Devices and Desires

by K. J. Parker

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

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

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

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

  He nodded without looking round. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What’s happening?” he heard himself say; but before Stesimbracus could answer, another of the clothesline prop things dropped out of nowhere and hit him. The point went in on the left side of his collarbone and came out through the small of his back, pinning him upright to the ground.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Thanks,” Eiconodou
lus said. The man was staring at him as though he’d never seen a human before. “What’s happening?”

  The man shook his head. “We’re getting slaughtered,” he said, and laughed.

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

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

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

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

  “Are you hurt?”

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

  Eiconodoulus opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated.

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

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

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

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