Devices and Desires

Chapter Eighteen

Captain Beltista Eiconodoulus of the First Republican Engineers-the title was, he felt, meaningless, since the unit had been arbitrarily formed only three days ago-was afraid of maps. Something inside him went cold when a superior officer summoned him and unrolled one. We're here, the enemy is over here, this is the road, here are the mountains, bit of rough ground between here and here; he would stand rather awkwardly and try and look eager and intelligent, but the fear would start to grow in his mind like an abscess under a tooth, until he could feel it with every heartbeat. The diagram became the focus of all the terrible possibilities that inevitably arise in a war-the mistakes, the enemy's superior knowledge or ability, the unforeseen and the negligently omitted, the things left undone and the things done to hurt and deceive. He felt as though he was looking at a sketch, such as artists make before they mix their paint and trim their brushes, a study for what was about to happen. Somewhere (that mess of brown rings representing mountains, that stipple of short lines signifying marshes, that bridge, that apparent plain) was the place where he would meet the contingency he hadn't prepared for or couldn't prepare for, and when he arrived there, as and when, there'd be confusion, terror, pain and death.

'You'll take this road to begin with,' he was told. 'They call it the Butter Pass, for some reason. Follow it up as far as this ridge here, then branch off along this track-it's a bit rough, apparently, but they assure me it's fit for wheeled traffic; you might want to take bridging and road-building equipment just in case-and follow it round all the way up to here. You can then double back along this pass here, which'll bring you out north of the city. By then, our main expeditionary force will be here, Palicuro, and we'll be able to establish a line of communication and put you in the picture. That's about it for now. Questions?'

He'd asked one or two, just to show he was smart and had been listening; but the map told him everything he needed to know.

He went back to his tent, summoned his lieutenants, fired off a string of orders while the key points were still fresh in his mind. He hardly knew the men he gave the orders to, but if the recruiters back home and the Mezentines had confidence in them, he supposed they must be all right. He'd find out soon enough, in any case.

Really, he told himself, I'm just a wagon-master, delivering goods. And there's the enemy to consider, of course, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. He steadied his mind with a series of tried and tested departure rituals. He carefully packed up his writing-desk, checking to make sure the paper-box was full and that there was a good supply of soot and oak-gall for making ink (running out of materials to write orders with in the middle of a battle would be a singularly stupid way to die, he'd always felt). He loaded his clothes, spare boots, books of tables and tolerances, food, bandages and medicines methodically into his pack. He checked his armour, joint by joint and strap by strap. Finally, he moved everything to the middle of the floor of his tent, in a neat pile, ready for the muleteers to collect and load. Twenty-seven years of soldiering and he was still alive and he hadn't caused a defeat or a disaster yet; if there was a reason for that (it was a question he remained open-minded about) it was probably attention to detail and the methodical approach.

As soon as they were under way (he didn't like the look of the road; it was dusty, which obscured visibility, and the ruts and potholes were already beginning to gnaw away at the temper of his cart axles), he made a start on the next step in his customary procedure: to consider the purpose of his mission, and to make it as simple as possible, so he'd be able to keep sight of it. Fortunately, in this instance that was straightforward enough. All he had to do was deliver his cargo, one hundred and fifty Mezentine war machines, to the place on the map marked with an X. There was other stuff once he'd got there-unpack the machines, assemble them, tune them, assemble the carriages and the mobile platforms and install the machines on them-but he had a bunch of Mezentine civilians along to do all that, so his involvement would be limited, in effect, to nodding to them and saying, 'Go.' Once he'd done that, of course, there'd be new orders, but that'd be another day.

The next step was, of course, to plan a daily routine. He'd found that if you broke the day up into small pieces, it was easier to control (hardly a startlingly new discovery, but as far as he was concerned, it was one of the great truths of human existence); accordingly, he preferred his days dismantled into units of one hour. He could hold an hour comfortably in his mind without straining. Sometimes he wondered who'd invented the hour. A genius, whoever it was; the hour was a perfect tool for handling and controlling the world, ranking alongside fire, the wheel and the axe.

These exercises kept his mind engaged and unavailable for worry and panic as far as the first night's stop, at which point he was able to hand over to fatigue, which put him gently to sleep until an hour before first light, when his day began. That first hour of the day was essential, as far as he was concerned. It bore the weight of the rest of the day like an arch. In it, he woke up, drew up his duty rosters and assignment schedules, studied his map and his intelligence reports; all the components of the armour that would protect him against chaos and failure.

The final stage of his early-morning procedure, and the one that always caused the most amusement to his subordinates, involved the rolling of two densely woven rush mats around a green half-inch stick, which fitted upright into a slot in a heavy piece of board. Mats and stick together simulated perfectly, so he'd been reliably informed, the human neck, viewed as an objective for the swordsman. If he performed the cut neatly and accurately each time, he could get three days' cutting practice out of each mat, but he was a realist and always made sure he had a plentiful supply. He was, after all, a soldier; which is a euphemism for a man who kills other men by slashing at them with a sharp edge.

Because his men didn't know him well yet, he didn't attract an audience for cutting practice on the first morning. Information travels quickly through an army, however; by the third morning, he performed a distinctly botched cut in the presence of two lieutenants, two sergeants, half a dozen enlisted engineers and the captain of muleteers, all of whom had managed to find legitimate reasons for calling on him a quarter of an hour before the scheduled start of the daily briefing. He no longer minded. He didn't object to being laughed at behind his back, so long as he had control of the subject matter.

'You should try it,' he chided a young lieutenant whose face he didn't like, although he was probably the most competent of the junior staff. 'Warms up the muscles, helps concentration, good mental and physical discipline. In fact, I'd make it compulsory if we could source enough mats.'

The lieutenant had the inherent good sense not to reply, and Eiconodoulus wished he could remember what the man was called. He was razor-sharp when it came to faces, but a martyr to names. He hoped there'd be time to learn them all.

It was a rather fraught meeting; mostly his own fault, because they'd reached the point where they had to turn off (according to the map) but there was no sign of the track they were meant to follow. Everything else was there, as duly and faithfully recorded: a slight horn in the mountain wall, and under it a gully, the perfect place for a track, except there wasn't one.

'Maybe it's an old map and the road's just got a bit worn away,' suggested one of the lieutenants (big, square man with a short beard, too old to be a lieutenant, too ineffectual to be promoted, but reasonably bright nevertheless). 'It's surprising how quickly a track can heal up, if you see what I mean. But-'

Eiconodoulus shook his head. 'I've been and looked,' he said. 'While you were still asleep,' he added, unnecessarily and untruthfully. 'There never was a track there, which means either the map's wrong or we're in the wrong place. You,' he went on-not being able to remember names meant he'd got a reputation for brusqueness in all his previous commands; mostly, he'd found it helped. 'Take a dozen men on horses and go and have a look. Ride on about five miles, see if you can see any sign of this bloody track. You, take half a dozen on foot, go and see if your friend here's right and there was a track there. Don't take too long about it.'

