, and they were cutting it up. It looked a whole lot smaller than I expected it to be.’

Theudas closed his eyes. ‘Odd you should say that,’ he said. ‘I thought the same thing, seeing him again. Of course, when you see someone when you’re a kid and again when you’ve grown up, that’s often the way. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing Temrai strung up. I think I could get to like him hanging by his feet.’

‘Your privilege,’ Gannadius replied, muffling a yawn. ‘I never said you should stop hating him; after all, you’ve got cause. All I’m saying is, I’m not so sure as I was that I have.’

‘You could hate him for my sake. Isn’t that what we’re taught, love your friends’ friends and hate their enemies?’

‘Oh, all right,’ Gannadius said. ‘For your sake I hate him and I hope his pet lizard dies.’

(
A curse
, Gannadius realised;
I’m laying a curse on someone I don’t hate for the sake of someone young and soaked through with the lust for revenge. That’s what Alexius did once, and look what happened. Gods, I hope this headache I’m getting is just a headache -

- And he saw behind his eyes the shark, the fat and flesh flayed away from the framework of its bones, like the frames of a ship before they start planking up the sides. A fine feast they were preparing, these cooks he could see; shark and bear steaks, and eagles cooked whole on spits like chickens, slowly turning in front of the heat of the fire, wolves roasted and stuffed with apple and chestnut, great snakes gutted and made into the skins of blood sausages, a flitch of smoked lion hanging from a hook in the ceiling, a whole dinner of predators - he could see them laying strips of tender-loin of leopard in the bottom of the pie-dish, and bottling giant Colleon spiders like fat plums -)

‘What do you mean?’ Theudas said. ‘Temrai hasn’t got a pet lizard.’

‘You see?’ Gannadius replied. ‘It’s starting to work already.’

 

Bardas Loredan was sure he’d watched the arrow all the way, from the moment it appeared as a tiny speck in the sky until it actually hit him; an unbearably long time, but not long enough for him to move a foot to his right and get out of its way, although he did his best. Curious, he thought, at the moment of impact, how time can work like that. It’s enough to make a man believe in the Principle.

When the shock of the arrow on the cheekpiece of his helmet pushed his head round - it was like being slapped hard across the face - he was sure he must have died (
it’s customary to die first
) but apparently he’d made a mistake (
in your case we’ll make an exception
). Instead, he could feel a sharp pain in his temples; and if he understood the rules correctly, the dead are excused pain, as a sort of consolation prize. As he turned his head back again, he was aware of the jagged edges of the small hole the arrow had punched in the steel slicing painlessly along the line of his jaw to the edge of his lip, and the hot trickle of blood inside the padded helmet, quite remarkably like the warm, wet feel of piss running down his leg when he was a little boy. Delayed shock; he staggered briefly, found his feet and stood up straight again.

They’d attacked without warning; a distant hiss, like oil in a hot frying pan, and a quite lovely pattern of arrows rising against the noon sun, like a large flock of doves put up off a stubble field. It had taken him a few moments to work out where the arrows were coming from - a fold of dead ground between the column and the opposite ridge of the valley. This was advanced archery, shooting extreme-range volleys at a target they couldn’t even see, something the provincial office’s auxiliary bowmen didn’t have the skill or the confidence to do. For the rest of the column it had been terrifying, heartstopping, this business of being killed by an enemy you hadn’t even seen. In Bardas’ case, it only made him slightly nostalgic for the mines.

He looked around for Estar but couldn’t see him. Nobody seemed to be giving orders, and the patient, disciplined ranks of Imperial infantry were standing still, like carthorses in heavy rain.
Damn
, Bardas thought. He stepped forward out of line and started shouting military stuff like
Left wheel
and
Dress to your front
, the sort of thing he’d learned in Maxen’s army and thought he’d forgotten. The Imperials weren’t like Maxen’s men, though; they were a joy to drill, smart and precise, men who didn’t just obey the words of command but actually believed in them, as if they were the holy words of some religion. It was unnerving, this total and unthinking obedience, with all its connotations of responsibility and trust.
Don’t say I’m getting involved again
, Bardas thought resentfully; but unless somebody got these men out of the line of fire, there would be avoidable deaths and injuries; Estar nowhere to be seen, the other officers standing by as faithfully as the men. The blood had reached his collar-bone; the lapel of his habergeon was soaking it up like a sponge, and the sharp edges were cutting more deep, thin slices, precise as the leaf-thin blades of the cooks’ knives as they dressed out the sheep.
Almost proof, but not quite; a small puncture hole on the outside, a series of bloody gashes within.

