The Escapement

17

He was right. It took no time at all. Later, it was estimated that a third of the Mezentine dead were killed when Daurenja exploded his mine, either by the force of the blast, or by injuries caused by being thrown into the air, or by falling debris. The Aram Chantat disposed of the rest. An Eremian officer who arrived with unnecessary reinforcements halfway through the operation said it reminded him of killing rats in a barn: you lifted up a trough or a feed bin, then clubbed or stamped on them as they scurried frantically past. They hardly fought at all, he said, like it simply didn't occur to them to try using their weapons. In fact it was an Eremian officer, Major General Miel Ducas, who coordinated the reduction and elimination of Mezentine forces on the embankment after the breach had been made. His approach was simple but effective. Having used flying wedges to split up the mass of the enemy, he pressed them back against the City wall, surrounded each segment in detail and let the Aram Chantat get on with the job. In spite of their enthusiasm for the work, even the Aram Chantat eventually grew tired from the sheer effort of cutting bone and hammering metal, so he organised them into shifts, a fresh unit coming in to relieve the executioners when they grew too weary to continue. The number of Mezentines killed on the embankment was never reliably established, since a great many bodies were buried under the spoil and rubble; Chairman Psellus later put the figure at twelve thousand, but this was generally held to be an excessively conservative estimate.

Because the chairman was otherwise engaged when the embankment was breached, and all his superiors in the chain of command were killed or severely injured, or disappeared and couldn't be found, Colonel Zosoter of the artillery took charge of the defence of the forward positions and the evacuation of the survivors. He had precious little to work with. The enemy's flying wedge tactics meant that his forces were fragmented into isolated segments, and he was unable to communicate with them given the risk-practically a certainty-that any message he sent would be intercepted by the enemy. He was confident that the gates would be opened to let the survivors back in, and acted on that assumption, falling back on the gatehouses as the enemy pressed home their assault.

The gates stayed shut.

When it became apparent that Chairman Psellus had abandoned him, Colonel Zosoter ordered his men to lay down their weapons and surrender, on the entirely reasonable assumption that the enemy took prisoners. He was wrong about that, too. He had her escorted to the top of the Chandlers' bell-tower, whose window overlooked the main gate. She didn't want to look, insisting that it was none of her business, and she'd done nothing wrong.

Psellus had always taken refuge in the fact that he wasn't a violent man. He hadn't even tried to hurt anybody physically since he was eight years old. He reached out as if to pat her comfortingly on the shoulder, wound his fingers in her hair and tugged till she gasped. Then he twisted her head to face the open window.

"In that case," he said, "there's no reason why you shouldn't look."

She swore at him, but struggling made it hurt more. "Let me go," she said. "I've got my eyes shut."

"If you don't open them," Psellus said gently, "I'll push you out of the window."

She called him some names he didn't actually understand, though he got the general idea. He leant against her gently, and she screamed.

"Look," he said.

(Afterwards, he felt very badly about it; partly because he thought he'd let himself down, partly because if she hadn't opened her eyes, he was sure he would have pushed her out, and killing her would have meant the end of any hope of saving the City. He was also deeply disturbed by how thrilling he found the texture of her hair and the softness of her body as he pressed against it. Just as well, in fact, that she gave in when she did, and opened her eyes.)

She said nothing; and after thirty seconds or so, he relaxed his grip on her hair and let her pull away. She glared at him, as though he'd trodden on her foot.

"I agree," he said. "You've done nothing wrong. You just wanted to be happy. But now you can see why you've got to help me. Otherwise, they will break in here, and they will kill you. Ziani won't be able to stop them."

She frowned. "I never thought we'd lose," she said. "I thought we'd win. We always win, don't we? We're better than everybody else."

He shook his head. "We're better at everyone else at some things," he replied. "The things that matter, naturally. But they're stronger than us, just as I'm stronger than you. One thing this has taught me, you can't win against brute force if you're weaker."

Her frown deepened; it was as if he was insisting that two and two made five. "But they're savages," she said.

"Yes. And savages are better at fighting than we are. We've always tended to see that as evidence that we're superior to them. I'd like to believe that's true, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. Now, will you do what I asked you?"

She nodded. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

"Not really," he said. When it was all over, the Ducas reported to General Daurenja, who nodded and smiled at him. "Thank you," he said. "You've done well."

The Ducas made some formal gesture, which the general assumed was an Eremian military salute. "Just doing my duty," he said.

"Carry on," the general replied.

Miel left him and walked slowly back towards the ditch. The Mezentine dead were piled up like grain sacks waiting to be loaded, a great wealth of commodities. He paused, stooped and turned over a body at random. Then he searched it, taking a bronze cloak-pin, a finger-ring, a linen handkerchief and twelve dollars cash.

An Eremian soldier was watching him. He straightened up, dropping the goods he'd taken into his pocket, and nodded affably. The soldier saluted.

"We made them pay for what they did to us, didn't we, sir?" the soldier said.

