The Proof House Part 23

'Thank you for bringing me my duck,' Gorgas said solemnly. 'That's another line we're very interested in right now. This new breed they've come up with over there - do you know much about ducks, Doctor?'

Gannadius shook his head. 'Only how to eat them,' he said. For some reason, Gorgas seemed to find that hilariously funny.

'Ah, well then,' he said, when he'd recovered from his outbreak of mirth, 'you're helping me prove my point. I'm prepared to bet you there's an almost unlimited demand for quality poultry, not to mention the eggs and the feathers.' He held the duck up by its feet, so that its head swung to and fro. 'Yes,' he went on, 'I think we're well on the road to success with this one. So, how have you been keeping? And what, if you'll excuse my curiosity, were you doing with the plainspeople? Hardly the place I'd expect to find a world-famous philosopher.'

Gannadius explained - not very well, but he got the impression that Gorgas knew all about it already. When he'd finished, Gorgas nodded and refilled his cup for him. 'It's an awkward situation there, no doubt about it,' he said. 'I have the feeling that Temrai and his people aren't long for this world - sad, in a way; you've got to admire them for their courage and initiative, the way they've bettered themselves over the last seven years or so. Oh, I'm sorry, I hope you didn't think I was trying to be offensive. I got so used to thinking of you as a Shastel academic during our little pocket war on Scona, I forgot that of course you're Perimadeian.'

'It's all right, really,' Gannadius replied, thoroughly alarmed at the thought that Gorgas Loredan had been thinking about him in any context. 'And yes, to a certain extent I agree with you. I found it very hard not to like them when I was over there.'

Gorgas smiled. 'Still,' he said, 'it's an ill wind, and so forth. As far as I'm concerned, the good thing is the opportunity it gives my brother Bardas to advance his career with the Empire. I know it must sound silly, but I worry about him; well, he's my brother, I'm ent.i.tled. You see, ever since he left the army - the City army, I mean, after Maxen died - well, he's just been marking time, drifting aimlessly along without any real purpose in his life, and it's such a waste. I really thought I might have been able to get him involved with what we were doing on Scona - give him my job, basically, after all, he'd have done it much better than I ever could; and all I've ever wanted is to go home to the Mesoge and mess about playing at farming. And now,' he continued with a sigh, 'I've got what I want, and where's Bardas? Serving time as a sergeant, for G.o.ds' sakes, when he isn't risking his neck down some hole in the ground, or slaving away in some miserable factory, when he should be making something of his life, achieving something he could be proud of. No, if Bardas beats the plainspeople and kills Temrai, coming on top of what he did at Ap' Escatoy, he's got to be in line for a proper job somewhere, possibly even on the fast track to a prefecture somewhere, even though he's an outsider. ' He smiled again, and leaned back. 'So, and I know this must sound a bit callous, I'm sorry for Temrai and his lot, but I really want this war, for Bardas' sake. It could be the answer to a lot of things for him.'

Gannadius took a sip of his cider. It still tasted just as foul, but his mouth was painfully dry. 'As you say,' he murmured, 'it's an ill wind. Well, I hope things work out for you with the duck project.' It occurred to him that if the plainspeople were ma.s.sacred, there wouldn't be any duck project; in which case why was Gorgas bothering with it? But he decided not to raise the issue. Instead, he stood up, smiled, and walked away, rather more quickly than was polite.

And that, he reflected as he crossed the Market Square, ought to be the end of my grand adventure; home again (well, it counts as home for all practical purposes), safe and sound and none the worse for wear. But it didn't feel like the end of anything; rather, it was as if he was hanging around waiting, like an athlete at a country fair who's been knocked out of one event and has several hours to kill before he's on again.

So, instead of heading for Athli's house, where Theudas would be waiting and Athli would be inexplicably delighted to see him safe and well, he crossed over to the south side of the Square and headed inland, without knowing why, in the general direction of the brickyard and the wire mill.

Why a nation that adamantly refused to make anything it could buy or sell abroad had decided to make an exception in the case of bricks and wire, n.o.body knew. There weren't even any theories (and Islanders had theories about everything); it was just a freak accident of commerce, to which no particular significance should or could be attached.

Unusually, the big double doors of the wire mill were open, and Gannadius stopped for a gawp.