Oddly enough, both scouting parties reported back within minutes of each other. No, there wasn't a turning further up the main road. No, there hadn't ever been a track in the gully under the horn. Eiconodoulus could feel the world tightening around his head like a sawyer's clamp, but at least it wasn't totally unexpected.

'Fine,' he said, as the scouts waited for the miracle they obviously expected him to be able to perform. 'My guess is, whoever made the map looked at that gully and assumed there'd be a track down it. In any case, that's the direction we've got to go in, and we don't have any choice. Lucky we brought the road-building stuff.'

Hardly luck; he'd been ordered to bring it. But they needn't know that. Let them assume it was his own resourcefulness and foresight. They seemed happy enough. They had confidence in him. Probably they'd asked around when they heard who they were being assigned to, and men who'd served with him in other campaigns had told them, you'll be all right, he's eccentric and a bit of a bastard, but he'll get you home again. He'd worked hard for that reputation, so that over the years the lie had gradually started to come true. Anyway, he knew how to lay a road quickly and with the minimum of materials. Just to cover himself, he sent a messenger back to headquarters: No sign of track, am building road, anticipate three-day delay, will advise. That put it rather well, he felt.

Mostly it was digging, with pickaxes, crowbars, mattocks and shovels; get the big rocks out of the way and use them to fill the big holes. The further he went, the more certain he became that there was indeed a track, probably just over the lip of the first rise up ahead, somewhere in that basin of dead ground. As he stared at the hillside beyond he was sure he could see the line of it, a very slight contrast in colour, like an old scar. In which case, what had happened was that the map-makers knew there was a track around here somewhere-maybe they were coming along it from the other direction-but through sloppiness or lack of time they didn't bother to survey the link from it to the Butter Pass, just assumed that it followed the convenient gully. It annoyed him to think that they were probably dead by now (it was an old map) and so they'd never be officially found out and reprimanded.

He was right. They found the track a day and a half later. Just out of curiosity, he sent scouts back along it, and they reported back that it did indeed come out on the Butter Pass, about ten miles before the mouth of the gully. They'd probably have seen it quite easily if they hadn't been relying on the map. Eiconodoulus tucked the thought of that away in the back of his mind, in his private store of other people's notable failures, to be relished properly at leisure.

It wasn't much of a track, after all that fuss. At times, Eiconodoulus wondered if he'd have been better off cutting his own, because there was a much more suitable lie about a hundred yards further up the slope. Clearly these hills had never been grazed-sheep are much better surveyors than humans when it comes to finding the easiest path-and whoever had laid this track in the first place must've been blind, or at any rate short-sighted. Every time a cart bottomed out in a hole or a hub graunched against a half-buried rock he winced, expecting to hear the crisp crack of failing wood or the brittle note of snapping iron. There would be worse places to be laid up mending a busted cart-it was open enough to allow him to see an approaching enemy in good time-but he had food and water to consider. They were going to be several days later than anticipated, and this wasn't land you could live off. He knew better than even to consider ditching the carts and going back, leaving Mezentine war engines lying about for the enemy to find. If the worst came to the worst… Now he came to consider it, he didn't know what he should do. Nobody had told him; destroy the engines before the enemy could get hold of them, yes, but the wretched things were made of steel, so they wouldn't burn, and he didn't have the tools to cut them up. The most he could do was bend them out of shape, but that'd take a long time and a lot of effort. He should have been briefed on that point. More negligence.

Well, he'd just have to complete the mission successfully, then. So much clearer when you simplify.

On the fourth day, young Lieutenant Stesimbracus-the one he didn't like, the competent one-came back from scouting looking unusually cheerful. He'd found, he said, the other track marked on the map, the one which had been supposed to cross the one they were on at a place marked as 'cairn', except there were no cairns. Not being able to find it was more than a trivial annoyance. The missing track was a link between their path and another running parallel to it, which happened to be the frontier between Eremian and Vadani territory. Obviously it was important not to cross the border inadvertently. Likewise, they could reasonably assume that they wouldn't be attacked from that direction, since the Eremians wouldn't dare trespass on Vadani land. The last thing the Eremians would want would be a war on two fronts.

'It's annoying, though,' Stesimbracus said. 'The path on the Vadani side's a much better road; straighter, and properly made up. We could save a day, and cut back here'-he jabbed a finger at the map-'and precious little chance of getting found out, because we're a long way away from any of their manned outposts. Also, there's a river down in a goyle on the other side.'

Eiconodoulus scowled. Neither of the streams marked on the map had been there, and although they'd found one that wasn't marked, that had been two days ago, when they weren't so worried about the water running out. They'd been relying on the imaginary streams believed in by the map-makers.

'You know better than that,' he said. 'If we go blundering about down there and run into a Vadani unit, you don't need me to tell you what could happen. In fact, you'd better pass the word around: nobody is to cross into Vadani territory for any reason whatsoever. Got that?'

'Sir.' Stesimbracus was wearing that kicked-puppy look he found so intensely annoying. 'May I ask, what are we going to do about water?'

'Use it sensibly,' Eiconodoulus answered briskly. 'We've got enough, so long as we don't waste it. You'd better talk to the quartermaster about that.'

It got worse. Just after noon on the fifth day they reached the top of a low ridge, only to find a completely unexpected combe dropping away at their feet. Eiconodoulus' first reaction was fury; competent scouts should've found it and told him, it should've been on the bloody map. He got off his horse, walked up to the lip and looked at it as though it was a personal affront.

You couldn't get a cart down there. The other side perhaps, going up again; but going down would be suicide. He turned his head left and right. The bloody thing seemed to go on for ever, it'd take days to go round it, assuming there actually was a way round. Combe; canyon, more like. The downward slope was studded with boulders, and he was prepared to bet that the dust and gravel wouldn't give a firm footing. Final mockery: there was a substantial stream, practically a river, gurgling cheerfully away at the bottom of it. All the water in the world, but he couldn't get at it.

He sulked for an hour, pretending to study the map, while scouts went out to see if there was a way round. Of course not. On one side the canyon went away straight until it faded out of sight, a very long way away. The other side wasn't even worth exploring. He was fairly sure there would be a crossing-point quite close, a trail zigzagging down, or a hole in the wall. It had to be possible to get through on the other side, because that was where the Vadani road ran, and of course he couldn't go there.

Nothing for it. They'd have to cut a road of their own, just enough to let them take the carts down, unloaded, without the horses; then back up to the top, collect the dismantled war engines and carry them down on their backs. Three days? Be realistic, four. Plenty of water, of course, but food was going to be a serious problem. Half-rations; the men were going to love that. Finally, just in case that wasn't enough to be going on with, he'd lost his precious visibility. Standing on the lip and looking round, he could see at least a dozen places where an enemy unit could sneak up on him and attack with little more than a quarter of an hour's notice.

