Academic Exercises (43 page)

I wasn’t going to go along, but in the end I couldn’t resist. It was sheer impulse. I saw the dragoons forming up in the barracks square, I grabbed my hat, the
Art of War
and a pair of boots and ran out after them. They were very kind; lent me a horse (horrible creature; foul temper, mad as a tanner; when I kicked up a fuss about it later, they said they’d chosen it for me because it was white, and a commander-in-chief should always ride a white stallion. Bastards.) and off I went.

This is supposed to be a happy story, so we’ll pass over the torments and miseries of getting there. Suffice it to say, I’ve been paying well over the odds for really good quality goose-down cushions lately. Anyhow, we got there, very fast indeed. I left the map-reading to the colonel and his people, so we didn’t get lost. Actually, I tried to leave everything to them, but they weren’t having that. Protocol. If the commander-in-chief’s present, he’s got to command; junior officers can only advise. So, the first thing I said when we stopped and got off our horses was, “Advise me.” Which, your second cousin be praised, they did.

The biggest laugh I got out of the whole business was when Colonel Bessas (good man, that; keep an eye on him) opened his saddlebag and took out, guess what, a very old and battered copy of
The Art of War
. Never left his tent without it, he told me. Snap, I said, and showed him mine. Better still, he’s only got the seventh edition. There were so many bookmarks in it, it’s practically twice the size it should be. Anyway, we looked it up and there it was, diagrams and clear instructions, so that was what we did.

And it worked. Bugger me, Nico, it worked. It’s just like chess, only a bit more straightforward, and you have to send runners and despatch riders to make the moves. Other than that; you sit there on your horse, Nico, assuming you can persuade the loathsome thing to keep still, and you look down from a high place, like you’re a god or something (I’m sure you know the feeling), and you try and find what you’re looking at on the map. The little-kid’s-doodle trees on the parchment sort of blend into the real but tiny trees you can see in the distance. In your mind’s eye you flatten the hills down into the contour-lines; you learn the trick of ignoring one dimension. You find the river; and guess what, it’s exactly where it’s supposed to be. It’s roughly the same relationship as between fresh and dried figs; the same, but flat and neat and all the juice drained out. A map is a whole desiccated world, once you’ve learned to see it in those terms.

It’s also a bit like the theatre; the theatre as seen from a very high place, like the cheapskates who climb the trees in Victory Avenue so they can watch the play without paying. Of course, they’re too far away to hear a word the actors are saying. A general’s a bit like that. He’s a cheapskate too (unless he’s a steelneck fighting general, in the thick of it with his men; not me). He won’t pay the ticket money, namely the risk of getting stabbed or hacked or trampled to death, so he has to perch in his tree, and he never hears the words. He has to follow the whole thing in dumb-show. But the cheapskates in the trees get to see far more. They can see backstage as well as what goes on in front of the curtain. So; I saw the carts trundling along the road, way off to the left, not a care in the world (naturally, the drivers weren’t in on the secret; security); simultaneously, I could see the bad guys, just little insect shapes moving about just inside the tree-line. And, because I knew exactly where to look, I could see our boys, keeping absolutely still, like chess-pieces, or those bizarre porcelain armies your illustrious ancestors used to be buried with, to guard them in the next world. There was a moment when they were all moving at the same time—carts going trundle up the road, bad guys sneaking through the woods, good guys creeping down the hillside; none of them could actually see any of the others, but I could see them all; they were all there because of me, because I’d brought them all there to come together in one small place at one specific time, to achieve the result I wanted. It’s the weirdest feeling, Nico. In one sense, you’re the Angel of Death. People are going to
die
because of you, and isn’t that the most appalling thing imaginable? On the other hand, it’s all perfectly all right, because the bad guys are the enemy, it’s like killing rats, not homicide but pesticide; and some of the good guys will have to get killed too, because that’s the price we pay. Well, not you and me personally. Just soldiers. It’s what they’re paid for.

Way off on a mountain, of course, you don’t get to see the detail. You don’t buy a ticket, you aren’t entitled to see blood, and smashed bones, and hands and feet cut off, and dying men ignored because they’re no longer relevant. In a way, I almost admire the fighting generals; except I have a nasty feeling they enjoy it.

