Colours in the Steel (44 page)

Athli thought for a moment and suggested a couple of names; established advocates who picked and chose their work and charged high fees. ‘If you beat any of them,’ she went on, ‘you’d certainly make a name for yourself. And obviously, the Prosecutor’s always looking out for new advocates.’ She paused, not wanting to know the answer to the question she was minded to ask. ‘Why do you want to work for the Prosecutor, particularly? The money’s good but nothing special, you’d do better in commercial practice. In fact, being a woman you’ll probably find divorce would be a good field to be in.’

The girl shook her head, dislodging one of the combs from her hair; it fell on the table with a clatter. ‘Divorce is a waste of time,’ she said. ‘Thanks for those names; I’ll bear them in mind.’

Athli felt a great urge to go away, and decided to give in to it. ‘Well,’ she forced herself to say, ‘well done once again and the best of luck.’ She stood up. ‘Clearly all that extra tuition wasn’t wasted.’

The girl looked up sharply at that. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I intend to make sure it wasn’t. Goodbye.’

She said the word like a military officer saying
Dismissed
, and Athli walked away without looking back. She had decided not to say anything to Loredan; after all, he was through with all this, and he had a city to defend. Besides, she found she couldn’t even now remember the wretched girl’s name.

 

The enemy camp appeared under the walls of the city one morning like a mushroom, or a suspicious lump under one’s skin not previously noticed. Later, the Security Council decided that they must have sneaked their rafts downstream as far as the gorge where the river cut through the low hills, a mile or so from the fork. Then, during the night, they somehow managed to make the last mile in pitch darkness, land their gear and set up camp no more than a third of a mile from the Drovers’ Bridge; all in utter silence, setting up tents by feel without a sound or a gleam of light. Practice, the Council supposed, makes perfect, and for nomads pitching and breaking camp must be second nature. Nevertheless, it was an impressive achievement.

That was what was said in retrospect. When the first light of a grey and rather chilly day illuminated a vast expanse of ghostly grey and brown shapes apparently growing out of the low slopes on the left bank of the river, the city’s reaction was rather less analytical.

This time, however, there were no mobs or riots; not even the anticipated mad rush to the harbour that Loredan had carefully provided against in his first-stage plans. That was just as well; even his plans hadn’t covered the possibility of the enemy simply being there one morning. Instead, the city was quite unnervingly quiet, with groups of people standing out in the streets as if they were waiting for something to happen but had no idea what it was likely to be.

The first Loredan knew of it was when someone he didn’t know burst into the small, cold room in the second-city gatehouse that he’d been using as a bedroom since his return from the cavalry raid. He jerked awake and was scrabbling for the hilt of his sword when the intruder spoke.

‘We’ve got company,’ the man said.

Loredan forgot about the sword and concentrated on getting his eyes open. He’d been up late the night before going over some discrepancies in the Quartermaster’s accounts.

‘What?’ he mumbled. ‘What’s going on?’

‘They’re here. The enemy. They’re camped outside the gates. Sir,’ the man added as an afterthought. ‘You’re needed right away.’

Loredan swung his legs off the stone shelf that served him as a bed. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m Captain Doria of the change watch. With respect, sir, are you coming or not?’

Loredan studied him sourly through barely functional eyes. ‘All right, Captain,’ he said. ‘Hold your water just a minute while I get dressed. Whatever the enemy may have done to us, they don’t deserve to be greeted by the sight of me without my trousers on.’

As he rode down through the lower city, past endless faces staring up at him from every inch of pavement, he had the feeling of being late for some important ceremony that couldn’t proceed without him; his wedding, for example, or his funeral. He was aware that he hadn’t shaved, his hair was a mess and his clothes looked like they hadn’t been changed for a week (which was true). He got a stitch in his side climbing the bridgehouse tower, and arrived uncharacteristically short of breath.

‘All right,’ he panted, resting for a moment against the frame of a trebuchet. ‘What’s going on?’

Then he noticed that almost the entire Council was there; the Prefect, the Lord Lieutenant, the clutter of officeholders that he hadn’t even bothered to sort out in his mind; even Alexius and the Chief Governor of the Fencing Schools.
Always the same
, he muttered to himself,
the General’s always the last to know
.