At first, he couldn't make out what they were doing. They'd set up a series of posts, in pairs, about four feet high and two feet apart; through each pair of posts ran a thin steel rod about half the thickness of the tip of his little finger. Each rod was as long as he was tall, and had an L-shaped handle at one end and a slot in the other. The factory hands had threaded wire through the slots and were turning the handles, wrapping wire tightly round the rods like the serving on the handle of a bow. When there was no more s.p.a.ce on the rod for any more turns of wire, they lifted it up and off by way of a slot cut in the side of each post and carried it over to an anvil, where two men with cold chisels worked down the length of the rods, cutting off the loops of wire so that they fell to the ground as split-ended steel rings, which a couple of young boys scooped up in large baskets and carried into the back of the shop.

It reminded Gannadius of something. He thought for a while and then remembered the wire factories of Perimadeia, where they'd used something similar but much larger to form the links of chains. Once he'd found that mental image, he knew what they were doing: they were making armourers' rings, for chain-mail. For some reason, Gannadius found the idea disturbing. No question but that the stuff was for export; he didn't know a single Islander who owned a mailshirt (he knew several who owned thousands of mailshirts, carefully packed in oil-soaked straw and ready for shipping; but such ownership was intended to be as temporary as possible) or a sword that wasn't a fashion accessory, or a bow or a spear or a halberd. As a nation the Islanders acknowledged the existence of war only as something that happened far away between two rival groups of potential customers. A unique mind-set, simultaneously endearing and reprehensible, like so much about these people . . . He shook his head, as if making himself wake up. There was no real likelihood of the Islanders taking up arms and going off to war, even if the rest of the world seemed determined to do so. Far more than mere water separated the Island from everywhere else, and for that Gannadius was extremely grateful. Nevertheless, he didn't feel like wandering about any more. It was high time he went home, even if (like every other place he'd thought of as home for as long as he could remember) it was somebody else's.

The armies of the Sons of Heaven sang as they marched; and generally speaking, they did it well. In addition to the signallers who blew their bugles for the charge and the retreat, there were any number of soldiers who carried flutes, rebecs, mandolins, fiddles and small drums along with their blanket rolls and three days' rations; when the mood took them, they would hand their pikes to their neighbours in the column and accompany the singing, so that from a distance the approach of the army sounded more like a wedding than the onslaught of the Empire.

Bardas Loredan, who had no ear for music, had been rather taken with this apparently uncharacteristic frivolity; and besides, even he liked the tunes, which were either fast and lively or fast and sad, but never droopy like the refined fugues and motets they were so fond of in Perimadeia, or tuneless and interminable like Mesoge folk-songs. He couldn't sing and could barely whistle, but he hadn't been with the column long before he found himself humming, b.u.mble-bee fashion, when the soldiers struck up one of his favourites.

But he couldn't understand the words. They were in a language that was entirely unlike anything he'd ever come across; not the highly inflected sing-song Perimadeian that was the standard in most places, from the Mesoge to the plains; or the attractively rounded-and-crisp language of the trading nations, Colleon and the Island (and, by default, Shastel and Scona), which n.o.body had ever set out to learn deliberately but which everybody acquired, like a sun-tan, after any sort of regular contact with the people who spoke it; or the hammered-flat Perimadeian dialect that was the second language of all the western provinces of the Empire. When he finally got around to asking someone, he was told that the soldiers' songs were in the language of the Sons of Heaven, and that n.o.body had a clue what any of them meant.

To Bardas' mind, this spoiled the effect of the marching minstrel show, to the point where it started to get on his nerves. The idea that twenty thousand men could march along singing a song they didn't understand struck him as rather distasteful; for all they knew, they could be singing graphic accounts of the defeat and subjugation of their own native cities, with detailed descriptions of what the victorious Sons of Heaven had already done to the men and were intending to do to the women and children. He asked the man he'd been talking to if it bothered him, and the man replied, no; the songs and singing them were an ancient tradition of the service, and traditions are what hold a professional army together. A man should be proud to be allowed to learn the words and join in singing them; they were a secret, a mystery that came with being accepted, becoming part of something great and invincible. The ordinary soldier didn't need to understand the words of the song, the plan of campaign or the reason for the war; he was there to put into effect what the Sons of Heaven, in their absolute wisdom, decided should be so. And that was all there was to it.

