Colours in the Steel (45 page)

‘I suppose they know what a white flag means,’ muttered the Lord Lieutenant nervously. ‘We know what it means, but do they?’

‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ the Prefect muttered back. ‘You’d better ask Loredan, he’s the one who knows these people.’

Loredan pretended he hadn’t heard; let them worry, it might encourage them to keep quiet while he tried to parley. Not that he had much hope of success. It didn’t seem likely that this large and splendidly equipped army had come all this way and gone to all this trouble just to negotiate more favourable tariffs on imported manufactures. As far as he was concerned, there was only one thing to be achieved, but it was quite possibly the key to the defence of the city. He wanted to see the other man.

Because the enemy you’ve seen is the least of your problems.

The approach of the embassy caused a stir in the camp, where the clan was only just calming itself down after the shock of Loredan’s pebble. Another boy - a different one this time - came running full tilt to the landing area, where Temrai was going over the unloading routines with the men he’d put in charge.

‘Horsemen,’ the boy said, thereby gaining the attention of everyone present. ‘Forty of them, heading this way.’

Uncle Anakai broke the silence. ‘Either they’re being mean with their resources today, or they want to talk,’ he said. ‘Are they carrying a white flag?’

The boy looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘They’ve got a standard, I think, but I didn’t notice what colour.’

‘A white flag means they want to talk,’ Temrai explained. ‘It’s some sort of primitive Perimadeian belief - a bit of old shirt tied to a stick makes you arrowproof. One of these days I’d love to test it scientifically.’

Uncle Anakai grinned. ‘Are you going to talk to them?’ he asked. ‘There doesn’t seem much point to me.’

Temrai, who had been crouching on his knees drawing a diagram in the mud with a stick, stood up and wiped his hands off on his trousers. ‘On the contrary, Uncle An,’ he said. ‘This is a stroke of luck I hadn’t expected. It gives us a chance to take a good look at who we’re up against.’

One of the engineers raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean that’s their leaders out there? Why don’t we kill ’em now? Take out their entire high command before the battle starts.’

Temrai shook his head. ‘And then we’ll be back where we were, fighting against generals we know nothing about. No, let’s go and talk to them, get an idea of how their minds work. Best behaviour, everyone. Remember, ears open and mouths shut.’

The two parties met just in front of the camp. Not to be outdone, Temrai had brought with him fifteen counsellors, fifty horsemen and three white flags, hastily manufactured out of captured bedlinen. At the last moment, he nudged his cousin Kasadai in the ribs and whispered, ‘You be me, all right?’

‘What?’

‘Pretend you’re me. Don’t want them to know who I am. All right?’

Kasadai shrugged. ‘You’re the boss. What shall I say if they ask me things?’

‘Whatever you like. Thanks, Kas.’ Temrai dropped back, shifted his otterskin cap a little further down over his face and let Kasadai ride to the head of the party.

As the two groups converged, Loredan spurred ahead, dropped his reins and folded his arms across his chest. ‘All right,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘Which one of you monkeys is in charge here?’

After only a tiny moment’s hesitation, Kasadai rode forward. He cleared his throat. ‘I am Temrai Tai-me-Mar,’ he said impressively, ‘son of Sasurai. What do you want?’

Loredan smiled at him contemptuously. ‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘You’re too old. The new chief’s a snot-nosed kid, everyone knows that. Must be you, the one wearing a dead rat on his head. Come over here where we can talk without bellowing.’

After a long embarrassed silence Temrai rode forward. ‘I’m Temrai,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

Loredan squinted at him. ‘I know you from somewhere,’ he said. ‘Hopeless with names, but faces I don’t forget. Got it; you’re that clumsy kid from the arsenal, the one who bust my sign.’

Temrai nodded slightly, his eyes as cold as steel in winter. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I remember you, too. I’m pleased to see my enemies have a drunk for a general.’

Loredan grinned broadly. ‘That’s a good one,’ he said. ‘I must remember that. Anyway, enough small talk. We’ll let you withdraw in good order on two conditions. One, you burn those contraptions you’ve got over there before you go. Two, you pay me what you owe me for my sign. Deal?’