They made room for him on the rampart, and he looked out. At first, he took the grey shapes for low mist, such as sometimes drifted up from the river; but it was the wrong time of year and besides, he’d seen the clan’s tents before.

‘Well, well,’ he said, very quietly. ‘How did that get there, I wonder?’

The bridgehouse Captain told him what had happened in a low voice, and Loredan nodded. ‘Possible,’ he replied. ‘A good night’s work, if that’s the way it was. I’m impressed.’

‘We think it’s the only way they could have done it,’ the Captain murmured. ‘The implications...’

‘Quite.’ Loredan nodded. ‘By the way, why are we all whispering?’

Actually, it seemed reasonable enough; don’t make any loud noises, you might wake them up. ‘People in the city are saying it can only have been done by magic,’ said the Prefect, with a quick scowl at the Patriarch. ‘We’re putting a stop to that kind of talk, of course; terrible effect on morale.’ He paused and gazed out at the awesome sight in front of him; from his expression, it was quite possible that the Prefect subscribed to the magic theory. ‘I shall want an explanation of how this was allowed to happen,’ he added. Loredan ignored him.

‘Has it occurred to anybody to ask them what they want?’ he said.

‘I’d have thought that was obvious,’ the Lord Lieutenant drawled. ‘I don’t believe they’re here to try and sell us carpets.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ Loredan replied evenly. ‘At the very least, we might get a good look at this remarkable young chief of theirs. I’d be interested in seeing what he looks like.’ He stopped talking and rubbed his chin, feeling the bristles against the ball of his thumb. ‘Talking of which, has anybody actually seen one of them yet? Looks to me like they’re still in bed.’ He looked round. ‘Where’s Garantzes? Is he here?’

The Chief Engineer stepped forward. Damn it, how come he was looking so spruce and military at this unholy hour?

‘Chief Engineer,’ he went on, ‘how far away would you say those tents are from here?’

The engineer frowned. ‘Six hundred yards,’ he replied, ‘possibly a fraction less. Well out of range, if that’s what you were thinking.’

‘Right.’ Loredan nodded. ‘Pity. Still, we might as well say good morning, while we’re here.’ He beckoned to the bridgehouse Captain. ‘Get that new trebuchet wound up, will you? Quick as you like. And someone send down for a twenty-five-pound stone and one of those big wicker baskets with straps on the lid.’

Trying to aim an underweight missile from a trebuchet over twice its normal operational range wasn’t an experiment Loredan had bothered to conduct. Fortunately, the camp was a large target. The stone flew from the hemp and rawhide sling, shedding the basket (which was only there to make it big enough to fly cleanly out of the sling) and rising almost impossibly high before plummeting down and landing destructively on an empty wagon just inside the extreme western edge of the camp.

The effect was quite satisfying. The thump and crash brought men running from the nearby tents; a pity they were too far away for their faces to be visible, but the way they stood for a moment before running off again in all directions was eloquent enough. They had been confident that they were well out of range, and here was evidence that they weren’t. It was quite some time before it occurred to them that it had been a fairly small stone, and there hadn’t been any others, whereupon they came out again.
Now, with luck, they’ll go and wake the chief
, Loredan said to himself.
We might even find out where his tent is. I don’t see why he should have a nice lie-in if I can’t
.

 

‘Temrai,’ gasped a voice in his dream, ‘they’ve started shooting.’

He woke up, lifted his head, opened his eyes. It wasn’t a dream any more; there was a young lad he didn’t recognise standing half-in and half-out of the tent flap. ‘What do you mean, shooting?’ he asked blearily. ‘And who the hell let me go to sleep? There’s so much I ought to be...’

‘They’re throwing rocks into the
camp
,’ the boy interrupted frantically. ‘From that big tower over the bridge. I saw it with my own eyes.’

Temrai was up out of his chair in a matter of seconds. ‘That’s impossible,’ he said. ‘We’re well out of range. They can’t have anything that powerful, surely.’