In spite of the disillusionment, Bardas couldn't help humming one tune that had burrowed deep into his mind. It was one of the fast, lively ones, generally accompanied with drums and flutes - the words, of course, were just a blur of noise but it had to be a marching song, if only because it was so difficult not to hum it when marching . . . Its shape was an endless loop, so that unless you made a conscious decision to abandon it there was no reason why you'd ever stop.

As easily as he'd taken to humming the tune, Bardas got into the habit of commanding the army. As much as anything, it was a matter of convenience and habit. He'd learned a long time ago that the easiest way to do anything is properly; it was less effort to tell the officers and sergeants the right way than have to sort out the mess they made if they tried to work it out for themselves. Every morning, just before daybreak and reveille, he held a staff meeting, told the heads of department what he expected them to do and questioned them about the things they'd done wrong or hadn't got around to doing the previous day. He interrogated the quartermaster and the colonel of foragers about supplies and materiel, the colonel of scouts about the terrain they'd be crossing in that day's march, the captains of each division about the state of their commands, the captain of engineers about how he proposed to deal with any natural obstacles or obstructions; if they gave the wrong answers he told them the right ones, the first time patiently. It was so much less effort than discussion, canva.s.sing opinions, arguing merits; and since he'd been here before and done very much the same things, there wasn't really any point in pretending to listen to the views of men who knew less about the subject than he did. Anything else would be like discussing the letters of the alphabet with a bunch of children who couldn't read yet, rather than simply chalking them on a slate and saying, Learn this.

And he had been here before; it was strange how easily it came back to him, across over twenty years of deliberate forgetting. They pa.s.sed the place where Maxen had won an incredible victory, five hundred heavy cavalry against four thousand plainsmen; he'd almost expected to see the bodies still lying where they'd left them, but there was nothing to mark the spot apart from a cairn of stones he'd ordered built himself to cover their own trivial losses. They crossed the Blue Sky River by the ford where Maxen had finally caught up with Prince Yeoscai, King Temrai's uncle - the river had been in spate and when they found him, Yeoscai was sitting on his horse staring at it, as if he couldn't believe in such gratuitous spite from something that wasn't even human. They camped one night in the little valley where Maxen died; his cairn was still there, but Bardas was content to look at it from a distance. And from that point on, it was simply a matter of remembering; no more thought needed.

Two days on from Maxen's cairn (if I'd been Temrai I'd have pulled it open and flung his bones to the wild dogs years ago) they were held up by another river; the Friendly Water, which had dammed up in the hills and flooded the Longstone Combe. The easiest solution was to build a bridge at the head of the combe, but the nearest timber was a day's cart-ride behind them. He emptied the supply wagons and sent them back with the pioneers and the foragers, armed with detailed specifications of the amount and dimensions of timber they'd need, and settled down to wait. There was no reason why the army should be idle while it was waiting; there was kit to overhaul and inspect, armour to repair, boots to patch up and renail; archery practice and weapons drill and parade drill, an opportunity to train the soldiers in specific techniques they'd need against the plains cavalry and archers, tactical seminars for the captains and lieutenants, a few disciplinary tribunals that had been too complex to decide in an evening session on the march, a chance to update and correct the provincial office's rather vague maps. By the time he returned to his tent, well into the second night of the delay, he was rather more weary than he'd have felt if they'd been on the road. He took off his armour - it was a second skin to him now, and he felt strange and uncertain on his feet without the weight of it on his shoulders; first, unbuckle the chausses, followed by the gorget, then the pauldrons, followed by the cops and vambraces, followed by the cuira.s.s, finally the mailshirt and habergeon, and he was a little white worm again, a snail out of its sh.e.l.l - then kicked off his boots and lay down on the late Colonel Estar's foldaway rosewood camp bed.

As soon as he closed his eyes he found himself in a place he knew well, almost as well as the plains. It was dark there, and he couldn't see the walls or the roof; it was a tunnel under a city, garlic and coriander together, a cellar under a factory, the proof house. He turned round - that involved kneeling down, feeling for the plank walls of the gallery - and saw that Alexius had got a fire going; he saw the smoke rising straight up into the vent-hole in the roof, with its blackened edges.

'You're early,' Alexius said.

'We've been making good time,' he replied. 'Is there a lot to get through?'

