Devices and Desires

Chapter Twenty-Two

Melancton was a realist. He knew that he had no more chance of winning against the Perpetual Republic than the Eremians did. Just for the hell of it, however, he decided to persevere with the long-range engines for a little while. He had, after all, taken a great deal of pains to haul a large supply of ammunition for those engines; might as well use it up as let it go to waste, he thought. Even if it won't bring the walls tumbling down, it'll make life inside the city distinctly uncomfortable for a while. In war, every little helps.

So the bombardment resumed, as soon as the rest of the three-hundredweight balls had been lugged up from the valley. Melancton didn't hang around to watch, or listen; he left Syracoelus in charge and retired to his command centre in the main camp. In his absence, the engines resumed their patient, unbearable rhythm.

Syracoelus was a straightforward man, not afflicted with gratuitous imagination. He ordered the engine crews to target four areas on the main gate towers, places where, in his experienced opinion, the structures would be most vulnerable to prolonged violent hammering. At the very least, he reckoned, he ought to be able to crack or weaken something. All it takes is a crack, sometimes.

It was hard to read anything, because of the dust. Each time one of the engine-stones bashed against the outside wall, a sprinkle floated down from the ceiling, where the two-hundred-year-old plaster mouldings had cracked and were slowly being shaken apart. Dust covered the maps laid out on the long table, the dispatches and summaries and schedules. Orsea's mouth was full of it, and he kept licking his lips, like a cat.

The first bombardment had been all horror; ten minutes when he couldn't think because of the noise and the terrible shaking. But it had ended, and Jarnac had assured him that the walls had shrugged it off; the Mezentine engines hadn't done their job, he'd said; it was a miracle, he hadn't added, but there was no need. Quite unaccountably and contrary to all expectations, their invincible enemy had failed.

The second bombardment, he reckoned, was probably mostly just spite. The tempo was quite different. The engines were loosing their shots slowly, taking great pains to be accurate, to land each ball on precisely the same spot as its predecessor. Each time there'd be that unique, extraordinary swishing, humming whistle, followed by the thump you could feel in every part of your body, and then the little cloud of dust would shake out of the plaster and float down through the air. Then the interval, nearly a full minute; then, just when you were beginning to think that they'd given up and stopped, the whistle again.

'They're spinning it out,' one of the councillors said, 'making it last as long as they can.'

'Let them,' someone else said. 'The chief mason says they can bash away at the towers till the snows come and they won't hurt anything. He reckons the stone those balls are made of is too soft; they're splitting and breaking up on impact, he says, and that's taking all the sting out of them. If that's the best they can do, we haven't got a lot to be worried about. They can't keep it up for too long, they'll run out of things to throw at us; and they can't sit down there and wait for fresh supplies, they haven't brought enough food with them. The plain fact is, they got it wrong, and they haven't got time to put it right.'

'Even so,' another voice said mildly, 'it'll be nice when it stops. That row's making my teeth hurt.'

Some people laughed; Orsea forced a smile, to show solidarity. It wasn't the thump, he'd realised, it was the whistle. He'd timed it by counting; one-two-three-four-five-six. When it came, he had no choice in the matter; his mind went blank and he counted. Anything else was blotted out, and once the thump came he had to start again from scratch. The constant jarring had given him a headache, which wasn't helping, either. He'd have given anything to be able to hit back, but he knew that was impossible. If he launched a sortie, just to shut the bloody things up, it could cost him the war, and the Eremians their lives. It was like being taunted by a bully; it kills you slowly, but you know that as soon as you respond, you've lost. Quite simply, there was nothing to be done. And here he was, doing it.

'Where's Jarnac?' someone asked.

'Went out to have a look,' someone else replied. 'I think he gets antsy, just sitting around. You know, man of action.'

Scattered laughter; everybody knew Jarnac Ducas, of course. By the same token, everybody in the room was determinedly not looking at the vacant space where Miel Ducas should have been. They'd been not looking for hours. The strain was worse than the bombardment.

'How about a night sortie?' someone said. Silence. It wasn't the first time the suggestion had been made, and there was no reason to suppose that the many valid reasons against it had ceased to apply. 'I was thinking of a small force, no more than a hundred men…'

Whoever it was bleated on for a minute or so, then shut up. Nobody could be bothered to say anything. They were waiting for the whistle; and when it came, they counted.

'The Duke's compliments,' the man said, 'and if it's convenient, we've got orders to move you to the ground floor.'

Miel looked at him as though he was mad. 'The ground floor?' he repeated.

The man nodded. 'On account of the bombardment,' he said. 'The Duke felt that if they were to bring engines round the side of the city, you might be in danger up here. Much better off on the ground floor.'

Miel wanted to laugh. 'That's very thoughtful,' he said. 'When would he like me out by?'

'As soon as you're ready,' the man said. 'No tearing hurry.'

There were all manner of things that Miel wanted to ask, or say; but the man wouldn't know the answers to the questions, and it wouldn't do for him to hear the comments. 'Send my valet up and we'll start packing,' he said, with a faint smile. 'Thank you.'

