The Proof House Part 18

Vetriz caught her breath. 'Really?' she said. 'Why am I not surprised?'

'I'm going to pour myself a drink; can I get you anything? Apparently, he wrote to the prefect offering an alliance against Temrai. The prefect turned him down flat.'

'Well, he would,' Vetriz said. 'Who'd want to be a.s.sociated with the likes of Gorgas Loredan?'

Athli smiled. 'Ah,' she said, 'but it gets better. A day or so after Gorgas got the get-lost letter from Ap' Escatoy, he managed to capture a man called Partek-'

'Now that name's familiar.'

'It should be,' Athli said. 'He's been on the Empire's Most Wanted list for years. He's some kind of rebel leader, apparently.'

She handed Vetriz a cup of sweet cider, spiced Perimadeian style with honey and cloves. Vetriz managed not to pull a face when she sipped it. 'Really? I didn't think the Empire had rebels.'

'Well, it does,' Athli said, dropping on to a couch and kicking off her slippers. 'Though they hate admitting to it; the warrants always say pirate or highway robber. But it's common knowledge that they'll do whatever it takes to get hold of Partek.' She closed her eyes. 'I must admit, I resent it when people like Gorgas get strokes of luck like that. I mean, it's not as if he'll do anybody any good with it; probably not even himself, if his record's anything to go by.'

Vetriz had become uncharacteristically quiet; she was staring at the wall a foot or so above Athli's head as if something was written there. Athli decided to change the subject- But Vetriz wasn't listening. Oh, d.a.m.n, she thought, I thought I'd seen the end of this sort of thing. Apparently not; she was standing in some kind of workshop or factory, and the first thing she noticed (couldn't help but notice) was the noise. Men were bashing bits of metal with hammers. The light slanted in from high, tall windows, marking out silver squares on the floor and making the rest of the building seem dark and gloomy by comparison. In the middle of the floor she could see a pile of what looked like body parts: arms, legs, heads, torsos, heaped and jumbled up - it was in the dark part, and she couldn't see clearly, only a flash of metal and the evocative shapes of joints and limbs. The men at the benches were bashing away at more of the same, hammering a leg or a torso or a hand, then adding it to the pile. Why were they doing this, she wondered? There didn't seem much point, bashing a limb that was already severed; or maybe this was a factory where they made mechanical men, like the ones in the fairy tale she remembered from when she was little. Then the angle of the light shifted a little, and she saw that they were making armour - (Same thing, really; perfect steel men, can't be broken or damaged from the outside. If only these people were a little bit more clever, maybe they could find a way of doing without the soft, fallible bit that goes on the inside.) - And there was someone she knew; they were building him, piece by piece from the feet up, and when they put the head on, it had his face (but there's nothing inside. There was something inside once, it's customary for there to be something inside. Maybe in his case they've made an exception) - 'Triz?'

'Sorry,' Vetriz said. 'I was miles away. What were you saying?'

The battle wasn't going well.

Temrai leaned away, settling his weight over the heel of his back foot, and kept his guard up, his wrists low, watching his enemy along the outstretched, upwards-tilted flat of his sword. He was completely out of his element here, of course, struggling to remember position one from fencing lessons fifteen years ago. He'd just about got the hang of position one when the camp was raided and there was no more time for education; so as far as scientific swordfighting was concerned, that was it.

Don't look at your sword, look at me, they'd told him - encouragingly, patiently, angrily, loudly, until he'd made himself do what he was told just so he'd be allowed to lower his guard and ease the pain in his wrists. Now he could see what they'd been getting at; but it was too late now to ask what he should do next.

All he could see in the other man's eyes was intense, single-minded concentration, something he found infinitely more disturbing than mere hatred. It was as if he could see the lines, angles, geometric projections that he was calculating behind his expressionless steel face; it was like trying to stare down pure mathematics. Just as he was thinking seriously about dropping his sword and running away, the other man made his move; a wonderfully co-ordinated manoeuvre involving a long step forward with the front foot, a powerful swivel of the waist, a minimal-backlift sideways cut with the bend of the wrists accelerating the blade swiftly and smoothly through the arc of the swing. In reply, Temrai jumped backwards with both feet and pushed his sword at right angles towards the other man's face, as if urging him to take it from him. He felt the shock of the blades colliding run up past his wrists into his elbows; it was a dull, bone-jarring pain, like hitting your own thumb with a hammer.