Alexius shook his head. Oddly enough, he wasn't wearing Alexius' body this time, or rather he'd put on another man's face over his own (like a visor) so that he'd become Anax, the Son of Heaven who had failed. 'Shouldn't take long,' he said. 'Fetch the hammer and we'll make a start.'

He remembered the feel of Bollo's hammer in his hands - big, heavy, definitive, the measure of all things - but for the first time (and how many times had he been here? He'd lost count) he noticed that the hammer was in fact the Empire, because of course nothing can survive Bollo's hammer, it's just a matter of seeing how long it continues to offer resistance and the manner in which it eventually fails - The first piece to be tested was an arm; a low-specification, munition-grade arm, made of ordinary flesh and bone, not expected to pa.s.s above the first degree of proof. Anax laid it on the anvil and Bardas reduced it to pulp with a few well-placed blows.

'Fail that,' Alexius said. 'All right, next.'

He put a torso up; it was quite well made, with skilfully formed pectorals and well-defined ribs, and it was stamped with the plainsmen's mark, usually a guarantee of quality. Bardas started with a couple of heavy bashes across the breastbone - 'Thought so,' Anax commented, 'fancy decoration on top of poor material' - then methodically broke the ribs, as easily as snapping off icicles. 'Fail that,' said Anax, and Bardas swept it off the anvil into the sc.r.a.p.

'Next,' Alexius said, and Bardas put up a head. 'Collector's item,' he said, because it was the head of a Son of Heaven, the late Colonel Estar. 'Always wanted to see how well one of these would do,' he said, and swung the hammer, putting a lot of left elbow and right shoulder behind the blow. The skull crumpled but stayed together - 'That's quality for you,' said Anax - and it took him seven blows to wreck it completely. 'It's the bone structure that does it,' Anax pointed out. 'That high-domed forehead, see, and those cheek-bones. I'll pa.s.s that in the second degree; still not good enough for the purpose it was made for.'

Another torso; female this time, with small round b.r.e.a.s.t.s and sloping, rounded shoulders. It had been made in the Perimadeian style but the patina on the surface suggested the sunlight of the Island. Breaking the ribs and collar-bone was easy enough; but the flesh was soft and springy, like the quilted silk armour of the far-eastern provinces, easy to bruise but next to impossible to crush, the force of the hammer blows just seemed to soak away into it, like water into sand. In the end, Bardas managed to ruin it by trapping it between the hammerhead and the edge of the anvil. 'Third degree pa.s.s,' said Anax. 'Impressive.'

'Cheating, if you ask me,' Bardas replied.

Next was a hand; a girl's hand with long, slender fingers. Instead of the hammer Bardas used the eight-pound axe, and the fingers came away quite cleanly. 'Now the hammer,' Alexius said, and Bardas smashed it across the back, expecting it to pulp. It didn't. 'Ah,' said Alexius with a smile, 'that's a genuine Loredan, you see. Tough as old boots, they are.' By the time he'd wrecked it to his satisfaction, Bardas had worked up quite a sweat.

'Let's have that head there,' Alexius said. 'Now,' he went on, turning it round in his fingers, 'here's a challenge for you. Let's see just how strong you are.'

Bardas grinned; the head was bald, with a strong jaw and a big, soft mouth. 'Leave it to me,' he said; but the first, second and third blows glanced harmlessly off the curved surface of the skull, and the head, opening its eyes and winking, forgave him.

'I'll pa.s.s it if you like,' Alexius said sardonically. Bardas didn't reply; he laid the head on its side and hammered on the jaw until the hinge cracked, then attacked the temples. He made some inroads but had to give up when he hit short, caught the shaft of the hammer on the side of the anvil and broke off the head.

'd.a.m.n,' he said. 'I'll use the axe.'

'All right,' said Anax, 'but it's not the right tool, so it won't be a fair proof.'

'So what?' Bardas replied. The axe made a better job; but by the time he was satisfied there wasn't much edge left on it, and the blade was notched where he'd hit directly on one open, winking eye. The head forgave him again as he shoved it off the anvil. 'Fifth degree proof,' Alexius said. 'They don't make 'em like that any more.'

Bardas was tired. He wiped away the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist and asked, 'Is that it?'

'Almost,' said Anax. 'One more head, and then we're done.' And he reached under the bench and produced the head of Colonel Bardas Loredan. 'All right then, Mister Clever,' he said. 'Crack that if you can, and I'll buy you a jug of cold milk.'

