Devices and Desires

Chapter Three

As soon as Duke Orsea realised he'd lost the battle, the war and his country's only hope of survival, he ordered a general retreat. It was the only sensible thing he'd done all day.

One hour had made all the difference. An hour ago, when he'd led the attack, the world had been a very different place. He'd had an army of twenty-five thousand men, one tenth of the population of the Duchy of Eremia. He had a commanding position, a fully loaded supplies and equipment train, a carefully prepared battle plan, the element of surprise, the love and trust of his people, and hope. Now, as the horns blared and the ragged lines crumpled and dissolved into swarms of running dots, he had the miserable job of getting as many as he could of the fourteen thousand stunned, bewildered and resentful survivors away from the enemy cavalry and back to the relative safety of the mountains. One hour to change the world; not many men could have done such a thorough job. It took a particular genius to destroy one's life so comprehensively in so short a time.

A captain of archers, unrecognisable from a face-wound, ran past him, shouting something he didn't catch. More bad news, or just confirmation of what he already knew; or maybe simple abuse; it didn't greatly matter, because now that he'd given the order, there was precious little he could do about anything. If the soldiers got as far as the thorn-scrub on the edge of the marshes, and if they stopped there and re-formed instead of running blindly into the bog, and if they were still gullible enough to obey his orders after everything he'd let them in for, he might still be relevant. Right now, he was nothing more than a target, and a conspicuous one at that, perched on a stupid white horse and wearing stupid fancy armour.

It hurt him, worse than the blade of the broken-off arrow wedged in his thigh, to turn his back on the dead bodies of his men, scattered on the flat moor like a spoilt child's toys. Once he reined in his horse, turned and rode away, he acknowledged, he'd be breaking a link between himself and his people that he'd never be able to repair. But that was self-indulgence, he knew. He'd forgone the luxury of guilt when he bent his neck to the bait and tripped the snare. The uttermost mortification; his state of mind, his agonised feelings, didn't matter any more. It was his duty to save himself, and thereby reduce the casualty list by one. He nudged the horse with his heels.

The quickest way to the thorn-hedge was across the place where the centre of his line had been. His horse was a dainty stepper, neatly avoiding the tumbled bodies, the carelessly discarded weapons that could cut a delicate hoof to the quick. He saw wounded men, some screaming, some dragging themselves along by their hands, some struggling to draw a few more breaths, as though there was any point. He could get off the stupid white horse, load a wounded man into the saddle and take his chances on foot. Possibly, if there'd only been one, he'd have done it. But there wasn't just one, there were thousands; and that made it impossible, for some reason.

Orsea had seen tragedy before, and death. He'd even seen mess, great open slashed wounds, clogged with mud and dust, where a boar had caught a sluggish huntsman, or a careless forester had misjudged the fall of a tree. He'd been there once when a granary had collapsed with fifteen men inside; he'd been one of the first to scrabble through the smashed beams and fallen stone blocks, and he'd pulled two men out of there with his own hands, saved their lives. He'd done it because he couldn't do otherwise; he couldn't turn his back on pain and injury, any more than he could stick his hand in a fire and keep it there. An hour ago, he'd been that kind of man.

A horseman came thundering up behind him. His first thought was that the enemy cavalry was on to him, but the rider slowed and called out his name; his name and his stupid title.

He recognised the voice. 'Miel?' he yelled back.

Miel Ducas; he'd never have recognised him. Ten years ago he'd have traded everything he had for Miel Ducas' face, which seemed to have such an irresistible effect on pretty young girls. Now, though, he couldn't see Miel's nose and mouth through a thick splatter of dirt and blood.

'There's another wing,' Miel was saying; it took Orsea a heartbeat or so to realise he was talking about the battle. 'Another wing of fucking cavalry; reserve, like they need it. They're looping out on the far left, I guess they're planning on cutting us off from the road. I've still got six companies of lancers, but even if we get there in time we won't hold them long, and they'll chew us to buggery.'

Orsea sighed. He wanted to shrug his shoulders and ride on-he actually wanted to do that; his own callous indifference shocked him. 'Leave it,' he heard himself say. 'Those lancers are worth more to us than a regiment of infantry. Keep them out of harm's way, and get them off the field as quick as you can.'

Miel didn't answer, just pulled his horse's head round and stumbled away. Orsea watched him till he was out of sight over the horizon. It'd be nice to think that over there somewhere, screened by the line of stunted thorns, was that other world of an hour ago, and that Miel would arrive there to find the army, pristine and unbutchered, in time to turn them back.

Orsea still wasn't quite sure what had happened. Last night, camped in the middle of the flat plain, he'd sent out his observers. They started to come back around midnight. The enemy, they said, was more or less where they were supposed to be. At most there were sixteen thousand of them; four thousand cavalry, perched on the wings; between them, ten thousand infantry, and the artillery. The observers knew their trade, what to look for, how to assess numbers by counting camp fires, and as each one reported in, Orsea made a note on his map. Gradually he built up the picture. The units he was most worried about, the Ceftuines and the southern heavy infantry (the whole Mezentine army was made up of foreign mercenaries, apart from the artillery), were camped right in the middle, just as he'd hoped. His plan was to leave them till last; break up the negligible Maderi infantry and light cavalry on either side of the centre, forcing the Mezentines to commit their heavy cavalry to a long, gruelling charge across the flat, right down the throats of his eight thousand archers. That'd be the end of them, the Bareng heavy dragoons and the lancers. If a tenth of them made it through the arrow-storm, they'd be doing outstandingly well; and then Orsea's own lancers would take them in the flank, drive them back on their own lines as the wholesale roll-up started. In would come the horse-archers from the extreme ends of the line, shepherding the Mezentines in on their own centre, where the Ceftuines would've been standing helplessly, watching the world collapse all around them. By the time the fighting reached them, they'd be hemmed in on all sides by their own defeated, outflanked, surrounded comrades. The lancers would close the box, and the grand finale would be a long, one-sided massacre.

It had been that, all right.