Strange; the tower had become home. At least, it had become his customary environment, like a hawk's mews, a place where he perched and waited, hooded, until he was needed, or until someone came to pull his neck because he was no longer of any use. He wasn't sure he'd be able to cope as well, down at ground level.

It took a long time to put the proper state of the Ducas into bags and boxes (how can I have gathered so much stuff in such a short time? Miel wondered, as two more men staggered away down the stairs with their arms full). Eventually he was alone in a bare stone room, waiting for his keeper to take him down. Since he was on his honour (he was always on his honour), he hadn't even considered trying to slip away, bolt down the stairs while everyone was preoccupied with moving his possessions, try and run away. There was, after all, nowhere for him to go; he was the Ducas, everybody knew him by sight, and if he ran he'd have to leave being himself behind. That made him think, very briefly, of Ziani Vaatzes, who'd done just that. What on earth would that have felt like; jumping out of a window, he seemed to recall, and running like a doe or a boar flushed out of cover. And didn't he have a wife and children? I couldn't do that, Miel decided, I'd rather have stayed put and let them kill me.

The captain of the guard came to collect him; stood to one side to let him go first (due deference or a security precaution? Both, Miel decided; a happy coincidence of protocols). The tight coil of the spiral staircase made him feel slightly dizzy-always worse going down-and he had to stop for a moment and put his hand on the wall before they reached the bottom.

Just briefly they passed out into the open air. Miel stopped and looked up at the sky, then apologised for holding things up. It was time for his afternoon letter to Orsea.

'Can you tell me what's going on out there?' he asked the guard.

'Bombardment stopped about an hour ago,' the captain replied. 'We don't know yet if they've got any more stones to chuck at us, but it doesn't matter if they do. They just break up, like clods of dirt.'

At that moment Miel felt a stab of bewilderment, as though he'd suddenly woken up in a strange place. If the city was being attacked, he ought to be on the wall or in the council room, doing whatever he could to help. It seemed ludicrous that he should be blinking in the sunlight on the wrong side of the city, dull-witted from prolonged idleness, about to settle down in another cosy, enclosed room with nothing useful to do. He tried to remember what it was that he'd done wrong, but he couldn't. This is silly, he thought. I'll write a quick note to Orsea, he'll sort it all out. Then he remembered; he'd already done that, many times, and for some reason it didn't seem to have worked. He turned to the captain, who seemed a decent enough sort.

'Excuse me,' he said (because the Ducas is always polite). 'Can I ask you something?'

The captain frowned, then nodded. 'Of course.'

'This sounds silly,' Miel said, 'but you wouldn't happen to know, would you, what it is I'm supposed to have done?'

The expression on the captain's face was hard to interpret. Surprise, definitely; incredulity, perhaps, or shock. 'You mean…' he started to say, then hesitated for a moment. 'You mean to say you don't know?'

'That's right,' Miel said. 'I mean, they arrested me and brought me here, but nobody seemed to want to tell me why, I've written to the Duke and everybody else I can think of, but they haven't seen fit…' He paused. The Ducas doesn't criticise the Duke. 'I just wondered if you'd heard anything,' he said.

'That's-' Again, the captain stopped himself. 'If you haven't been told,' he said, 'it's got to be because there's a good reason. I'm sorry'

Miel looked at him. 'So there is a reason?' he said. 'You know what it is, but you won't tell me.'

'I can't,' the captain said.

Miel thought for a moment. 'Let me ask you something.' he said. 'You know what it is I'm supposed to have done. Yes?'

The captain nodded slowly.

'Fine,' Miel said. 'And I suppose it must be something pretty bloody dreadful, if I've got to be locked up in here for it. So; do you think I'm guilty?'

The captain looked away. 'It's not-'

'Do you think I did it or don't you?'

'Yes,' the captain said. 'Everybody knows about it, there was a letter-'

'A letter.' Miel closed his eyes, just for an instant. 'Right, thank you. I think I see now.'

The captain was looking at him. 'So it's true, then?' he said.

He tried not to, but he couldn't help laughing. 'I don't bloody know, do I?' he said. 'You won't tell me what the charges are.'

There was an edge of anger to the captain's voice. 'You were conspiring with the Vadani,' he said. 'You were plotting to get the Duke to escape, bugger off and leave us. You and-'

'That's not true,' Miel said angrily. 'What the hell have the Vadani got to do with it?' he added, because for a moment he'd forgotten who the letter had been from. He remembered as the captain replied.

'You're saying it's not true?' he said.

'I'd rather not discuss it,' Miel said. 'But for your information, because you're stuck with me and I don't want you thinking you're guarding some kind of evil monster, I've never had any dealings with the Vadani except as an accredited diplomat; I don't know Duke Valens, I've never talked to him or written him a letter or had a letter from him. If this is about what I think it is, then it's just a private thing between Duke Orsea and me.' He paused. 'Do you believe me?'

The captain stared at him. 'I don't know,' he said.

'Oh come on,' Miel said impatiently. 'Either you do or you don't.'

'You've got to go inside now,' the captain said.