Bardas frowned. 'What with?' he said. 'I've bust the hammer and the axe is useless.'

Alexius scowled at him. 'Don't be so pathetic,' he said. 'When I was your age we proved everything with our bare hands, we didn't faff about with hammers. Stop mucking about and get on with it.'

So Bardas hammered on the piece with his clenched fists, which were of course harder than any axe and heavier than any hammer; but try as he might, once he'd battered away the skin and the flesh, he couldn't make so much as a little dent in the skull. 'Quality,' Anax muttered. 'Don't think you'll ever crease that, not even with a drop-hammer.'

'Rubbish,' Bardas replied irritably. 'I can break anything. b.l.o.o.d.y fine a.s.sistant deputy viceproofmaster I'd be if I couldn't. Here, give me that.' He pointed to an arm which Anax had picked out of the pile; it was Colonel Bardas Loredan's sword-arm, neatly sawn off at the elbow. He cut off the hand with his thin-bladed kitchen knife, the one he used for jointing and skinning the carca.s.ses, and swung the ma.s.sive bone round his head with all the strength he could muster. Steel on steel, the noise was; because Colonel Loredan's head was a helmet and his sword-arm a vambrace, cop and lames. 'You can always tell the quality by the sound it makes,' Anax reminded him. 'Listen to that, best Mesoge steel. When you've done with that skull, I'll have what's left for a planishing stake.'

'There won't be anything left,' Bardas grunted; and he attacked the piece as if it was an enemy and his life depended on the outcome. In the end, honours were roughly even between the arm and the skull; both were dented and twisted, but nothing a good armourer couldn't mend by beating out over an anvil. Quality like this can always be mended by hard, skilful bashing between hammer and anvil; no reason why it shouldn't go on for ever.

'Give up?' Alexius asked, and the skull's eyes opened - - 'What?' Bardas asked. There was a man standing over him. 'G.o.ds, is it morning already?'

'Staff meeting,' the soldier replied. 'Then weapons training; it says on your schedule you're doing wounds and death with the ninth, tenth and twelfth platoons.'

Bardas yawned. 'I'd completely forgotten. All right, tell 'em I'll be out in a minute or two.'

Another agreeable thing about the Imperial army was its eagerness to learn. Two centuries ago, the Sons of Heaven had hit on the happy notion of performance-related bonuses for field armies. These awards were calculated at platoon level (to take it further down the command structure would be to risk encouraging soldiers to place individual opportunity above corporate goals) and were based on the number of confirmed kills attributable to each platoon during a battle. Naturally, any kills achieved in the face of or to the prejudice of explicit orders from an officer were discounted; only the platoons that saw action were eligible, which had the beneficial effect of making each unit eager to take its turn in the front rank. In consequence, combat tutorials from an expert like Colonel Loredan were regarded as a genuine opportunity to increase a platoon's earning power, and were very well attended.

'Today,' Bardas said, looking over the top of the ma.s.s of attentive faces, 'we're going to look at the mechanics of killing; this is all about making your blows count, doing as much damage as you can with as little exposure and risk as you can get away with.'

You could have heard a coin drop. Bardas suppressed a grin. If you could see me now, Alexius; a college lecturer.

'Quite simply,' he went on, 'there's two ways of doing damage with the sword and the halberd, namely thrusting and cutting. Now then, hands up anybody who's studied fencing or something similar outside the service.' A couple of hands appeared; Bardas nodded. 'Well, first thing you'll be doing is forgetting everything you were taught in fencing school about thrusts being better than cuts. Sure, thrusts kill better than cuts, but they kill slowly. You're in a battle and the other man's trying to kill you: you don't just want him dead, you want him dead now. Most of all, you want to stop him being able to hurt you; which is why a cut that does relatively little damage - snips off a thumb, say - is quite likely going to be more use to you than a neat thrust through the lung that'll drop him dead as a stone in ninety seconds' time.'

The audience shifted a little in their seats. Bardas knew why; they weren't sure which they were more interested in, staying alive or racking up a healthy body-count. Very good; let them keep that division of priorities firmly in mind.

