Colours in the Steel (7 page)

 

Twelve years ago, a party of horsemen rode in through the Dawn Gate. They looked ragged and tired; their clothes were patched and threadbare, their mailshirts mostly held together with wire. Many of them were as hideous as the ogres in children’s stories; badly set fractures left limbs out of shape, scar tissue had formed over wounds that had been inadequately dressed or septic. Men and horses alike were almost comically thin, their hands and feet seeming out of all proportion to their bodies.

They were, or course, heroes, though nobody came out to meet them, and a few people threw things at them because they’d lost. They were all that was left of the army.

Maxen’s Pitchfork had been, for as long as anyone could remember, the city’s one and only defence against the vague and constant threat posed by the nomadic clans of the western plains. Because they did their job so well, the citizens took them for granted, giving them honour, respect and twenty-five quarters a month all found; accordingly they never thought to ask themselves how a thousand heavy cavalry could possibly be expected to hold back the virtually limitless manpower of the clans. After all, it worked, and they did manage it; and whenever a citizen woke up in the middle of the night out of a nightmare of shrieking savages and clouds of arrows, he would remember General Maxen, Lord Count of the Exterior, turn over and go back to sleep.

But Maxen, who had spent thirty-eight of his sixty years in the field fighting the clans, suddenly did the inconceivable thing and died - of gangrene, following a fall from his horse during a routine punitive expedition. As soon as news of his death spread among the clans, there came the inevitable explosion. For the clansmen, Maxen had been quite simply the most terrifying thing in the world, a demonic force that appeared in the middle of the night, surrounded by blazing torches and slashing swords, killing every living thing in a whole caravan and then melting away into some crack in the earth, invisible in the vast emptiness of the plains. Maxen’s death was like the death of fear itself; so, when his second-in-command, Alsen, met the assembled clans beside the Crow River, they threw themselves against the Pitchfork as if charging straw dummies in a training exercise. Alsen, who had been on the plains twenty-five years since joining the regiment as an ordinary trooper, was a brilliant soldier, the kind whose campaigns might under other circumstances have been studied in military academies. As it was, he faced odds of twenty-five to one and inflicted such devastating losses on the enemy that an assault on the city was rendered impossible for many years to come. But he fell, and eight hundred and eighty of his men died with him. The husk of his army hurried back to Perimadeia under the command of Maxen’s nephew, a lad of twenty-three who had only been on the plains for seven years; one Bardas Loredan.

 

 

‘To say that the Principle enables one to tell the future,’ said the Patriarch, his mind elsewhere, ‘is tantamount to saying that the main function of the sea is the delivery of driftwood. It would be more accurate, though still basically erroneous, to state that one who closely observes the Principle can make certain assumptions about the effects it is likely to have on the material world. Anything further than that would be misleading.’

The young woman whose name he couldn’t remember wasn’t a member of the class any more. She had got what she came for, or something approximating to it, and left. Alexius had the troublesome feeling that he was in the position of an innkeeper’s daughter who has spent an amusing night with a handsome stranger and is beginning to feel sick in the mornings. The after-effects of the curse were getting to him; he needed to see the girl again if he was to have any hope of putting things right.

‘Consider a road,’ he continued, as the students bent their heads over their writing tablets, diligently committing his wisdom to marks in wax. ‘A man rides along a steep-sided valley, in a region notoriously infested with robbers. From where he is he cannot see them waiting for him around the next bend of the road, although he suspects they may be there. An observer high up on the hillside can see him and the robbers as well. There is no magic in this; simply a high vantage point. It follows also that you cannot see the ambush if you are riding the road; only the impartial observer, watching the affairs of others, can perceive the imminent danger.’

It was, Alexius knew, a hopelessly flawed comparison; but it would do for freshmen. Later, when they knew better, they could have the pleasure of gloating over its obvious faults, which would be good for their confidence.

