Devices and Desires

by K. J. Parker

  She shouted back, “Who?”

  “Duke Valens.”

  She thought she’d misheard him; then she realized, as though she’d just been told the answer to a silly riddle a child could’ve guessed, who the horsemen were. Valens had come to rescue her.

  It was a complete shambles, of course. Dead bodies everywhere, both the enemy and the Eremians scattered all over the place; he’d come expecting to fight a hopeless battle against ridiculous odds, but instead he’d turned up late, when it was all over; picked a fight with the Perpetual Republic, and all for nothing.

  A footsoldier made the mistake of being in front of him. Valens twitched his left rein, urged his horse on with his heels and held his sword out just a little as he passed. No need to strike or anything like that; the sword’s edge touched the man’s neck, and momentum did the rest. Elegant; but he’d wanted to let off steam by hitting something hard.

  All around him, his men were slaughtering the enemy like sheep, which wasn’t what he was here for. Instead, he needed to find someone he could talk to; he needed to find her, and the fool Orsea, and then get out again as quickly as possible. Anything else he did here, such as killing Mezentines, was just making a bad situation worse.

  Pull yourself together, he thought, this is getting out of hand. In front of him — while he’d been agonizing, the battle had overtaken him, proving once again that War has deplorable manners — his color squadron had surrounded a large unit of Mezentine infantry, jamming them close together so that they could hardly move, let alone fight back. He watched his men drive their horses tight up against the Mezentines’ bodies, barging them back, while their riders hacked resignedly at heads and arms showing above an arbitrary line; it was like watching tired men cutting back a hedge, their hooks turning blunt, their dexterity worn down into mere flailing and bashing. It was a disgusting sight, and it had come about because the Vadani Duke was a hopeless romantic, who couldn’t resist the thought of snatching his beloved out of the jaws of death. Busy as he was, and preoccupied with more practical matters, he had to stop and consider that. From the ugliness of his life he’d sought escape and redemption in pure and selfless love, and the upshot was lacerated flesh, cut and smashed bone, and the weariness of men worn out with the sheer hard work of killing.

  Then he pulled himself together, as previously resolved, and forced himself to become the efficient, dispassionate professional. Thanks to surprise and his enemy’s lack of imagination, he’d carried the field, for the time being. Such Mezentines as remained alive inside the Horsefair were penned up and harmless, but reinforcements would already be on their way from other parts of the city; his cavalry were good at attacking but not at being attacked, he lacked archers and infantry support, and he could expect no help from the shattered fragments of the Eremian forces. At best he had a quarter of an hour, in which he had to find her, and Orsea as well if possible. After that, he had to leave or face extermination. Fine.

  It stood to reason she’d be in the palace; Orsea too, if he had any sense (but of course he hadn’t). He could see the palace dead ahead of him, but he hadn’t paid enough attention to the fine detail of how you got there from here. The map of Civitas Eremiae he’d studied earlier marked streets, gates and arches, but so far it had proved less than entirely reliable (should’ve known better than to trust a map he’d bought from a woman in a red dress). If, as he feared, there were narrow streets and alleys between here and the palace, it’d be a stupid risk to take horsemen in there. All in all, he was beginning to wish he’d stayed at home.

  And then, unexpectedly, he saw her. She was quite close to him, no more than twenty yards away; there was a man with her, a brown-skinned man, therefore by implication a Mezentine or one of their mercenaries. He wasn’t in armor, which suggested he was a diplomat or other civilian; not that it mattered. It was her, unmistakable, just the same as she’d been the one time they’d met, ten years ago.

  He yanked his horse’s head round and dug his heels in. Some fool of a footsoldier darted across his line of sight; probably only trying to get away, but for half a second he was inside Valens’ reach, and that was the end of him. Valens didn’t notice anything about him, wasn’t entirely sure where the cut had landed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw him go down and his experience in such matters assured him that living men don’t drop down at that angle. He felt a mild tingle of pain in his sword-arm, just above the elbow, where he’d abused the tendon.