He was trying to maintain eye contact, stare the other man down; but it wasn’t easy. Just then, he’d have preferred it if Temrai had been looking at him down a sword blade, even if he’d been unarmed himself. He’d have known where he stood. But the boy’s eyes were painfully steady, as unwavering as that head-case girl’s sword-tip that night in the Schools.

‘I don’t forget faces either,’ Temrai said at last. ‘Since you won’t do me the courtesy of telling me your name, I shall just have to remember your face. I hope we’ll meet again.’

Loredan yawned. ‘I’m going to have to take that as a no, I think,’ he replied. ‘Pity. You haven’t a hope in hell, and an awful lot of your people are going to die. Not that I care a stuff about that; but some of mine’ll get hurt too, and I’d rather have prevented that, if I could. Ah, well, on your head be it.’

‘Accepted,’ Temrai said.

‘One last thing, though,’ Loredan went on, ‘since I’ve got you here and you’ll probably run away before we capture you, so we may not meet again - out of interest, why are you doing this?’

Temrai stared at him for a long time before answering. ‘It’s personal,’ he said.

‘Personal? That’s it? You’re leading your tribe to certain death because you’re miffed with us about something?’

Temrai nodded. ‘That’s about it,’ he said. ‘Actually, I’m grateful to you for reminding me. I was beginning to ask myself the same question; now I find I can remember the answer.’

Loredan pulled his horse’s head round. ‘Be like that, then,’ he said. ‘See if I care. You still owe me for my sign.’

‘You’ll get what’s owing to you,’ Temrai said. ‘I’ll see to that myself.’

To his credit, the City Prefect waited until they were out of earshot of Temrai’s party before he launched into his attack.

‘What in hell’s name did you think you were playing at?’ he hissed furiously. ‘If that’s your idea of diplomacy—’

‘It was a gambit,’ Loredan replied mildly. ‘An aggressive opening, like taking guard in the City fence. I found out what I wanted to know.’

‘I’m so pleased,’ the Prefect replied. ‘Perhaps you’d care to share this priceless intelligence with the rest of us, because I’m damned if I can see what was achieved back there. And what was all that nonsense about owing you for a sign?’

Loredan smiled wanly. ‘All perfectly true,’ he sighed. ‘And that’s five quarters I won’t see again in a hurry. You want to know what I’ve learnt? I’ll tell you. First, there’s no traitor who’s been selling arsenal secrets to the enemy; six months or so ago, that kid was working in the arsenal as a swordsmith. Now we know why. I guess we can say we taught him all he knows.’

The Prefect started to say something, but didn’t. Loredan nodded.

‘Second,’ he said, ‘that boy is clever. Grown up a lot, too; well, I suppose becoming chief of the clan might do that to a kid. Anybody who’s capable of carrying away the full specifications of all our major military engines in his head and then getting a tribe of nomads who’ve never done anything like it before to build a collection of engines like theirs is clearly not someone to be taken lightly. Now
that’s
justified this trip on its own.’

The Prefect bit his lip, and nodded. ‘I agree,’ he said.

‘Good. Now, third. Here’s a history lesson for you. Twelve years ago, Maxen attacked the chief’s caravan - that was when this lad’s father, Sasurai, was in charge - and we wiped out most of the royal household. To be honest, we thought we’d got the lot, all his living relatives in one go, all part of Maxen’s destabilisation policy; leave no obvious heir to the throne, result - civil war when the old man dies. Obviously we didn’t get them all, because the lad who pretended to be our man called himself Temrai, son of Sasurai. Also, when I asked him why he was doing this, he said it was personal.’ Loredan sucked his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘He wasn’t kidding, either. If he’s Sasurai’s son, then we killed his entire family, except for him and the old man. The fact of the matter is, he’s got no choice. He’s
got
to do what he’s doing, and the clan’ll know that. Which means they aren’t going to get bored and go away if they don’t carry the city at their first attempt.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d already guessed this was all to do with Maxen’s war. I hadn’t realised till now it was this serious.’

‘Anything else?’ the Prefect asked.

‘A bit more. Our boy isn’t impressed by bluster, and he doesn’t lose his temper. That’s worth knowing. He’s in full control, as far as I can judge; there were plenty of clan dignitaries there, but none of them said anything apart from Temrai. That implies they’ll do what he tells them to. We might try and figure out whether there’s a way of breaking that, something we can do to turn them against him, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope of that.’