The boy led the way. Already the place was like an ants’ nest, just after the first slosh of boiling water has hit it. The scurrying people stopped in their tracks when they saw Temrai coming, and fell ominously silent.
Gods, they’re blaming me
, he thought, quickening his pace.
But it’s still impossible. Nothing could pitch a two hundredweight block of stone over six hundred yards; it’d have to be a trebuchet, and you couldn’t make one with an arm strong enough to bear the counterweight, not to mention the devastating stresses on the frame. The thing would have to be as tall as a mountain; you’d never find trees tall enough to make it from
.

‘There,’ the boy said excitedly, and Temrai saw that he was pointing at a wagon. It wasn’t exactly an inspiring sight; one side was splintered, an axle was cracked and the rear wheel on that side was missing a couple of spokes.

‘Well?’ Temrai said.

‘There!’ the boy repeated. Temrai looked more closely, and saw that there was a small rock partially buried in the ground beside it. For a moment he stood looking at it, wondering if there might be a connection. Then he realised what had happened.

‘Is that all?’ he said, relieved.

Everyone was looking at him.

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘just look at it. It’s nothing more than a pebble, compared to proper trebuchet shot. Think, will you? It takes twenty minutes to wind those things up, and the best they could do with stones that size would be pick us off one by one. They’d all be old men before they did us any significant damage.’

They carried on looking at him. Nobody actually said it -
Yes, but suppose I’m the one the next rock hits
- but they didn’t need to. Temrai went closer, picked the rock up and dropped it again. Most of all he was thinking about what he’d just said; significant damage, a military expression meaning thousands of dead people rather than just hundreds. It wasn’t all that long ago that one old woman being swept away when they crossed a river constituted a national disaster.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘here’s what we’ll do.’

 

The second shot of the war sailed over the city wall, clearing the rampart by a few inches, dropped in the gutter and was buried in horse manure up to its blue and white duckfeather fletchings. It was an arrow from the bow of a fast-moving mounted archer, riding a zigzag pattern directly under the arms of the wall-mounted engines, right up to the causeway opposite the drawbridge. He’d loosed his arrow at the gallop, wheeled flamboyantly round and hurtled back. Nobody shot at him, loosed off a catapult or even called him a rude name; the towers of the city seemed as indifferent to his escapade as the trees of a forest are to the scamperings of a squirrel.

‘What was all that in aid of?’ somebody asked, breaking the silence.

‘Bravado,’ someone else replied, picking the arrow fastidiously out of the dung by its nock and handing it at arm’s length to a clerk from the Office of Records. ‘Go and put that in a museum somewhere,’ he said with distaste. ‘One of these days it might be worth something, if you wash the horseshit off it first.’

Loredan nodded. ‘First round to us, anyway,’ he said. ‘We win the opening exchange of melodramatic and futile gestures. Now we’ve got their attention, let’s go and see if they want to talk.’

While the Security Council were bickering about who should make up the embassy, things started to happen down on the plain. A line of huge rafts appeared on the river, each one tying up as close to the camp as it could get. The rafts were laden with stacks of timber; you didn’t need to be an engineer to recognise the components of torsion engines.

Somebody on the wall noticed, and the word was passed down to Loredan, who left the squabbling diplomats and scampered up the stairs to the nearest tower.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘We can do something about that. Run to the harbour and get three light cutters ready for immediate action. We can sink those rafts where they stand; or rather,’ he added, ‘we can tow a couple upstream and scuttle them, so the river’ll be blocked. We’ll see how they get on if they’ve got to carry all that stuff five miles on their backs.’

He’d hardly finished speaking when someone tugged his sleeve and pointed. One of the rafts had pulled in on the right-hand bank, not far upstream of the bridge causeway. As Loredan watched, the rafters unshipped one end of a thick, heavy chain. Other men from the same raft set about sawing through a substantial oak tree that grew beside the water.
Hell
, Loredan muttered to himself,
they’re ahead of me again. They’re going to block the river off with that chain so we can’t get at the rafts
. ‘Tell ’em to forget about the cutters,’ he called down the stairs. ‘These people are brighter than I thought.’

 

The embassy rode out across the drawbridge; ten members of the Council escorted by thirty heavy cavalry, with a captain of the guard riding ahead with the flag of truce.