  She saw him approaching; froze for a moment in panic, then looked round for somewhere to run to. The fool with her had pulled out a sword (a short, single-edged huntsman’s falchion, he noticed automatically; loot, presumably, and much good it’d do him) and was trying to get between her and the presumed approaching danger. No time for that sort of thing; Valens swerved left, leaned forward a little, smacked the falchion out of his hand with the flat of his sword, and completed the engagement with a short, stiff thrust to the heart.

  He noticed in passing that the thrust was turned and didn’t penetrate, but that was of no concern. The fool had fallen over, and didn’t matter anymore. She was standing quite still, her mouth open in horror and no sound coming out. “It’s all right,” he yelled, “it’s me.”

  Of course, she didn’t recognize him, even with his bevor up. Why should she? It was ten years ago, and they’d only chatted for a few minutes. “It’s me,” he howled, “it’s Valens. I’m come to save you.” Melodrama, he thought; what a crass thing to say. “Please, stay still, it’s all right.”

  She was staring at him as though he had wings and a tail. She said something but he couldn’t hear. The hell with it, he thought, and slid off his horse. He landed awkwardly, turning his ankle over, and swore.

  “Valens?” He heard her this time. “What are you —?”

  Explanations; for crying out loud, no time. “Soon as I heard about the assault,” he said. He was lying; it had taken him a day, a night and a morning before the pain had got too much for him to bear and he’d ordered out the cavalry. “I came to get you. And Orsea,” he added, wishing it hadn’t sounded such an obvious afterthought. “Where is he?”

  She just looked at him. Oh, he thought, and he had enough conscience left to hate the part of him that added, Well, never mind. “We can’t hang around,” he said, then remembered he’d forgotten something; his manners. “Will you come with me?” he asked.

  She didn’t say anything for a very long time, maybe as long as a third of a second. Then she nodded.

  “Here, you take my horse,” he said. He held out the reins. She was looking at the horse; how am I supposed to get up there? He winced; he really wasn’t handling this very well, but seeing her made him feel seventeen and mortally awkward again. “Give you a leg-up,” he said.

  Her foot in his hand; a sharp stab of pain, as her weight aggravated the strained tendon. Then she was reaching down for the reins, as two of his captains rode up fast. Their faces told him they’d been looking for him, expecting not to find him alive. He turned to the nearest of them. “You,” he said, “find me a horse. You, with me.”

  She was saying something, and he couldn’t hear; the helmet-padding, probably. “What?” he asked.

  “Orsea,” she shouted back. “He led the counterattack, but I don’t know what happened. You’ve got to —”

  Valens knew perfectly well what he’d got to do without having to be told. “I know,” he said. “Can you take me to where —?”

  She shook her head; and then a voice somewhere behind him and to the right said, “I can.” He looked round and saw the little brown-faced man, the one he hadn’t managed to kill a moment ago. “I know where he fell,” this incongruous man said, “I was watching from the tower. Before I came to find you,” he added, to her. “I can show him.”

  She nodded rapidly and said, “Please”; and for a moment, Valens felt violently jealous. For pity’s sake, he told himself. “All right,” he said — the captain had come back with a riderless horse; quick service
, he’d have to remember that — “you can take us there.” He hopped into the saddle and grabbed the reins. “And then we really do have to leave,” he shouted to her.

  The little man looked up at him and sort of waved his hands — what about me? — at which the captain, clearly a man of initiative, reached down, grabbed him round the waist and pulled him up behind him on his horse. The other captain closed in behind them as they rode off, following the little man’s pointing finger. If he’s lying, Valens promised himself, I’ll have him gutted alive.

  It was delicate work, picking a way through the dead bodies. The horses didn’t really want to tread on them, and stepped tentatively, like ladies in good shoes on a muddy track. Before they got to where the Mezentine was taking them, he sent the other captain to call off the attack and regroup the men, ready to leave as soon as they were through with looking for Orsea.