‘Or consider,’ he went on, ‘a cup of water standing on a table. The cup cannot move or spill the water of its own accord; but if there should chance to be an earthquake, or even a train of heavy wagons passing in the street below, the cup will appear to tremble of its own accord. The man who detects the first signs of the earthquake, before it is perceptible to the untrained eye, or who sees the wagons entering the street, will know that the cup will move. He can predict; he can interfere by picking up the cup, preventing it from being shaken off the table and breaking. If he is unscrupulous, he can claim that by his tremendous powers he can cause the cup to shake and the water to spill, and then appear to make good his boast.’

Putting ideas into their heads? None that weren’t there already an hour after they were born. Alexius detested fortune-tellers even more than those who pretended to heal the sick or lay curses for money. The sad fact was that such prophecies had a tendency to come true, mostly of course because the customer expected them to and acted accordingly.

‘We who study the Principle,’ he resumed, ‘can stand back and see the lurking robbers or the approaching wagons. Sometimes, our observations make it possible for us to intervene; in which case we expose ourselves to all the dangers we warn others about; we run down into the pass to warn the traveller, or hurry to where the earthquake is to be in the hope of saving someone. To assert that we can avert bandits or spill water from a cup without touching it, however, is not only dishonest but terribly dangerous. The bandits will leave the traveller alone and attack us. We, rather than the person we have come to warn, will spill the water. There are those who say that when we see a disaster approaching and do nothing, we are acting reprehensibly; think of it rather as preferring that the robbers will have only one victim instead of two. That concludes the lecture; by tomorrow, read the first twenty chapters of Mycondas’
Syllogisms
and be prepared to answer questions.’

He stopped speaking and, as far as the students were concerned, ceased to exist. Some of them, he knew, would quite simply not believe him. They would far rather assume that he and his fellow masters were trying to keep the best tricks back for themselves. Let them; too ignorant as yet to harm anybody but themselves.

As the last few of them trooped out, chattering to each other about everything except what they’d just been told, Alexius let his mind slip back to the question of the young woman and the curse, which was still hurting him like a grain of sand trapped under an eyelid. Where was she? Perhaps one of the other students might know; except that she’d been here such a short time that it was highly unlikely that she’d confided in any of them. Besides, in comparison they were all hopelessly young and immature. Who would entrust secrets to a mere child? If she told them why she was leaving and explained about the curse, doubtless there would be a few fools who attempted to do the curse for themselves. Well; if they were lucky, they might escape with nothing worse than the failure of a trick.

The Patriarch of Perimadeia, hunting high and low after a girl student who had left the course on its second day; a girl who had spent a considerable part of the evening of the first day in the Patriarch’s cell. He could imagine what his junior colleagues would make of that if they got the opportunity. Which, he decided, they would not. He would have to find some other way to cure himself of this malady.

He was aware of someone behind him, walking quickly to catch up. Without looking round, he slowed down.

‘Fascinating.’ He recognised the voice; Gannadius, the Archimandrite of the City Academy. Too late now, however, to quicken his pace. ‘Every year five hundred new faces, and yet within a week or two they look and sound exactly the same as their predecessors. Do we do that to them, I wonder, or are all young people basically interchangeable?’

‘Both, I suspect,’ Alexius replied. ‘Whatever individuality they may still have when they arrive here is soon ground away by the necessity of being indistinguishable from their peers in appearance, tastes and opinions. The best thing anyone can say for youth is that eventually we all grow out of it.’

The customary exchange of epigrams having taken place, Alexius hoped that his colleague would now go away. No such luck; today, Gannadius had something to say. When he would eventually get around to saying it was anybody’s guess.

‘It distresses me to think that I was once that young,’ Gannadius sighed. ‘I assume that I was, although for the life of me I can’t remember it. As far as I’m concerned I’ve always been the same age. My friends, however, have grown old around me.’

Wonder why? Alexius asked himself. ‘I read once,’ he replied, ‘that each man has a certain age that is appropriate to him; once he reaches it, he stays there, although his body continues to wear out.’

‘In my case, it would have to be forty-three.’

In spite of himself, Alexius was interested. ‘Really? Why forty-three?’