Miel breathed out slowly. 'In case you're worried,' he said, 'I won't tell anybody about what you've just told me. If it comes up and they ask me how I knew, I'll say it was just some rumour my barber told me about. All right?'

The captain nodded gratefully. Evidently he was prepared to take the word of the Ducas. 'All I know is what people have been saying,' he said. 'They found a letter hidden in your house, and apparently it links you to a conspiracy to lure the Duke out of the city; they're saying the idea was to persuade him to escape to the Vadani, and then Valens would hand him over to the Mezentines.'

Miel nodded. 'I see,' he said. 'Because the Vadani are really still our enemies.'

'Partly. And partly…' The captain looked past him, as if the stairs they'd just come down were impossibly fascinating. 'They say the Duchess is having an affair with Valens, and this is how they planned on getting Orsea out of the way.'

Miel was silent for a moment. Then he said: 'I think you'd better lock me up now. If you really believe all that, the least you can do is chain me to the wall. If I were you, I'd cut my throat right now.'

Not surprisingly, the captain didn't reply. He led the way into the ground-floor apartment, which had already been furnished with the Ducas furniture and effects. The book he'd been reading was on the lectern, open at the right place. The Perfect Mirror of the Chase; Jarnac's choice, from his own library. Right now, Miel decided, he really wasn't in the mood. He flipped it shut and sat down in the window-seat, with his back to the world and the war. On the table there was a stack of paper, his inkwell, pen, penknife, sand-shaker, seal and candle; they knew his routine.

Instead, he drew his knees up under his chin and stared at the wall. There was a tapestry there; he'd been staring at it for some time before he noticed it, because it was exactly where it should be, where it always had been in relation to where he was likely to be sitting. It was the tapestry that always hung on the back wall of his writing-room, back at the Ducas house. He smiled, though its presence hurt him, and for the first time in twenty years he took a moment to look at it.

He'd grown up with it, of course, because everything in the Ducas house had always been there, certainly as long as he could remember. It was relatively recent by Ducas standards, certainly no more than eighty years old; Neo-Classical Primitive, if you insisted on being technical, which meant the figures were lean and angular, their elbows and knees bent and pointed, their heads in profile, their lips curled in a frozen smile, their hands and feet unnaturally small. In the centre, a unicorn was kneeling at the feet of a girl (she was flat-chested and her neck was freakishly long, which was the Neo-Classical Primitive way of telling you she was supposed to be pretty), while behind a nearby bush, half a dozen men lurked with spears and drawn bows. They weren't actually looking at the unicorn, because of artistic conventions, but it was pretty obvious what was going to happen next. Above and below the main scene ran borders crowded with running hounds-tiny heads, little stubby legs, stupidly long, thin bodies-in between exuberant growths of twisted, distorted flowers. He'd never really looked at it before, because if he had he'd have seen how terrifying it was, with its hideous, misshapen creatures and its message of treachery and death. It was supposed to be an allegory of courtly seduction; in Neo-Classicism, most things were. He wondered: which one is me, the girl or the hunters? The unicorn is Orsea, of course (it looked like a long, thin goat with a spike stuck in its head); I suppose I must be the girl, and the hunters in the bush are whoever's behind all this…

Somebody or other; he found he really wasn't interested in who it might be. Could be anybody, the Phocas, the Nicephorus, there were a dozen great families who traditionally sought to overthrow the Ducas at least once a generation.

It was a pursuit without malice, carried out between natural enemies who respected each other; no apology given or sought. Nine of the greater Ducas had been executed for treason; according to family tradition, six of them had been innocent, falsely accused by rival houses. In return, the Ducas had contrived to bring down eight of the Phocas, six of the Perdicas, seven of the Tzimisces… It was a way of keeping score, like a championship or a league, with so many points for an execution, so many for a banishment and so on. It was one of those things, and you really couldn't feel resentful about it, just as the dove doesn't resent the falcon, though it does its very best to avoid it.

The letter, though; someone had found it (they'd found it, the captain had said; but he'd have known if the Duke's men had come to search the house). The whole point was that nobody knew about that hiding-place but him. The only possibility was a servant, someone who'd worked in the Ducas house for a long time, who'd come across it by accident while cleaning or tidying. That was a possibility he didn't want to think about; far better that it should be the Phocas than somebody he trusted. Besides, it didn't matter. As soon as he was able to talk to Orsea, he'd be able to explain everything; and besides, Orsea would know that ridiculous story the captain had told him couldn't possibly be true, because in order to believe it, Orsea would have to believe that Veatriz was part of the conspiracy, and that was, of course, impossible-

Veatriz. It hit him like a punch in the face. If, somehow, Orsea had persuaded himself or been persuaded that there was some kind of ridiculous plot, then he must think Veatriz was right at the heart of it-conspiring with her lover, the Vadani Duke, to lure him to his death. Only, Orsea couldn't be that stupid. Orsea would never believe anything like that.

Just as Orsea would never ignore letters from his best friend.