He’d brought the army out of column into line, and gave the order to advance. For this sort of situation the Imperial writers on the art of war recommended a manoeuvre they called the ‘hammer and anvil’: invite the enemy to concentrate their fire on an apparently suicidal infantry advance, the main body of the army apparently walking directly into the hail of arrows (but that’s what armour’s for) while wings of cavalry and light infantry hook round the back and drive the enemy headlong on to the men-at-arms’ pikes. It was a sound enough tactic provided you could rely on your cavalry officers to do their job. Bardas had seen them move off as soon as he started to turn the line, riding away from the enemy before describing a wide arc and appearing unexpectedly behind them. On this ground they’d have to ride all the way round to the other side of the far ridge if they wanted to stay out of sight. It’d be a long time before they were in position, which meant the armoured infantry were going to have to stay out in the rain getting soaked. It was a wager, the lives of thousands of men riding on a bet, their archers against our armourers.
Welcome back to the proof house, Bardas Loredan; we knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away.

What the hell had become of Colonel Estar? Common sense suggested that he’d gone down in the first volley of arrows, though Bardas hadn’t seen him fall. It was inconceivable that he’d run away. He was, after all, a Son of Heaven, and even Bardas Loredan needed to believe in something. If Estar was dead - things like that don’t happen, commanders-in-chief of mighty armies don’t die in the first volley of the first battle they fight in. But if he was dead (and Maxen died, remember) command of the army would pass to Sergeant Loredan, until such time as another Son of Heaven arrived from Ap’ Escatoy. The thought made Bardas shudder.

Here was an interesting problem, an examination question in the art of command. To reach the enemy they were having to march down a steep slope. It was essential that they keep in line; but the sheer weight of the armour on which everything depended was making them tend to hurry, almost to the point of breaking into a run. Bardas was having to drive his heels into the dry, crumbling turf just to keep his balance. In his mind he could clearly see the ludicrous image of an army in full plate tobogganing down the slope on their backsides, skidding and crashing into each other, tumbling head over heels into a tangled heap of steel and flesh - that was just the sort of thing that happened in a war, it was the way disasters came about and wars were lost. In a moment of great clarity he could see it, as if it had already happened; a mighty trash-heap, like the pile of pieces that had failed proof (men as well as armour that had failed proof; welcome home), with the plainsmen standing on the top of the little rise shooting at will into the mess and laughing so hard they could scarcely draw their bows. The image was so strong that it was almost impossible for him to distinguish between it and what he could actually see. He shouted back to his officers, invisible behind him, to keep the line, to slow down the advance - well, anybody could say the words, but turning the words into action, making the words come true, was a job for a real commander; he could only hope that there were a few of those in the ranks behind him. The arrows weren’t helping, either; they were on the skyline now, shooting down at almost their maximum reverse elevation; the arrows were glancing off the artfully angled surfaces of the plate and skidding away in all directions, smacking sideways into the faces and bodies of the fourth and fifth ranks. There was nothing to be done about them, they had to be ignored, as if they were horseflies on a hot day. The one thing the line couldn’t do now was stop and go back; if they tried that, they’d be tumbling down the slope in no time.

There was nothing for it but to trot the last few yards. A few men did go down, and each man that fell took two or three with him, with a thump and a crash like an accident in a smithy. No time to see to the fallen, they’d have to sort themselves out if they were still capable of doing so; there were living men pinned down under dead men, he knew, like miners trapped by a cave-in, and there they’d have to wait, depending on the general, on Sergeant Loredan, to win the battle and survive; otherwise they’d stay there till they died, or until the scrap-metal people came with their sharp knives to collect the spoil and skin the carcasses. Never should have let command fall into the hands of an outlander. Obvious recipe for disaster. He could hear them saying it now.