He thought about manpower. Building a road, then unloading, then carrying the machines; he needed sentries on those vulnerable approaches, and a fighting reserve in case he was attacked. He didn't have nearly enough men (which was just as well, given the food situation) and he was already horribly late. It didn't take much imagination to visualise the main expeditionary force pushing on to its assigned position, confident of artillery cover that wouldn't be there. The map had done for him, just as he knew it would one day.

He sent Stesimbracus away with the sentries, mostly because he was getting to the point where he couldn't stand the sight of him any more. That meant he had to put stolid, stupid Lieutenant Ariophrantzes in charge of the road party, while he perched on the edge of the combe doing nothing with the fighting reserve. That looked bad, he knew. The men would think he was skiving, when he ought to be down on the slope, digging or lugging baskets. But Ariophrantzes couldn't be trusted to command the reserve if there was an attack; it was a tactical nightmare in any case, because any enemy with a functional brain would use the terrain to attack in front and at the side, possibly from the rear as well if there were other gullies and ravines he hadn't spotted yet. One thing he could do: he gave orders for two dozen of the war engines to be assembled, fitted to their field carriages, and set up on the highest point of the lip. If he had to carry the wretched things, he might as well use them.

As four days dragged on into six, and half-rations had to be further reduced, and the road party's progress gradually slowed, he became convinced that there'd be an attack. It was obvious, the logical thing. It went without saying that the Eremians must have scouts out, watching every single thing he did. They'd know that he'd be at his most vulnerable when the road party were almost at the bottom of the canyon. First they'd attack the reserve, kill them or drive them off. The road party, practically defenceless, could then be slaughtered at leisure, the engines brought down the road Eiconodoulus had so obligingly built and carried off in triumph to Eremia. Anybody, some nobleman's idiot nephew, could devise an effective strategy for that. Defending against it, on the other hand… At the back of his mind, Eiconodoulus knew it was possible, but he also knew that he wasn't a good enough tactician to do it. Probably they'd write up the disaster in the military textbooks-his place in history-and cadets would be taught what he should have done (blindingly obvious, no doubt, with hindsight) as an awful warning against over-confidence. It amused him that he didn't even know the name of this place, though he'd be remembered in the same breath as it for ever. Meanwhile, the Eremians would be inspired by their miraculous victory, the Mezentines would be stunned by the worst defeat in their history, and all because some fool couldn't draw a decent map, though nobody would remember that in two hundred years' time.

The digging party reached the bottom of the combe, and no sign of any enemy. Eiconodoulus merely found that insulting; as well as building the road for them, he had to lug the stupid machines down it just to save them the effort. He thought about that for a while; and yes, it was blindingly obvious. They wanted the two dozen engines dismantled and out of action before they committed themselves. Very sensible. He obliged, and gave the order.

They didn't attack while the unloaded carts were led down, but of course they had more sense. Then it was time to carry the dismantled engines; the men were very unhappy about doing that, but they'd be even unhappier when the Eremian arrows started dropping down on them. Apparently, however, Eiconodoulus hadn't quite judged their plan right, because no arrows flew and the engines reached the river, eventually, after the hardest day's work Eiconodoulus could remember. By now he was very worried indeed. If the Eremians were content to pass up such a glorious opportunity as the one he'd just given them, it could only be because they had something even more deadly in mind, which he was too stupid to perceive. The engines went back on the carts, the water-barrels were filled, the horses spanned in; gradually it dawned on Eiconodoulus that there wasn't going to be an attack after all. They'd blundered; they'd passed up the most wonderful opportunity to give the Republic a bloody nose, through laziness, negligence, cowardice or stupidity. For the first time since they left the Butter Pass, Eiconodoulus laughed out loud. He'd beaten the map, after all.

On the other side of the canyon, there was no sign of any path; but there was gloriously even ground, better than the pitted and rutted surface of a track. Heather had probably grown there once, but the wind had scoured off the thin layer of topsoil and ground away the bumps and tussocks, leaving a layer of shingle and small stones that would've compared favourably with a nobleman's carefully tended gravel drive. The ground fell slowly away to the blurred grey seam of land and sky, where mists rose from the Lasenia river valley. Two days, or a day and a half if they could force the pace, and they'd be bypassing the foot of the mountain on which the city perched, on their way to where they were supposed to be. Eiconodoulus was a cautious man when it came to interpreting the actions of Providence, but he reckoned it wouldn't be presumptuous to assume that he was getting his reward for the tribulations he'd recently endured.

The final confirmation for this view came in the shape of a flock of wild sheep sheltering from the wind in a small dish-shaped combe; the scouts who found them managed to creep away without startling them, and Eiconodoulus quickly convened a tactical meeting. He listened to various suggestions (the oaf Ariophrantzes had been a hunter in his youth, and prattled on about nets and drives and beaters until ordered to shut up) and gave his orders.

His strategy was basic and simple. On three sides of the combe he drew up his spearmen, creating a hedge of sharp points about a hundred yards shy of the skyline. On the fourth side he sent in his strike force in two ranks; in front, the archers, and behind them the rest of the men, shouting, banging rocks and pans and helmets, waving their arms, generally making themselves as obnoxious as possible. As soon as they advanced over the rim of the combe the sheep bolted in the opposite direction. Running into the spearmen they veered off to the sides, round the inside of the encircling hedge, back to where the advancing line had closed the ring. Forced back into the hollow of the combe, they could then be shot down by the archers without risk to the spearmen.

It went perfectly, smooth as a carefully designed machine. At the precise moment he'd specified, the panic-stricken sheep galloped straight into his enfilade. About forty-seven went down in the first volley, whereupon the survivors bolted down into the belly of the combe, giving the archers the backstop they needed. There wasn't any need for skill. The archers simply loosed volleys until there was nothing left moving; then they strolled down into the combe to pick up their arrows and collect the carcasses for dressing. None of the sheep escaped. It was, Eiconodoulus couldn't help thinking, a rather encouraging omen for the war at large.

After days on half-rations, the men were happy again, and the excitement of it (Eiconodoulus wasn't sure if it had been a hunt or a battle) had done wonders for their morale; there were even volunteers for the chores of skinning, paunching and butchering. The only man who seemed unhappy was the fool Ariophrantzes; he scowled when he thought nobody was looking, and tried to stay out of the proceedings as much as possible. Eiconodoulus was inclined to put that down to pique (Ariophrantzes had put himself forward at the tactical meeting as a mighty hunter, his learned advice had been ignored, and still they'd got the lot) and he decided that such an attitude needed to be nipped in the bud. 'What's the matter with you?' he asked him.

Eventually he got a straight answer. 'It's nothing really, sir,' the oaf replied. 'Honestly. We had to get some food from somewhere, and it all worked out pretty well.'

Big of you, Eiconodoulus thought. 'So what's bugging you?'

