by K. J. Parker
That seemed to cover the situation pretty well, though Orsea felt he ought to be asking penetrating questions to display his perfect grasp of it. But the only thing he really wanted to know was whether, at some point between now and the start of the actual assault, Jarnac would be slipping off home to change into something else; or whether he’d got a full wardrobe of different armors laid out ready in the guard tower. He wished he didn’t dislike Jarnac so much, particularly since he was going to have to rely on him; that made him think of Miel, which had the effect of freezing his mind. “Carry on,” he heard himself say.
He toured the walls, of course, and anxious-looking officers whose names tended to elude him jumped up and saluted him wherever he went. They pointed things out to him, things he couldn’t quite make out in the distance — high points where the enemy might put observers or long-range engines, patches of dead ground where a whole division could lurk unseen, secret mountain trails that could be useful for raids and sorties — and he knew that he ought to be taking it all in, building each component into a mechanism that would serve as a weapon against the enemy. But there was too much of everything for his mind to grasp. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was slowly seizing up, as fear, shock and pain coagulated and set inside him. The enemy would build their platform and their engines would grind down the walls at their leisure, smashing Vaatzes’ hard-earned, expensive scorpions into rubbish before they’d had a chance to loose a single shot. When that task had been completed to their perfect satisfaction, the enemy would advance, entirely safe, to the foot of the wall; their scorpions would clear away the last of Jarnac’s defenders, the ladders would be raised, the enemy would surge in like a mighty white-fringed wave; and all the while, Miel (who could have saved the city) would watch from his tower window, and Veatriz would watch from hers; maybe they’d be watching when he was killed, maybe they’d see him fall and be unable to do anything…
Part of the torment was knowing that there was still enough time. He could send a runner to the captain of the East Tower; Miel could be here beside him in a few minutes, to forgive him and take over and make everything all right again. But he couldn’t do that; because Miel had betrayed him, Miel and Veatriz — the truth was that he didn’t know what it was they’d done, or how Duke Valens came into it; all he knew was that he could never trust either of them again, and without them he was completely useless, a fool in charge of the battle of life against death. It was like the nightmares he had now and again, where he was a doctor about to perform surgery, and he suddenly realized he didn’t have the faintest idea what he was supposed to do; or he’d agreed to act in a play but he hadn’t got round to learning his lines, and now he was due to go on in front of a hundred people. The officers carried on telling him things he ought to know, but it was as though they were speaking a foreign language. We’ve had it, he thought; and his mind started to fill up with images of the last time, the field of dead men and scorpion bolts. It’s all my fault, he told himself, I’m to blame for all of it; nobody else but me.
Once the tour of inspection was over, he went back to Jarnac’s tower and asked him what was happening. Jarnac pointed out the heavy engines — he could see them for himself now — being dragged up the slope by long trains of mules. Ahead of them trudged a dense mass of men; the work details, Jarnac explained, who’d be building the platform for the engines.
“I see,” Orsea said. “So what should we be doing?”
He could see a flicker of concern in Jarnac’s eyes, as if to say what’re you asking me for? “Well,” he said, “as I mentioned earlier, we have the option of launching a sortie. We can try and drive off the work details, or kill them, or capture or destroy the heavy engines. It’s our only way of putting the engines out of action before they neutralize our defenses — assuming, of course, that they’re capable of doing that. We’ve never seen them in action, or heard any accounts of what they can do, so we’re guessing, basically. But if we launch the sortie, we’ll be taking quite a risk. To put it bluntly, I don’t think we’d stand any more of a chance than we did the last time we took on the Mezentines in the open. Our scorpions can’t give us cover down there, and we’d be walking right up to theirs; and even if you leave the scorpions out of it completely, we’d be taking on their army in a pitched battle. I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”
Jarnac stopped talking and looked at him; so did a dozen or so other officers, waiting for him to decide. He could feel fear coming to life inside them (the Duke hasn’t got a plan, he can’t make up his mind, he’s useless, we’re screwed). He knew he had to say something, and that if he said the wrong thing it could easily mean the destruction of the city.
“Fine,” he said. “No sortie. We’ll just sit it out and wait and see.”
The silence was uncomfortable, as though he’d just said something crass and tactless, or spouted gibberish at them. I’ve lost them, he thought, but they’ll obey my orders because I’m the Duke. Their excellent loyalty would keep them from ignoring him and doing what they thought should be done, what they knew was the right course of action; they’d fail him by loyalty, just as Miel had failed him by treachery. Ah, symmetry!
But he’d given the order now; fatal to change his mind and trample down what little confidence in him they had left. Amusing thought: here was the entire Mezentine army coming up the mountain specially to kill him, well over thirty thousand men all hungering for his blood; even so, in spite of their multitudes, he was still his own worst enemy.
Jarnac cleared his throat. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to run the scorpion crews through a few more drills,” he said. “We’ve got time, I’m fairly sure, and —”
“Yes, do that,” Orsea snapped at him. “I’ll get out of your way, you’ve got —” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. He headed for the stairs. People followed him; he ought to know who they all were, but he didn’t. He had no clear idea of where he was going, or what he was going to do next.