He was already on his feet before the idea had taken shape in his mind. His instincts were telling him, you can't just sit here, you've got to get out and do something; rescue her, rescue both of them. It's your job, it's your duty. He made himself sit down again. The Ducas doesn't break out of prison; for one thing it'd be dreadfully inconsiderate, since it'd be bound to cause trouble for servants and dependants, who'd be assumed to have arranged or assisted his escape. Instead, the Ducas writes a letter to the Duke, explaining all the silly misunderstandings; the Duke believes him, out of respect for the Ducas honour; everything is cleared up and put right. Unfortunately, the system presupposed a competent Duke, a man of intelligence and sound judgement, who wasn't pathetically insecure and morbidly jealous about his wife.

He sat down and wrote a letter. Orsea-

This is ridiculous. I think I know what they've been telling you, and it simply isn't true. If you'll just come and see me for five minutes, I can prove it, and we can sort it all out. You owe me that.

He was about to sign it, but why bother? Nobody else on earth could have written that letter. He folded it, went to the door and called for a page. Nobody came, and that was a shock for the Ducas. Servants had always been there, all through his life. You didn't need to look; they'd be there, like component parts of a great machine. If the Ducas lifted up a plate, shut his eyes and dropped it, there'd be someone in the right place to catch it before it hit the floor. He called again, and waited. Eventually, a harassed-looking guard trotted up.

'Where is everybody?' Miel asked.

The soldier looked at him. 'On the towers, or the roofs,' he said. 'Watching. Didn't anybody tell you? The Mezentines are attacking.'

'Please,' said Jarnac Ducas, with a hint of desperation. 'Really, there's nothing you can do here, and I can't guarantee your safety. Please go back to the council room. That's where you're needed.'

Don't lie to me, Orsea thought, I've had enough lies from your family already. 'I'm the Duke,' he said, 'I should be here, on the front line. Where else should I be?'

Jarnac recognised the line; it was from a stirring speech made by Duke Tarsa IV, a hundred and seventy years ago. Probably Orsea didn't realise he was quoting. 'Inside,' he replied, 'where it's safe. Look,' he added, suddenly blunt, 'if you're up here and you get killed or badly hurt, it'll totally fuck up our morale. If they get up on the wall I'll send for you; that's when you'll need to be seen. Just standing around dodging scorpion bolts, that's no bloody good to anybody.'

And that's me told, Orsea thought rebelliously, but of course Jarnac was right. Not only did he sound right, he looked right, head to toe, in his no-nonsense open-face bascinet, brigandine coat over a light mailshirt, munitions arm and leg harness. You could believe in him, six foot five of lean muscle. He could've stepped straight off the pages of The True Art of War, or A Discourse of Military Science. He made Orsea feel about twelve years old.

'Fine,' he said, 'but you call me as soon as they get to the foot of the wall. That's an order.'

'Understood,' Jarnac said crisply; turned away, turned back impulsively. 'There's one thing you can do,' he said, in a voice more urgent and apprehensive than Orsea had ever heard him use before. 'Something that'd really help.'

'What?'

Jarnac stepped right up close, something the lesser Ducas had probably never done before in the history of the family. 'You can release Miel and send him up here to take over from me,' he said, with an edge to his voice that made Orsea step away. 'He's the man you need, not me. He's good at this stuff.'

He doesn't know, Orsea realised. 'I can't,' he said. 'Look, I promise I'll explain; but it simply can't be done, you've got to believe me.'

'I see.' Jarnac's massive head drooped on his neck for a moment, and then he was himself again. 'In that case, with your permission, I really must get back to the tower. I will send for you,' he added, 'you've got my word on that.'

Once Orsea had gone, Jarnac bounded up the stairs to the top platform of the tower. His staff were waiting for him, anxious to point out things they'd noticed-a unit of archers previously misidentified as engineers, tenders full of scorpion ammunition, a banner that could be the enemy general staff. Jarnac pretended to listen and nodded appreciatively, but the buzzing swarm of detail didn't penetrate. He was staring at the enemy; a single swarming, crawling thing trudging unhappily up the steep road to his city, with the intention of killing him.

Jarnac Ducas had fought in seventeen military engagements; the first, when he was just turned sixteen, had been against the Vadani, a trivial cavalry skirmish on the borders that had sucked in infantry detachments that happened to be in the vicinity and had turned into a vicious, indecisive slog-ging-match; the most recent, Miel's raid against the Mezentines. He'd missed the scorpion-cloud and the massacre, and he'd felt bad about that ever since. He'd been reading approved military texts since he was ten, at which age he'd also started to train with weapons (the sword, the spear, the poll-axe, the bow, the halberd); ten hours a week of forms, four hours a week sparring. By his own estimation, he was eminently qualified to lead a full regiment of heavy cavalry, as befitted his place in the social order. Never in his worst dreams had he ever imagined himself in sole command of the defence of Civitas Eremiae. That was something that simply couldn't happen.

'Get the engines wound up,' he said, not looking round to see who received the order. Whoever was responsible for doing it would know what to do. 'They're good to three hundred and fifty yards, is that right?'