'I don't know.' The oaf made a vague, helpless gesture. 'It's just that-well, like I told you earlier, my people hunted a lot when I was a kid, and I suppose I've still got their way of looking at things. Killing the whole lot like that-'

He couldn't be bothered to argue. 'If that's all,' he said, 'you can get on with your work. This is a military expedition, Lieutenant, not a day out with the hounds.'

'Very good, sir. One thing, though, if I might ask. What were you proposing to cook the meat with?'

The world is full of annoyances; none more infuriating than a fool with a valid point. In the end they had to unload a cart and trash it for firewood, having distributed its load between the others. Being best-quality Mezentine treated timber, it burned with a foul smell and a thick cloud of dark grey smoke, which made the meat taste of pitch. It was still a distinct improvement on nothing at all, but it wasn't the glorious feast of roast mutton that Eiconodoulus had been anticipating as a due reward for his achievement. Then it rained in the night, putting out the fires and drenching the remaining firewood with half the carcasses still raw. There was no point burdening themselves with uncooked meat that'd spoil by the time they reached anywhere they might expect to find more fuel, so the remaining carcasses had to be abandoned. It was just an unfortunate mishap, but somehow Eiconodoulus couldn't help feeling that the oaf Ariophrantzes had somehow been vindicated.

They made up time the next day, and by nightfall they reached the river. For once, the map was accurate; the river was shallow enough to wade across, although they had to unload the carts yet again (the second time in two days; they'd had to unload to redistribute the load from the firewood wagon). By now, Eiconodoulus was having to think and calculate in order to work out how many days they were behind schedule. Obviously he had no idea what had become of the main army, or how his tardiness was affecting the war. It wouldn't be good, he knew, but the scope of his contribution was still mercifully vague, although that didn't keep him from speculating about it endlessly. They wouldn't court-martial him or cut off his head, but they wouldn't listen to his excuses either. Somewhat perversely, he responded to that inevitability by refusing to hurry unduly; he was late already but he was making steady progress, and undue haste would probably lead to negligence and disaster. The next morning, as the sutlers filled the water-barrels from the river, he used up the last of his cutting-practice mats. No way of knowing when or where he'd be able to get hold of any more; another of the girders holding his life in shape had quietly failed. His victory over the sheep was beginning to fade from his mind, and the empty space it left quickly silted up with anxiety. More than anything, he wanted to be rid of this assignment and back with the rest of the army. He wasn't at his best in isolation, as he well knew.

From the top of the ridge overlooking the river, he was able to see the city for the first time. It was mid-afternoon by then, and the morning mist had burnt away; there was nothing to soften the steepness of the mountain, and the sight horrified him. He'd been in assaults and sieges, he knew about such things; and if ever a city was impregnable, this one was. For a while he could do nothing but stand and gawp, like a rabbit faced with a stoat. It seemed bitterly unfair that he should have been sent here, set such a difficult task which he'd somehow managed to achieve, simply in order to participate in an impossible venture, an inevitable disaster. There aren't many heroic ballads about men who strive against insuperable odds, surmount unthinkable obstacles and then die in the final act of abject failure. It wasn't his fault, but nobody would remember that, or ever get to hear about the criminally negligent map, the crossing of the great canyon or the flawlessly conceived and executed campaign against the sheep. He'd remain as anonymous as the waves smashing themselves into foam against a rock.

With an effort he pulled himself together. It was an extraordinary city, yes, but it remained no more than a problem in engineering, and the Mezentines were the finest engineers in the world. No doubt they'd already worked out how to deal with it; all he needed to do was deliver his cargo to the appointed place with as little further delay as possible; at which point he could hand the problem over to somebody else who was properly qualified to deal with it. They were welcome to the glory, provided he could unload the blame along with the dismantled war engines, mountings and carriages.

'So that's it, sir,' said a voice at his side-Stesimbracus, the good young officer he couldn't stand. 'Where we're headed.'

He nodded without looking round. 'Impressive, isn't it?'

Stesimbracus laughed. 'As a monument to short-sightedness, maybe,' he said. 'Personally, sir, I'm just grateful to be on our side. I'd hate to have the job of defending that.'

Which was probably, Eiconodoulus told himself, why he detested Stesimbracus so much. 'You don't see any problems, then?'

'Well, no, not really. It's a nice piece of construction work, but there's that obvious flaw. You'd have thought someone would've pointed it out while they were actually building the thing, but I suppose everybody thought somebody else would do it.'

Obvious flaw? Not that obvious, Lieutenant. 'So,' he said, 'tell me how you'd go about it.'

And Stesimbracus told him; and as soon as he'd finished, he couldn't help but agree. It was vividly, painfully, humiliatingly obvious. Maybe that was what genius was: the knack of seeing the obvious through its obscure curtain of irrelevancies. 'Well,' he said quietly, 'no doubt that's what Central Command intends to do. All we need to concern ourselves with is getting these carts up into the hills behind it.'

Stesimbracus nodded. 'Though you can't help wondering, sir, why they're bothering. I mean, why bother to put the catapult things up there? They won't be contributing anything. Diversion, I suppose; make them think we're planning a direct frontal assault.'

For some time after that, Eiconodoulus was plagued by that last thought. Suppose the boy was right about the plan-he very much hoped he was right, for the sake of the war and the hope of survival and victory-and that he was also right about the purpose of the war engines: a diversion. In which case, the engines weren't going to be loosed in anger; he'd carried them, and their stock of eighty thousand bolts, over the mountains and up and down the canyon and across the river, all for nothing, for show. Thin wooden cut-out silhouettes would've done just as well. All his efforts, his defeats and small victories and indelible humiliations, just to be part of a dirty great lie…

Next morning, at first light, they set off on what Eiconodoulus hoped would be the last stage of the journey. This time (perversely, he thought) the map was accurate; there was a road, a good one, skirting the city and going where they wanted it to. They made good progress, forcing the pace wherever possible; they had a superb view of the valley below, and the hills above them were too steep to allow an attack, so there was no chance of an ambush. Eiconodoulus was finally able to send messengers to the main army at Palicuro, so that was another weight off his conscience, although that hadn't troubled him quite so much once Stesimbracus had pointed out what the true strategy was. If he was a little late, so what? He was, after all, just the decoy.

As far as he could tell from observing traffic in and out of the city, the Eremians either didn't know they were being invaded or didn't care. Neither explanation was credible, but he was past caring about matters of high strategy. All that mattered was to get to the end of the journey and deliver the war engines. If they kept up their current rate of progress, they could be there by noon tomorrow, and history would have no further use for them. Simple carriers' motivation: deliver the load and go home.