In response to his urgent request for technical advice, they brought him a man called Falier, who was apparently the chief engineer of the state arms factory. It seemed logical enough. This Falier was in charge of building the machines, so presumably he’d know how they worked and what they were capable of doing.
Falier turned out to be younger than he’d expected; a nervous, good-looking, weak sort of man who’d probably agree with everything he said. General Melancton sighed, told him to sit down and offered him a drink.
“The heavy engines,” he said. “The — what are they, the Mark Sixes. How far will they shoot?”
The man called Falier looked at him as if he didn’t understand the question. “Well,” he said slowly, “it all depends. I mean, for a start, how heavy a ball are you using?”
Expect the worst of people and you won’t be disappointed. “I don’t know,” Melancton said with studied patience. “You tell me. What weight of ball will give me maximum range?”
Falier was doing sums in his head. “A two-hundredweight ball will carry six hundred yards,” he said, “at optimum elevation, assuming the wind’s not against you. But,” he went on, “I can’t guarantee it’d be effective against that sort of masonry; not at extreme range.”
“I see.” Melancton sighed. “So what weight of ball do I need to use?”
“Well,” Falier said, “a five hundredweight’ll go through pretty much anything.”
“Excellent. And what’s the extreme range of a five hundred-weight?”
Falier shrugged. “Two hundred yards,” he said. “More if you’ve got a following wind, of course.”
“That would be well inside scorpion range, from the city wall.”
“Oh yes.” Falier nodded enthusiastically. “Especially shot from the top of the wall there. Actually, it’s quite a sophisticated calculation, where the point of release is higher up than the point of impact. It’s all to do with the rate of decay of the bolt’s trajectory, and the acceleration it builds up on it
s way down. The variables can make a hell of a difference, mind.”
Falier, in other words, didn’t know the answer to his question; so he thanked him and got rid of him, and resolved to build his siege platform at four hundred and fifty yards. If the balls dropped short at that range, they’d just have to move up a bit closer and build another platform. Embarrassing; but with any luck, all the witnesses to his embarrassment — the hostile ones at least — would be dead quite soon, and so it wouldn’t really matter terribly much. He gave the order, then left his tent and walked a little way up the road so he could watch the building detail at work.
The mercenary infantry were, of course, too well trained and high-class to dig earth and carry it back and forth in baskets; so he’d sent to Mezentia for brute labor, and they’d sent him five hundred assorted Cure Doce, Paulisper, Cranace and Lonazep dockside miscellaneous, at three groschen a day. Twenty groschen to the Mezentine foreign thaler, and it’s a sad fact of life that you get what you pay for. The Cure Doce dug and spitted with a kind of steadfast indifference; the Paulisper didn’t mind heavy lifting, but were generally drunk by mid-afternoon; the Cranace picked fights with the Paulisper over matters of religion and spectator sport; the Lonazeppians worked hard but complained about everything (the food, the tents, the Cranace’s singing). In the event, it took them four days and nights on a three-shift rotation to build the platform. Melancton’s most optimistic forecast had been six. The Eremians made no effort to interfere in any way, which he found strange and faintly disturbing. In their position he’d have launched sorties; even if capturing or wrecking the engines proved too difficult, scaring the labor force into mass desertion would’ve been no trouble at all. An enemy who neglected such an obvious opportunity was either supremely confident or utterly resigned to defeat.
On the fifth morning, he went up to the platform with Syracoelus, his captain of artillery, the engineer Falier and a couple of pain-in-the-bum liaison officers from the Mezentine Guilds, who’d been sent up to find out why the war hadn’t been won yet. The early mists had burned away in bright, harsh sunlight; the heavy engines had been hauled up overnight and were already dug in, aligned and crewed for action. Four hundred and fifty yards away, the enemy looked like roosting rooks behind their turrets and battlements, the noses of scorpions poking out from behind each crenellation.
Melancton and his party stood in silence for a while, looking up at the walls. Nobody seemed in any hurry to say anything, not even the usually unsilenceable Mezentines. Finally, Melancton said, “Well, I suppose we’d better get on with it.” The engine crews hesitated, trying to figure out if that constituted a valid order to open fire. Melancton frowned, then nodded to Captain Syracoelus, who looked at the nearest engine-master and said, “Loose.”