'If you're going to kill a man or take him out of play, you'll need to damage either the works or the pipes; works are things like muscle, sinew and bone, pipes are veins and arteries. But damage isn't everything; you can do fatal damage and still not do the job. Just as important as damage is shock. Always remember that, if you can.'

Bardas paused and took a sip of water.

'For a good military kill with a thrust, don't bother with the head too much. Skulls are thick; unless you're lucky enough to get a fluke shot in through the eye, the ear or the mouth, chances are that all you'll do is make your enemy even more bad-tempered than he was before. Necks are good, especially if you twist the blade once you're in, but the neck's a d.a.m.n fiddly small target; so's the heart, come to that. If you go for the heart, ten to one you'll get tangled up in the ribs, which are springy and a right pain. You can make a real mess of someone's chest and still not stop him; it's a low-return shot, not something you want to muck around with in a serious battle.

'If you're fighting cavalry, of course, you've got the option of a thrust up under the ribs - also if you're kneeling to receive an infantry charge. As well as the heart, you've also got a clear shot at the liver and a big fat artery. Gut-shots are probably the easiest kind of thrust; but you'll be amazed at the amount of junk there is inside there that you've got to get through before you reach anything worthwhile. Also bear in mind that the stomach muscles convulse when they're cut, enough to move your shot off line. By the way; when you p.r.i.c.k a stomach, it goes pop as all the air comes rushing out; it'll startle the life out of you the first time you hear it, so be prepared for that.

'Actually, if you're thrusting you can do a lot worse than go for the arteries in the groin, the small of the back, upper arm, armpit, knee and so forth. Lay one of those open and you'll almost certainly have a kill; but please, always bear in mind the fact that bleeding to death takes its own sweet time, during which he's still armed and dangerous. Even if you've got him fair and square in a good place, always follow up, preferably with a big cut, just to make sure he ends up on the deck. Same goes for kidneys, lungs, all that stuff. If all you're interested in is killing, get a job in a slaughterhouse. If you want to be a soldier, concentrate on killing quickly.'

He paused for breath. Still got their attention? Good.

'Cutting, on the other hand,' he went on, 'is as much about shock as damage. Cut a man's hand off and suddenly he's not a threat any more, even if he lives to be a hundred. Remember, pain is your friend, it'll stop him trying to get you; a perfectly lethal thrust might not hurt enough to notice, and if a man doesn't know he's dead, he might not stop attacking you until it's too late. Now, the choicest cuts are to the head and neck; but don't fool about trying to chop the other man's head off when a nice crunching slash across the neck artery will do just as nicely. For one thing, while you're swinging your sword up for the really big hit, you're the next best thing to an open target yourself. Short, meaty cuts across bones are what bring home the bacon; so long as you stop him cold, you can always finish him off with the next one.

'Finally, people will tell you the thrust's quicker than the cut; maybe so, but that sounds to me like you're taking too big a swing. Get close first, then take your shot; use your feet to close up the gap, move your body and your arm at the same time, and you won't need to worry too much about slow cutting. Do it right and they'll never know what hit them. All right, any questions? '

There were questions, plenty of them and for the most part intelligent and informed. Once again Bardas reflected on what a pleasure it was to work with people who really cared about technique and craft. If only he'd had a few students of this calibre (instead of only one) when he was running his fencing school, perhaps it might have worked out a whole lot better.

Later that day, the first timber wagons rolled back into camp, and the tempo changed noticeably. In no time at all the lumber was unshipped and hauled to where it was needed, giving the engineers barely enough time to finish their designs. As he watched the teams of men dragging the heavy logs into position, he couldn't help remembering the spectacle of Temrai's men as they shifted lumber and built their trebuchets and catapults under the walls of the City. No matter which side you're on, there are few sights more inspiring than a large number of men working well together on a big, ambitious project; watching them lever and winch huge bulks of timber about as if they weighed nothing at all, even hoist them into the air on cranes and pulleys, is enough to make a man feel proud to be human. Is this how Temrai felt? he wondered. He'd have been ent.i.tled to, no question about that. It was odd; being back here, doing this sort of thing, was almost enough to make him feel young again.

Young and in charge, like Temrai against Perimadeia. Young and supremely confident, like Bollo starting to swing his hammer. Young and with a lifetime of opportunity ahead of him, like Bardas Loredan leading Maxen's army home from the wars. He thought for a moment about the young lad who'd briefly been his apprentice on Scona, when he'd been trying to make his living as a bowyer. He remembered what it had felt like, on the night of the Sack, twisting Temrai's arm behind his back with one hand, holding the cutting edge to his throat with the other. That had been one of the most intimate moments of his life.