A deep, low hum far away to his left; Orsea stood up in his stirrups, trying to get a better view, but all he could see was dust. He couldn't even remember which of his units was over that way now. Every part of his meticulously composed line was out of place. When the disaster struck, he'd tried to fight back, pulling men out of what he thought was the killing zone, only to find he'd sent them somewhere even worse. He didn't understand; that was what made him want to sob with anger. He still didn't know how they were doing it, how the bloody things worked; all he'd seen was the effects, the clouds and swarms of steel bolts, three feet long and half an inch thick, shot so fast they flew flat, not looped like an ordinary arrow. He'd been there when a volley struck the seventh lancers. First, a low whistling, like a flock of starlings; next, a black cloud resolving itself into a skyful of tiny needles, hanging in the air for a heartbeat before swooping, following a trajectory that made no sense, broke all the known rules of flight; then pitching, growing bigger so horribly fast (like the savage wild animals that chase you in dreams), then dropping like hailstones all around him; and the shambles, the noise, the suddenness of it all. So many extraordinary images, like a vast painting crammed with incredible detail: a man nailed to the ground by a bolt that hit him in the groin, drove straight through his horse and into the ground, fixing them both so firmly they couldn't even squirm; two men riveted together by the same bolt; a man hit by three bolts simultaneously, each one punched clean through his armour, and still incredibly alive; a great swathe of men and horses stamped into the ground, like a careless footstep on a flowerbed full of young seedlings. Just enough time for him to catch fleeting glimpses of these unbelievable sights, and then the next volley fell, two minutes of angle to the left, flattening another section of the line. He couldn't even see where the bolts were coming from, they didn't seem to rise from the surface of the earth, they just materialised or condensed in mid-air, like snow.

As he watched the bolts fall all around him, he couldn't understand why he was the only one left alive, or how they could aim so precisely to kill everybody else and leave him alone. But of course they could. They could do anything.

That was when he'd given his one sensible order, just over an hour ago. A few minutes later, the volleys stopped; there were no coherent bodies of men left to shoot at, and the Mezentine cavalry was surging forward to begin the pursuit and mopping-up. So hard to judge time, when the world has just changed and all the rules are suddenly different, but his best guess was that the disaster had taken ten minutes, twelve at the very most. You couldn't boil a pot of water in that time.

Just a simple steel rod, pointed at one end; he reached out and pulled one out of the ground as he rode. You could use it as a spit; or three of them, tied together at the top, would do to hang a pot from over the fire. They stood up out of the ground, angled, like bristles on an unshaven chin, and there were far too many to count. It'd take weeks just to come round with carts and collect them all up-did the Mezentines do that, or did they leave them, as a monument of victory and a warning to others, till they flaked away into rust? He could imagine them doing that, in this dead, unused plain, which they'd shot full of pins.

I'd have liked just to see one of their machines, he thought, as a sort of consolation prize; but I guess I haven't done anything to deserve that privilege.

He looked back over his shoulder, to see how close the Mezentine cavalry was; but they weren't closing. Instead, they seemed to be pulling back. Well, he could understand that. Why risk the lives of men, even paid servants, when you've got machines to do the work? They'd made their point, and now they were letting him go. So kind of them, so magnanimous. Instead of killing him, they were leaving him to bring the survivors home, to try and find some way of explaining what had become of the dead. (Well, there was this huge cloud of steel pins that came down out of the sky; and the dog ate my homework.) They were too cruel to kill him.

At the thorn hedge, he found what was left of his general staff; twenty out of thirty-six. His first reaction was anger; how could he be expected to organise a coherent retreat without a full staff? (So what are you going to do about it? Write a strongly worded letter?) Then it occurred to him that he wasn't ever going to see those missing faces again, and there was a moment of blind panic when he looked to see who was there and who wasn't. Key personnel-four out of five of the inner circle, but the missing man had to be Faledrin Botaniates; how the hell am I going to keep track of duty rosters without Faledrin? The others, the ones who weren't there, were-The shame burned him, he'd just thought expendable. He forced himself to go back and repeat the thought. It'd be difficult, a real pain in the bum, to have to cope without them, but a way could be found. Therefore, they were, they'd been, expendable.

There, he'd thought it; the concept he'd promised he'd never let creep into his mind, now that he was the Duke of Eremia. That coped off the day's humiliations, and he was right down there with all the people he despised most. Fine. Now he'd got that over with, it might be an idea to do some work.

They were looking at him; some at his face, some at the blood trickling through the joints of his leg-armour. He'd forgotten all about it.

'What happened to you?' someone said.

The scope of the question appalled him for a moment; then he realised it was just his stupid wound they were talking about. 'Friendly fire,' he said briskly. 'I guess I'm the only man on the field who got hit by one of our arrows.' He started to dismount, but something went wrong. His left leg couldn't take any weight, and he ended up in a heap on the ground.

He yelled at them not to fuss as they pulled him to his feet; it was ridiculous, bothering with him when there were thousands of men gradually dying on the other side of the brake. Before he could forbid it, someone sent a runner for the surgeon. Stupid. No time for that.

'We've got to get out of here,' someone was saying. 'They don't seem to be following up right now, but we've got to assume we'll have their cavalry after us any minute. Does anybody know where anybody is?'

Orsea had views of his own on the subject, but quite suddenly he wasn't feeling too good. Dizziness, like he'd been drinking; and he couldn't think of words. He opened his mouth to say something, but his mind had gone blank. His arms and head seemed to weigh far too much…

When he woke up, the sky had turned to canvas. He looked at it for a moment; he could see the weave, and the lines of stitching at the seams. He realised he was lying on his back, on cushions piled on a heap of empty sacks. His throat was ridiculously dry, and he felt so weak…

'He's coming round,' someone said. (Fine; treat me like I'm not here.) 'Go and fetch Ducas, and the doctor.'

He knew that voice, but while he'd been asleep, someone had burgled his mind and stolen all the names. He tried to lift his head, but his muscles had wilted.

'Lie still,' someone else said. 'You've lost a hell of a lot of blood.'

No I haven't, he wanted to say. He let his head slip back on to the cushion. There were heavy springs bearing on his eyelids, and the light hurt. 'Where is this?' he heard himself say, in a tiny little voice.

'God only knows,' someone said, just outside his limited circle of vision. 'Just to the right of the middle of nowhere. We've rounded up what we can of the army and the Mezentines seem to have lost interest in us, so we've pitched camp. Miel Ducas is running things; I've sent someone to fetch him.'