The Eremians attacked them on the open hillside, at the junction of the road they were on and a small, straight track leading up from the city. The first that Eiconodoulus knew of it was yelling and the neighing of horses, from somewhere at the back of the train. He'd heard that sound in his mind many times; an axle had finally given way, a cart had foundered, other carts were swerving to avoid it, there'd be chaos in a matter of minutes. He swung his horse round, and saw what looked at first sight like a swarm of flies; small black dots in the air above him. But flies don't usually fly slanting down, and they don't grow as you watch them. Arrows, he thought; but they were too high up.

He heard himself shouting, and was faintly impressed to hear what he was saying: get out of the way, get off the carts, take cover. But he was too preoccupied to take his own advice. A small black dot turned into a falling pole, suddenly growing enormous as it bent its trajectory towards him. He realised, through innate mathematical ability or sheer intuition, that it was going to hit him. It was a curious idea, and while it was forming he felt no fear; a small voice in the back of his mind suggested that it'd be worth trying to get out of the way if that was possible, but there wouldn't be time to make the horse move. But if he rolled out of the saddle-yes, why not?

He landed on his elbows and knees, and the pain knocked everything out of his mind for a moment. The first thought to return was a mild anxiety-have I broken anything?-and he wriggled a bit to see if anything wasn't working. The pain gave place to the sharp protests of jarred bone and tendon, and he stifled a yell. Then a terrible weight flopped on to him, crushing his thigh, jamming his lower leg against the ground so that all the force of impact fell on the joint of his right knee. He felt something fail-it was like listening to a single note on the harp, if pain was music-and his mind registered and accepted that there was something badly wrong before everything was washed away in a surging tide of agony.

That lasted three or four seconds, an intolerably long time, and then it stopped. Vaguely he was aware of human voices, a voice, someone shouting, someone shouting at him. He couldn't think why, he hadn't done anything wrong; then he was moving, being pulled. Very bad, because his knee and leg were still trapped under the heavy thing. He screamed. The movement stopped, the pain swelled to bursting point, and the world went away.

When it came back-how long had it been away? Not terribly long; he remembered he'd been more or less here, and the voice was still shouting. He forced himself to concentrate. The voice was Lieutenant Stesimbracus', and the weight that had crunched his leg was his own horse. It was lying a few feet away, its back legs twitching, its head perfectly still, and there was something like a clothes-line prop sticking out of it, at the point where the neck meets the shoulder. It occurred to him, in an abstract, detached sort of a way, that Stesimbracus must have pulled him out from under the horse; very kind of him, because the weight was ripping his knee tendons off the bone, but he still wasn't prepared to like the man.

'Are you all right?' Stesimbracus was roaring in his ear, and he really wanted to laugh, because he obviously wasn't, a dead horse had just fallen on his leg-

'What's happening?' he heard himself say; but before Stesimbracus could answer, another of the clothes-line prop things dropped out of nowhere and hit him.The point went in on the left side of his collar bone and came out through the small of his back, pinning him upright to the ground.

War engines, Eiconodoulus thought; and then he realised what must be happening. He tried to move, then remembered he couldn't; and that was the point at which panic hit him, and fear, and all the physical effects that go with them. He could feel his stomach-muscles twist, his bladder loosen, his arms tremble and ache; he could hardly breathe, as though something even heavier than the dead horse was pressing down on his chest. But he knew those feelings, and he knew he could make them go away for a while by concentrating.

Unbelievably, Stesimbracus was still alive, because he saw him blink, and then his lips moved. He stared for a moment, as much from curiosity as horror or compassion; but a running man chose that moment to trip over him, and pain took over for a while.

When it let him go again, he saw the fallen runner scrabbling to his feet and leaving; he'd never seen a man run so fast, it was no wonder he'd tripped. He remembered Stesimbracus and looked back. His lips were still moving a little, but his eyes had the empty look that Eiconodoulus had seen before. He felt very bad about having disliked him so much, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

Experiments showed that he could still move everything apart from the wrecked knee. If he could get to his feet and find something to use as a crutch, he'd be able to stand, possibly even get about. That would probably be a wise course of action. He realised that everything had changed, and until he'd found out exactly how things stood, he couldn't rely on any of the information or the plans of action that had applied a minute ago. That hurt almost worse than the crushed knee. He realised he needed somebody who could tell him what was happening (but that would've been Stesimbracus' job). He was, of course, still the most significant man in this action; everything would depend on how he dealt with it, but he couldn't even stand up.

Ludicrous, he thought, someone's got to come and find me, I'm needed-Another clothes-prop dropped very close, kicking up dust that blinded him for a moment and reminding him that the bombardment, the source of the damage, was still going on. For a second or two he experimented with various ways of pushing, squirming or bouncing himself to his feet, but they all failed painfully. But he was a resourceful man, he knew it perfectly well, and this wasn't a time to go all to pieces.

He saw the solution to the problem; it was standing, literally, in front of him. If he grabbed hold of Stesimbracus, he could pull himself up that way, assuming the spike that had transfixed him was firmly enough in the ground. Unfortunately, the poor fellow was still just faintly alive, and for a moment he was too… Eiconodoulus analysed the cause. He was too embarrassed to reach out and grab a handful of a dying man's trouser leg, while the dying man was watching. That seemed to make some sort of sense, but he forced himself to do it nevertheless.

It worked, just about; he got himself upright, though in the process he dragged the spike out of the ground and it toppled slowly, with its grotesque burden, to the ground. Never mind; he fought to find stability, because nothing mattered more than staying on his feet, his foot, and not crashing back to the ground again. He balanced self-consciously for a second or so. He'd made it.

He lifted his head and, for the first time since it all started, looked to see what was happening. It didn't look hopeful. There was now a forest of the clothes-prop things, planted slanting in the ground like a spindly crop of beans. Rather too many of them were planted in dead or dying bodies, and there didn't seem to be many living people about. He rationalised: that'd be because they were taking cover, as he'd ordered them to do. He thought about trying to move from where he was. Another spike pitched about three feet away. He looked up; the sky was still full of them, like a distant flock of rooks. This is hopeless, he thought, there's nothing I can do. I might as well let myself fall over, because it'd take less effort and I've got no strength left.

But he didn't do that. Instead, he took a step forward. Mistake; badly thought out. The ground hit him in the face, and pain took over again. Hopeless. Even if he could stand up and find someone to give orders to, his mind was so blurred and sodden with pain that he couldn't think straight. It was as bad as being drunk (it was the loss of clarity that had put him off drinking, many years ago); that awful sense of knowing what needed to be done, but not being able to order and express the thoughts. He was no use to anybody any more. Best thing would be to lie still and quiet. If he insisted on moving, find a cart and crawl under it, wait for the attack to stop and for someone to come and rescue him.

(But somehow he knew, as a positive certainty, like someone remembering the past, that none of the spikes were actually going to hit him, not him; it was quite likely that he was going to die-thirst, starvation, heat, throat cut by looters-but it wouldn't be from a clothes-prop dropping out of the sky. Strange, that this comforting but strictly qualified revelation should have been granted to him, because he didn't have any sense of being needed, by destiny, the powers that be, whatever. It was just a fact, a piece of information.)