As they worked, the soldiers of the Sons of Heaven sang the appropriate working songs, taking them on trust, as always. It must be wonderful, Bardas thought, to have that kind of faith; so comforting, so much easier, like a log running on rollers instead of being dragged along the ground. Trust, believe, and it'll make you young again - that's what a sense of purpose can do for you. If only there wasn't always some older, wiser man to hold a sharp edge to your throat and take the faith away, like Bardas Loredan during the Sack.

'Asking for trouble, I reckon,' Venart protested, yet again. He'd said it so many times that it was rapidly turning into a joke.

'We'll see,' someone replied. 'We've got them over the proverbial barrel. They need us; it's business, pure and simple.'

'They're late,' someone else commented. 'They've never been late before.'

In the Long Room of the Island's Chamber of Commerce, fifty or so representatives of the Island's Ship-Owners' a.s.sociation (founded a week previously) were waiting to meet with a delegation from the provincial office, on a matter (as the invitation to the meeting had phrased it) of some urgency and delicacy.

'It's hustling, that's what it is,' Venart persevered, 'and you know it as well as I do. You can call it what you like, but that's what it is.'

Runo Lavador, owner of seven ships, sat on the edge of the President's desk, swinging his legs like a small boy. 'All right,' he said, 'it's hustling. Perfectly legitimate business practice. We've got what they need - ships. They've got what we want - money. It's for the parties to the deal to make their own bargain.'

'We made a deal, though,' said one of the few people in the room who agreed with Venart. 'Going back on it - well, it doesn't seem too clever to me. We've got a pretty good deal already, if you ask me.'

Runo Lavador shrugged. 'If you don't want to be here,' he said, 'then by all means b.u.g.g.e.r off. n.o.body's forcing you to do anything. Besides, you simply don't understand the nature of the charter business. All along, they've been entirely at liberty to call it a day and walk away if they found a better deal somewhere else. They chose not to. Now we're making a choice; we want more money. They can still walk away, any time they want. To listen to you, anybody'd think we were holding a knife to their throats.'

The tall, heavy doors at the other end of the hall swung open, and the Sons of Heaven made their entrance. Hard not to think in terms of pageantry and theatre when a party of them entered a room; first, an honour guard of halberdiers in half-armour, then a secretary or two and a couple of lesser clerks carrying desks and chairs and ink-horns; then the delegates themselves, both of them a head taller than anybody else in their party, and scurrying behind them, three or four unspecified attandants, cooks or valets or personal librarians. Look out, Venart thought, here come the grown-ups. He hoped they weren't going to mind too much. They wouldn't, would they? After all, it was only money that was at stake here, and so far the Sons of Heaven had given the impression of valuing money the way sailors value seawater.

Cens Lauzeta, the fish-oil baron, was sitting in the President's chair. n.o.body could remember electing him chairman, but n.o.body minded very much if he wanted the job. He stood up and nodded politely as the delegates processed (no other word for it) down the hall and sat down at the far end of the long table.

'Good of you to spare the time to see us,' said Cens Lauzeta, sounding even more c.o.c.ky than usual (what was it about the fish-oil trade that brought out the boisterousness in people?). 'We represent the Island Ship-Owners' a.s.sociation'

'Excuse me,' interrupted one of the delegates. 'I don't seem to recall having heard of your organisation before.'

'I don't suppose you have,' Lauzeta replied cheerfully. 'We haven't been in existence for terribly long. Up till now, there hasn't been a need. But here we are; so, if it's all right with you, we might as well get on with the negotiations.'

'By all means,' replied the Son of Heaven. 'Perhaps you'd care to tell me what we're here to negotiate.'

Lauzeta smiled indulgently. 'Money,' he replied. 'So far, you've chartered ships belonging to our members - no complaints on that score, by the way, you've been perfectly straight with us and we've been straight with you. But now,' he went on, sitting on the arm of the President's chair, 'things are about to change. You're going to take our ships off to a war; we don't know how long this war's going to last - well, how could anybody know that? - we don't know when we're likely to get our ships back, or whether we'll get them back at all. No offence, my friend, but we're businessmen, and we've been hearing reports about the way this war's going that put a whole new perspective on the deal.'