Someone assured him that it was, not that the information was necessary. Some weeks earlier, a party of workmen had hammered a row of white stakes into the ground in a straight line, precisely three hundred and forty-nine yards from the wall. As soon as the enemy crossed the staked line, the scorpion crews were going to loose their first volley. The engineers who installed the machines had carefully zeroed them to that range, so that the first cloud of bolts would land on the line, with a permitted tolerance of six inches either way. The enemy advance guard, marching purposefully up the hill in good order, were already as good as dead. It was the unit behind them Jarnac was thinking about.

The key would be the mobile scorpion batteries; he could see them, though the enemy had done their best to disguise them as ordinary wagons. If he could neutralise the Mezentine scorpions, he reckoned he could kill one man in three before they reached the base of the wall. Take away a third, and the enemy army wasn't strong enough to take the city; there were definitive tables of odds in the military manuals that told you the proportion by which the attackers needed to outnumber the defenders in order to secure victory. Jarnac had a copy of A Discourse of Military Science tucked inside the front of his brigandine, with a bookmark to help him find the place. The critical figure was one in three; simple arithmetic.

Now then, he thought. The skirmish line advances, I wipe them out; while our engines are rewinding, they push forward the mobile batteries so that they're in range. I loose a volley that gets rid of all their scorpion crews, but when we're all down again, they send up replacement crews to span and align their scorpions. If I'm quick, maybe I'll get those crews too, but there'll be a third wave, and a fourth. Sooner or later they'll get off their shot; I'll lose crewmen, which'll slow down my rate of fire as I replace them. Whoever runs out of scorpion crewmen first will lose the war. And that's all there is to it.

(He paused for a moment to consider the sheer scale of the enterprise he was committing himself to. Not tens of deaths but hundreds, not hundreds but thousands, not thousands but tens of thousands; each death caused by a wound, a tearing of flesh, smashing of bone, pouring out of blood, an experience of intense pain. He'd seen death several hundred times, the moment when the light went out in the eyes of an animal because of some action of his, at which point the shudders and twitches were simply mechanical, no longer controlled by a living thing. Each of those deaths he could justify in terms of meat harvested, crops preserved from damage, honour given and respectfully taken-there were times when he found it hard to believe any of those justifications,' but he knew somehow that what he was doing was clean and legitimate. Now he was going to see death on a scale he couldn't begin to imagine, and the justification-which should have been self-evident-seemed elusive. Why kill ten thousand Mezentines, he asked himself, when the outcome is inevitable and the city is doomed to fall? Why should any human being kill another, given that the flesh and the hide are not used, and no trophy is taken? All he could find to shield himself with against these thoughts was a banal they started it, and the illogical, incredible fact that unless he killed them, all of them, they were going to wreck his city and murder his people. Because there's no alternative; it was a reason, not a justification, on a par with a parent's because I say so, something he had to obey but could neither understand nor respect. It was no job for a gentleman, even though it was the proper occupation of the lesser Ducas-but not to command, not to be in charge and accept responsibility. He hadn't been born to that; Miel had, and that was what he was there for. Except that he wasn't; why was that? he wondered.)

They were closing; they were only yards from the white posts; they were the quarry walking into the snare. Jarnac took a deep breath, sucked it in, found it impossible to let it go, because when he did so, he'd be saying the word, loose, that would kill all those people. Could he really do that, exterminate thousands of creatures with just one word, like a god or a magician in a story?

'Loose,' he said, and the scorpions bucked all along the wall. The sounds they made were the slider crashing home against the stop, a thump of steel on wood, and the hiss of the bolt forcibly parting the air. All around him, men were exploding into action, arching their backs as they worked frantically at windlasses, swirling and flickering like dancers as they picked up and loaded bolts, jumped clear as the sear dropped and the slider flew forward again. He pressed against the battlement and looked down, in time to see the cloud of bolts lift, a shimmering, insubstantial thing that fell like a net. The enemy were flattened like trampled grass, as if an invisible foot was stamping on them. They weren't people, of course; they were blades of grass, or ants, or bees swarming; not a thousand creatures who resembled him closely but one composite, collective thing, belonging to the species enemy. The bolt-cloud lifted again and blurred his view.

Something about it was wrong; at least, the enemy weren't acting in the way he'd been expecting. They'd sent forward another wave, but it was walking, scurrying right into the path of the bolts. He saw the invisible foot stamp it flat, and there wasn't another wave behind it. He realised what it meant: Vaatzes the Mezentine had improved the design of the windlasses, or something of the kind. These scorpions could be reloaded faster than the ones the Mezentines made, which meant their timings for their planned manoeuvres were all wrong; accordingly, instead of sending their people into a neat, safe interval between volleys, they'd placed them right under the stamping foot. Jarnac felt sick; it was a wicked, treacherous thing to do, to trick the enemy into destroying his own people on such an obscene scale. He turned his head away, and saw an engineer hanging by his hands from a windlass handle, every ounce of bodyweight and every pound of strength compressed into desperate activity.