It had all gone wrong so quickly. First, a volley of arrows dipping down at them out of the sky - it was like the time he'd been cutting ferns for the horses' litter and inadvertently sunk his hook into a wasps' nest, the same bewildering, unexpected suddenness. The column was still bucking and scrambling and rearing and picking itself up off the floor when the heavy infantry had erupted out of a small copse the scouts had certified as clear only a few minutes before; they made contact while the last of the arrows were still dropping in and pitching (like pigeons or rooks on a patch of rain-flattened beans, with a swirl and a flourish). They pulled the men on the outside down from their horses and trod on them as they squashed their way in, pushing men and horses out of the way with their shields, slashing at exposed arms and legs and knees as if they were tr.i.m.m.i.n.g back a hedge. Temrai had just worked out who they were and where they'd come from when the pikemen slammed into the column from the rear; then he'd been knocked off his horse by the man next to him, toppling out of the saddle like a badly secured sack of flour, and for a while he'd seen nothing of the battle except the hooves of spooked horses, trampling the ground all round his head.

Apparently, he'd parried the first blow; but even he could see that he'd done it the wrong way, got himself deeper into trouble. With a small, precise movement, the other man disengaged his sword from the block, made a slight adjustment of angle and lunged, far too quickly for Temrai to do anything about it. The sword-point hit him at the top of the arch of his ribs; but amazingly the angled contour of the breastplate turned it, made it slide away across his chest and under his armpit. Without really knowing what he was doing, Temrai slammed his own sword across the other man's forehead, making a terrible thumping noise. The other man took a step back, put his heel down on the head of a dead man behind him, turned his ankle over and went sprawling down on his backside, his legs lifting up in the air so sharply that Temrai would have had his teeth smashed in if he hadn't managed to dodge the flailing sabaton.

Unfortunately, in all this excitement he'd dropped his sword. By the time he'd stooped awkwardly down and picked it up out of the mud the other man was sitting up, backing away, scrabbling for his own sword. Temrai hit out at him and managed to connect with the side of his helmet, the force of the blow glancing off the sloped plate; and the grip was so slippery with mud that he couldn't hold on to it, and it slipped through his fingers like the first trout he'd ever managed to tickle off the bed of a stream and then didn't dare hold on to. The other man was on his knees, swishing at him with his sword - easily avoided by taking a step backwards, but that was a mistake, since his own sword was now about five yards away, behind his enemy.

The h.e.l.l with this, Temrai said to himself; and he jumped over the flailing arc of the sword blade, landed with his knees round the other man's neck and went over, grabbing at the top of his head as he fell. His shoulder hit the ground first; then he felt a screaming pain in his knee where he'd twisted it round almost half a turn. Without thinking much about what he was trying to achieve, he got his fingers under the bottom rim of his enemy's helmet and dragged upwards as hard as he possibly could. He could feel the other man twisting and struggling between his legs, hands trying to grab his; so he tugged harder, shrieking as the pain from his knee surged up through his whole body. It hurt so much that it was several seconds before he realised that the other man had stopped moving, strangled by his own chinstrap.

Temrai realised that he couldn't let go; if he did, all his weight would fall on his dislocated knee, and he couldn't bear the thought of that. 'Help!' he yelled, but of course n.o.body could hear him - half the men within a five-yard radius were the enemy, and all of them were dead. Fat lot of use they were to a man in a nasty spot of trouble.

Wonderful stuff, armour, he thought, in the small part of his mind that wasn't saturated with pain. Mine saved me, his killed him. Pity we can't train it to fight on its own; then we could all stay at home. Then the pain leaked through into that compartment as well. He closed his eyes and tried to numb out the ache in his fingers, which were starting to slip. He could feel the sharp edge of the helmet rim methodically cutting the skin on the inside of his top finger-joints. If he held on long enough, say for a week, would it eventually slice through the bone?

'Temrai? Is that you?'

He opened his eyes. He couldn't see who it was talking to him, and he couldn't quite place the voice. 'Yes, of course it's me. Help me up, I'm stuck.'