Miel raised his eyebrows. "I suppose so, yes," he replied.

He walked down the steep slope formed by the collapse of the embankment, concentrating to keep his balance. Around him he was aware of men calling out (the wounded, too badly hurt to move; it reminded him of the bleating of sheep), and thought of the expression the scavengers used: live one here. Of course, they made a point of salvaging any wounded men who could be expected to recover, and putting the others out of their misery. He envied them their humanity, but reflected that it had done them no good in the long run. If they hadn't spared him, they'd probably still be alive now.

The ditch was easy to cross now; they'd brought up planks and laid them on top of the rubble and dead bodies, making a road wide enough to drive a cart over. He noticed the silence, and realised that the Mezentines had given up shooting from the wall batteries. It made sense, of course, to conserve their ammunition. He thought about the hail of scorpion bolts that had wiped out Orsea's wretched attempt at an invasion. Now it was the other way around, like a reflection in a mirror; a different angle, but the same thing.

He remembered saving Daurenja's life, when Framain and his daughter had wanted to kill him. It had been the act of a humane man. He couldn't imagine those circumstances arising now. He wouldn't have got involved in the first place.

He crossed the ditch and walked slowly up the trench, labouring through the mud, working out in his mind how to approach the task of clearing up the mess. Burial details: first, of course, the dead would have to be stripped, the recovered goods sorted into piles: military equipment in one heap, personal items in another. Carts to haul away the armour, weapons, bales of clothing, footwear; sacks for the rest. As he understood it, the correct procedure was to appoint a factor to take charge of the salvage, notify the principal dealers and organise a series of auctions. The proceeds of sale of the military equipment went back into consolidated funds, while the private property of the dead went into a separate fund, to be divided up between the soldiers who'd taken part in the relevant action. The important thing was to make sure that everything was visibly fair and equitable. The factor, if he remembered correctly, took five per cent of the gross. He was sure the general would give him the job, if he asked politely.

He stepped aside to let a wagon go by. The carter leaned down and called to him. "What's it like up ahead?"

"Not so bad," he replied. "The trench is a bit sticky still, but the slope's pretty gentle. You'll get across the ditch all right, but you won't get much further. Too steep."

The carter nodded. "You know where I can find whoever's in charge?" he said. "Sounds like I'll need men to haul this lot up to the wall."

"You've found him," Miel replied pleasantly. "I'll send a couple of platoons, if you think that'll be enough."

The carter thanked him. "Special delivery for the general," he explained. "Top priority, is what I was told."

"Ah, well then," Miel said. "I won't hold you up any longer."

True to his word, he sent on the two platoons before he started rostering the burial and recovery details-he was, after all, still first and foremost a soldier, and his duty must take precedence. The men he'd dispatched squelched up the trench at the double, anxious not to keep the general waiting. So far they'd had nothing to do, and it looked as though the preliminary assault was now as good as over. If they were lucky, they'd be on the spot for the attack on the City itself, and first in meant the best pickings. Everybody knew the general had a special trick up his sleeve for busting down the gates, so that wouldn't be any problem.

They overtook the cart just as it was about to cross the ditch. The sergeant went ahead, to make sure the planks were firmly seated, and shouted back that it was all as firm as a rock. Later he told anybody who'd listen that it was the carter's fault, for not driving straight. Also, the boards were slippery with mud, and he hadn't realised the load was so heavy. The offside back wheel slid off the boards and went over, cracking the axle, and the shifting of the cart's weight skewed it sideways. The boom twisted and snapped, and the cart turned over, rolling its cargo off the improvised road and into the deep, wet mud.

The general was furious. He came scrambling down from the gate as soon as he heard what had happened, screaming at the carter and the soldiers, threatening them with court martial, torment and eventual death, and plunged into the mud up to his knees, wading like some rare marshland bird towards the tarpaulin-wrapped bundle half sunk into the mud. He yelled for ropes and long poles, attached the ropes himself, got behind the lump with a lever to work it loose from the grip of the suction. The heavy cylinder came out without too much trouble, considering its weight, and likewise the oak barrel; but two of the stone shot sank without trace in the mud and had to be abandoned.

"It's all right," he panted at Ziani, "we can get by with three. In fact, we can get by with one. Don't worry," he added with a brilliant smile, "it's going to be fine. It'll take more than a bit of mud to stop me now."

"I believe you," Ziani said.

With the ropes and levers, they dragged the cylinder up the bank, ploughing furrows in the loose dirt with their feet. Glancing up, Ziani saw movement behind the gatehouse rampart; he shouted for pavises, a shield trolley, archers to cover them and keep the enemy's heads down. But nothing happened, and he saw that Daurenja was gently shaking his head. "Don't worry," he was saying, "it'll be just fine, we don't need them. We'll be under the lee of the wall soon, where they can't reach us." He doesn't want witnesses, Ziani realised; he wants to keep the secret to himself, right up to the very last moment; and he knew intuitively that the soldiers hauling so energetically on the ropes wouldn't be living much longer. They'd be right at the front in the next action, or there'd be some horrible accident. Not for him, though. Daurenja would never do anything to harm him, because he trusted him implicitly.