He forced himself to look back at the view below, as though it was a punishment he knew he deserved. They'd been moving their scorpions up; now they were trying to stop them before they vanished under a net of bolts. The enemy was a bubbling stream now, swirling and breaking around tiny black pebbles, swept against their will into a weir of flying pins. Most of all, it was an utterly ludicrous spectacle; and beyond it he could see the familiar copses, spinneys, chases and valleys of his home, places he knew down to the last deer-track and split tree. It was an impossibility; what was that word the Mezentine had used, to describe something that shouldn't be possible, outside any definition of tolerance? It was an abomination.

After a while he got used to it, or at least he blunted the significance of what he was watching. It took four abortive and costly experiments before the Mezentines figured out the timing of the Eremian scorpion winches; the fifth time they were successful. It was a strange kind of success-seconds after their scorpions had been advanced into position, every man in the moving party was dead-but it constituted a victory, because the rest of their army started cheering, a sound so incongruous that it took Jarnac several seconds to figure out what it was. The sixth wave managed to span and align the engines before they died. The seventh-

But Jarnac had been practising for that. As soon as the sliders had slammed home, he raised both arms and yelled. Nobody could make out what he was saying, of course, but they'd been through the drill twenty times, anticipating this moment. As Jarnac dropped to his knees and shoved his shoulders tight against the rampart wall in front of him, he couldn't look round and see if the rest of his men were doing the same. He hoped they were; a heartbeat later he heard the swish, and that was when he closed his eyes. The clatter, as the enemy's scorpion bolts pitched all around him, was loud enough to force any kind of thought out of his head, and he forgot to give the next order. Fortunately, they didn't need to be told.

They got their next volley off just in time. Before his own bolt-cloud had pitched, a thin smear of enemy bolts sailed, peaked and dropped around him. He heard yells, a scream or two; he didn't look round, but couldn't help catching sight of a man with a bolt through his shoulder, in the hollow above the collar-bone; he overbalanced and fell backwards off the ledge. Jarnac leaned forward over the rampart-someone yelled at him but he took no notice-and saw confusion and an opportunity where the enemy scorpions were drawn up. It was an advantage; they'd have to bring up new crews now, and they'd run straight into the centre ring of the target and be killed. Before they died, they'd have spanned the windlasses and loaded the bolts, so that their successors could slip the sears and launch the volley. I'm killing men at an incredible rate, Jarnac told himself, but there's still too many of them. As he watched the new crews run forward, work frantically and die, he knew he was wasting his time. Might as well fight the grass, he thought; you can fill a dozen barns with hay, and all you're doing is encouraging it to grow.

It was the twelfth wave that did the damage. He timed it as well as he could, but maybe the twelfth-wavers were faster or better-trained, or maybe his men were getting tired; just as he was about to yell, 'Cover!' the bolts came down. It was like sea-spray breaking over a wall; and once he was up and on his feet again, he saw that half his crews were dead. The other half loosed their volley; he was leaning over the back edge of the walkway, yelling for fresh crewmen. They arrived in time to look up at a cloud of bolts. As the remaining engines returned fire he called again. The bolts overshot most of them as they scrambled into the cover of the wall, and they found engines spanned and ready to loose. That's a thought, Jarnac said to himself, and cursed his stupidity for not thinking of it before; loose alternately, in two shifts. He didn't need to give an order, they were doing it anyway. Another Mezentine volley pitched; he estimated that only a quarter of their engines were manned and operating. The trouble was, a quarter was plenty. Not only were they killing men, the bolts were stabbing into the timber frames of the engines, gouging out gobbets of splintered wood (the Mezentines, of course, made their frames out of steel). A return volley, and more men running up the stairs, jumping, vaulting over the piled-up dead, leaping at the windlass handles, ripping bolts out of nearby corpses to load the slider because it was quicker than stooping to load from the stack. Jarnac waited for the enemy reply. It didn't come.

He waited a little longer, then sprang to his feet and peered over the battlement. The main body of the enemy army was advancing, pouring round, past and over the line of engines, each with its grove of spitted dead men. Jarnac didn't understand; had they run out of artillerymen after all, or were they simply sick and tired of watching? It didn't matter; they were advancing into the killing zone-he heard the crash of the sliders, watched the enemy go down. He saw a whole line crumple and flatten, and the line behind them march on over them without stopping. The next volley pitched and slaughtered, but by then three other lines were out of the line of fire. Simple, when you thought about it. With his scorpions he could kill a quarter of the Mezentine army before they came within bowshot of the wall. But a quarter wouldn't be enough. He didn't need to open his copy of the Discourse and look it up on the table. He could do the sums in his head.

Someone, a junior staff officer of some kind, was standing a few yards away, gawping at the dead; half-witted, mouth open, arms dangling at his sides. Jarnac yelled to him but he didn't seem to hear, so he jumped up, grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

'Go to the palace,' he said. 'Fetch the Duke.' He had to repeat it twice, and then the man picked up his feet and ran, sliding in pooled blood, tripping on scorpion bolts and dead men's legs. That chore done and promise fulfilled, Jarnac turned back to the pointless task of killing ten thousand men.