'What seems to be - oh, right, I see. Hold still. This'll probably hurt.'

'Mind what you're-' he said, and then screamed and let go with his fingers. The next thing he was consciously aware of was the feeling of the flat ground under his back and head, and a slightly different modulation of the pain in his knee. 'Thank you,' he said, and opened his eyes.

'That's all right.' It was Da.s.sascai, the spy. 'Now then, how the h.e.l.l am I going to get you out of this?'

Temrai breathed in as far as he could manage. 'What's happening?' he said.

'We counter-attacked,' Da.s.sascai replied. 'It wasn't the cleverest move in the world, but we got them beat by sheer weight of numbers. You don't want to know any more, for now.'

'Don't I? Oh, right. Can you get me out of the way somewhere, and then find Kurrai or someone-'

'Not Kurrai,' Da.s.sascai said. 'He wouldn't be much use.'

'Oh,' Temrai repeated. 'd.a.m.n, I can't remember who's next in seniority. Find someone, anyhow. I need to know what's going on.'

'First things first,' the spy said. 'I'm going to try dragging you over to that tree - oh, of course, you can't see it from there. It'll probably hurt a lot.'

'All right,' Temrai said. It did.

A little later, Da.s.sascai knelt down beside him and asked, 'Do you still want me to go to look for someone, or would you rather I stayed here? The last I saw we pushed them back, but I haven't a clue whether we made it stick; they could be through here any minute. I really don't want you to be lying here like this if they come back.'

Temrai shook his head. 'You'd better go,' he said. 'Send someone to fetch me when you get the chance. And thank you.'

Da.s.sascai nodded his head. 'That's all right,' he said.

'Excuse me asking, but are you really a spy?'

Da.s.sascai looked down at him, smiled and shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'All right, stay there. I'll be as quick as I can.'

Temrai closed his eyes; above all, he realised, he was completely exhausted. It'd be very easy right now just to drift off to sleep. But that wouldn't do, not in the middle of a battle. He thought about what Da.s.sascai had just told him - not the cleverest move in the world, got them beat by sheer weight of numbers. I bet you really are a spy, he thought, and pa.s.sed out.

When he came round, there were voices talking overhead.

'-Wasn't meant to be a decisive battle; just a probe, that's all, to see what we're about and slow us down a little. G.o.ds help us when they really come after us.'

'Quiet. He's awake.'

He opened his eyes, and at first it was as dark as if he was underground. Then a lamp flared as someone lifted it over his head and put it down nearby.

'Temrai?' He recognised the voice and the face, but the name escaped him, which was odd, since he knew the man well. 'Temrai, it's all right. You're back at the camp.'

Temrai tried to move his lips, but his palate was dry and numb. 'Did we win?'

'Sort of,' the man replied. 'We made them go away, at any rate. Now we're falling back on Perimadeia.'

'Basically,' said the other voice, which was equally familiar, 'basically, they've cut us off from the plains, it's like they're trying to bottle us up in the Perimadeian delta with our backs to the sea. Latest reports say they've got three separate armies in the field now. If we try to get through, they'll come at us from both sides.'

'I see.' He thought of Tilden, his wife, back at the main camp. 'Is Kurrai dead?' he asked.

The second man frowned. 'You are in a bad way, aren't you?' he said. 'Do I look particularly dead to you?'

'Oh.' Temrai closed his eyes and opened them again. 'Sorry, yes. I'm a bit confused. Someone told me you were dead.'

'A lot of people seem to have thought so,' Kurrai replied. 'I just hope they aren't too disappointed.'

'Casualties,' Temrai said, remembering a time when he wouldn't have used the word; he'd have asked, How many of my people were killed? How many of my people were badly hurt?

'Not good,' said the other man, the one who wasn't Kurrai.

It cost him a good deal of effort, but Temrai managed to scowl. 'Define a good casualty,' he said. 'How many did we lose?'

The two men looked at each other. 'Over two hundred, ' Kurrai said. 'I think it was two hundred and thirty, something like that. Plus another seventy-odd wounded. We got about thirty of them.'

Temrai nodded. 'I see,' he said. 'Two hundred and thirty killed out of a column of five hundred. What are we going to do?'