He definitely knew that voice, but it didn't belong here. It was absurdly out of context; it belonged in a garden, a little square patch of green and brown boxed in by mud-brick walls. His father's house. Now he knew who the speaker was; his second oldest friend, after Miel Ducas. Fancy not recognising someone you'd grown up with.

'Cordea?' he muttered.

'Right here.' There was something slightly brittle about Cordea's voice, but that was only to be expected in the circumstances. 'They got the arrow out,' he was saying, 'they had a hell of a job with it. Apparently it was right up against the artery, nicked it but didn't cut into it. The doctor didn't dare draw it out, for fear of the barbs slicing right through. In the end he had to go in from the side, so you're pretty badly cut up. Infection's the biggest risk, of course-'

'Shut up about my stupid leg,' Orsea interrupted. 'What about the battle? How many…?'

He couldn't bring himself to finish the question. Simple matter of pronouns; how many of our men did I kill?

'Nine thousand dead.' Cordea's voice was completely flat. 'Two thousand badly wounded, another three thousand cut up but on their feet.' Cordea paused. 'Miel insisted on going back with his lancers and the wagons; he picked up about eight hundred before they started shooting at him. Of course the surgeons can't cope with numbers like that, so we'll lose another two, three hundred just getting home. Actually, it could've been a whole lot worse.'

Well, of course it could. But it was plenty bad enough. 'Has anybody got any idea what those things were?' Orsea asked.

Cordea nodded. 'Tell you about it later,' he said. 'Look, it was me said that Miel should take charge; only I couldn't think of anybody else. Are you all right with that?'

Orsea tried to laugh. Talk about your stupid questions. 'Absolutely fine,' he said.

'Only, I know you and he don't always get on…'

'Cordea, that was when we were twelve.' He wanted to laugh, but apparently he couldn't. 'What about moving on?' he said. 'We can't just stay here, wherever the hell we are.'

'In the morning. They're shattered, we'd lose people if we tried to move out tonight. We've got sentries, in case they attack.'

'How far…?' Dizzy again. He gave in and closed his eyes. If he let himself drift back to sleep, maybe he'd wake up to find it had all been taken care of. He'd never wanted to be a duke anyway. 'Ask Miel…' he began to say, but the sentence didn't get finished.

'It's a real stroke of luck, him getting wounded.'

He'd opened his eyes but it was still dark; there was just a glimmer of lighter blue. He lay still.

'There's going to be hell to pay,' Miel's voice went on, 'but we'll make out he's at death's door, it'll go down well. No need to tell anybody it was one of our arrows.'

'Tell them he was a hero, fighting a desperate rearguard action so the army could escape,' someone else said. 'I'd rather we were bringing home a victory, but a glorious defeat's not so bad. Better than a bloody good hiding, anyway. How's the water holding out?'

'Not wonderful,' Miel answered. 'Thank God we were able to save the barrels, or we'd be completely screwed. As it is, we'll probably get to the foothills tomorrow night, and there's plenty of springs coming down off the mountains. You'd better cut the ration, though. The horses should come first, we can't afford to lose any more.'

'All right.' The second voice was getting further away. 'We were right, though, weren't we? I mean, basically it was a good idea.'

He heard Miel laugh. 'No,' he said. 'No, it was a bloody stupid idea. Maybe next time when he says, let's not pick a fight with the Mezentine Empire, somebody'll listen.'

(But that's wrong, Orsea wanted to say. I was against it to begin with, but then they explained and I realised they were right. It made good sense, it was the bigger, broader view, and the only reason I was against it at the start was fear…)

'Doctor's here,' someone else called out. 'Is he awake?'

'No,' Miel replied. 'At least, I don't think so. Tell him to wait, I'll take a look.'

They lit a lamp so the doctor could see what he was doing. Not anyone Orsea had ever seen before; he looked drained, as was only to be expected. His eyes were red, and all he said when the examination was over was, 'He'll keep. Just don't bounce him up and down too much.'

'I'll bear that in mind.' Miel turned his head, knelt down beside him, and for the first time since the battle, Orsea saw his face without the thick, obscuring smear of caked blood.

'Hello,' Miel said. 'How are you doing?'

He was glad he hadn't had to see it before they stitched it up; but Miel wouldn't be getting the sort of stares he was used to from the pretty girls in future. Orsea felt bad about that; he knew how much it meant to him, always being the best-looking, never having to try. Well, that was a thing of the past, too.

'Awful,' he replied. 'How about you?'

Miel shrugged. 'Things are pretty much under control,' he said. 'One more march should see us off this fucking plain. I don't see them following us up the mountain. I've sent ahead for what we need most.'

Orsea closed his eyes. 'I was lucky,' he said.

'You bet. Another sixteenth of an inch, the doctor said-'

'That's not what I meant. I was lucky I got hurt. It meant I got to sleep through all the worst bits, and you've had to cope. I'm sorry about that.'

Miel clicked his tongue. 'Forget about it,' he said.

'And your face.'

'Forget about that too.' Miel's voice tensed up just a little, nonetheless. 'It was pretty comical, actually. Ducked out of the way of one of those bolt things, tripped over my feet, laid myself open on a sharp edge. Of course I'll tell all the girlies it was hand-to-hand combat with the Mezentine champion.'

'You were standing over the crumpled body of the Duke,' Orsea said. 'Outnumbered five to one-'

'Seven.'

'You're quite right, seven to one; and they were all in full armour, and you'd lost your sword, so all you had was a tent-peg-'

'A broken tent-peg, please.'

'Naturally' Orsea sighed. Actually, that's not so far from the truth. In fact, what you did was rather more important. You see, I wouldn't have been able to-'

'Balls.' He heard Miel shift; he was standing up, presumably. A leader's work is never done. 'The doctor says you need to rest. I said, it's what he's best at. Try not to die in the night.'

Orsea pulled a grim face. 'Just to spite you, I will,' he said, 'and then you'll be left with all my messes to sort out on your own.'

Miel frowned at him. 'That joke's still funny this time,' he said, 'but next time it'll just be self-indulgent. While you're in here with nothing to do, you can think of a new one.'