At the foot of the wall, Melancton finally stopped and looked back over his shoulder. As he did so, he thought about the old fairy-tale that says you mustn't look behind you in the kingdom of the dead, or the dead will get you. The hero, of course, gets as far as the gateway unscathed; but, because he's a tragic hero, he gives in at the very last moment, and is lost for ever.

Best, therefore, not to think about the men who wouldn't be joining him for the next phase of the operation. He leaned his head back and looked up at the wall. Above him, he couldn't see the enemy scorpions, but he could hear the crack of the sliders slamming home. He was safe from them here; the city wall sheltered him, which in itself was a pleasing irony. With a tremendous effort he cleared his mind of the images that clogged it, and tried to remember the next step.

If the defences of Civitas Eremiae had a weakness, it was the main gate itself. The doors were strong-according to the reports he'd seen, six inches of cross-ply oak, reinforced with internal crossbeams-but they offered considerably more hope of success than the walls, and of course he had Mezentine ingenuity and craftsmanship to help him, provided he could move it the enormous distance of five hundred yards.

He glanced behind him again. Here it came; they'd listed it in the inventory as a battering-ram, but there was more to it than that. True, the first stage in its operation was simple enough, merely a beautifully engineered derivative of the crude old log-dangling-from-chains. Once it had been swung, however, and its two hardened and tempered beaks had pecked into the gate panels, it displayed hidden talents. At the heart of it was a windlass driving a worm. You could turn the windlass with one hand, but the power of mechanical advantage would force the two beaks apart, tearing the gate panels like rotten cloth. A point would-be reached where the wretched timbers wouldn't be able to resist any longer. They'd be prised open, the frame of the gate would spring, and a sharp tug on the back of the ram would drag them out like a bad tooth. He had his employers' word on that, which was a comfort.

The ram edged forward. It was being pushed by fifty-odd men, who were sheltered from the scorpion bolts by eighth-inch steel pavises mounted on the sides of the frame.

An overimaginative observer with a tendency to romanticise might be put in mind of a wild boar beset by hounds; to Melancton it was a piece of equipment, and he bitterly resented having to pin his hopes on it. For all that, it came slowly; there were dead men and other obstacles under the wheels, which had to be either dragged out of the way or ridden over. There was a slight gradient to overcome as well. He could picture the machine's designers, shaking their heads and making excuses when they heard about how he'd failed. He could hear bones crunching and skin bursting under the wheels.

Of course, he hadn't failed yet. Men were crowding round it, partly to get what cover they could from the bolts, partly to add their weight and help it up the slope, over the obstructions. He saw a man pinned to a frame-timber by a scorpion bolt; he was still alive, and every jolt and bump twisted the steel pin in his ruptured intestines. A man shouldn't have to see things like that, he thought. Soldiers die in a battle, and each death is hideous and obscene, but a commander has to look past all that, so that he can see the pattern, the great shape of the mechanism. He scampered out of the way as the machine rumbled and crunched towards the gate. The noise was confusing, how could anyone think with that going on? There was a disgusting smell of sweat and urine, which he realised was his own.

He saw the beam sway backwards, drawn by chains running on pulleys; trust the Mezentines to get a gear-train in somewhere. It hung in the air for a moment, and a slab of rock dropped from the battlement above, bounced off the wall as it fell, skipped out wildly and caught the side of a man's head. Melancton saw his legs and back collapse as he lurched sideways and fell in a heap, like discarded dirty laundry. The beam swung forward. He heard the splitting of wood. The beam had stopped dead, not a quiver in the chains. They were spanning the windlass now, he could hear the scream of the oak ply being levered apart. Shouting all around him, on all sides and above, where an Eremian officer was screaming at his men to lower the elevation on a scorpion as far as it would go. Not far enough, Melancton knew, and the panic in his enemy's voice delighted him. He lifted his head and saw a great wedge of daylight glowing through the wrecked panels of the door. The framing timbers were bent like the limbs of bows; it was shocking to see the torture of materials as the stress from the worm built up in them. It was impossible for solid oak bars to bend as far as that. They snapped, the ends a prickly mess of needle-pointed splinters running down the over-abused grain. He heard a voice give an order, though he couldn't make out the words. The beam jerked back; the doors popped out of their frame like a cork from a bottle.

Of course, he hadn't given much thought to what would happen after that. He'd sort of assumed that once the gate was open, that would be that; as though the gate was the enemy's neck, snap it and they die. Instead, a cloud flitted out of the open gateway, and in the fraction of a second it took to pass him by, he heard the hiss and recognised the flight of arrows.

The engine sheltered some of them, but not all. For a moment, long enough to count up to six, it was all perfectly still in the space in front of the gate, because nobody was left alive to move. The Eremians, he knew, were fumbling for arrows, nocking them, drawing. They'd be in time to meet the confused, furious charge with another volley. Melancton turned his head away until he heard the hiss. When he turned back, he saw his men charging.

The archers in the gateway changed their minds at the last moment, realising they didn't have time for another volley. Just too late, they turned to run, and the infantry charge rammed them. Mostly they were simply knocked down and trampled on; there wasn't any room for using weapons, and no time. Melancton jumped up to join the charge. He was ready to go when he heard the slam of sliders.