(The good leader, he thought; he's got all the qualities of the good duke, everything Orsea tried so hard to copy and failed. Certainly, he couldn't think of anybody else who'd be able to hold the alliance together, or who'd have got this far…)

A few arrows pitched around him, but they were harmless, out of shot, and he ignored them. The only effect they had was to encourage the men to pull harder. They were a good three yards under the overhang of the wall by now. A man would have to lean right out over the parapet to see them, and then he'd be too cramped up to draw a bow. But they were still far enough away from the foot of the wall to be safe from bricks and rubble dropped on them. In which case…

"Here," Daurenja said, his voice low and choking. "This'll do. Right, let's get the wraps off and set it up."

Four men were struggling with the barrel; another four were laboriously rolling a round of shot up the slope, bracing their backs and thighs against it to stop it from slipping and rolling back down. Daurenja was fumbling with the knots of the cords that bound the tarpaulin round the cylinder. He scrabbled, tore a fingernail, swore, frowned and pulled a jack knife from his pocket. It took him quite some time to open out the blade. Ziani had never seen him be clumsy before. In a way, it was almost touching.

In the end, he cut the cords and slit the tarpaulin, like a hunter paunching the game. Inside the cut cloth lay the black tube, a horrible fruit inside its split shell. Daurenja reached in and touched it for a moment, laying his palm flat on it, the way Ziani had seen ostlers calm fractious horses. Then he turned his head and shouted to the men to go back to the cart; they'd find wooden blocks and timber sections, some wedges, a hammer and something that looked like a glue-boiler's iron pot.

"It's in two sections," Daurenja was telling him. "There's the tube proper, and a sort of reservoir that slides into the back end, to hold the charge of blasting dust. The two together sit in a wooden cradle, and the reservoir's held tight in the tube by a wedge bearing against the back member of the frame. It's not wonderful, but I didn't want to risk trying to close the tube at one end, welding in a bung or anything like that. The reservoir's just a pot, turned out of solid, so it'll be plenty strong enough. Of course, it's got to be practically an interference fit, where the reservoir joins the tube…"

Crude, Ziani thought. You'd do better with a screw thread or a couple of locking lugs. He's perfectly capable of thinking of that, but he's in too much of a hurry. Not that it mattered. The wedge arrangement would be good enough for one firing, and that was all it'd take.

While the men were fitting the timbers together (Daurenja had cut mortices in them beforehand, a beautiful job; all the men had to do was slot them into each other and tap in a few dowels), Ziani straightened his back and looked thoughtfully at the gate. The proper nomenclature was a Type One; a six-inch thickness of quarter-inch plies, the lie of the grain pointing alternately up and down, side to side. No battering ram yet made would be capable of splintering that. And of course it'd be wedged shut from the other side, and there'd be bars across it, and reinforcing struts jammed into the ground, and behind that a portcullis, which they'd already have lowered. They'd tested a Type One in the factory once by shooting at it with scorpions and onagers at point-blank range, but the plies had flexed and bounced back the shot. No weapon known to the Republic had been able to smash up a Type One. It was Daurenja's tube, then, or nothing.

They were lifting it on a stretcher of spars and lowering it gingerly into the assembled frame-as simple as a box without a top or a bottom, with a semicircle cut out of the front for the tube to rest in. Daurenja was talking to it.

Not, Ziani insisted to himself, that it mattered. It'd be over soon, and before long he'd be inside the City. He focused on that. Nothing else was important, after all.

One of the men was prising the lid off the barrel. Daurenja left the tube and elbowed him gently out of the way. In one hand he held the iron bowl that fitted into the end of the tube, and in the other was a plain tin cup from a soldier's mess kit. He dipped the cup into the barrel and brought it up again full of a shiny black compound that looked like charcoal dust. He ladled seven cupfuls into the bowl, then nodded to the man to put the lid back on the barrel.

"Well," he said, in a shaky voice, "here goes nothing."

He knelt to fit the bowl into the tube; then he held it in place with the fingertips of his left hand while he scrabbled for the hammer and the wedge with his right. Five smart taps, precise as a woodpecker, and then he laid the hammer down and stood up. Three men heaved a round of shot up to the mouth of the tube and rolled it in, snatching their hands away to keep their fingers from getting trapped. With a nod of his head, Daurenja gestured them out of the way. He was kneeling again, his head directly over the back end of the tube. He wasn't sighting down it, the way the Mezentine engineers peered along the groove of a springal. Instead, he was looking at the gate as though he was the weapon, training and aiming himself at it. Appropriate, Ziani couldn't help thinking. At some time or other, everybody turns himself into a weapon for some purpose or other.

Someone was messing about with a tinderbox, frantically cranking the handle and puffing air through the hole in the side. Without looking round, Daurenja extended his arm, his hand palm up to receive the box. His eyes still fixed on the gate, he stuffed the end of a short piece of cord into the hole and blew gently. He's completely forgotten about us, Ziani thought. This is the crucial moment of his life, and there simply isn't room for anybody else.

