The Escapement (54 page)

"If you like," Ziani said. "Though I warn you…"

"Don't. Just tell me."

So Ziani told him: how he'd opened the gates of Civitas Eremiae to the Mezentines, allowing them to slaughter the people and burn the city. He kept it short and concise; Valens had bought the confession, but he hadn't paid enough for details. When he'd finished, he made himself turn his head a little and look at Valens'

face; pale as milk, apart from the angry red around the wound.

"Why?" Valens asked.

"There were a number of reasons," Ziani replied. "The city was bound to fall sooner or later, so the people inside it were as good as dead already. I was sick to death of watching the scorpions I'd built shooting their soldiers down by the thousand. I thought that if they took the city, it'd end the war." He paused, then said,

"And then I thought I could go home."

Valens nodded very slightly. "That was the deal, was it?"

"Yes. They cheated me, of course. There was supposed to be a safe conduct to get me out of there, we'd arranged it all beforehand. But when the time came, the men who were supposed to be meeting me didn't show up, and I knew they weren't going to keep their side of the bargain. So I made my own way out, and luckily—"

"You rescued Veatriz," Valens said quietly.

"That's right, yes. I figured that if I could get both of us out of the city and across the border into your country, you'd let me stay as a reward for saving her. Of course, you turned up and spared us both a long and unpleasant walk." For a moment or so, he wondered if Valens had forgotten how to breathe.

"You're right," he said eventually, "it's not something I could ever have forgiven. But I gave you my word, and so we'll forget all about it." He winced as he said that.

"Partly because you made that thing for the doctors; but that wouldn't have been enough, on its own. Mostly it's because I've been profiting from your crime: if you hadn't done it, Veatriz would probably have been killed when they eventually took the city; as it was, I brought her here, and now she's my wife, and that's the only thing I ever wanted. It practically makes me your accomplice." He shook his head, like a horse refusing the bridle. "All right," he said, "those are the reasons why you did it. I still can't see
how
you could bring yourself to do it, though. It was…" He paused, scowling because the right word wouldn't come. "It was inhuman," he said.

"So utterly callous…"

"Tell me," Ziani said. "If you'd been me, and opening the gates would've given you the woman you love, would you have done it?"

Valens nodded, once.

15

To punish the Cure Doce for the cowardly and unprovoked attack on Duke Valens, General Daurenja sent six thousand cavalry into their territory with instructions to do as much damage as possible in the course of a week. The expeditionary force was made up about equally of Eremians and Vadani, under the command of Colonel Miel Ducas.

As soon as he crossed the border, the Ducas divided his army up into three squadrons. Two of these he entrusted to seasoned Vadani officers; the third he led himself. He had a reliable map of the border country, with all the principal farmsteads marked. His orders to the two subordinate commands were to kill everybody they found, secure any stocks of food they might encounter, and burn the buildings. He set a schedule and arranged a rendezvous where the three squadrons would meet up before returning to allied territory.

The first farm on his itinerary was tucked away in the seam of a river valley. He attacked at dawn, aiming to catch the enemy at morning milking; that way, the herd would have been brought in to the main sheds, saving his men the trouble of rounding them up, and the farm workers would likewise be conveniently assembled in one place: the men and boys in the sheds, the women in the kitchens, fixing the men's breakfast.

Two thousand men were far too many for such a straightforward operation, and excessive numbers would simply get in the way. Accordingly, he drew up eighteen hundred of his men in a tight cordon around the perimeter of the home meadows, to pick up stragglers, and divided the remaining two hundred into five units of forty. The best available intelligence put the number of people living on the farm at sixty. Time was of the essence—as the Ducas put it, they had a lot of work to do in just seven days—as was thoroughness; given their tight schedule (six farms a day for seven days), it was imperative that no survivors escape to raise the alarm at the neighbouring farmsteads.

Everything went well. All five units were able to approach without being seen, thanks to the cover of the farm buildings. Squads one, two and three surrounded the sheds, burst in and killed all the men in just over three minutes. Simultaneously, squad five barred the doors of the main house and set it on fire, while squad four secured the herd. Squads two and three broke into the barns and loaded as much grain and hay as they could fit on the farm carts, while squad one skirmished the rest of the buildings, picking out half a dozen Cure Doce who happened to be there. The buildings were set alight, a prize party was detailed to take the cattle, grain and fodder back to the main camp as quickly as possible, and the squadron re-formed to move on to the next target. The whole operation was completed in just under the hour.

As he repeated the procedure at six more farms on the first day—he was so far ahead of schedule that he found he had time to fit in an extra raid—he rotated the duty assignments so that nobody had to take part in more than one attack. He himself was the only exception; in all seven raids, he insisted on leading the main strike force himself. By the time they camped for the night, carefully hidden away in a wood on the slopes of a deep combe an hour's ride from the last farmstead, the Ducas had personally killed seventeen men, nine women and seven children.

That night, he dreamt that she was standing over him as he slept; he was standing off to one side, looking at her as she stared down at him, lying huddled on the ground, his head under the blanket.

She said: Why?

You wouldn't understand, he said. It's all to do with duty.

Don't give me that, she said. All your life, you've protected the weak and the defenceless: your tenants, the people of Civitas Eremiae, the refugees after the city fell, when you led the resistance. Now you've turned into the enemy you spent your life fighting. Why?

Duty, he said. I'm an officer of the Alliance. I have my orders. And I can't tell anybody else to do something horrible and evil if I'm not prepared to do it myself. She said: that's not the real reason.

No, he admitted. It's a valid reason, or at any rate a valid defence to a charge of monstrous inhumanity. But it's not the real reason.

She repeated the question: why?