'Is that so?' replied the delegate coolly. 'Please enlighten me.'

'If you like,' Lauzeta said. 'One column effectively wiped out; the colonel in command of another column killed in action; the enemy have mobilised and are on the move, taking the offensive - this isn't what we all had in mind when the deal was struck. Those invincible armies don't seem quite so invincible any more, and we think that changes things quite a bit.'

'I see,' said the Son of Heaven. 'But you're not disputing the fact that we have binding agreements with the members of your a.s.sociation?'

Lauzeta shook his head. 'Not the way we see it,' he said. 'What we're saying is, one of the a.s.sumptions on which the contracts were based has changed. I've spoken to some of our leading commercial lawyers and they all tell me the same thing. A contract's like a house; if the foundations collapse, the whole thing falls to the ground. As we see it, the contracts are null and void.'

The delegate raised an eyebrow. 'Really,' he said. 'As far as my layman's understanding of Imperial law goes-'

'Imperial law, maybe,' Lauzeta interrupted. 'But the charters were all signed here on the Island, so they're under the jurisdiction of Island law and Island courts; and I'm telling you, as of now the contracts are dead and buried. Fact.'

'An interesting line of argument,' said the delegate. 'In which case, a.s.suming your interpretation is valid, I suppose you want us to withdraw our men and return the ships.'

Lauzeta shook his head. 'By no means,' he said. 'That'd put a serious crimp in your plans, and none of us want that. No, we're quite happy to carry on with the agreement just so long as the agreed levels of payment are revised to take into account the likely additional time and risk. After all,' he went on in a rather more conciliatory tone, 'the last thing we want to do is fall out over this; the Island and the Empire have always been close-'

('No they haven't,' Eseutz Mesatges whispered in Venart's ear. 'Even with a following wind, it's a two-day journey.'> 'Shh,' Venart replied.) The delegate frowned and smiled at the same time. 'You want to proceed with the existing agreement, but you want more money. Is that what you're saying?'

Lauzeta nodded. 'Bluntly, yes,' he said. 'I think it's entirely reasonable to factor in an allowance for depreciation of goodwill and loss of business opportunities. For one thing, what do you think is happening to our regular business while our ships have been standing idle? We do have compet.i.tors, you know.'

The delegate conferred briefly with his colleague. 'How much more money do you want?' he asked.

Apparently, Cens Lauzeta hadn't been expecting that particular question; he opened his mouth and closed it again, and said nothing. The delegate raised an eyebrow.

'What we need to do,' Lauzeta said at last, 'is agree some sort of formula that'll allow us to work this out scientifically. I mean, I wouldn't want you to think we're just pulling a figure out of the air.'

'You mean,' the delegate replied, 'you want more money, but you don't know how much more money.' He stood up, and the rest of his entourage immediately did the same. 'Perhaps when you've thought of a figure you'd be kind enough to let me know. In the meantime, I'd be grateful if you could tell me whether we should continue loading our ships, or whether you want them unloaded again.'

'I-' Lauzeta didn't appear to have anything to say. There was a moment of embarra.s.sed silence; then Runo Lavador, who'd been sitting still and cringing quietly for most of the meeting, jumped to his feet. 'Probably it'd be best if you unloaded,' he said. 'I mean, until we've finalised this payment business-'

'Excuse me.' The delegate had spoken quite softly, but everybody in the room was looking at him. With a tone of voice like that, there wasn't really any need to shout. 'May I ask who you are, and what standing you have within the a.s.sociation?'

A faint mist of panic clouded Lavador's face; he dispelled it with a visible effort. 'I'm Runo Lavador,' he said. 'And I'm just an ordinary ship-owner, that's all. But I'm pretty sure I'm speaking for all of us. Isn't that right?' He looked round at his colleagues, none of whom moved an inch. 'I'm sure you understand,' he said.

The delegate looked at him for a count of three. 'Very well,' he said, and walked briskly out of the room, followed in no particular order by the rest of the party. Lauzeta waited till the doors closed behind them.

'Well, how was I supposed to know?' he said, before anyone else could say anything. 'And you weren't helping,' he added, glowering at Lavador. 'A right bunch of fools you made us look.'

'I made us look?'