Academic Exercises (42 page)

I’ve written it all up in proper military language in despatches, copied herewith. I would also be enclosing herewith my formal resignation from the governorship, only my original supply of purple ink’s been stolen and the stuff you sent me has dried up into a solid block, which has proved unbreakable even to strong men with sledgehammers. Please can I come home now, before I get any more of our people needlessly killed? Please?

His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun
,
father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, to Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, greetings.

His Majesty advises Phormio to expect the arrival of reinforcements, namely two (2) divisions of dragoons and one (1) division of auxiliary cavalry.

Don’t you fucking dare. Things are not going well for me here. The bureaucrats and the old money are dancing rings round us, because we don’t know our way about in their precious systems, and I’ve been having to field questions in Senate about frontier security. Surely by now it’s apparent to his Majesty that the situation requires the firm hand of a seasoned professional soldier. If you quit on me, they’ll make me assign some steelneck from the Phocas or the Bringas, and you know what he’ll do the moment he takes command? That’s right. He’ll march on the City and I’ll be dead. You bloody well stay where you are, or we’re all done for.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to fly off the handle. I sympathise, I really do. But it’s pretty desperate right now, and basically I’m hanging on by my fingernails. Yours is the only active military zone; therefore, the only place where they can legitimately post a fighting general. So; what I need most of all is you, my best friend, who I know I can unreservedly trust, to stay put, make it look like you’re doing something, and hold things together until I can deal with Antilochus and the First Families and their huge entourage of subsidiary arseholes. All right?

Please?

Look, the troops I’m sending you are pretty damn good. They’re my father’s veterans; for some reason best known to themselves, they seem to like me, or at least they like me better than Eugenius Bringas. Also, they’re hard as nails, the officers aren’t just somebody’s nephews, and so long as you let them know you’re open to suggestions, if you’re about to do something bloody stupid, they’ll tell you. Also, the auxiliaries are Aram no Vei—a bunch of murdering savages, yes, but
our
murdering savages. Just pay them on time, and they’ll kill anything that moves on this earth.

Talking of which; how are you off for money? It’s a bit tight right now—the Treasury’s playing silly buggers about collecting the property tax, to starve me of funds—but I’ve got Dad’s reserve and uncle Zeno’s reserve and a few other bits and pieces they don’t know anything about. Sometimes it’s good that all my family were basically a bunch of thieves and pirates. As the last man standing, I inherited their stashes.

Sorry about the ink. I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced they put plaster in it, to stop me writing to anybody. Bastards. Anyway, the one (1) pound enclosed herewith is my unofficial homebrew, knocked up by my pal the forger. He’s a treasure, that man. He’s going to teach me how to lift seals next.

While I think of it, a few messages from the rest of the gang. Menestheus says to stop whining; you should try doing his job. Aristaeus asked me to remind you about that time in second year when we stole the Dean’s post-chaise, dismantled it and put it back together again on the roof of the Old Library. He reckons that if we could do that and get away with it, running the Empire should be a piece of piss. Strato is looking about for a copy of
The Bedchamber Dialogues
for you (the seventh edition, with the full-page pictures) so at least you’ll have something to read.

Having them here—and you there, of course—is the only thing that’s keeping me going. I really do miss Gorgias, though. He’d know what to do.

I remember you saying to me once, when we were carrying that wardrobe up the back stairs at Chairmakers’ Street; it’s bloody hard work being your friend, Nico. Well, you were right about that. I hope I’ve never pretended otherwise. All I can say is, thanks; for the past, and for now.

You will stay, won’t you?

Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, to His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun
,
father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, greetings.

Phormio begs to inform His Majesty that the reinforcements have arrived and are being deployed in accordance with standing orders pending new developments.

Tell you what, this moonshine purple ink of yours is a major improvement on the official rubbish. Whatever you’re paying your pet crook, double it.

Tell Strato thanks ever so much for the book. Tell him I especially appreciate it because it’s evidently his own personal copy. At least I assume it is. That would account for the curious stains.

All right, I’ll stay. Actually, things are looking up, ever since you sent me those lunatics. I’ve always been scared stiff of soldiers, but these guys are real headcases. I mean that in a nice way, of course, and so far they’ve been behaving themselves, more or less. The main thing is to keep them away from garlic. It does funny things to them.