Be that as it may. It worked just fine. The bad guys never knew what hit them. A double volley of arrows from the Aram no Vei, followed by a full-on heavy cavalry charge. Best estimates say there were about a hundred and fifty of them (which suggests that robbing the pay convoy was only part of their mission; some village somewhere got lucky), of whom we killed a hundred and nine. I’d told the colonel that taking live prisoners was top priority, followed by securing dead bodies. That didn’t work out. They don’t surrender. Those who were too badly hurt to run had their throats cut by their friends. According to our men, quite a few of them got killed because they stayed behind to finish off the wounded when they could easily have made their escape. I can’t understand how anybody could do that.

The whole performance lasted a matter of minutes. If I’d gone off into the bushes for a shit just before the carts first came into view, I’d have missed nearly all of it. It’s hard to believe so much can happen, so much really drastic stuff, in so short a space of time, in such a small area. Four hundred yards away to the east, while the fighting was fiercest, I saw two deer amiably grazing; not a clue there was anything untoward going on just over the ridge.

Anyhow. We now have a hundred and nine dead bodies. (Our losses; six, of whom two were Aram no Vei. Oh, and the cart crews, unfortunately.) I had them unload the carts and load up the corpses, exactly as they were, and we lugged them back here for a closer look.

You remember the story about the philosopher; the more I think about it, the harder it gets? Well, quite. The more data we get on the bad guys, the less we know about them. Their kit, for example. Seventy-four of the corpses had the same pattern of basic, entry-level scale-mail jerkins and half-onion pot helmets. I’m no expert (I’m sending examples to you so your people can make a proper analysis) but I believe that stuff’s made in Rhangabe, the big mass-production factories, for sale on the open market. It may be possible to trace the actual batch numbers from the ordnance marks, in which case you may be able to find out who the actual buyers were. The rest of them had standard government issue, just like our men except the crests, unit and rank badges had been cut off—isn’t that standard practice for decommissioned stuff sold as surplus? Again, your experts may be able to find something useful. It’s the best lead we’ve got.

As for the men themselves; well, they aren’t foreigners. Not overseas foreigners, anyhow. I haven’t been to look at them myself, but I’m told they could be anybody; locals, Northerners from over the border, or recruited anywhere in the Empire north of Uncia. I’m getting the village headmen down to look at the bodies to see if they recognise any faces. Nobody here knows any of them.

Well, that’s about it. I sent the carts back for the wire, by the way. I’ll need it for the wall I’m building; right the way across the Seclera valley, just in case that’s where they’ve been coming in and out. Ten-foot high earth bank with matching ditch, topped off with pallisades and post-and-wire fences, to slow up a direct assault. The idea is, forward observation patrols see the bad guys coming and send word to the nearest rapid response unit, who zoom up and man the wall before the bad guys reach it. It’ll never work, of course. The real idea is to discourage the bad guys and make them choose another entry/exit point; and we’ll see them doing it and be ready.

Like I said; this soldiering is the proverbial slice of pudding. It’s better than work any day.

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 congratulates Phormio on his success. Preliminary results of the examination of the armour and other effects recovered from the dead insurgents herewith. The plan to construct a barrier approved and applauded.

Years ago, before I even met you and the rest of the gang, I saw a man killed. He was one of the builders working on the roof at our old house, and the scaffolding platform he was standing on gave way. I was watching out of my window at the time, and I vividly remember seeing it happen. One moment there was this little man, standing on a platform, doing something with nails and a hammer. Then the platform shifted and broke away from the wall; and I laughed, because it looked just like one of those slapstick routines in the circus. The man was so surprised; he did an enormous double-take, just like the clowns do, and grabbed wildly and caught hold of one of the brackets holding up the guttering. Well, of course he did, I thought. That’s what happens. That’s what’s so funny. I was absolutely sure he’d clamber up the bracket, pulling a big funny face, and then he’d haul himself up onto the roof, do the big oversize dusting-himself-down gesture, and then move on to the next part of the routine. But he didn’t. He struggled and struggled to get his leg over the bracket, but then his fingers just let go, and he fell; and he wriggled in the air, like a fly caught in a web, and then he hit the ground, and he bounced just a little bit, and ended up sprawling all over the place. I didn’t understand. I stood there thinking, no, that’s not right, he was supposed to climb back up again (and then the plank he was on would shift and throw him, or a hoist full of bricks would swing round and hit him on the head, or something equally diverting). It was wrong, like the sun starting to come up and then changing its mind and setting again, in the east. I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget that. It was the moment when I decided that death was a really bad, wrong thing, about as bad as it could get.