'Seriously.' Orsea looked at his friend. 'I feel really bad about it, you being landed with all of this.'

Miel shrugged. 'It's my job,' he said.

'At least get someone to help you. What about Cordea? He's not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, but he's smarter than me-'He stopped. Miel had turned away, just for a moment.

'Oh,' Orsea said.

'Sorry,' Miel replied. 'My fault, I'd assumed they'd have told you. Blood poisoning, apparently.'

'I see.' For a moment, Orsea couldn't think; it was as though his mind was completely empty. He ought to say something, but he couldn't remember any suitable words. Miel shook his head.

'Get some sleep,' he said. 'It's the most useful thing you can do.'

'Sleep?' Orsea laughed. 'Sorry, but I don't think I can.'

But he could; and the next thing he saw was bright daylight through the open tent-flap, and the doctor prodding his leg with his finger.

'You're lucky,' the doctor said, 'no infection, and it's scarring up nicely. Mind you,' he added, with a kind of grim zest, 'one wrong move and it'll burst open again, and next time you may not be so fortunate. Try and keep your weight off it for now.'

'Thanks,' Orsea replied through a mouthful of sleep, 'but I've got an army to move up the mountain, so I don't-'

'No you haven't. Miel Ducas is handling all that.' He made it sound like the arrangements for a dance. 'You can help best by staying put and not causing any trouble.'

'Fine. Don't let me keep you.'

The doctor grinned. 'I was all finished anyway. I'll look at it again this evening. Remember, nothing energetic. They've put together a litter to carry you.'

The doctor left before he could argue, which was annoying. He wanted to protest; how could he let himself be carried about on a litter when there were wounded men-seriously wounded men-who were going to have to hobble and crawl, and who might well not make it all the way? But, as the tent-flap dropped shut behind the doctor's back, he realised it was pointless. They wouldn't allow it, because he was the Duke and he wasn't allowed to die of impatience and nobility of spirit. If he tried to dismiss the litter-bearers and walk up the mountain, it'd only lead to fuss and delay while Miel and the others told him not to be so bloody stupid; if he protested, he wouldn't impress the doctor, and nobody else would be listening to him. With a sigh, he decided to reclassify himself as a cumbersome but necessary piece of luggage. The galling thing, of course, was that they could manage perfectly well without him; better, probably. After all, he was the one who'd got them all into this appalling situation.

They came and dismantled the tent around him; brisk, efficient men in muddy clothes who seemed to have the knack of not seeing him. They left him on his pile of cushions and sacks under a clear blue sky, in a landscape crowded with activity. He watched them loading the carts with folded tents, barrels, sacks, unused arrows still in their sheaves, boxes of boots, belts and spare side-plates for helmets, trestle tables and wounded men. Finally his litter came. Two Guards captains hauled him on to it; the porters lifted it on their shoulders like a coffin, and joined the queue of slow-moving baggage threading its way on to the narrow path. From his raised and lordly position he could see a long way over the heads of his people (wasn't there an old saying about that, how we're all dwarves on the shoulders of giants; we're lesser men than our fathers, but because we inherit their wisdom and experience, we can see further). First he looked back in case there were any signs of pursuit. It was impossible to make out much on the featureless plain, but he convinced himself he could see the battlefield and the thorn hedge. The grey blur in the air; would that be a huge flock of crows picking at the dead, or smoke from fires where the tidy Mezentines were burning up the litter? He could see the heads of the army, flashes of light on helmets that were beginning to rust, since nobody could be bothered with scouring them down with sand twice a day. On the way out they'd marched in ranks and files, smart and neat as the hedges round formal gardens. Now they trudged in knots and bunches, and the gaps between each group looked like bald patches in a frayed coat.

(Invade Mezentia, they'd told him; clever men who'd chafed at the old Duke's timid caution, because they knew that the longer the job was left, the harder it would be. Attack them now, while there's still time. It's us or them; not aggression but simple, last-ditch self-defence. The old Duke had had the perfect excuse: the long, bitter, unwinnable war against their neighbours, which drained away every spare penny and every fit man. But that war was over now. They'd had to grin and bear painfully humiliating terms-land and water-rights and grazing-rights on the eastern mountains given away instead of fought over to the death-but it had been worth it because it made possible the pre-emptive strike against the real enemy, and thanks to the last fifty years of relentless campaigning and slaughter they had an army of hardened veterans who'd drive the Mezentine mercenaries into the sea. The alternative, biding still and quiet while the Republic strangled them to death at their leisure, was simply unthinkable. Besides, with an army of twenty-five thousand, how could he possibly lose?)

They were taking the Butter Pass up the mountain. Not through choice. They'd come down into the plain, five days ago, by way of the main cart-road, a relatively gentle gradient and firm going for the horses. But they were a whole day east, thanks to the fear of the Mezentine cavalry, and they didn't have enough water left to go round the foot of the mountain. The Butter Pass was a different proposition altogether. It was adequate for its purpose; once a month, hundreds of hill-farmers' sons trudged down it with yokes on their shoulders, each carrying a hundredweight of butter and cheese to the cluster of tents where the Mezentine buyers were waiting for them. Going back up the mountain, they had a much lighter load: a few copper pennies or a roll of cotton cloth (third or fourth quality), at most a keg of nails or a rake and a hoe. Taking an army up the Butter Pass was the sort of stupid thing you only did if you had to. It was slow going. To get the carts up without smashing wheels or shearing axles, they had to stop every fifty yards or so to shift boulders, fill in potholes, cut away the rock or improvise embankments to widen the path. Boulders too big to lever aside had to be split, with hammers and wedges or by lighting a fire to heat them up and then quenching them with buckets of precious, scarce water. It was a vast, thankless expenditure of effort and ingenuity-no praise or glory, just a sigh when the obstacle was circumvented and a grim shrug as the next one was addressed-and all Orsea could do was watch, as his bearers lowered him to the ground, glad of the excuse for a rest. It was all wrong; he should be paying off his debt by leading the way. In his mind's eye he saw himself, dusty and bathed in sweat, leaning on a crowbar or swinging a big hammer, exhausted but cheerful, first man to the job and last man off it, and everyone feeling better for knowing he was there with them-instead, he watched, as if this was all a demonstration by the corps of engineers, and he was sitting in a grandstand, waiting to award prizes. Miel Ducas was doing his job for him, and doing it very well. He thought about that, and felt ashamed.