Seriously; what I’ve got in mind is a string of rapid-response units, three hundred dragoons and a hundred Aram no Vei, right across the frontier, with the provincial regulars to stop up the gaps. Meanwhile, I’ve been spending your money like you wouldn’t believe. Contrary to what it says in the briefings, it is possible to suborn the frontier elders into actions they consider dishonourable, just so long as you suborn them a
lot
. As a result, I think I may be able to find out a bit more about what’s going on. The frontier villages must know something; the bad guys can’t just flit backwards and forwards across the line without anybody seeing anything. You can break the news to Menestheus; tell him that my quarterly accounts will be a masterpiece of fiction unsurpassed since the golden age of Vesani literature. While we’re on the subject; can you let me have HS 300,000 from your dad’s rainy-day fund? Well, you did offer.

Nicephorus to Phormio; greetings

Thanks

Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, to His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun
,
father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, greetings.

Phormio begs to inform His Majesty that he has engaged the enemy and won a minor victory. Despatches herewith.

I don’t know why people make such a fuss about this soldiering thing. It’s a piece of piss.

No, really. It’s all in the book. If you happen to have your copy handy, turn to volume II, chapter 16, paragraphs 36b to 42e, and that’s more or less what happened.

Yes, but I’m not going to leave it there, because I want to boast about it. I was actually there, you see. I watched the whole thing.

I’d been brooding quite bit on how the bad guys had suckered me so easily, and then it struck me. Quinctillus, I thought (to be precise,
On War,
ch.7, 98f-101d). Always attack your enemy at his strongest point. You remember how dumb we always thought that was; but it’s not.

Their biggest strength, I reasoned, is my weakness. Namely, my not having a clue; that’s their greatest asset. So, all right, I thought. Use that. Because they made a monkey out of me so easily last time, they’ll happily believe I’m capable of making further and yet more catastrophic bog-ups. Only this time, I’ll make one on purpose, and be ready for them.

It took a bit of setting up, of course. The bait had to be money, the pay convoy. It’s become fairly obvious that they’ve got sources of information here in the governor’s office. They always seem to know what I’m going to do, usually before I do it. So, use that too.

So; I told my senior clerks that I’d asked you to send me the HS 300,000. I left it at that; let the information trickle down to the spies, it’s more natural. The next step was the clever bit.

You remember Clearchus? Tall, thin, miserable kid in the year above us. Always being ragged about his dad being in trade. Well, I happened to remember that among other things, his dad supplied ironmongery to the military; nails, bolts, hinges. So I wrote to Clearchus, nice chatty letter, asking him what his best possible price was for forty barrels of sixteen-gauge hot drawn wire might be, COD Tremissis City. He wrote back, typical snotty attitude; he wasn’t anything to do with the family business, he was a successful and highly sought-after lawyer specialising in religious law (I knew that already), but he’d passed on my letter to his father, who’d be in touch. Dad wrote back—much more friendly—quoting a price. We haggled; in fact, I got one hell of a deal, I surprised myself; who’d have thought I’d be good at trade? Anyhow, we agreed terms and I confirmed the order and sent him a money warrant, and we fixed up a delivery date.

Which was, of course, the whole object of the exercise. You see, I told Clearchus’ dad a whole load of lies about the main roads being liable to get blocked by snow this time of year, and the subsidiary roads being iffy on account of bandits; basically, I gave him a delivery route that’d take his carts within spitting distance of the frontier, very close to where I’d had very promising reports of enemy activity (your bribe money at work). Then I told my clerks, as casually as anything, that I’d arranged a convoy of military supplies, coming in on such and such a date via the Leuca Pass.

Now, because I never do anything like that, sully my hands with the irksome business of day-to-day materiel procurement, that put the spies on notice that I was up to something. Forty barrels of something heavy, loaded on eight carts; hardly catapult science to figure out what that something heavy was likely to be, given that I was known to be expecting a huge sum of money from central government.

This is where your dad’s lunatic dragoons were so important. I had to take the chance that the bad guys’ infiltration network hasn’t been able to get to them yet. To be on the safe side, I waited till we had a routine staff meeting, at the end of which I told the dragoon colonel to stay behind, because I wanted to discuss some disciplinary issues (plausible enough, right?). Instead, I told him exactly what I’d got planned. He was to be on hand with a whole division, plus half the Aram no Vei. I left it up to him to figure out how he’d manage that without letting the cat out of the bag. As it turned out, he had no trouble; simply didn’t tell them about it until an hour before departure time; told them to get three days’ rations and saddle up; didn’t tell them where they were going until they were practically there. Apparently, dragoons will stand for that kind of shit.