One more go at it, he promised himself; I'll have one more try, and if that fails I'll have done my best. He contrived to bounce himself up on to his good knee, and found that if he let the ruined leg drag, like a travois behind a mule, he could haul himself along after a fashion by his elbows. It was a ludicrous way for a grown man to act; it was the sort of thing you'd expect of a child playing a game, pretending to be a snail or a caterpillar. He wouldn't get very far like this, but he could go a little way, just to show willing. So he crawled five yards (the small stones and gravel flayed the points of his elbows, even through the padded sleeves of his aketon) and stopped. A little later, he crawled another five yards. He realised he wasn't actually achieving anything, but he knew he'd just get restless if he lay still and quiet waiting to die.

Ten distinct stages, five yards at a time, brought him to the shade of a cart. There was somebody else under it. He called out, 'I need help, I can't walk'; the man under the cart didn't move. Eiconodoulus called again, but still no answer. Fine, he thought, he's dead; so he heaved himself forward, banging his forehead on one of the chassis timbers. Only then did the man seem to notice him; he leaned forward, grabbed Eiconodoulus' arm and pulled him under the cart.

'Thanks,' Eiconodoulus said. The man was staring at him as though he'd never seen a human before. 'What's happening?'

The man shook his head. 'We're getting slaughtered,' he said, and laughed.

Shock; takes different people in different ways. 'The mounted escort,' Eiconodoulus said. 'Have you seen them?'

'All dead,' the man answered. 'I saw it. One shower of bolts, nobody left. All gone.'

That was a blow. 'Who are you?' he asked. 'Engineer?'

The man shook his head again. 'Carter,' he replied. 'Soon as I saw what was happening, I dived under here. Fucking waste of time. Those bolts'd go through the woodwork like it's not there.'

'Are you hurt?'

'No.' He said it with a wry grin, as though there was something funny about it; then he added, 'You know what's happening, don't you? You know who's shooting at us?'

Eiconodoulus opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated.

'It's our own bloody side, that's who,' the man said, his voice rising in anger. 'Got to be. Because those are scorpion bolts, and only the Mezentines have got scorpions. It's our own fucking side shooting at us.'

Eiconodoulus froze. It was as though the thought was too big to fit in his mind, and had jammed up the opening, making it impossible for him to think at all. 'Can't be,' he said. 'Why? Why would they do that?'

The man shrugged. 'Don't ask me,' he said. 'I mean, obviously they think we're the enemy.'

'But…' With an effort, Eiconodoulus forced his mind clear. It was, in fact, entirely possible. He was days later than scheduled, and maybe his messages hadn't reached the main army; they'd assumed he was dead or captured, so they'd sent up more scorpions; they'd arrived and been installed to guard the road, and somehow their observers hadn't recognised his column, had assumed that it must be the enemy. It was possible; in which case…

He thought about it for a moment. Scorpion bolts; and the Mezentines had a ferociously guarded monopoly on field artillery. It was the only possible explanation.

'In that case,' he said slowly, 'we've got to tell them, and then they'll stop.'

'Fine,' the other man snapped. 'You go.'

'I can't,' Eiconodoulus said, quiet and reasonable. 'My knee's all broken up. I can just about crawl a couple of yards, that's all.'

The other man was scowling at him; he had a thin, dry face and he spoke with an eastern accent. 'Fucked if I'm going out there,' he said.

'Why not?' Eiconodoulus said. 'You just told me it's not safe under here. The only way we'll be safe is if someone goes and finds the battery and tells them to stop shooting. I can't do it.' He paused, watching the man's face. 'I wouldn't get fifty yards.'

He could see the other man doing the mathematics; only two of us, he can't go… 'I'm not going out there,' he said, as though Eiconodoulus had made an indecent suggestion. 'No, you can forget that.'

Best not to say anything; so he shrugged and kept quiet. The man protested a few more times, then slowly crawled out from under the cart, straightened up-cramp, probably-and began to run, wobbling like a baby calf. Eiconodoulus could only see his legs from the knee down; he followed him until he was out of sight. Well, he thought; it's my job to give orders.

He lay on his back, and the pleasure of being still and quiet surged through him like a wave. He closed his eyes to rest them, knowing it was impossible to go to sleep, here in the middle of so much danger. He tried to rally his thoughts, but it was too much effort. There wasn't anything he could do anyway. The responsibility was slipping away from him; he wasn't in charge any more, because he had the perfect excuse.

Light, movement, the sound of voices. His body was awake before he was; he woke up in the act of shrinking away, dragging himself backwards with his elbows. As his eyes opened, he found himself staring at an extraordinary human being. The spectacle reminded him of something he'd read about or heard, maybe in a briefing; the man's face and hands were the most remarkable colour: pale, bone-white tinged with pink. At the back of his mind,he was sure he knew about this, but the only explanations that occurred to him were that the man had been rolling in white slip, the thin clay wash potters paint on the outsides of big jars, or he'd managed to get himself covered in flour.

Then he remembered; where he was, what had happened, his wrecked knee, the fact that the enemy, the Eremians, were a white-skinned race.

'Got one,' the man was shouting. 'Over here.' Eiconodoulus wondered what had become of the cart, but he didn't dare take his eyes off the white man. He couldn't see a weapon, but he was under no illusions about what would happen next. The Eremians (a casual aside in a briefing, months ago) don't take prisoners.

That was that, then.

(All his adult life, he'd wondered about this moment, which he'd long since accepted as inevitable; the moment when he faced the enemy who would kill him. He'd assumed that it would be a spasm of blind, hurting, thrashing pain and terror-he'd seen wounded animals being dispatched, men being executed, victims of accident and artillery-and it had bothered him, because he'd die a wriggling, squirming, convulsing thing, and the weapon tearing into his body would hurt unbearably. The thought had almost been enough to make him quit the profession, but there had always been good, sensible reasons to hang on for another six months, another year. Now that he faced it, he felt like an explorer or a philosopher finally arriving at the place he'd searched all his life to find; the great question, what will it be like, was finally going to be answered, and he found himself considering the situation objectively, as though he'd have the opportunity to report back to a commission of inquiry. He'd tell them, I felt sick, very wide awake, completely aware of everything everywhere apart from my own body, and calm.)

Other white men were standing over him; one on each side, maybe two behind. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a spearhead-so it'd be a stab rather than a cut, he noted; good, because puncture wounds kill quickly, by organ damage, whereas slashes tend to kill by shock and loss of blood. A small part of his mind that was still interested in collecting information noted that the white men spoke good Mezentine but with a strong, rather comical accent.

'What do you want to do?' one of them asked.

'Take him back with the wagons,' said another, a disembodied voice over his head. The others mumbled agreement, and arms came down out of the air and dragged him up. He stood for a moment, then collapsed.

'Fuck,' someone said. 'Look at his knee.'