There was still an hour's light left when they gave up for the night, but everybody was too exhausted to carry on. There had already been unnecessary accidents and injuries, and Miel had called a halt. Instead, men stumbled about on a sad excuse for a plateau, struggling to pitch tents on the slope, wedging cartwheels with stones to stop them rolling; the whole tiresome routine of unpacking and setting up, lighting fires without proper kindling, cooking too little food in too little water. They pitched his tent first (were they doing it on purpose to show him up? No, of course they weren't); the doctor came, looked, prodded and failed to announce that the wound had miraculously healed and he'd be fit for duty in the morning. One by one the survivors of his general staff dropped by. They were genuinely anxious about his health, but they didn't want his orders or even his advice. Finally, Miel Ducas came, slow and clumsy with fatigue, squatting on the floor rather than wait for someone to fetch him a chair.

'Slow going,' he reported. 'I'd sort of counted on making it to the hog's back tonight, so we could get on the south-west road by noon tomorrow. As it is, we might just get there by nightfall; depends on conditions. And if it decides to rain, of course, we're screwed.'

Orsea hadn't even considered that. 'Who said anything about rain?' he said. 'It's been blue skies all day.'

Miel nodded. 'Talked to a couple of men who make the butter run,' he said. 'According to them, it's the time of year for flash storms. Clear sky one minute, and the next you're up to your ankles in muck. That's if you're lucky and you aren't swept away in a mudslide. Cheerful bastards.'

Orsea couldn't think of anything to say. 'Let's hope it stays dry, then.'

'Let's hope.' Miel yawned. 'Once we reach the hog's back, of course,' he went on, 'it's all nice and easy till we get to the river; which, needless to say, is probably in spate. I have absolutely no idea how we're going to get across, so I'm relying on inspiration, probably in the form of a dream. My ancestors were always being helped out of pots of shit by obliging and informative dreams, and I'm hoping it runs in the family. How about your lot?'

Orsea smiled. 'We don't dream much. Or if we do, it's being chased by bears, or having to give a speech with no clothes on.'

'Fascinating.' Miel closed his eyes, then opened them again. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Not respectful in the presence of my sovereign. How's the leg?'

'Oh, fine. It's that miserable bloody doctor who's making me lounge around like this.'

(Stupid thing to say, of course. The leg wasn't fine; the doctor most likely hadn't had more than a couple of hours' sleep since the battle; and of course the Ducas family received supernatural advice in their dreams, since they were genuine old aristocracy, unlike the jumped-up parvenu Orseoli…)

'Do as he says,' Miel replied sternly. 'Your trouble is, you don't know a perfectly valid excuse when you see one. You were the same when we were kids. You'd insist on dragging yourself into classes with a raging temperature, and then we'd all catch it off you and be sick as dogs just in time for the recess. You will insist…' He hesitated. 'Just for once, stay still and make the most of it. We're all going to have a high old time of it soon as we get home.'

Orsea looked away. You will insist on doing the right thing, even if it's guaranteed to result in misery and mayhem; or something to that effect. 'All right,' he said. 'It's just so bloody stupid. Getting shot with one of our own arrows.'

'At least our side got to draw blood,' Miel replied. 'Hello, what's all that fuss they're making outside?'

Orsea hadn't noticed; now Miel mentioned it, he could hear shouting. 'They've attacked,' he said.

'Don't think so, or they'd be doing more than just yelling. Hold still, I'll go and see.'

He came back again a moment later, grinning. 'Would you believe it,' he said, 'they caught a spy.'

'You're joking.'

'I'm not. I saw him. Genuine Mezentine spy, brown face and everything. I told them to string him up.'

Orsea frowned. 'No, don't do that,' he said. 'I want to know why they're so interested in us. Maybe they didn't know about this path before. If they're looking for a back way up the mountain, that could be very bad.'

Miel shrugged. 'It's your treehouse. I'll have him brought in, you can play with him.'

The prisoner was a Mezentine, no question about that; with his dark skin and high cheekbones, he couldn't be anything else. But that raised a question in itself. Mezentine officers commanded the army, but the men they gave orders to were all mercenaries; southerners, usually, or people from overseas.

Besides, it was hard to see how a member of the victorious Mezentine expedition, which hadn't come within bowshot or lost a single man as far as Orsea was aware, could have got in such a deplorable state. He could barely stand; the two guards were holding him up rather than restraining him. He had only one shoe; his hair was filthy and full of dust; he had several days' growth of beard (the Mezentines were obsessive about shaving their faces) and he smelt disgusting.

Orsea had never interrogated a prisoner before; of all things, he felt shy. 'Name,' he snapped, because it was as good a starting-point as any.

The man lifted his head, as though his name was the last thing he'd been expecting to be asked. 'Ziani Vaatzes,' he said, in a feeble whisper.

That didn't need expert interpretation. 'Get this man some water,' Orsea said, then realised that for once there weren't any attendants or professional bustlers-about on hand. Miel gave him a rather startled, what-me expression, then went outside, returning a little later with a jug and a horn cup, which the prisoner grabbed with both hands. He spilt most of it down his front.

Orsea had thought of another question. 'What unit are you with?'

The prisoner had to think about that one. 'I'm not a soldier,' he said.

'No, you're a spy.'

'No, I'm not.' The prisoner sounded almost amused. 'Is that what you think?'

Miel shifted impatiently. 'You sure you want to bother with him?' he asked.

Orsea didn't reply, though he noticed the effect Miel's words had on the prisoner. 'Really,' the man said. 'I'm not a soldier, or a spy or anything.' He stopped, looking very unhappy.

'Right,' Orsea said. 'You're a Mezentine, but you're nothing to do with the army out there on the plain. Excuse me, but your people aren't known for going sightseeing.'

'I'm an escaped prisoner,' the man said; he made it sound like a profession. "I promise you, it's true. They were going to kill me; I ran away."

Miel laughed. 'This one's a comedian,' he said. 'He's broken out of jail, so naturally he tags along behind the army. Last place they'd look for you, I guess.'