The man he hadn't identified yet frowned. 'I don't know about the rest of us,' he said, 'but you're going to get some sleep. Doctor's orders.'

'Oh. Are you a doctor, then?'

'What do you mean, am I a doctor? Dammit, Temrai, I was your doctor before you were even born.'

Temrai smiled weakly. 'Just kidding,' he said.

'Like h.e.l.l you were,' the doctor replied. 'Did you get bashed on the head during the battle?'

'Can't remember.'

'Well no, quite possibly you don't. It's my fault, I should have examined you more thoroughly. Feel sick at all? Headache, lights flashing in front of your eyes?'

'You think I've lost my memory,' Temrai said.

'Bits of it,' the doctor said. 'It happens that way sometimes.'

Temrai smiled, and the smile widened into a broad grin. 'If only,' he said cheerfully. 'If only.'

Poliorcis the diplomat shivered and wiped rain out of his eyes with the back of his hand.

'Are we nearly there yet?' he asked. The carter grunted without looking round. The rain was dripping in soft, fat drops off the broad brim of his leather hat. He didn't seem to be aware of it. Quite probably, by his standards, this const.i.tuted a sunny day.

Usually Poliorcis trusted his sense of direction, a valuable attribute for a man who spent so much of his time travelling in unfamiliar places. On this occasion, however, he was completely lost. The route the carter was taking was completely different from the one Gorgas Loredan had taken; either because Gorgas had been showing him the scenic route, or because Gorgas wasn't aware of the short cut. He'd also lost track of time, which was most unlike him. He put it down to the effect this country had on him. It reminded him rather of swimming in the lagoon off Ap' Sendaves; floating on his back in still water, gradually ceasing to be aware of his body, of anything around him, until he was nothing but a consciousness without context, an awareness with nothing to be aware of. That had been a bizarre feeling but a pleasant one. The Mesoge, in his opinion, certainly wasn't pleasant, and it didn't strike him as interesting enough to be bizarre; but it left him feeling disorientated in much the same way.

He even felt too bemused to rehea.r.s.e what he was going to say, or run through in his mind the arguments he was going to use. That was unfortunate - he felt more uneasy about this meeting than any number of far more important negotiations he'd been involved in - but the harder he tried to pull himself together, the more his mind wanted to wander. If it wasn't for the rain he could close his eyes and get some sleep; but nothing helps you stay awake better than the feeling of rainwater seeping under your collar and down your back. He pulled the sodden wreckage of his own hat a little further down and gave up trying to think; instead he gazed sullenly at the wet green all around him, the hedges dripping rain, the pools of brown water filling the wheel-ruts in the track ahead, the leaves of the docks and ferns glistening. The air was moist and tickled his throat, and he was painfully cold.

Must be easier ways of making a living, he muttered to himself, a man of my age. It was ridiculous for one of the provincial office's senior departmental negotiators to be squelching and b.u.mping along in a carrier's cart in the rain, risking pneumonia and pleurisy at the very least, on his way to try to reason with a lunatic who had no official standing, whose authority wasn't even recognised by the Empire, in order to secure the person of a minor troublemaker who'd happened to be taken up and turned into some kind of popular hero by a bunch of malcontents who probably wouldn't recognise him if he was sitting at their kitchen table.

The cart had stopped. He lifted his head and looked up, but all he could see was rain.

The carter didn't move. 'Stay here,' Poliorcis said. 'I'll need you to take me back to Tornoys.'

He started to ease himself down off the cart, but with a movement faster than anything he'd have imagined the man was capable of, the carter grabbed him by the elbow.

'Two quarters,' he said.

Poliorcis nodded and burrowed about in his drenched sleeve for the money. 'Stay there,' he repeated, and tried to reach the ground with his feet. He was too high up; but the hem of his robe caught in something, and he ended up kneeling in the mud. 'Stay there,' he said, one more time; then he got up, muddying his hands in the process, and headed for the gate he could just make out through the rain. While he was grappling with the catch (which was rusted up - presumably Gorgas and his brothers clambered over, and never bothered opening the thing; that would explain why it sagged so desperately on its one good hinge and the tangle of coa.r.s.e hemp twine that did service for the other one) he heard the reins crack behind him, and the sound of wheels slowly rolling through a puddle.