They don't know I can understand them, he realised. Not that it mattered; he had nothing to say to them. It occurred to him that if he revealed the fact that he could communicate with them, they might torture him for information before they killed him. That thought made him horribly aware of how painful and sensitive his knee was; anything would be better than being hurt by them, death would be much better. Suddenly he felt fear take over; he was shaking, and he couldn't make it stop. His body felt loose, as though all the joints had slipped and come unstrung; all his strength had evaporated, he was hanging from their hands, a dead weight. Why couldn't they just kill him and be done with it?

'He's in pretty bad shape,' someone said. 'Put him in the wagon and let's get out of here.'

They carried him, gently. As he was moved along he could see dozens of the white men, busily at work. Some of them were getting the carts ready to drive off, others were plucking up the clothes-props, carrying them in bundles, like men harvesting maize. At that moment, he realised that the Eremians had war engines too (not that it mattered to him, of course) and he'd blundered into a carefully laid ambush. At another time he'd be furious with himself for letting it happen; it was somehow pleasant to be released from the obligation to feel shame and self-reproach.

They put him carefully in the back of one of his own carts; they laid out blankets for him to lie on, and tried not to jar his knee as they put him down. They made a bad job of it, but he was bewildered by their concern. He'd braced himself for a different kind of pain, the being-dropped, slamming kind, and instead it was the awkward, clumsy sort. A white man sat next to him in the cart, and when it started to move Eiconodoulus nearly screamed, as a jolt twisted his knee the wrong way. The white man frowned at him, then looked away; his hands were clamped tight on the side of the cart.

Not dead yet, he thought, as the cart pitched and jostled over the ruts and stones; not dead yet, but don't go getting your hopes up. Look at it logically; things can really only get worse. Are hours or days of pain really worth staying alive for? Of course not. Then let's hope they kill me quickly, before this numb feeling wears off and I go to pieces. He tried to calculate in his mind the distance from the ambush site to the city (presumably where they were headed) but he couldn't quite get the map into his mind. It was as if it was part of a dream, in which he'd been a career officer of engineers in charge of a routine convoy, and it was swiftly fading away, as dreams tend to do in the light.

Ludicrous (he told himself when he woke up) that I should have wasted my last few hours of life in sleep; but then, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed them anyway. He opened his eyes and saw blue sky overhead; the jolting underneath him told him he was still on the cart. He realised that he felt unbearably impatient-why can't they just kill me now, instead of making me live through this interminable cart ride?-and while he'd been asleep his knee had locked up stiff and hurt worse than ever. If it hadn't been for the thought of how ridiculous it would sound, he'd have started demanding to be killed immediately; he grinned as he heard his own high, querulous voice in his mind, insisting…

Suddenly a great grey stone shape appeared overhead, like a swooping hawk; he was passing under an arch. The blue sky was edged with grey walls and red roof tiles, and the jolting was the multiple taps of steel-rimmed wheels on cobblestones. Here we are, then-at which point, a desperate feeling of reluctance swept over him, so that if he'd been able to move at all he'd have tried to jump off the cart and run. As it was, all he could do was lever himself up a little way on the points of his elbows. The white man next to him looked down, his face registering no interest. Eiconodoulus' strength ran out and he slipped back to rest.

Bouncing on cobbles for a very long time; then the cart stopped and the white man jumped up, calling to someone he couldn't see. Four or five of them appeared over him; they lifted him up (that hurt) and put him carefully on something long and flat, possibly a door or a hurdle. He couldn't make out what they were saying; there were unfamiliar words, possibly names. They moved him quickly; he had to close his eyes to keep from getting dizzy.

For a while after that, things blurred, like drops of water on a painting. He was carried about on the flat thing, then put down, then picked up again and carried some more. There were apparently long periods of lying still, sometimes voices overhead. Occasionally he made out one or two words, but they were meaningless out of context. Then came a long, bad patch; someone was digging about in his damaged knee, twisting it and stabbing into it with a knife or a tool. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up, but hands pushed him down flat. He could see white men standing over him, but he couldn't see the torturer himself. He waited impatiently for the questions to start-why the hell torture someone if you don't ask questions, where's the point?-but all he could hear was the men murmuring to each other. They aren't torturers, they're doctors, he realised; he laughed out loud, and then the pain blotted out everything. He wasn't aware of trying to move, but the men were having trouble keeping him still. At some point, the world went out like a snuffed candle.

A voice was murmuring overhead. It was talking. It was talking to him. 'How are you feeling?' it said.

He didn't know, of course. He took a moment to gather the necessary information, then he opened his eyes.

The white man didn't seem to want an answer after all, because he went on, 'My name is Miel Ducas. What's yours?'

Excellent question; don't know. He went to the very back of his mind and dragged it out. 'Captain Beltista Eiconodoulus,' he said. He shouldn't have told them that, of course.

'You're going to be all right,' the man called Miel Ducas told him. 'I'm afraid they couldn't save the leg, though. I'm sorry.'

Save the leg? What was he talking about? His leg was still hurting, of course, but what did it matter, since they were going to kill him? He felt confusion pressing on him like a pillow over his face.

'As soon as you're fit to travel we're sending you back,' Miel Ducas went on. 'We'd like you to take a message to your commanding officer. We won't bother with that now. You get some sleep, if you can.'

All the confusion welled up into a bubble, a blister; he tried to sit up, failed, and heard himself say, 'What happened?'

Miel Ducas sort of grinned. 'You got ambushed,' he said. 'You very nearly didn't, mind. We had scouts out tracking you up the Butter Pass, but then you went diving off the road into the shale and they lost you completely. We only managed to pick you up later, when you lit some fires.'

Fires. Ah yes, roasting the wild sheep. But we had no choice, we were starving.

'Anyhow,' Miel Ducas went on, 'you were obliging enough to come to the lure in the end, and thank you very much for the scorpions. With those and what we've already got, we reckon we can defend this city against anything you can throw at us. We'd have liked a bit more in the way of ammunition, of course, but, well; gift horses' teeth, and all that.'

He didn't understand what that meant, but he couldn't be bothered to ask. Instead, he took a moment to look at his surroundings. The bed he was lying on was in the middle of the floor of a circular room-where do you get those? In the turrets of castles. There was a straight-backed, carved oak chair, dark with age and assiduous polishing, and a door, and a narrow window. Miel Ducas looked at him for a moment, then went on: 'You've been out of it for a week, believe it or not. During that time we used your scorpions, with their sweet little carriages, to attack the main column you were supposed to meet up with. We ran out of bolts before we were able to get them all, but the latest reports say we cleared about seven thousand men, which isn't bad going for a race of backward mountain savages, don't you think? Anyhow, what's left of them have scuttled back down the pass; they took their wounded but left the scorpion bolts, which shows your people have no idea about priorities. Anyway,' he went on, leaning back in his chair a little, 'that's enough for now. You get some rest, and I'll be back to give you our message later on.'