As soon as they were inside the city, Loredan called for Garantzes and told him to break up the causeway opposite the drawbridge. Soon afterwards, four torsion engines on the eastern bastions were let slip, and the causeway became a tangled mess of splintered logs and planks. It was an impressive display of artillery work, and Loredan hoped that Temrai had been watching. On the other hand, he felt it was a little depressing to think that the first part of the destruction of the city had been accomplished on his direct order. He rather hoped it wasn’t an indication of what was to come.

 

‘Of all the stupid, cowardly things to do,’ the Lord Lieutenant raved, ‘breaking down the causeway so we can’t mount a sortie. So now we’re going to sit behind the walls and watch while they assemble their engines completely unhindered. It’s criminal.’

‘We can’t very well watch if we’re
behind
the walls, surely,’ his daughter replied. The rest of the family managed not to giggle.

‘Don’t be flippant,’ he said. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’ He tore the crust off a slice of bread, crushed the middle into a hard knob of dough and bit into it. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if money was changing hands somewhere in all this,’ he added melodramatically.

‘But I thought—’ His wife stopped herself and returned to her embroidery.

‘Well?’

‘Take no notice. Just something I must have got wrong.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

‘Well,’ she said, squinting to thread her fine bone needle, ‘it’s just that I thought it was you who’d insisted - very sensibly, I thought - that after the, what’s the word, exploratory force or expeditionary force or whatever it’s called, after they made such a mess of things, we weren’t going to have any more going outside the walls to fight them, we were going to sit tight and let them come to us. I think that’s what you said,’ she added. ‘Can you remember what Daddy said, Lehan, dear?’

Lehan, who was seven, nodded gravely. ‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘That was more or less it, anyway.’

The Lord Lieutenant scowled. ‘That’s not the same thing at all,’ he replied through a mouthful of bread. ‘Going outside and looking for another pitched battle is one thing. Harrying them while they’re setting up their confounded siege engines is something else entirely. Sheer folly to deprive ourselves of the chance of doing that.’

‘But you said their engines wouldn’t work anyway,’ Lehan pointed out. ‘You said it stood to reason that a mob of ignorant savages—’

‘That’s not the point. The point is, while they’re weak and disorganised, with their minds occupied with unloading the engines, now’s the best time to attack them. And that fool—’

The Lord Lieutenant was not, of course, an impartial observer. He was the leader of the Reform faction in the politics of the city, whereas the Prefect (the object of his fulminations; as far as he was concerned, Loredan was merely the Prefect’s agent) led the Popular faction. Although to an ignorant outsider the two factions were completely indistinguishable, the rivalry between them was unremittingly ferocious, and the uneasy truce that had been in place since the emergency began was starting to take its toll of everyone in the Council.

Nevertheless, the debate in the Lord Lieutenant’s household was fairly representative of what everyone in the city was saying, except that the average man tended to compromise the two positions; he derided the government for its cowardice in breaking down the causeway, while wholeheartedly subscribing to the view that the walls were impregnable and the savages would soon give up and go away.

‘They should be doing
something
,’ said Stauracius, the senior deacon, as he walked off his dinner in the cloister of the City Academy. ‘You’re pretty thick with the Patriarch, Gannadius. You should be lobbying for some action. It’s time the Order’s views were given the consideration they deserve.’

‘Oh?’ Gannadius raised an eyebrow. ‘Why? We’re an organisation of philosophers and scientists engaged in abstruse metaphysical research. Why should we have a valid opinion about fighting a war?’

Stauracius looked at him oddly. ‘I have to say,’ he said, ‘as the effective leader of the Order now that Alexius is so busy with his new duties, you don’t seem to be particularly concerned with our standing in the community. Or our responsibilities, come to that. We have an obligation to guide and counsel at times like these. We should be doing more—’

‘Perhaps.’ Gannadius looked away pointedly. ‘So you belong to the let’s-zap-them-with-magic school, I presume. It’s not an approach I have much time for, I’m afraid.’

‘It’s nothing to do with magic, as you know perfectly well.’