As he took the cord out of the box, Ziani could see the little orange tip. It glowed bright as Daurenja breathed on it, his breath as soft and urgent as a kiss. He saw Daurenja's lips begin to move (it could have been prayers or endearments, or a mixture of the two) as he guided the bright orange spot towards the hole drilled in the top of the pot. Quickly, Ziani stepped back; something obstructed his heel, and he turned round and saw a gabion, lying on its side. He ducked down behind it, but couldn't resist peering round it.

"Get back, all of you," Daurenja muttered (and it wasn't concern for their safety; he just wanted to be alone with the weapon when the moment came). "Any moment now, there's going to be a very loud noise, but that'll be just fine." He sighed on the burning cord, and it glowed back at him: true love. "It's going to be wonderful, just you wait and see."

Tender as a bridegroom, he touched the cord to the hole in the pot; and Ziani, his eyes open, could see only the cold spot in the heart of the welding fire, plain as a gate in a wall, a gate about to open. I warned him, he told himself, but he wouldn't listen.

For a fraction of a second, Ziani was sure he saw the tube swell, like a puffed-out cheek. Then it tore open, from the point where he remembered seeing the cold spot up to the muzzle. The noise and the heat slammed him back like a punch, and he felt something clip the side of his head. The sound rolled, echoed back off the city wall, washed over him and dissipated, leaving his head buzzing. He felt the warm lick of blood trickling down his cheek, and his burnt skin started to pulse.

He scrambled to his knees. The gabion he'd been hiding behind had turned into a mess of smashed osiers; there was a chunk of twisted steel buried in the dirt where it had been. He thought: it must have worked, nothing could've been so close to that and survived. He stood up, then stumbled and sat down in the loose earth.

Daurenja was lying on his back, about ten feet from where he'd been standing. His chest and half his stomach had been sliced away, and a tangle of wet tubes and pipes had been slopped out into the dirt. There was a steel splinter lodged in his cheekbone; the force of its entry had popped out his left eye. One arm had been torn off and was nowhere to be seen; the other was shredded. He was still breathing.

Ziani crawled closer. "Daurenja?" he said.

A tiny movement, as he tried to turn his head, and a horrible bubbling noise.

"I just wanted to thank you," Ziani said. "When I was at a loss for an escapement, I found you, you and your stupid bloody invention." He grinned, and the one eye blinked. "It didn't work," he said. "Well, I guess you know that. It was the cold spot. I warned you, but you didn't want to know. The gate's still there, and just look at you. Can you hear me? I want you to hear what I'm saying. I want you to know you failed. I succeeded, and you…"

Dust, drifting down from the air, settled on the surface of Daurenja's eye, but the lid didn't twitch. Drawing a deep breath, Ziani crawled a little closer, sucked and spat on the shattered face. No movement. He breathed out slowly. I'll miss him, he thought.

There wasn't much left of the weapon: one large fragment of the tube, concave, like an empty walnut shell, and a few splinters of the wooden frame. The rest of the tube and the powder pot had gone. Well, Ziani thought, so much for love. The trouble is, there's always a cold spot, and when it gives way, something like this is bound to happen.

He brushed blood out of his eye with the side of his hand. Blood would have to do instead of tears; he couldn't find any of those for Daurenja, the scholar, the inventor, the arch-abominator, the best engineer he'd ever known. Better than me, he added, surprised at the conclusion, but love was his undoing.

"Is he…?" Someone behind him, talking in a very small, quiet voice.

"Yes," Ziani replied without looking round. "His gadget didn't work after all. Give me a hand up," he added, and he felt himself lifted to his feet. "Let's get away from here, before the Mezentines start shooting at us."

The other survivors of the carrying party joined them as they scrambled down the bank to the ditch. As they crossed it, a scorpion bolt missed them by no great margin. After that, they made good time to the cover of the trench. The man who'd helped him to his feet confirmed his account of the death of the general and the failure of his device. The war council listened in dead silence, and Ziani nodded to him to leave.

"Which means," he said, his voice clear and steady (because the worst was over now, and the hardest part successfully concluded), "we're in a pretty bad way. In fact," he added, looking round the ring of blank, unhappy faces, "it's hard to see how it could be worse. Sure, we got past the ditch and took the embankment, and we killed a lot of men. But the walls and the gates are still there, our secret weapon didn't work, we can't build another one even if we wanted to, and the general's dead. Talking of which," he added forcefully (and nobody looked interested in interrupting him), "someone's got to take his place. I don't see Duke Valens here. Didn't anybody tell him about the meeting?"

One of the Aram Chantat cleared his throat; a small, dry man. "The duke was told about what happened," he said, "but he was not disposed to attend. We take this to mean that he is no longer concerned with the conduct of the war, which is fortuitous. We have no confidence in him."

Ziani nodded. "In that case," he said, "who do you want to…?"

