The Folding Knife (36 page)

By the time the ship had been drawn up on the sand, Aelius' men had stacked the gold sacks in two piles. At this point, Aelius released the villagers and told them to run, not walk, down the beach, away from the Mavortine war party; this they were only too happy to do. He sent the fifty prisoners, with their hands firmly tied and linked to each other with a rope, to stand between the two heaps of gold sacks. Then he beckoned the Mavortines to come across and help with the loading. When they were fifty or so yards away, Aelius gave the order for sixty of his men to start shooting. The Mavortines, who had come armed but without their bows and quivers, were either shot down or put to flight. The rest of Aelius' men formed up in front of the gold, apart from a detachment of fifteen who drove the prisoners up the beach and onto the ship. Once they were safely on board, Aelius' men (apart from the cordon of archers) started loading the gold on the ship. The Mavortines charged, took heavy casualties at seventy-five yards from the archers, fell back and stayed back; it was clear that they'd had enough. Aelius himself waited until the last sack of gold had been loaded before helping shove the barge off the beach; he was pulled aboard out of the sea on a rope.

By the time the barge reached the City, the Treasury men had weighed the gold (there was obviously too much to count each coin) and were able to report that losses, by weight, did not exceed the value of six thousand nomismata. As for the human cost, casualties to the recovery party and the ship's crew amounted to one broken arm (aboard ship), three cases of broken ribs (the armoured men hit by arrows in the pass) and minor cuts and bruises.

It was an ancient law of the Republic, designed to limit the prestige of individual commanders and curb the cult of personality within the military, that no general should be permitted to make a triumphal entry into the City twice in one year. General Aelius, who hadn't enjoyed the ceremonies the last time, was openly relieved, but Basso felt that something had to be done to mark the occasion. As he told the House during the debate on the wording of the official vote of thanks, it was not merely a case of what Aelius had done, but the manner in which he had done it. The speed, the resourcefulness, the sheer elan of the operation, the fact that Aelius had overwhelmingly defeated the enemy at every turn without the loss of a single man, clearly demonstrated to the whole world that the Vesani Republic, far from being weak, was stronger than ever before. Aelius had turned a potential humiliation into a magnificent victory, and it was essential for its own self-respect that the House should find some appropriate way of honouring him. He therefore proposed that...

"No," Aelius said. "No. Absolutely not."

Basso smiled indulgently at him. "You don't have a say in it, I'm afraid," he said. "The House has voted. It's out of my hands now."

"I won't do it."

"Yes," Basso said gently, "you will. If need be, the Speaker will send armed proctors to your house to drag you there. Cheer up," he added briskly, "back in the old days it was the highest honour the state could bestow, and you'll be the first man in three hundred years--"

"Oh for crying out loud," Aelius snapped. "Don't try and put the blame on them; it was all your idea." He was crouching in his chair, his fingers wrapped round his elbows. "What harm have I ever done you?"

Basso looked at him sternly. "Well," he said, "for one thing, you've cost me personally a great deal of money in lost interest on the loans I won't now be making to the Treasury. For which," he added graciously, "I'm prepared to forgive you, but only on condition that you stop acting like a child and do what's expected of you. If the people of this city don't get a chance to cheer at you and wave little flags, they're going to be very unhappy."

The Order of the Headless Spear was founded in
AUC
171, to honour the Paterculi brothers, who held the pass of Rhomphaea for six days against a vast Sclerian army, thereby saving the city. Membership of the Order was reserved for Vesani citizens who by their extraordinary courage and devotion to duty on the battlefield had preserved the City from destruction. The insignia, a simple ashwood pole, recalled the last stand of the Paterculi, when, their spearheads having snapped off in the bodies of their enemies, they fought on with the headless shafts. It was conceded even in official circles that the symbolism was rather unfortunate and provided regrettable scope for low humour and double entendre. Nevertheless, it was one of the Republic's oldest and proudest traditions, and the origins of the ceremony that went with it had been lost in the mists of antiquity.