The look on the man's face; fear, and disbelief, and sheer fury at not being believed. Any moment now, Orsea thought, he's going to demand to see the manager.

'You must be the enemy, then,' the man said.

This time. Miel burst out laughing. 'You could say that,' he said.

'All right.' Orsea was having trouble keeping a straight face. 'Yes, we're the enemy. Do you know who we are?'

The man shook his head. 'Not a clue, sorry. I don't know where this is or what the hell's going on. I didn't even know there's a war on.'

'The army,' Miel said softly. 'Wasn't that a pretty broad hint?'

Now the man looked embarrassed. 'To be honest,' he said, 'I assumed they were after me.'

Orsea looked at him. 'Really'

The man nodded. 'I thought it was a bit over the top myself,' he said. 'But we take renegades very seriously. I assumed-'

'Sorry to disappoint you,' Miel interrupted. 'But your army out there's been fighting us.'

'Oh, right.' The man frowned. 'Who won?'

'You did.'

'I'm sorry.' Now he looked more bewildered than ever. 'Excuse me, but who are you?'

'The Grand Army of Eremia, what's left of it,' Orsea replied. 'So, if you're not a soldier or a spy, and you didn't know about the war, why were you following the army?'

'I reckoned they must have water,' he said. 'Or at least they'd lead me to a river or something. I've only been following them for a day. I tried to steal some food, but the sentries spotted me and I had to run. When I stopped running, I realised I was lost. Then I saw your lot, and thought I'd try my luck. Nothing to lose. It was that or lie down and die somewhere. Just my luck I had to run into a war.'

Brief silence; then Miel said, 'If he's lying, he's very good at it.'

'I'm not, I'm telling the truth.'

'Cocky with it,' Orsea said. 'So, you're an escaped convict. What did you do?'

'It's along story.'

'Indulge me.'

The man looked at him. 'I killed a couple of prison warders,' he said. 'And maybe the secretary of the tribunal, I'm not sure.'

Miel leaned over the man's shoulder. 'Are you sure you wouldn't rather be a spy?' he said. 'I don't know what they tell you about us in the City, but murder's against the law out here, too.'

'Leave him alone, Miel, this is interesting. So,' Orsea went on, 'if you killed a couple of warders, you were in prison already, yes?'

The man nodded. 'I'd just been tried. But I got away and the warders caught me.'

'So you'd done something else before you killed the warders?'

'Yes.' The man hesitated.

'What?'

'It's complicated.'

Orsea raised an eyebrow. Whatever it was, this strange, scruffy man seemed to think it was worse than killing prison officers; he was afraid to say what it was. 'I'm game if you are,' he said.

The man took a deep breath. 'I was charged with mechanical innovation,' he said. 'It's very serious, in the City.'

'Worse than killing people?'

'I suppose so.'

'Were you guilty?'

The man nodded. 'Apparently,' he said.

Miel stood up. 'Now can we hang him?' he said. 'I mean, he's just confessed to murder.'

Orsea frowned. 'You still reckon he's a spy.'

'To be honest, I don't care much.' Miel yawned. 'What it boils down to is we can't very well let him go if he's really a convicted murderer, and I really can't be bothered making the arrangements to send him back. Also, he's seen the Butter Pass, and maybe he's thinking he could do a deal for the information. Either that, or I'm right and he's a spy. No offence, Orsea, but he's running out of play value. Let's pull his neck and get on with what we're supposed to be doing.'

That didn't sound much like Miel, Orsea thought; so this must be a ploy to get the prisoner scared and make him confess. On the other hand, the poor devil was unquestionably a Mezentine; lynching one would probably do wonders for the army's morale. Maybe that was why Miel was making such uncharacteristically brutal noises.

He made up his mind, suddenly, without being aware of having thought it through. If Miel was reminding him of his duty toward the army and the country, fine; he still wasn't prepared to string up someone who looked so unspeakably sad. In spite of the battle and the iron pins from the sky and his own unforgivable mistakes, Orsea still had faith in the world; he believed it might still be possible to make it work, somehow or other. The Mezentine, on the other hand, clearly felt that the world was a cruel, nasty place where bad things always happened. Lynching him would only serve to prove him right, and that would be a betrayal; and if Orsea believed in anything, it was loyalty.

'He's not a spy,' he said. 'And if he's committed crimes in Mezentia, that's really none of our business. I can't go hanging civilians without a trial, in any event. Find him a meal and somewhere to sleep, and in the morning give him three days' rations and a pair of shoes, and let him go. All right?'

'Miel nodded. He didn't seem at all put out about having his advice ignored. 'I'll get the duty officer to see to it,' he said, and went out.

Orsea was about to tell the guards to take the prisoner somewhere else when a thought struck him. He looked at the man and frowned. 'Mind if I ask you a question?'

'Go ahead.'

'In the battle today,' Orsea said, 'we did really badly. Your lot slaughtered us, and we never got close enough to see their faces. One minute we were advancing in good order, and then the sky was full of sharp steel bolts, about so long and so thick, and that was that. I was wondering,' Orsea went on. 'Can you tell me anything about that?'

The man looked at him. 'You mean, what sort of weapon was it?'

Orsea nodded. 'Obviously it must be a deadly secret; at any rate, it was a complete surprise to us. So I imagine you'd get in all sorts of trouble for disclosing restricted information to the enemy. On the other hand.'

The man smiled. 'It's a simple mechanical device. Well,' he added, 'fairly simple. A powerful steel leaf-spring is drawn back by a ratchet. There's a steel cable fastened to the ends of the spring, just like the string of a conventional bow. When the sear is tripped, the force of the spring acting on the cable shoots the bolt up a groove in the bed. It's called a scorpion.'

Orsea raised an eyebrow. 'You know a lot about it.'

'I should do,' the man replied. 'I used to make them.'

There was a long pause. 'Is that right?' Orsea said.

'I was the foreman of the machine shop at the ordnance factory,' the man said. 'I was in charge of production. We've got a building about a hundred yards long by thirty, just for the scorpions. On average we turn out a dozen a day; eighteen if we work three shifts.' He looked Orsea in the eye. 'Are you going to have me killed now?'

'I'm not sure. Do you want me to?'