The dry man looked at him; and even though he'd prevailed and nothing could stop him now, the intensity of the stare made him uncomfortable. "We feel there is only one possible choice," he said. "You are the senior engineer, and you alone have the expertise. We are in your hands."

Yes, Ziani thought; but he said, "That's true as far as the technical side goes, but surely one of you…"

The dry man shook his head. "We have already decided," he said. "Short of an outright refusal, you have no choice."

He'd never lost the feeling of wonder that came from the soft, firm click of a component fitting perfectly into place: the snick of a ratchet, of a locking bolt feeling its way exactly into its appointed place. A machine works because each part of the mechanism goes where it's designed to go, entirely constrained in its movement by the other pieces. The precise fit is because there's nowhere else it can go; because it has no choice. "I suppose you're right," Ziani mumbled. "And I suppose I'd better accept." He paused for a moment, trying to look as though the whole weight of the world had come to settle on his shoulders, though of course the reverse was true. "But if you want me to do this, you're going to have to trust me. Really trust me, I mean. Otherwise, you'll all have to go and be extremely polite to Duke Valens, because I won't be able to help you."

The dry man was still looking at him, but the stare no longer bothered him. There were no more choices for anyone. "Of course," the dry man said. "You have our unequivocal support in everything, General Vaatzes."

He allowed himself a grin. "Not that word, please," he said. "Just engineer, if you've got to call me something, and on the whole I'd rather you didn't." He settled himself in his chair, like a man who had just come home. "Now, the first thing I need to do is arrange a parley with Chairman Psellus." He came back from the meeting two hours later, and reconvened the war council. "They won't surrender," he said. "I didn't really imagine that they would, but it was worth trying."

An Aram Chantat said: "But we don't want their surrender. We want to sack the City and burn it to the ground."

Ziani grinned. "That's what I told them," he said. "I guess that's why they weren't keen. I told them that if they opened the gates, we'd march them to the edge of the desert. They could go to where you've just come from, and take their chances with your cousins whose names I can never remember. No skin off your noses, since you're going to be settling here permanently. But Psellus didn't like the idea. He said that if they were all going to die, they might as well save themselves the long walk. That's my people for you. We never did like walking much."

A silence, rather awkward. "And now we continue with the assault," someone said.

"Yes." Ziani closed his eyes for a moment. "Yes, we continue with the assault. Which means," he went on, sitting up a little straighter, and opening the file of papers he'd brought with him, "an artillery barrage to neutralise the batteries on the wall, and a new advance trench. This is what I'd been hoping to avoid, gentlemen, but we don't seem to have an alternative, and of course we're dangerously short of time. We have to undermine the main gate, which means digging a sap under it. That involves cutting a chamber at least three hundred yards long through the bedrock, which means our Vadani miners are going to be working very hard indeed for the cause. You can more or less guarantee that the Mezentines will try and countermine us, so we can expect to have to fight underground. If we had plenty of time, I'd say leave the work to the specialists, the Vadani, but my best guess would be three or four months before we got under the gate. With strict rationing, we can supply ourselves for three weeks; after that, we need to get at the Mezentine food reserves, or we starve. So that means we have to approach the job the other way: everybody in the army, apart from the artillery crews and the Vadani specialists-I want to save them for the final breakthrough-is going to have to get a spade or a pick and start digging." He looked up at the ring of faces around him. "I need to know right now if that's acceptable. If not, I can't help you."

"We will do what you tell us to do," an Aram Chantat said. Presumably he had the authority. "Tell us your requirements and we'll see to it."

Ziani nodded, and picked up a sheet of paper. "These are just rough estimates," he said. "I propose five shifts-that's one fifth of the available manpower, working a four-hour shift, with fifteen-minute changeovers. Here"-he stabbed at a map with his finger-" is where we start digging. You'll see it's out in the open, well within range of the walls, but we haven't got time to start further back, we'll have to rely on the artillery to cover us. That means I want all the Eremians and Vadani back at the artillery park; no disrespect, but the Aram Chantat don't make good bombardiers; as well as working the machines, they'll be gathering and shifting rock and rubble for ammunition, fixing broken machines, building new ones to replace the ones we can't salvage. It's essential that we keep the bombardment going, day and night; it's not just a question of keeping their heads down, we need to make them believe we're trying to bash a hole in the wall, so they'll expect an assault with ladders and towers and divide their resources." He paused for breath, and for effect. "Is all that acceptable?" he asked briskly. "If it's not, you should say so now. We simply don't have time to change our minds once we've started; we decide what we're going to do here and now, and then we stick to it. Is that agreed?"

When the meeting ended, Ziani left the Aram Chantat to organise their own people into shifts, and went to brief the artillery. He sent the Vadani out to gather stones and rubble, and assigned the Eremians to patching up the machines. Then he called in the battery captains. They told him how many machines were still working, how many could be fixed, how many trained crew were available, how much finished ammunition they still had. He was particularly interested in the onagers and the scorpions, and when they pointed out that there were more usable machines than trained men to work them, he told them to take men off the long-range weapons, the trebuchets and mangonels, to ensure that all the short-range engines were fully manned. Then he dismissed his staff and went to talk to Duke Valens; just a courtesy call, he said, to put him in the picture and make sure he didn't intend to interfere with the arrangements.