He was being somewhat premature, of course; first they had to span the huge windlass that dragged down the engine’s throwing-arm against the tension of the nested, inch-thick leaf springs that powered it. In the silence the smooth snicks of the ratchet sounded horribly loud (it was as though the city was asleep, and Melancton was worried they’d wake it up). A louder, meatier snick told him the sear was engaged and the engine was ready to be loaded; a wheeled dolly was rolled under a derrick which lifted a three-hundredweight stone ball off a pile; the dolly ran on tracks that stopped under a short crane, which lifted the ball into the spoon on the end of the throwing-arm. Men with levers rolled it into place and jumped clear. Syracoelus repeated his order; someone pulled back a lever, and the arm reared up, sudden and violent as a punch. Melancton could hear the throbbing whistle the ball made as it spun; at first it climbed, almost straight, so far that he was sure they’d overshoot the city completely. At the top of its trajectory it hung for a split second, the sunlight choosing that moment to flare off it, like an unofficial moon. Then it began to fall, the decay of the cast seeming to draw it in as if there were chains attached to it. He lost sight of it against the backdrop of the walls; heard the dull thump as it bashed into the masonry, saw a puff of dust and steam lift into the air and drift for a moment before dispersing. “Elevation good,” he heard someone say, “windage two minutes left”; another lever clicked and a sear rang like a bell, and that oscillating whistle again, followed by the thump and the round white ball of dust. The clicking of ratchets all round him was as busy as crickets in meadow-grass; men were straining at their windlasses, every last scrap of strength brought to bear on the long handles; voices were calling out numbers, six up, five left, two right; the distant thumps came so close together they melted into each other, and the whistles merged into a constant hum.
Compassion wasn’t one of Melancton’s weaknesses, but he couldn’t help wondering what it must be like on the wall, as the shots landed; if the thumps were so heavy he could feel them through the soles of his feet four and a half hundred yards away, what did they feel like close to, as they butted into the stones of the wall? Melancton had never been on the wrong end of a bombardment like this; an earthquake, maybe, he thought, or the eruption of a volcano. “Keep it going for half an hour,” he heard himself shouting over the extraordinary blend of noises, “and then we can see if we’re doing any good.” (Half an hour, he thought as he said it; how long would half an hour seem under the onslaught of the whistling stone predators, swooping in like a falcon on a partridge? He knew the fluffy white balls of cloud were steam because someone had explained it to him long ago; when the ball lands, the energy behind it is so great that for a split second it’s burning hot, and any traces of moisture in the target are instantly boiled away into vapor. How could you be on the receiving end of something like that and not drop dead at once from sheer terror?)
The barrage didn’t last half an hour; ten minutes at the very most, because by then all the shot had been used up, and it’d take at least an hour to replenish the stocks from the reserve supply. Syracoelus was quick to apologize; Melancton shrugged, having to make an effort not to admit that he was overjoyed that it was over; the clicking and ringing and the air full of that terrible humming noise, and the thuds of impacting shot a quarter-mile away as constant as the drumming of rain on a roof. He realized he’d been looking away, deliberately averting his eyes from the target. He looked up; and, to his considerable surprise, Civitas Eremiae was still there.
“Shit,” someone said.
Syracoelus gave orders to his crews to stand by. “What’s happening?” bleated one of the Mezentine liaisons. “I can’t see from here.” Someone else said, “Maybe we’re just dropping them in the wrong place; how about if we concentrated the whole lot on the left-hand gatehouse tower?” Three people contradicted him simultaneously, drowning out each other’s arguments as they competed for attention. “Hardly bloody scratched it,” someone else said. “Fuck me, those walls must be solid.”
Failure, then. Melancton felt like laughing out loud at the absurdity of it. The Mezentine heavy engines had been beaten, they weren’t up to the job. Melancton caught himself on the verge of a grin; could it possibly be, he wondered, that he was beginning to want the Eremians to win?
“Wonderful,” Syracoelus was saying. “Well, we can’t possibly go in any closer, we’d be right under the noses of those scorpions on the wall. I suppose we could up the elevation to full and try the four-hundredweight balls, but I really don’t think they’ll get there, even.”
“If we had a load of really strong pavises,” someone else began to say; nobody contradicted him or shouted him down, but he didn’t finish the suggestion.
It hadn’t worked, then; or at least, not yet. There was still plenty of ammunition back at the supply train. He caught sight of Falier, the man from the ordnance factory, who hadn’t contributed to the post-bombardment debate. He looked like he might throw up at any moment. “Is there any way to beef up the springs?” Melancton asked. He had to repeat the question a couple of times before he could get an answer, which was no, there wasn’t. They were already on their highest setting, Falier explained, all the tensioners were done up
tight.
“Any suggestions?” Melancton asked. “Come on, you produce the bloody things. Is there any kind of modification we could make?” Falier shuddered and shook his head. “Not allowed,” he said.
Melancton looked at him. “Not allowed?”
“That’s right,” Falier replied. “Not without a dispensation from the Specifications directorate at the factory. Otherwise it’d be… I’d get into trouble.”
Melancton smiled at him. “I’m giving you a direct order as commander in chief of the army,” he said. “Now —”
“Sorry.” Falier looked away. “I’m a civilian. You can’t order me. If you threaten me, I’ll have to report it. Anyhow,” he went on, “it’s all beside the point. We’d need to make new springs, and beef up the frames as well. Even if we got all the calculations right first time, it’d take weeks to have the springs made at the factory and sent up here. Have you got that much time?”
He’s lying, Melancton realized. Of course he knew about Specifications, how they were sacrosanct and couldn’t be altered on pain of death; he also knew that the arms factory was the one exception. As to the other argument (so neatly offered in the alternative), he had to take Falier’s word for it, since he knew nothing about engineering or production times. He was fairly certain that Falier was exaggerating the timescale, but of course he couldn’t prove it.