Over the centuries, many scholars had tried to make sense of the ritual, and the best gloss they had been able to come up with was as follows. The candidate for admission to the order was stripped naked because the Paterculi had fought so long and so hard that all their armour had been cut away. The candidate rode to Temple on a donkey because the Paterculi, unable to find horses to get them to the pass before the enemy, had commandeered mules from a nearby farm. Why the candidate was obliged to ride the donkey the wrong way round, facing its tail, was uncertain, though it might possibly refer to a later incident, the exploits of Bracteatus against the Lobar, when Bracteatus infiltrated the enemy camp by pretending to be a madman, riding backwards on a draught ox. The ritual pelting of the candidate with pomegranates was almost certainly a reference to the siege of
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207, when the Sclerian army camped outside the walls had mocked the starving citizens within by throwing rotten fruit into the city. There was no obvious derivation for the triple drenching of the candidate's head (in water, wine and whey), although some researchers felt that these elements were survivors of a much older ritual, now totally obscure, which had been incorporated into the Headless Spear ceremony at an early stage of its evolution.

After the third drench, Aelius was towelled off and clothed in a simple sackcloth robe by the laticlavular and angustoclavular tribunes and led up the Temple steps, where he was officially received by the City legate and the deacon of the Studium. His eyes were then blindfolded as he was escorted into the nave of the Temple, while the choir sang "Hail, Invincible Sun" and "Behold Him who in glory". His eyes were uncovered at the foot of the steps of the high altar, where the Patriarch of the Studium presented him with the headless spear, while outside, in accordance with tradition, twelve sergeants from his regiment were supposed to be scattering handfuls of silver and copper coins (provided by the candidate) among the crowds. Since all of Aelius' men had gone straight back to the Cazar Peninsular as soon as they'd been paid, their place was taken by twelve senior NCOs of the City Guard. In another break with tradition, the coins distributed were gold, provided (an open secret) by the First Citizen; they were the very first release of the newly commissioned Victory issue, struck from the stock of foreign gold that the raiders hadn't touched, with Basso's head on one side and on the other, a helmeted, draped and cuirassed bust of General Aelius, holding the headless spear, under the inscription
Saviour Of His Country
.

"It doesn't look anything like me," Aelius said.

Basso laughed. "Everybody hates their portrait on the money," he said. "I remember my father moaned about it for weeks; said they'd made him look like a chicken. And as for that hideous caricature of me--"

"I didn't say I didn't like it," Aelius interrupted. "But this is some hero, not me." He turned the coin over, hesitated and handed it back. "At least I got to see one," he said.

"You'll be sick of the sight of it," Basso replied. "We're minting twenty thousand. Just think. All over the world, thousands of people who've never seen you will believe you look like that."

Aelius frowned. "Here, let me see it again," he said. Basso spun him the coin; he caught it, looked closely and frowned. "One thing," he said. "The way I'm holding the stick."

"Ah, yes," Basso said. "Sorry about that. Open to misinterpretation, especially when it's worn down a bit. That's what happens when you have to push things through in a hurry. Still, at least you'll have a different nickname now, instead of Cowshit."

Aelius looked at him. "Quite," he said. He handed the coin back, but Basso waved it away. "Keep it," he said. "Drill a hole in it and hang it round your neck for a lucky piece."

"Not likely," Aelius said. "I can't afford expensive jewellery. You know," he went on, "I'm deeply conscious of the honour, and I'm sure most men would give their right arm to have a chance of being totally humiliated in front of a hundred thousand people, but all things considered, I'd rather have had some money. Not a fortune necessarily," he added, "but just
something
would've been nice. At least enough to replace the pair of boots I ruined wading about in salt water."

Basso shook his head. "Out of the question," he replied. "It'd be considered the most appalling insult."

"Oh."