Observers he'd sent forward directly after the war council closed came back with the news that the Mezentine batteries were now fully manned; they were winching huge quantities of ammunition up to the wall with giant cranes, as well as brand-new machines, presumably straight off the production lines. The estimates they gave him suggested that the Mezentines had the edge in numbers of engines, though their long-range capacity was significantly less: two thirds of their machines were scorpions, while most of their trebuchets had been smashed up in earlier engagements and didn't appear to have been replaced. Ziani received the news with a distracted nod of the head, and went back to examining ammunition inventories.

Two hours after the war council, Aram Chantat staff officers reported that the first shift was ready, with the other four shifts standing by. As ordered, every man had a spade, a pick or a shovel instead of his usual equipment, they'd taken off their armour and they were ready to go.

"All right," Ziani said. "Get them moving. You know where to go."

An officer frowned at him. "With respect," he said, "shouldn't you start the bombardment first? Otherwise-"

"We start shooting when they start," Ziani snapped back. "Not before."

He watched as the first shift marched out into the empty plain: seventy-five thousand men, according to the roster. Five shifts of seventy-five thousand men, shifting five square feet of dirt each; you could change a country out of all recognition in a week. He shook his head. So much effort, so great an effect, all to accomplish such a simple objective. But it was too late to change anything now. The escapement was running, and very soon it'd all be over. He beckoned to one of his aides (didn't know the man's name; didn't care).

"Take this letter to Duke Valens," he said. Valens read the letter, screwed it up into a ball and threw it on to the little charcoal brazier. "I'm just going out for a while," he said.

She looked at him. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"It's all right," he said. He was looking round for something. "You haven't seen that hanger, have you?"

"I don't know," she replied. "What's a hanger?"

"Shortish sword, with a sort of curved bit on the hilt. I put it down somewhere, but…"

"What do you need a sword for?"

He shrugged. "Not properly dressed without one," he replied. "Ah, here it is. It's lucky," he added, smiling bleakly. "At least, that's the theory. Hasn't actually brought me much luck so far, but there's still time."

She caught her breath. "Is something going on?" she said. "I thought you said you were out of it now."

"I am," he replied, not looking at her. "That bastard Vaatzes is in charge now, and welcome."

"What did he want to talk to you about?"

"Oh, nothing much." He was having trouble with the buckle of his sword-belt; not like him at all. Usually, all his movements were so precise.

"Was it about the war?" she asked.

"Everything's about the war," he said; and she thought, he doesn't really mean that.

The tent-flap opened, and she saw Miel Ducas standing in the light. "Are you ready?" he asked. He didn't seem to have noticed she was there.

"As I'll ever be," Valens replied. "All set?"

"Yes."

Valens took a step forward, then turned back to face her. "I won't be long," he said. "And then there'll be some things we'll need to talk about."

She shrugged. "I'll be here," she replied. "Sewing something, probably," she added.

He nodded, no expression at all on his face. Then he left and the flap dropped back, shuttering out the daylight.

Miel had brought a horse for him, and held his stirrup as he mounted. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Of course," he answered irritably. "I'm not a cripple or anything."

"You heard about Daurenja."

"Yes." Valens picked up the reins. "You know," he said, "I've been in charge of everything around me practically all my life. It's nice to have someone else running things for a change."

Miel shrugged. "You say that now," he said.

Valens laughed. "Hardly matters what I say," he said. "And what about you? Are you going to use the title? Only, Duke Ducas is a bit of a mouthful."

"People can call me what they like," Miel replied.

They rode together in silence for a while; then Miel said, "Are you really going to accept this?"

"Yes," Valens said. "For now, anyway. Things may change later, of course. But right now, it's the only realistic course open to me."

Miel nodded; but he said, "I really don't want to do this."

"It's no big deal," Valens replied.

Then they discussed technical matters: positions, tactics, co-ordination of movements, concealment of intentions and the element of surprise. As they rode over the top of the ridge and looked down, Valens reined in his horse and sat still for a moment.

"There aren't enough of us," he said.

"No," Miel agreed. "But that's all there is, so it'll have to do."

But he hadn't meant it; because the sight of the Vadani cavalry, twenty thousand men-at-arms, standing in formation with lances at rest, was a glorious illusion, and he wanted to enjoy it for as long as he could. It made him think of his father, who believed in all this sort of thing, just as he believed in the hunt, and the concept of the good duke and the contract between ruler and people. Besides, he told himself, as they rode down to take their places at the head of the formation, Ziani Vaatzes thinks there's enough of us, and he knows best.