They'd briefed him in great detail about the effective use of scorpions, with examples drawn from many campaigns against many different enemies. But they hadn't said anything about what would happen if a densely packed force of infantry received a scorpion volley at point-blank range. Given the proud thoroughness of Mezentine military intelligence, he could only presume that such a thing had never happened.

It had happened now. The men in the front of the scrum were blown back as if by a blast of wind or an incoming breaker. Swept off their feet, they slammed into the men behind them, as the bolts plunged through them and out behind. Three men pinned together, unable to fall for a long moment, until they toppled sideways; the sheer crushing effect of so much force contained in such a crowded, fragile space. Melancton saw it all, and the images soaked into his mind. They would be there for ever, like frescos painted on the inside of his eyelids. He noticed that he was stumbling towards the gateway, shoving his way in a jumble of calves, elbows, shoulders, backs. What am I doing? he wanted to know. Why am I going there, it's dangerous. He had no choice in the matter, apparently. He heard the hiss of arrows, and a soldier fell across him, treading on his kneecap as he sprawled to the ground. Three more paces brought him to a dead stop. Somehow it had turned into a pushing contest. His arms were jammed against his sides, so he shoved his shoulder into the back of the man trapped in front of him, and pushed with his back and legs. Someone else was doing the same to him. All the breath was forced out of his lungs, and he found he couldn't replace it. The panic of not being able to breathe suppressed every other thought for a moment, until the man behind him shifted a little and the pressure on his lungs eased up. He gobbled a deep pull of air, and was flattened against the man in front.

The Eremians loosed another volley from their scorpions.

By now, all the dead were too tightly wedged up to fall; they were a shield, a ram, something to push against. Melancton's mind evacuated all his remaining thoughts as pain rendered everything else irrelevant. He could hear his own voice screaming. Whatever was happening to him, it seemed to be going on for ever. He could see the logic; he'd looked round on the threshold of death's kingdom, and now he would be here for ever.

The Phocas were sceptical after the event. They maintained that in a crush like that, nobody could make a difference, no matter how strong they were, or how brave. But they kept their doubts to themselves, for fear of appearing ungracious. None of the other eye-witnesses agreed with them, in any event. The Bardanes and the Nicephorus both maintained that at the critical point of the battle in the gateway, Jarnac Ducas and his personal guard, recruited from his huntsmen and harbourers, cut a path through the enemy with poll-axes and glaives, took their stand outside the gate and held their ground until all the Mezentines who'd spilled into the city had been killed, and the engineers had blocked the gateway with steel pavises propped up by scaffolding beams. Only Jarnac himself and one huntsman made it back, scrambling up over a pavise as it was being lifted into place and dropping down the other side. It was, the majority of those present agreed, the most extraordinary thing they'd ever seen.

The huntsman died ten minutes later-they counted twenty-one wounds on his body-but Jarnac was able to walk twenty yards to a mounting-block and sit down of his own accord before he passed out. The consensus was that he owed his life to the brigandine coat.

When he came round, half an hour later, he opened his eyes and asked what was going on. They told him that the attack had been driven back, with heavy losses. He didn't believe them, and passed out again.

It was Ziani Vaatzes who suggested dropping grappling-hooks from the gatehouse tower and simply lifting the battering-ram off the ground, using the portcullis winch. They did as he told them because he was a Mezentine, and therefore knew about such things. When the crisis was over and they wanted to lift him shoulder-high and salute him as the saviour of the city, he turned out not to be there. Meanwhile the ram dangled in the air like a dead spider, until someone thought of winching it up as far as it'd go and then slipping the winch. It fell thirty feet and smashed, and that was the end of it.

Duke Orsea arrived too late, of course. He'd run from the council room as soon as the messenger arrived, but the press of bodies was too thick and he couldn't get through. By the time he'd scrambled his way to the front of the scrum it was all over, and they were carrying the lesser Ducas home on a door. Everyone was convinced he was dead, until he appeared at his front gate, leaning on someone's shoulder. The cheering was as loud as the battle at the gate.

They spent the rest of the day and all the following night shoring up the barricades in the gateway and fixing or cannibalising the damaged scorpions. Vaatzes reappeared to take charge of that side of it. Probably it was just stress and fatigue, but nobody was able to get a civil word out of him. He shouted at the workers, which wasn't how he usually behaved toward his men, and nobody seemed able to do anything right.

Some time after midnight, they finished counting the dead bodies and collating the casualty lists. Five hundred and seventeen killed, over nine hundred wounded; meanwhile, a work detail was struggling to get the dead Mezentines out of the gateway, so the masons could get in and block up the breach with bricks and rubble. Nobody could be bothered to count them, though there were inevitably a few jokes about saving some of the better heads for the lesser Jarnac's trophy collection. As and when there was time, the plan was to load them into ammunition derricks, winch them up to the top of the wall and throw them over. There wasn't enough space in the city to bury them, and burning such a monstrous quantity of material would have posed a fire hazard.