Because I want to, he said. Because each time I carve into a neck tendon or chop open a skull, it gives me pleasure, and it's permitted by the proper authorities, I'm allowed to do it. I've fought so long on the opposite side and I've always lost; it's a pleasure to be on the winning side for a change.

She said: you can't lie to me, Miel, we've known each other too long. Is that the real reason?

He thought before he answered: I don't know. I think it might be, but I'm not sure. It could be that I hate myself so much, and this is the most effective way of hurting myself I can find; to become the thing I hate the most.

She said: that seems more likely. But is it the real reason?

He thought some more, and said: it's the duty of the Ducas to help his friends and hurt his enemies. These people are my enemies, because my orders say so. She said: your orders came from that freak Daurenja. He sees nothing wrong in rape and murder. Your duty is to protect the weak and the defenceless. He saw himself stir in his sleep; a movement of the arm, as if trying to push something away. He said: my duty is to the Eremian people, who are part of the anti-Mezentine Alliance, whose leader was attacked and nearly killed by these people. It is essential that such a grave crime should be punished.

She said: that's not the real reason.

True, he conceded. All right, then: when I was with the scavengers, and then later, when I was killing and robbing soldiers just to feed myself and you…

(She frowned, but didn't interrupt.)

… when I was doing all that, it wasn't for duty or politics or in a just cause in a just war. I was a predator, killing to live. Now, you know what happens when a fox gets inside a henhouse. He can't help it, it's his nature.

She said: you know you can't lie to me, not after all these years. Is that the real reason?

He said: I'm not sure, but I think it might be.

As he woke up, he saw a man standing over him, looking worried. He recognised him as the sergeant of the troop he'd led on the last raid. "Are you all right?" the sergeant asked.

"Of course," Miel replied. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"You were screaming," the sergeant replied.

The next day they destroyed eight farms; the day after that, seven more. There would have been time for an eighth, but during the killing, a man managed to stab the Ducas in the thigh with a hayfork. The wound was deep but clean, missing the major blood vessels, and the Ducas tried to make light of it, but his senior staff insisted that he should rest and let the surgeon clean it up and dress it.

"It should heal just fine," the surgeon told him. "Unless you insist on exerting yourself and opening it up again; in which case, you'll lose blood, and that'll make you weak, and you won't be able to do your job. What you need," he added firmly,

"is rest and sleep."

That made the Ducas laugh. "Actually," he said, "I've been having trouble sleeping."

"I can give you something for that," the surgeon said.

Whatever it was (he didn't like to ask), it worked; and when she came and stood over him that night, he could see her but wasn't able to make out what she was saying, and after a while she went away. That was good, except it meant he was left alone with Orsea.

How long have you been here? Miel asked.

I've been here all the time, Orsea replied. I go with her wherever she goes. Actually, it's embarrassing, now she's married Duke Valens.

It must be distressing for you, he said, watching them together.

Yes, Orsea said. But he has a better right than me. She loves him, you know. She never loved either of us.

Orsea turned to walk away, then hesitated. He asked: why?

Because I want to, Miel said. Because Jarnac hunted wolves and foxes and all the scavengers and predators in the forest, but now he's dead, so there's nobody to stop me. And they always gave me duties I was never able to perform, because I was too weak or too stupid, but this is something I can do really well.

You're screaming again, Orsea said. You'd better wake up, before you disturb the whole camp.

So he woke up and looked round, and Orsea was nowhere to be seen; but for several minutes he felt sure that he was there somewhere, behind the armour stand or under the bed, like the adulterer in a farce. Then he told himself: get a grip, Orsea's dead, Valens had him killed, and that wasn't your fault, either. Even so, when he breathed on the polished steel of his breastplate, which he used as a shaving mirror, he had the strangest feeling that the face he could see was not his own but Orsea's, toad-belly white where the blood had drained from the severed neck veins; and he thought, yes, but why Orsea? Why not one of the hundred or so innocent civilians I've murdered over the past few days, or one of the soldiers I killed for his boots, or even some Mezentine I dispatched in the war?

They let him ride, because they couldn't stop him, but they wouldn't allow him to go with the raiding parties. He had to stay behind with the main cordon, watching for the first plume of black smoke; it made him feel like he was a small boy, being punished for something.

He gave up taking the sleeping medicine, and that stopped Orsea from following him around. He still had dreams, but instead of talking to him, she just looked at him and shook her head sadly, as if to say, I knew you'd end up like this.

It had become the fashion for the artillerymen's wives to bring them their lunch up on the embankment, and to sit with them watching the enemy sappers digging the approach trenches. They were getting closer, and occasionally a man who wanted to show off would string his bow and shoot an arrow or two at the lead sapper as he poked his head and chest up out of the trench to move the shield trolley and place the front gabions. Some of the artillerymen were getting quite good—there was plenty of time to practise, now that they'd given up on the bombardment, and precious little else to do—and once or even twice a day, an arrow would hit the target; the head would slump forward, until the dying man's wriggles dislodged him and he slid back down into the trench. The lucky archer got free drinks all evening. The enemy never shot back. But when the trench came close enough for the artillerymen to catch the occasional word of what the enemy were saying, the lead sappers took to wearing monstrous full-face close helmets and breastplates, which the arrows couldn't penetrate. The scorpion crews were under strict orders not to shoot at them (nobody knew why), so the lunchtime sniping stopped and they started playing backgammon instead. Even then, the wives used to say that the enemy were getting worryingly close, and shouldn't Chairman Psellus be doing something about it? To which their husbands replied, explaining patiently, as men do to women, that it really didn't matter, since there was no way on earth they'd be able to get past the flooded ditch, and that was all there was to it.