"He'll send a rider," Miel was saying. "Till then, we just stay here still and quiet." There was a mild stir, a gentle buzz, as the artillerymen realised that Chairman Psellus had come up on to the wall. It hadn't escaped anybody's notice that he hadn't been there when the enemy blew up the embankment and slaughtered all those people. It was curious: nobody really believed he'd gone away because he was afraid, or anything like that. He'd gone, they knew, because he'd been called away to deal with something more important; so if he was here now, it meant that whatever happened next mattered…

"We think it's a work party," someone was telling him. "We sent a few scouts down; apparently they're not armed, they've got digging tools. We put the number at somewhere between eighty and a hundred-"

"Yes, thank you," Psellus said mildly. "I believe I know what's happening." Someone brought up a chair, and he sat down. "Their artillery."

"A lot of activity," whoever it was replied. "All the signs are, they're getting ready to launch a massive bombardment, though oddly enough they've taken men off the trebuchets and put them on the-"

"Indeed." Psellus wiped his nose, which was running. "Our artillery is ready, I take it?"

"As ordered," the man replied briskly; a slight, anxious hesitation, then: "I take it you do know we've stood down the long-range engines and-"

"Yes, thank you." He was looking straight ahead, at the huge square shape moving toward the city, and beyond it, to the enemy artillery. "You've done very well. Please make sure we're ready to start shooting as soon as I give the order. Not before, under any circumstances. Is that quite clear?"

Whoever it was nodded. "Of course," he said. Another pause, and then, "But you haven't given us the targets yet," he said, tactfully. "You did say to stand by and you'd give the targets when you were ready, but…"

Psellus sighed, like a man being chivvied into a task he'd have preferred to avoid. "Not quite yet," he said. "Let's all just stay still and quiet for now."

Still and quiet, as though the world was holding its breath; until, some time later, whoever it was said, "Chairman, they're practically within scorpion range now, surely we should be doing something…"

Psellus sighed again. "You're quite right," he said. "Tell the captains to target the main body of the enemy-is that the right expression? I mean that great big square of them coming towards us."

Whoever it was hesitated just for a split second. "With respect, shouldn't we take out their artillery first? Otherwise-"

"Please," Psellus said, very quietly. "Do as I say."

Orders were passed down; it amused him, the way one officer passed them on to another, who went and told someone else, who went and told someone else… The chain of command, presumably, and it was admirably military. But absurd, nevertheless. "All ready, Chairman," the nonentity was saying. "At your command."

"Thank you," he said firmly. "Please wait."

They all think I'm mad, he thought. They're trying to make up their minds to push me out of the way and do what needs to be done; but they won't do it. Which is just as well. Even so, we're a pathetic excuse for a nation…

Then a flash of light caught his eye, and he looked at the top of the ridge, where he'd been told to look when the moment came. "Tell me," he said urgently. "My eyesight's so poor these days. Is there a large body of horsemen on top of the ridge?"

Slight pause. "Yes," whoever it was said. "But…"

Deep breath. "In that case," Psellus said mildly, "kindly open fire." Miel Ducas galloped down the slope, terrified in case his horse should stumble and throw him, and keep him from his duty. But the Ducas is, of course, a supremely accomplished horseman, and his mount is the finest money can buy.

Ten yards short of the artillery line, he reined in and looked round for someone to talk to. An artillery captain (an Eremian, thank God) turned round and stared at him.

"Hey, you," Miel shouted at him. "Do you know who I am?"

The captain nodded.

"Good. New orders. You need to bring down your elevation fourteen minutes, all of you."

The captain was doing mental arithmetic. "That can't be right," he said. "If we do that, we'll be shooting straight at-"

"Fourteen minutes," the Ducas repeated. "Now." The parts of a machine fulfil their various functions because they have no choice. A lever pivots a sear, which slips out of the notch cut in the underside of a roller. Unsupported, the roller gives way, releasing the slider, which shoots forward under the pressure of two springs along a close-sided keyway, driving the arrow shaft along its channel and away through the air. The arrow has no choice but to fly until it hits the target. Or a lever pivots a sear, which slips out of its notch in the roller, which releases the swinging arm, which rushes through ninety degrees, pivoting around its axis pin, until it slams into the crossbar, launching a net full of bricks, broken masonry, flints and potsherds into the air. Then the hook goes on the slider or the arm and the winch begins to turn. The tongue dances over the teeth of the ratchet as each turn drags back the slider or the arm against the furious resistance of the springs, until the sear drops into the notch on the underside of the roller, and a new arrow or a new consignment of lethal junk lands in the slot, and the lever drops, and the sear falls out. Between the spanning of the spring and the release there is only the sear, the trigger, the escapement, and once it lets go, the force is committed beyond recall.