He smiled again. 'No,' he said. 'But it's not up to me, and if you're looking for someone to blame-'

'Already got someone, thanks,' Orsea said. 'Now, there was no need for you to tell me that, and you don't strike me as the sort who blurts things out without thinking.'

The man nodded. 'Scorpions aren't the only thing we make at the ordnance factory,' he said. 'And besides, from what little I know about the outside world, I get the impression that you're a long way behind us as far as making things is concerned.'

'To put it mildly,' Orsea said. 'As you very well know.'

The man's dirty, battered face was closed, and his eyes were very bright. 'I could teach you,' he said.

'Teach us what?'

'Everything.' His whole body was perfectly still, apart from the slight movements caused by his quick, shallow breathing. 'Everything I know; and that's a lot. Basic metallurgy; foundry and forge work; machining and toolmaking; mass production, interchangeable components, gauges and tolerances. It'd take a long time, you'd be starting from scratch and I'd have to train a lot of people. I don't know how you're fixed for raw materials, iron ore and charcoal and coal. We'd probably have to start off by damming a river, to build a race for a decent-sized waterwheel. You'd be lucky to see so much as a nail or a length of wire for at least five years.' He shrugged. And it'd mean a lot of changes, and maybe you're perfectly happy as you are. After all,' he added, 'I'm hardly the best advertisement for an industrial society.'

Orsea frowned. 'Leave the bad side to me. You carry on telling me about the advantages.'

'You don't need me to do that,' the man replied. 'You know as well as I do. First, you wouldn't depend on us for pretty well every damned thing you use. Second, you could trade. Undercut the Mezentines and take over their markets. That's why our government won't let people like me leave the City. You could transform your whole society. You could be like us.'

'Really. And why would we want to?'

He raised one dust-caked eyebrow. 'As I understand it, you just lost thousands of lives trying to wipe us out, and you never even got close enough to see the colour of our eyes. You must've had some reason for wanting to annihilate us. I don't know what it is, but maybe that's the reason why you should turn into us instead.'

Orsea tried to think. There was a great deal to think about, great issues of security, prosperity and progress that had to be addressed before taking such a radical decision. Orsea knew what they were, but when he tried to apply his mind to them it was like trying to cut glass with a file. Really he wanted someone to decide for him; but that was a luxury he couldn't afford. He knew it was the wrong approach, but he couldn't help thinking about the battle, the field bristling with the steel pins. It'd be a greater victory than winning the battle; and it'd be the only, way of making sure something like that never happened again. But if Miel was here, what would he say? Orsea knew that without having to ask. Of course the Ducas were an old family, you'd expect one of them to have an intuition for this kind of problem, so much more effective than mere intelligence. Miel would know, without having to think, and no amount of convincing arguments would make him change his mind. But Miel (who always got the girls) hadn't married the old Duke's daughter, and so it wasn't up to him. The dreadful thing was, Orsea knew, that nobody could make this choice for him. It was more important that he chose than that he made the right decision.

'The men you killed,' he said. 'Tell me about that.'

The man hadn't been expecting that. 'How do you mean?' he said. 'Do you want to know how I did it?'

'That's not important,' Orsea said. 'And you did it because you had to escape, or they'd have executed you for whatever it is you did that's too complicated for me to understand. No, what I'm asking is, did you have to kill them or else they'd have killed you on the spot or dragged you off to the scaffold? Or did you have the option of just tying them up or something but you killed them anyway?'

The man seemed to be thinking it over carefully. 'The two guards had caught me trying to get out of the Guildhall grounds,' he said. 'They took me to the stables to kill me. It was two to one, and I was lucky to get away with it. And I was clever,' he added, 'it wasn't just luck. But it was them or me. The other man, the tribunal secretary-he was the judge, really-I don't know if I killed him or not. I hit him very hard with a lampstand, to get past him so I could jump out of the window. I hit him as hard as I could; but it was so I could escape, not to punish him or get my own back on him for wrecking my life.' He paused. 'If he was here now, and you said to me, Go ahead, if you want to bash his head in I won't stop you, I'm not sure what I'd do. I mean, he did destroy my life, but killing him wouldn't change anything; and as far as he was concerned, he was doing the right thing.' He looked at Orsea. 'Does that answer your question?'

'I think so. At any rate, it was what I thought I needed to know; assuming I believe you're telling the truth.'

The man shrugged. 'That's up to you.'

'It's all up to me,' Orsea replied. 'I wish it wasn't, but it is. There's another thing, too. If I was in your shoes, I don't know how I'd feel about what you're proposing to do. Really, it's betraying your country.'

The man nodded, as though showing he understood the point Orsea was making. 'Why would I do that,' he said, 'except out of spite, because of what they did to me? Which means, if I'm capable of spite, maybe I killed the guards and the judge for spite too.'

'That thought crossed my mind,' Orsea said.

'Naturally.' The man was quiet for a while. 'I can't be sure,' he said, 'but I don't think that's the real reason. I think maybe my reason is that if they can order me to be killed when I really didn't do anything wrong, then perhaps the whole system needs to be got rid of, to stop them doing it again. And also,' he added, with a slight grin, 'there's the fact that I've got a living to make. I need a job, I'm an engineer. Not many openings for someone in my line outside the City, unless I make one for myself. And we hadn't discussed it, but I wasn't really thinking of doing all that work for free.'

Orsea laughed. 'There's always that,' he said. 'And I suppose, if you betray your people for money, that's better than doing it for revenge. Actually, I don't think I've ever met an engineer before. Are they all like you?'

'Yes,' the man said. 'It's a state of mind more than anything. You can't help thinking in mechanisms; always in three dimensions, and always five stages ahead. It takes a little while to learn.'

Orsea nodded. 'And what about you? Are you married? Children?'

'One daughter,' the man replied. 'I won't see either of them again, I don't suppose.'

'And will anything bad happen to them, if your people find out you've betrayed them?'

'It'll happen anyway, because of what I'm supposed to have done.' The man was looking away, and his voice was perfectly flat. 'If I was going to take revenge for anything, it'd be that.'