Recently, I had to sign a death warrant; my first. They put it on my desk along with a load of other stuff—minor charters, land grants, proceedings of the House for my approval, and this other bit of paper, that said a man had to be killed. I sat there staring at it, with my pen dribbling ink up my sleeve. A clerk asked me if anything was wrong and I just turned and looked at him, and he backed away and left me to it.

Of course, the man in question had to be executed. He was a nasty piece of work—murder, rape, armed robbery—but he was a nobleman’s son, so it needed my signature. I simply couldn’t do it. My arm wouldn’t move. I thought, scribbling my name on this bit of paper will kill someone; well, don’t do it, then, that’s obvious enough. But it had to be done, and eventually I did it. Believe it or not, I closed my eyes as I signed. I went around the rest of the day in a daze; people had to repeat everything they said to me, and I couldn’t grasp the simplest thing I was told.

So what? It’s like the old argument about eating meat; if all the city people had to kill and skin their own food, everybody’d be a vegetarian. But that’s not true. A few weeks of living on nothing but greens, and they’d find it in themselves to get the job done. They’d do what I did; they’d make an effort of will and do it. I felt afterwards like I’d cut out a part of myself, or blinded a third eye. I felt smaller, less smart, reduced. But the next time, I won’t make such a meal out of it. Probably I’ll shudder and feel bad, but I’ll just sign the bloody thing and have done with it. That’s what we do, and it’s amazing what you can accustom yourself to. Like the very first time you taste wine or beer, and it’s revolting, and you think, people drink this stuff for fun?

I’ve made damned sure everybody everywhere’s heard about your success. I even considered raising a statue or having a special issue of coins minted, but I suppose that’d be premature. But a least it’s shut the mouths of the Bringas in the House, and I’m sleeping a great deal easier. It goes without saying, I’m so grateful. I knew I could rely on you.

Neatly done, too; the stuff with the wire was pure Charisticus; exactly what Xanthus the Fox would’ve done (is that where you got the idea from? Go on, you can tell me.) And to think you were talking about packing it in and coming home. You idiot.

Now, to business. We’ve learned a lot from that armour and stuff, though I can’t see that it gets us anywhere, at least not yet. You were right about the commercial stuff. It was made in Rhangabe, at the Strength & Honour factory, the second biggest armoury in the city. They’re a perfectly legitimate concern; in fact, I’m their biggest customer. They make basic equipment which we ship to the buffer states in the East as military aid. Once it gets there, of course, anything can happen; the local chieftains give it away as presents to their retainers, or the grand vizier intercepts it, tells his boss the ship sank, and then sells the stuff through intermediaries, or it’s used to fit out mercenary companies, who neglect to give it back or keep it against arrears of pay. That’s before it gets used, of course. Most of the armour in the trade is, of course, battlefield pickups. I didn’t know this, but one of the biggest companies quoted on the Exchange is the Philargyrus Brothers; they employ fifteen thousand free men and eight thousand slaves, as at close of business yesterday their ordinary shares stood at HS 70, and their main business is going round battlefields stripping the dead. Where they can’t get their own people in, they buy the stuff from local freelances—usually grim old women and orphan kids; it’s one of the few ways you can make a living if you haven’t got land in the North-East and the South. The Philargyrus company’s the biggest dealer, but there’s a dozen other major players, plus a whole crowd of small independents. A lot of the stuff they pick up just goes for scrap, but anything that’s serviceable or can be cost-effectively repaired goes straight back on the open market. The Philargyrus aren’t too bad, actually; in return for the plunder concession (which they negotiate with both sides in advance) they undertake to look after the wounded and bury the dead, and they do a pretty good job. The local freelances are much more likely to cut the throats of anybody they find still alive, just because it’s easier to strip a body if it’s not wriggling about.