The farmhouse door was open, but there didn't seem to be anybody about. 'h.e.l.lo?' he called out. n.o.body answered. He stood for a moment, watching rain drip off him and on to the stone flags, then decided that this simply wouldn't do. He might not be a Son of Heaven, but he represented the Empire; the Empire doesn't stand dripping in doorways, it marches in and puts its feet up on the furniture.

At least it was dry inside the house, and what remained of the fire gave off a little warmth. He parked himself in the chimney corner, still wrapped up in his travelling coat, which was now three parts water to one part cloth. The settle was more comfortable than it looked. He let his head rest against the back and closed his eyes.

He woke up to find Gorgas Loredan leaning over him, a slightly scornful expression on his face. 'You should have let us know you were coming,' he was saying, 'I'd have sent a carriage for you.'

'Doesn't matter, really,' said Poliorcis, who'd just realised that he'd woken up with a splitting headache. 'I'm here now.'

'Good.' Gorgas Loredan sat down next to him on the settle, so close that he had to budge along a little to avoid being in contact with him. 'In that case we can cut the small talk and get down to business. I a.s.sume you're here to make me an offer.'

'Well, yes,' Poliorcis mumbled. 'And no.' His mind was foggy and furred up, and he couldn't remember a single one of the princ.i.p.al bargaining positions he'd been working on over the last few days. 'It's more a case of asking what you want from us. I think you'll find we're willing to consider any reasonable proposals.'

Gorgas sighed and shook his head. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I must have misunderstood. You see, I was under the impression that we were going to work this thing out together in a constructive and sensible fashion, instead of playing games. Goodbye.'

'I see.' Poliorcis stayed exactly where he was. 'After I've come all this way, you're throwing me out.'

'I'd never dream of being so rude,' Gorgas replied. 'Still, since you don't appear to have anything to say to me, I must confess I can't see any point in your being here; and since you've already seen all the sights, and our climate doesn't seem to agree with you-'

'All right.' Poliorcis had an unhappy feeling that he'd given away the initiative in the negotiations before they'd even begun, and had no real chance of getting it back. 'Here's a firm offer, no ambiguities at all. Money: how much will you take for your prisoner?'

Gorgas laughed. 'Please,' he said, 'let's at least pretend to respect each other. You've seen the Mesoge; what possible use would money be to me in a place like this?'

Just outside the back door, a dog was barking furiously. The noise picked at the pain in Poliorcis' head like fingers plucking harpstrings. 'Very well then,' he said. 'Not money. What else? Something we have, presumably, that you need. Tools? Weapons? Raw materials?'

Gorgas shook his head. 'You're making fun of me,' he said. 'Personally, I don't regard that as very diplomatic. Tell me, do you really despise us that much? Do you really think we're nothing but bandits and thieves, little better than the gangs who go around fishing through open windows with a hook on the end of a pole? I thought you'd have understood, when I took the trouble to show you; we're farmers, peaceful people who want to make friends with our neighbours. Show us just a little respect and I'll give you your d.a.m.ned rebel for free.'

'You're talking about the alliance,' Poliorcis said. 'I can only say that I'm extremely sorry, but the provincial office feels that a formal alliance at this time would be inappropriate.'

'Inappropriate.'

Poliorcis felt as if he was slowly sinking up to his knees in mud. 'I'd just like to point out,' he said, 'that what you're asking is entirely without precedent. We have no formal alliances with anybody; not Shastel or the Island or Colleon. Please try to understand our concerns; if we made an alliance with you, what sort of message would that send to them, after we've turned down overtures from all of them? Quite simply, it's not the way we do things.'

'All right.' Gorgas yawned. 'If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's flexibility. Flexibility, realism, always look for the deal that's good for both sides. Now, you're telling me the Empire doesn't have any allies, and I'm sure you'd never lie about a thing like that. Well then, we'll forget all about an alliance, and I'll tell you straight exactly what's in my mind. The truth is, whether or not we're formal allies, all I want is for you, the provincial office, to give me a chance to do something I need to do; you think about it and tell me if you can see a way it can be done. After all, you're the diplomat; I'm just a soldier and a farmer and I'm really out of my depth here. I need to pay off an old debt - no, that's not it. I need to set right a really bad thing I did once. You see, I made it possible for Temrai to sack Perimadeia. Does that shock you?'