  “Around here,” the little man was saying — he wasn’t used to riding; he was pointing with one hand and clinging grimly to the captain in front of him with the other. “I know I saw him go down; he was wearing a helmet with a white horsehair crest —”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  Valens was listening, but he was also looking at a big, tall man standing a few yards away. He’d been leaning on a pole-axe, a picture of complete exhaustion. There was so much blood on him that he glistened like a fish, and he appeared to be bewildered, almost in a daydream. He must have heard the horses’ hoofs; he snapped upright and leveled the pole-axe in a high first guard; as he did so, a panel of his ruined brigandine flopped sideways and hung out at right-angles.

  She screamed; she was calling out a name, which he didn’t catch.

  “Is that him?” he shouted.

  “It’s —” The name was Jar-something, Jarno or Jarnac. She urged her horse forward; the blood-covered man dropped his axe, stumbled and caught a handful of mane to hang from. “Jarnac, where is he?” she was yelling in his face. “Orsea; do you know —?”

  The man said, “He’s here,” in a loud, clear voice. “He’s alive.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Valens noticed that there were a lot of dead men on the ground, all Mezentines, all horribly smashed and cut about. For some reason he thought of the boar at bay, and of the hound that won’t leave its injured master. “Fine,” he said loudly. “Let’s get him and go home. Him too,” he added, nodding at the man called Jarnac; because, by the look of it, he was too useful to waste. “Horses over here, quick.”

  She half-turned in the saddle to look at him. She didn’t smile. He hadn’t expected her to, it wasn’t the time or the place for smiling; but the expression on her face said, It never even crossed my mind that you’d come for me, but I understand why you did; and yes, I accept the gift for what it is. In that moment, Valens felt something he couldn’t begin to identify, but which he’d never felt before, and he knew that it justified what he’d done, no matter how devastating and evil the consequences might be. Then she turned away from him. She was watching as two of his men lifted a bloody mess of a man’s body onto a horse. He thought about that, too, and realized he couldn’t lie to himself. He wished that Orsea had been dead when they found him, and he hoped he’d die, now or very soon, and he knew that he’d do everything in his power to keep him alive.

  “Right,” he said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  Miel Ducas lifted his head. He was alone.

  He could see out of his left eye. His right eye was blurred and it stung. He closed it and wiped it with his right hand; just blood, that was all. Then the pain in his left arm started, or he noticed it for the first time. Under other circumstances it’d have monopolized his attention, but he couldn’t afford the luxury. He was alive, for now, but everything else was pretty bad.

  He was alone in the Horsefair, with a lot of dead people. His left arm was broken, and something bad had happened which had left a wet red patch on the left side of his shirt, hand-sized, just above his waist. He could hear hoofs clattering in one direction, and men yelling in another. Clearly not out of the woods yet, then.

  He remembered. Orsea; he’d set out to find Orsea, death, or both. Instead, he’d been hit, fallen over his feet, blacked out. The city had fallen to the enemy, and presumably a massacre was in progress. All bad stuff; but for some reason he’d been left over, as though Death had declined to accept him. He grinned. For the first time in his life, the Ducas was apparently of no importance, finally — at the end of the world — relieved of duty.

  I will no longer try and do anything beyond my capabilities. Other people’s excessive expectations of me brought me to this pass, and I’ve had enough of them. Instead, let’s see if I can stand up.

  There’d be no commemorative fresco in the cloister of the Ducas house to celebrate it — would there still be a Ducas house, this time tomorrow? — but he achieved it, nonetheless; he pushed with his knees and straightened his back, and he was on his feet. He swayed dangerously, took a step forward to catch his balance. Let the word go out to every corner of the duchy. The Ducas was standing up.

  Nobody seemed to have noticed, which was no bad thing. He staggered a couple of paces and stopped to rest. He couldn’t bring himself to feel any sense of urgency, even though he knew time was short. Something had happened while he’d been lying on the ground, dead to the world; something important, and he’d missed it. Whatever it was, it had emptied the Horsefair of Mezentines, but he had a shrewd idea they’d be back soon enough. It would be nice to be somewhere else by then.