When Miel Ducas had gone, he stretched out full length and shut his eyes; he felt dizzy and uncomfortable, and his head was aching. Apparently he wasn't going to die after all. It should have been a moment of sheer joy but it wasn't. He was going to live; they were sending him back to Mezentia. They'd cut off his leg.

Carefully he sat up. There was a blanket over him, which he twitched away; it fell on the floor, where he wouldn't be able to retrieve it. He hadn't realised before that he had no clothes on. He could see his thigh, down to the knee. It was wrapped in bandages, and there was nothing beyond it. Extraordinary.

Instinctively, he tried to wiggle his toes. The left side worked fine. He frowned. It was like when he'd been lying awkwardly and woken up with his leg completely numb; unless he grabbed it with his hand, he couldn't move it. There was actually nothing there. It was a bizarre feeling, like something out of a dream.

Now what? He tried to imagine what it was going to be like, but he couldn't. Soon his leg would stop being numb and he'd have a ferocious attack of pins and needles. He concentrated. Well, for one thing, he wouldn't be able to walk.

Fear choked him like hands tight around his throat. He curled up in a ball and for a long time all he could do was try and fight off the waves of terror and despair. If only they'd killed him; he was ready for that, it would've been no big deal. This kind of mutilation, though, that was far worse. Better death than life as a cripple. (He was making gestures, striking poses; even while he raged and cringed against the horror of it, a calm voice in the back of his mind was making lists-things I can still do, things I can't-and figuring out ways of coping. Meanwhile, the rest of him relaxed into the comfort of despair: as soon as I'm out of here, I'll get hold of some poison, or I'll just refuse to eat. Thinking about killing himself helped him calm down, because it was one thing he knew he'd never do.)

He was lost in these thoughts when the door opened again. He froze, suddenly aware that he hadn't got any clothes on. The newcomer came in and looked down at him. He wasn't white, like the others; his skin was the normal colour. An ambassador maybe, or someone who'd been sent to negotiate for his release, or supervise a prisoner exchange? Highly unlikely that he'd be here on his own; he'd be escorted, there'd be guards with him.

'Who are you?' he heard himself say.

The newcomer smiled. 'I'm Ziani Vaatzes,' he said.

Eiconodoulus knew who he was. 'They told us you're dead,' he said.

Vaatzes raised an eyebrow. 'Is that right?' he said. 'Well, I'm not. In fact, I'd be grateful if you would set the record straight when you go back to the City. I'm most definitely still alive. Furthermore, the scorpions that shot up your column were built by me. Maybe you'd be kind enough to emphasise that when you make your report.'

'All right,' Eiconodoulus said.

'Thank you.' Vaatzes dipped his head in mock courtesy. 'Was that one of my bolts?' he asked, nodding towards the bandaged stump.

Eiconodoulus shook his head. 'My horse fell on me,' he said.

'Really? What dreadful bad luck. Infection, I suppose. When you get back to the City, ask to be taken to the Coppersmiths' Guild. Don't ask me why, but the artificial limb-makers count as coppersmiths for the purposes of registration. Anyhow, they'll fix you up. It's amazing, the quality of their work. I wouldn't be surprised if they had you walking again, eventually. One model they make, for above-the-knee cases like yours, it's got a joint so it bends just like the real thing; and there's a really neat little spring-and-catch arrangement that locks the joint up when you put weight on it, and releases it when you take the weight off again. Once you've learned to sort of throw the false leg forward as you move, you can actually get along at close on normal walking speed, though I understand it can't be used on stairs or anything like that.'

'I'll do that,' Eiconodoulus said. He nearly added, 'Thank you', but decided against it. Instead he asked, 'Is it true? What they told me, about the attack on the main column.'

Vaatzes nodded. 'At least seven thousand killed,' he said. 'They ran out of bolts. Unfortunately, the ones I made don't work with the genuine article. But they're interchangeable the other way round-my scorpions can loose genuine ordnance bolts-so I'm changing the pattern a little. By the time you attack again, we'll have a good supply'

Eiconodoulus frowned. 'Do you want me to tell them that too?'

'You can if you like,' Vaatzes replied. 'But that's not why I'm here. I want you to take a message for me, a private message, for a friend of mine. He's bound to be in close contact with the main army, he's foreman of the ordnance factory, so someone'll take it to him. Falier, his name is.'

'Falier,' Eiconodoulus repeated.

'You've got it. And by the way, it'll be well worth your while, trust me. It'll make it possible for your side to win the war.'

Eiconodoulus was sure he hadn't heard that right. 'What did you just say?'

'This message,' Vaatzes said, 'to my friend Falier. It'll tell him how to get past our defences.' He grinned. 'It's called treachery,' he said. 'It's frowned on in some quarters, but it saves lives and gets results. Now, I want you to listen very carefully, because this is important.' He paused and furrowed his brow. 'You're looking at me strangely,' he said. 'You do want your side to win the war, don't you? I mean, it'll be good for you, not to mention getting your own back, for the leg and everything.'

'I don't understand,' Eiconodoulus said. 'I thought you're on their side.'

'I am,' Vaatzes replied, 'for the moment. But listen, you've got to get the message to Falier. It won't be any good unless he gets it, so don't go telling it to your superior officer or the commander in chief or the Guild Assembly; it'd just be meaningless drivel to them, and they'd think you're up to something or loose in the head. It's only valuable if Falier gets it, do you understand?'

Eiconodoulus nodded, because it wasn't really a lie if he didn't actually say the word. 'What's the message?' he asked.

He thought about it a lot, after Vaatzes had gone away, and later, on the long cart-ride back to Mezentia, but it made no sense at all. Several times he made up his mind that he wouldn't deliver it-why should he, after all? It was bound to be a trick or a trap, but so crude that the Mezentines would never fall for it. He'd only make a fool of himself; maybe the whole thing was Vaatzes' idea of a joke. It was unthinkable that the same man who'd betrayed the Republic by defecting to its worst enemy and building them war engines that could wipe out seven thousand men could also give away the key to breaching the unassailable walls of Civitas Eremiae. It made no sense. You'd have to be born stupid to fall for something like that.

The Mezentines were very considerate, in their way. After he'd been debriefed and questioned, by his own people and the Mezentine authorities and representatives from their war cabinet, he was sent to the Coppersmiths' Hall, where he was measured in two dozen places with tapes and rules and callipers. They showed him an example of what they were planning to make for him, and sure enough, it had a cunning little mechanism to lock it when you put your weight on it, just as Vaatzes had said. For some reason (he couldn't detect any logic to it), that was what made him decide to pass on Vaatzes' message to Falier after all. He asked one of the false-leg people to do it for him; apparently, the man knew someone who knew someone else who was an off-relation of Falier's new wife. Once he'd done that, he put it out of his mind. After all, it was meaningless, and he had other matters to think about now.