Then the scorpion bolts lift, like a flock of rooks disturbed while feeding; they climb into the air on a lifting curve that reaches a high point, hesitates for a tiny moment, then (as though a sear has been tripped) falls in a decaying trajectory, accelerating as it slants down out of the sky. Or the hundredweight of jumbled, ballistically inefficient rubbish soars in a dissipating pattern, hangs, decays and drops, each lump spinning and twisting in the air like a falling man treading emptiness, powered by its own height and the furious pull of the ground, until it pitches… Miel Ducas had seen it all before, of course. Once upon a time, he'd watched the Mezentine artillery beat flat the Eremian army, the way the wind lays a field of corn. Once you've seen one wipeout, there's a case for saying you've seen them all. So it didn't bother him that he couldn't see what happened after the cloud of bolts lifted up into the sky. He could picture it in his mind easily enough.

Instead, he watched the Vadani cavalry pouring down over the ridge, parting into two wings as it reached the plain and surging up to surround the remaining four fifths of the Aram Chantat as they waited still and quiet for their shifts to begin. Of course, they couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the bank that shielded the artillery from the city batteries. They wouldn't have the faintest idea, until the scorpions swung round on their traverses to point straight at them.

Even so, he thought, it'd probably be a good idea to get out of the way. He walked his horse through the gap between the head-high stacks of scorpion bolts, dismounted, handed the reins to someone or other and scrambled up on to the wall, at a place where a Mezentine shot had punched a hole. What he saw was quite familiar.

"One more shot," he called out, "then a new setting."

This time, nobody questioned the order. The war council was still sitting, of course. There had been issues they wanted to discuss without General Vaatzes there. But the general came in anyway, and he had a platoon of Eremian soldiers with him.

"Your attention, please," he said. No choice at all, as he explained to them. A fifth of their men were already dead, shot or squashed by the combined fire of the Eremians and the Mezentines. The remainder were unarmed, packed close together, surrounded on three sides by the Vadani cavalry and faced on the fourth side by the allied scorpion batteries. As Ziani pointed out, if they chose to fight, there was a chance they might prevail by sheer force of numbers, eventually, but their losses would be something of the order of seventy per cent; and then they'd still have the Mezentines to contend with.

"I arranged it with Duke Valens and Chairman Psellus," he went on. He was almost too tired to speak, but the impetus of the final stage swept him along. "We all agreed that, compared with the threat you represent, our differences are relatively trivial; the sort of things we can always sort out later on, we decided, once we've got rid of you."

They were staring at him, but he really couldn't care less about that. His mind was a long way away, preoccupied with far more important issues.

"At any rate," he went on, "we've solved the supply problem-which," he added with a grin, "I created when I told Daurenja how to blow up the embankment. It was my gesture of good faith to Chairman Psellus; by using up a third of our flour reserve, I guaranteed to him that the City couldn't be taken by conventional siege and assault, because there simply wouldn't be time before our supplies ran out. He had to take my word for it that General Daurenja's secret weapon wouldn't work, but that was a foregone conclusion. I was there when it was made, and I knew it would fail. Now, of course, the supply problem's been solved, simply by virtue of the fact that there's eighty thousand less of you and twenty thousand fewer Mezentines. It was a brutal solution, but rather less so than the alternative, which was to slaughter all the Mezentines. And if you discounted that, there really wasn't any choice."

He paused for breath. He'd been talking quickly, to get it over with so he could move on. He slowed down a little as he continued:

"My deal with Psellus is as follows. We-I mean the Vadani and the Eremians-will disarm you and escort you over the mountains to the edge of the desert. Once you've crossed back to where you came from, Mezentine engineers will destroy the string of oases, so no one will ever be able to bring an army across there again." He shrugged. "I have no idea how you go about wrecking a large pool of water, but my people have the expertise, not to mention the incentive. Then, apart from the inevitable small raiding parties every so often, we'll never see or hear from you again, which is how it should be. The Mezentines will break down the City walls and undertake never to raise a standing army; and there'll be a trade agreement, we haven't worked out any details yet, but it'll mean the Mezentines will sell their goods for a fair price, and pay a substantial war indemnity; there'll also be a lot of changes in the way the Republic's run, but that's an internal matter, nothing to do with you. In return, the Vadani and the Eremians will be responsible for the City's defence." He frowned. "It's not a very good deal for any of us, and I expect it'll break down sooner or later and we'll all be back at each other's throats again before very long, but at least we'll be rid of you. It took this war to make us all realise that you're the one problem none of us can accommodate. You're a different kind of threat; you change everything."

One of the Aram Chantat said: "You realised it, though. Before the wedding, even. That's why you made it happen."

Ziani gave him a blank stare. "I'm not important," he said. "What possible relevance could one man's concerns have to the fate of nations? What I've done is end the war with the minimum of bloodshed and damage, and given the people of three countries some kind of chance of living in peace. Surely that's a leader's duty, and if it isn't, it should be."

"We misjudged you," said another. "We assumed you wanted revenge."

"I'm not a savage," Ziani replied calmly. "Only savages think like that."

He was about to dismiss them, but one of the Aram Chantat caught his eye and said, "Will you go back to your wife and daughter, and your work in the factory? Isn't that what you wanted?"

Ziani looked back at him, like someone looking into a mirror. "The meeting is closed," he said.