‘I was that age when I first read the
Analects
,’ Gannadius said simply. ‘What about you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve reached it yet,’ Alexius confessed. ‘I can distinctly remember being three, and wondering what being three meant. And I was seventeen for a very long time, but I’m not any more. I think I stopped being seventeen when I realised I was no longer afraid of my immediate superiors.’

‘And that was when?’

‘When I became Patriarch,’ Alexius replied. ‘Now I’m afraid of my immediate inferiors, but that’s scarcely the same thing.’

Gannadius nodded wisely. ‘To change the subject completely,’ he said, ‘are you feeling well?’

Alexius stopped walking and rubbed his chin to cover his surprise. ‘Is it that obvious?’ he asked.

‘My dear friend, you’ve been walking around like a man with his foot in a trap. Would it be impertinent for me to speculate that you have, so to speak, trodden on a hidden rake among the proceedings of the Principle and been struck a sharp blow on the nose in consequence?’

Alexius smiled. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Because I knew exactly what I was letting myself in for. I did a curse, and I’m afraid it didn’t agree with me.’

‘Oh. Anyone we know?’

Alexius hesitated. Gannadius was frequently inopportune, often tedious, always pompous; but as far as Alexius knew he had no dark ulterior motives or savage ambitions, and his writings revealed a surprisingly perceptive and practical mind and a sharp intellect. And Alexius needed help if he was ever to get rid of this wretched affliction.

‘A fencer,’ he said, ‘by the name of Bardas Loredan. With whom, I might add, I have no personal quarrel whatsoever. The curse was on behalf of someone else, which is probably why I’ve taken it so badly.’

Gannadius bit his lower lip, suppressing a grin. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘I really must congratulate you on the quality of your work. I must remember to be extremely polite to you at all times.’

Alexius raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘Ah, you wouldn’t know, would you? It so happens that I have a small sum of money invested with a cartel that produces and sells charcoal. They’re in dispute with a rival concern, and the matter goes to court shortly. Our opponents have briefed one Bardas Loredan to represent them.’

‘I see. And?’

‘And we’ve retained Ziani Alvise,’ Gannadius replied. ‘You’ve heard of him, no doubt?’

Alexius frowned. ‘I think so. I don’t follow the courts at all, but the name rings a bell. Is he good?’

‘You might say that. I understand that among the sporting fraternity, Loredan is being offered at a hundred and twenty to one and finding no takers.’

‘I see.’ Alexius nodded slowly. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘I’d strongly recommend that you put your last quarter on Loredan. In fact, while you’re at it you could put fifty quarters on him for me.’

Gannadius looked puzzled. ‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘modesty is an admirable quality, but don’t you think you’re taking it a little too far? I would argue that the mere fact of the fight suggests that your curse is working very well indeed.’

‘You don’t understand. In my curse he’s committed to die at someone else’s hands. One person in particular. Not Ziani Alvise.’

‘Ah.’ Gannadius looked thoughtful. ‘That’s rather tiresome, since I’ve already backed Alvise quite heavily. Still, I suppose I can find a few more quarters to cover the bet. Thank you; you may well have rescued a poor man from abject poverty. In return...’

Alexius acknowledged the offer with a slight tilt of his head. ‘I must admit,’ he said, ‘I could do with some help. This curse is proving confoundedly sticky. I think I must have done a rather better job than I thought.’

‘In cursing, as in cooking with garlic, it is best to resist the temptation to add just a pinch more for luck. Will you come to the Academy or shall I call on you here this evening?’

Alexius considered. On balance, it would be better if the proceedings didn’t take place under the noses of his brothers in the Principle. ‘After dinner,’ he said, ‘at the Academy. All your people ought to be in Chapter by then.’

‘And I with them,’ Gannadius pointed out. ‘Still, a personal request from the Patriarch—’

‘I’d rather you said it was urgent affairs of the Order,’ Alexius replied. ‘Which isn’t that far from the truth. Ever since, I’ve had no end of difficulty in concentrating on anything. The paperwork is starting to get out of hand, to say nothing of my reading.’