  (Where? He had nowhere in the world to go. He thought about that. It also meant there was nowhere he had to go, no appointments made for him or obligations requiring him to be present anywhere. That was a very strange feeling indeed.)

  There was a horse. It was standing about twenty yards away, its head neither up nor down, its reins tangled around its front nearside hoof. As he stared at it (come on, haven’t you ever seen a horse before?), something snagged its attention and it started to walk away; but the movement tightened the rein and, being a well-schooled horse, it stopped. Miel grinned. Allegory, he thought; even at this late stage, the world puts on a moral fable for my benefit. A horse, on the other hand, could take him places, always assuming he could get up on its back.

  Big assumption. Still, he wasn’t busy. A yard at a time, nice and slow, conserving his meager strength and not startling the horse with sudden movements (an elegant economy of motivations), he approached it, until he was close enough to bend forward — that hurt surprisingly much — and tweak at the reins. Obligingly, the horse lifted its foot, releasing the tangle. Of course, it hadn’t known to do it for itself. A fellow slave of duty.

  He looked up at the saddle. Might as well ask him to climb a mountain on his knees. What he needed, of course, was a mounting block. He thought about that. He was in the Horsefair, which was called that for a reason. Over on the far east side there was a row of three dozen mounting blocks. If he could get there, he might be able to scramble up onto this horse’s back and ride away, possibly even to the nebulous and unimaginable environment known as Safety. At the very least he could try. After all, if the world had wanted him to die here, it wouldn’t have issued him with the horse.

  A third of the way there his knees gave up. He hung for a quarter of a minute from the reins and a handful of the horse’s mane, grabbed together in his right hand. He was too weak to pull himself upright by them, too contrary to let go and slide to the ground. In theory, he could call on rugged determination and force of character to spur him on to that last spurt of effort. Not in practice, though. The mane hairs were cutting into the side of his hand, and his bodyweight was pulling the curl out of his fingers. He knew that if he slumped to the ground, he wouldn’t be able to get up again. It was a quiet, low-key way for the Ducas to fail. He was almost prepared to accept it.

  At the last possible moment, the horse grunted, raised its head a few degrees and started to amble forward. It was only a very slight movement, but
it was enough. The horse dragged him along, the toes of his slippers trailing on the ground; it had spotted the hay-nets that hung on the east wall, behind the row of mounting blocks.

  On the neck of the pass that overlooked the road to Civitas Eremiae, Valens halted his men and looked back. Smoke was drifting up into the still air. It was mid-morning on a bright, warm day.

  “What’s happening?” asked one of his captains.

  Valens narrowed his eyes against the glare. “They’re burning the city,” he said.

  The captain thought about that. “Didn’t take them long to evacuate the civilians,” he said.

  “I don’t think they bothered with that,” Valens replied.

  It took the captain a moment to grasp what he’d heard. “So what are we going to do?” he said.

  “Us?” Valens sighed. “We’re going to go home, of course. We’ve done what we came for.”

  “I thought we came to save the Eremians.”

  “No.” Valens shortened his reins into his left hand. “No, that’d be a mistake. Let’s get moving.”

  He was glad to get over the pass, back onto the road that led to the border, where he couldn’t see the smoke. He was pleased when they brought him the casualty report — twelve dead, seventeen injured, mostly minor cuts and grazes; his men had acquitted themselves extremely well under difficult circumstances. He could be proud of them. In fact, the only man who’d done badly in his small army, failed in his duty and brought disaster down on his comrades-in-arms and the entire Vadani people was himself. My prerogative, he thought; and he cast his mind back to when he’d first heard about Duke Orsea’s insane idea of a preemptive strike against the Mezentines. Deliberately picking a fight with the most powerful, most ruthless nation on earth, people who never forgave, never forgot, took quiet pride in the total extermination of their enemies… Ordinary stupidity wouldn’t be enough, you’d have to be actually deranged to do something like that.