"Well, of course. Think about it. The Headless Spear's reserved for citizens; which in practice, back when it was all dreamed up, meant members of the noble families who traditionally ran the army. Goes without saying, they didn't give a damn about money, since they were all born with far more than anybody could spend in a lifetime. All they cared about was honour. Which is why," he added, "everybody else involved on our side gets a nice lump sum in cash, and you get a stick." Basso looked at him, and narrowed his eyes a little. "What's the matter, Aelius?" he asked. "You're not short of money, are you?"

Aelius raised his hand, palm outward. "Not in that sense, no," he said. "And I'm not asking for a pay rise, either. I'm perfectly comfortable on what I'm getting. And, of course, for what I get paid each month, you could buy half the Cazar Peninsula. It's just..." He turned his head away just a little. "I was thinking about retiring, that's all."

Basso's head shot up. "Out of the question," he snapped. "Sorry."

"You gave that a lot of careful thought."

"Didn't need to," Basso said, and when Aelius turned back to face him, he found that Basso was staring at him with a look of barely restrained fury. "I don't know what I did to deserve that," Basso went on. "Funny, I'm sure I'd have remembered if I'd stabbed you in the back or had your entire family hunted down and murdered."

"Don't give me that," Aelius said, with a certain degree of bluster. "I'm not indispensable."

"That's for me to decide," Basso replied. "And I've decided, and you can't leave. I couldn't do without you when everybody was demanding I have you arrested and slung in jail, and I can't do without you now. That's all there is to it." He paused for a moment or so, then went on (quieter and gentler): "Look, if this is anything at all about money, just say how much and I'll write you a personal draft." Aelius glowered at him; he smiled. "I knew it wasn't," he said. "All right. Is it a protest about having to ride backwards on a donkey with no clothes on? Because that was just show business, for your fellow citizens. You know how it is. Ninety per cent of my job is keeping them entertained."

Aelius looked down at the floor. "I'm starting to feel my age," he said.

Basso laughed. "Don't be ridiculous."

Aelius looked offended, if anything. "Back home, I'd be an old man. My grandfather died at fifty-six--that's just five years older than I am now. He didn't die
of
anything, just wore out."

"Then be grateful you've been living in a civilised country," Basso replied. "Besides, you didn't do too badly for an old man the other day."

Aelius furrowed his brows. "They didn't want me with them," he replied. "My mother's people, when I went to hire them. They said they'd do the job, but they wanted me to stay behind. They said I'd slow them up."

"Then they were wrong."

Aelius shrugged. "I had a real job keeping up," he said. "When they were hardly feeling it, my lungs were bursting and my legs felt like lead. It was only because I had other things on my mind all the time that I didn't give up and just lie down and pass out. All right, I'm not quite dead yet, but I'm too old for all that bloody running about."

"Fine," Basso said impatiently. "And how often are you going to have to do that?"

"I had to the other day."

"Then train someone to run about for you," Basso snapped. "Find a good man and teach him how to be you. When you've done that, I'll let you go. Till then, I can't spare you. Is that clear?"

Aelius looked at him for a moment, then let his shoulders sag. "It's proof that I'm right," he said, "that I haven't got the strength to argue with you."

"You'll stay."

Aelius made a let-me-be gesture. "I only said I was thinking of retiring," he said. "I mean, what's wrong with that? I was considering how pleasant it would be to buy a nice house with a bit of land out back somewhere in the southern suburbs. Put on some weight, grow roses. I wasn't actually about to resign my commission." He twisted round in his chair, so he could look out of the window. "You're right about one thing, though. I need to bring on someone I can rely on, for things like this latest business."

Basso nodded. "A Cazar."

"Wouldn't have to be," Aelius replied. "I went to my mother's clan because they were the only people I could think of in a hurry who could do the job, and who I'd dare trust with all that money. That's not to imply Cazars are the world's best fighting men. Actually, it'd be far better if we had a unit capable of jobs like that stationed here, permanently--picked men, really well trained, assured loyalty..." He frowned. "Why are you pulling that face?"