'At least you're honest,' Orsea said. 'Or you come across as honest.' He closed his eyes, rubbed them with his thumb and middle finger. 'Tell you what,' he said. 'You come back home with me, stay with me as my guest till I've made my decision. I'm sure we can find something useful for you to do, if you decide you want to stay with us, of course.'

'Naturally.' The man's face slumped into a long, narrow grin. 'You do realise,' he said, 'I haven't got the faintest idea where your country is, or what it's called, or what you do there, or anything. In the City we have this vague concept of the world as being like a fried egg, with us as the yolk and everywhere else slopped out round the edges.'

'Interesting,' Orsea said. 'Well, my country is called Eremia Montis, and it's basically a big valley cradled by four enormous mountains; we raise sheep and goats and dairy cattle, grow a bit of corn; there's a good-sized forest in the eastern corner, and four rivers run down the mountains and join up to make one big river in the bottom of the valley. There's something like a quarter of a million of us-less now, of course, thanks to me-and till recently we had this ghastly long-standing feud with the duchy on the other side of the northern mountain, but that was all patched up just before I became Duke. We've got loads of fresh air and sky, but not much of anything else. That's about it, really. And I'm Orsea Orseolus, in case you were wondering; and you did tell me your name, but I've forgotten it.'

The man nodded. 'Ziani Vaatzes,' he said. 'Just fancy, though; me talking to a real duke. My mother'd be so proud. Not that she'd have known what a duke is. Where I come from, dukes are people in fairy-tales who fight dragons and climb pepper-vines up to heaven.'

'Oh, I do that all the time,' Orsea said. 'When I'm not losing battles. So,' he went on, 'tell me a bit about all these wonderful machines you're going to build for us. You said something just now about a waterwheel. What's that?'

'You're joking, aren't you? You don't know what a water-wheel is?'

Orsea shrugged. 'Obviously some kind of wheel that can travel on water. Not much use to us, because the river flows down the mountain, clearly, and there's nowhere in that direction we want to go. Still, it must be terribly clever, so please tell me all about it.'

Ziani explained to him about waterwheels, and how the Mezentines used the power of the river Caudene to drive all their great machines. He told him about the vast artificial delta in the middle of the City; scores of deep, straight mill-races governed by locks and weirs, lined with rows of giant wheels, undershot and overshot in turn, and the deafening roar of regulated, pent-up water exploited to perfection through the inspired foresight of the Guilds. He explained about the City's seventeen relief aqueducts, which drew off flood-water in the rainy season and circulated reserve current when the pressure was low in summer; about the political dominance of the hydraulic engineers' Guild; about the great plan for building a second delta, worked out to the last detail two centuries ago, still running precisely to schedule and still only a third complete.

'Are you serious?' Orsea interrupted. 'There's thousands of your people working on a project that'll never do anybody any good for another four hundred years, but they're happy to spend their whole lives slaving away at it.'

'What's so strange about that?' Ziani replied. 'When it's finished, it'll double our capacity. We'll be able to build hundreds of new factories, providing tens of thousands of jobs for our people. That means a hundred per cent increase in productivity; we'll be able to supply goods to countries we haven't even discovered yet. It's an amazing concept, don't you think?'

Orsea looked at him. 'You could say that,' he said.

'You don't sound all that impressed.'

'Oh, I'm impressed all right,' Orsea said. 'Stunned would be nearer the mark, actually. You're using up people's lives so that in four hundred years' time you can make a whole lot of unspecified stuff to sell to people who don't even know you exist yet. How do you know they'll want the things you're planning to make for them?'

'Easy,' Ziani said. 'We'll find out what they need, or what they want, and then we'll make it.'

'Supposing they've already got everything they want?'

'We'll persuade them they want something else, or more of the same. We're good at that.'

Orsea was quiet for a while. 'Strange,' he said. 'Where I come from, we organise the things to suit the people, or we try to; it doesn't usually work out as well as we'd like, but we do our best. You organise the people to suit the things. By the sound of it you do it very well, but surely it's the wrong way round.'

Ziani looked at him. 'I guess I'd be more inclined to agree with you,' he said, 'if you'd won your battle. But you didn't.'

There was a long silence. 'You're a brave man, Ziani Vaatzes,' Orsea said.

'Am I?' Ziani shrugged. 'Yes, I suppose I am. I wonder when that happened? Didn't used to be. I suppose it must've been when they took my life away from me. Anyway, that's waterwheels for you. Did you say something a while ago about something to eat?'

That night, when his guest had been fed and clothed and found somewhere to sleep, Orsea expected he'd dream about the great river, squeezed into its man-made channels, turning all those thousands of wheels. Instead, he found himself back in that same old place again, the place he always seemed to end up when he was worried, or things were going on that he didn't understand; and that same man was there waiting for him, the one who'd always been there and who seemed to know him so well. All his life, it seemed to him, the man had been ready for him, a patient listener, a willing provider of sympathy, always glad to give him advice which never seemed to make sense. Tonight the man told him, when he'd finished explaining, that he had in fact won the battle; and he took him to the top of the mountain, to the place where you could see down into the valley on one side, and out as far as the sea on the other, and he'd shown him the city burning, and great clouds of smoke being carried out to sea on the wind. He reached out and caught one of the clouds (he could do that sort of thing; he was very clever); and when he opened his fist, Orsea could see that the cloud was made up of thousands and millions of half-inch steel rods, three feet long and sharpened at one end. So you see, the man said, it turned out all right in the end, just as you designed it. I imagine you're feeling a certain degree of satisfaction, after six hundred years of planning and hard work.

Not really, Orsea replied. All I wanted to do was go home.

The man smiled. Well, of course you did, he said. That's all any of us want; but it's the hardest thing there is, that's why we had to work so hard and be so cunning and resourceful. And you mustn't mind the way he talks to you. Where he comes from, they naturally assume they're better than foreigners, even foreign dukes and princes. But you wanted to see the waterwheels, didn't you? They're just here.

He pointed, and Orsea could see them, but they didn't look quite how he'd imagined them. They were crowded together up close, so that each one touched the one next to it, and the gear-teeth cut into them meshed, so that each one drove its neighbour. All down the river-bank, as far as he could see; but it was the wrong way round, like he'd tried to tell the stranger.

That's not right, he said. The river should be driving the wheels, but it's the other way round.