Poliorcis looked at him. 'I know,' he said.

'Oh.' Gorgas sat still, expressionless. 'What do you think about that?'

'I don't,' Poliorcis replied. 'That is, I know why you did it, what your reasons were; it was because your sister owed a lot of money to rich individuals in Perimadeia, and she knew she could never pay them back. It was a business decision. Now, I can give an opinion as to whether that was wise or unwise from a commercial point of view, but if you're expecting me to say whether I think what you did was right or wrong, I'm afraid I can't. I don't think in those terms; it's as if I was colour-blind and you wanted my opinion about a certain shade of green. So,' he went on, 'what has that got to do with us?'

Gorgas breathed out, rubbed his chin. 'I suppose I'm the one who's shocked,' he said. 'I'm not colour-blind, as you put it. I can see that what I did was terribly wrong. I knew my brother was fighting for the City; I ruined his life and nearly got him killed. That's what I've got to put right. I have to kill Temrai and destroy the plains tribes, fighting side by side with him, paying my debt. Can you see that? Even you must be able to see that. Now, I don't care what my official standing is, I just need to be there and to do my share, otherwise I won't be able to live with myself. Because of what I did, I'm already responsible for the death of my own son; I owe it to him as well. Can you see how simple and straightforward this all is?'

Poliorcis thought for a while. 'One thing I'm sure about,' he said, 'you're an interesting man. And if there's one thing the Sons of Heaven are interested in, it's interesting people. But let's think this through, shall we? With all due respect, we already have all the military resources we need. When we first met, you were talking about archers, how we don't have enough. The fact is, we do. We have whole nations of archers in the Empire - longbow, short recurve, long recurve, horse archers, crossbowmen, you name it. Our factories can deliver twenty thousand bows and two hundred thousand arrows a week, all made to specification, identical, though the factories might be a thousand miles apart. So really, we don't need any more archers. Now, you've told me why you feel you need to fight this war. Let me tell you why we're fighting it. We have more regular full-time soldiers than there are men, women and children in all of Shastel and the Island and Colleon and Perimadeia and all the other places you've ever heard of put together. We built that army so that n.o.body - n.o.body - could ever be a threat to us. Between the Sons of Heaven and the remotest possibility of danger there's a wall of steel and muscle so thick that nothing on earth could ever break through it. If the ground suddenly opened and swallowed our homeland up, we could fill the hole with human bodies and rebuild our homes on top of them. No, we make war because we need to find our army something to do, to keep them from getting bored and restive and out of shape; so you see, we really don't want anybody else fighting our battles for us - it'd defeat the whole object of the exercise. I'm sorry, but there it is. I can't help you.'

Gorgas nodded slowly, as if he'd just had a difficult calculation explained to him. 'I understand,' he said. 'And sooner or later you'll come here, walking the dog, so to speak; and it'd be embarra.s.sing for you to be seen to pick a fight with people you once treated as friends and allies. That's sound enough reasoning, I can accept that. But it doesn't solve my problem. Poliorcis, I'm asking you because you're the expert: how can we arrange it so that you get what you want, this pirate of yours, and I get what I need? There has to be a way. All we've got to do is figure out what it is.'

Poliorcis frowned. 'I must say,' he said, 'you're dealing with the news of your impending conquest and subjugation very well. Most people would probably have got angry, or frightened.'

'Pointless,' Gorgas said. 'You weren't telling me anything I didn't know. It's obvious enough; you said it yourself, that's one of the reasons I wanted the alliance. But you're too smart for me, and I accept that; there's still no reason why we can't put our heads together and find a way of making the inevitable a little bit less painful than it'll otherwise be. Flexibility. Realism. That's what it's all about.' He bit his lip, then clapped his hands together so loudly that Poliorcis jumped. 'I know,' Gorgas went on. 'I know exactly what we can do. I hereby surrender the Mesoge to the Empire, and throw myself and my people on your mercy.' He smiled beautifully. 'And as a gesture of goodwill, it'd be really appreciated if we could take our place as auxiliary soldiers in your expeditionary force against Temrai. There, doesn't that cover everything beautifully?'