by K. J. Parker
When he heard the news, Goiauz the prophet solemnly shaved off his hair, eyebrows and beard, buried himself in ashes and didn’t speak or move for two days. Then he announced that he had been granted a vision of the Invincible Sun in glory. The Sun had told him that every non-believer in the world now belonged to Him, and that it was Goiauz’ duty to go out and bring home the flocks and the herds.
The column that set out up the Great South road wasn’t just an army. It was essential, Goiauz said, that the entire nation should join together in the sacrament. They would follow the enemy’s road to the sea and take their capital city; then, embarking on the enemy’s ships, they would sail to the Eastern capital, then march overland to the West. As he had already demonstrated beyond any possible doubt, the enemy were entirely incapable of withstanding the onslaught and arrow storm of the faithful. He was aware that the two brothers who led the armies of East and West were united against them, and that they were reckoned to be very fine generals. He wasn’t particularly concerned about that. No living man, no matter how cunning, could withstand the wrath of the Invincible Sun, whose power was so great that all those who even looked at Him directly were struck blind. In six months’ time – he, Goiauz the prophet, undertook it – the great work would be complete and the entire world would be filled with the glory of the holy truth.
“I had an idea it would be here,” Forza said quietly.
Dead bodies don’t stink in the desert the way they do in more temperate regions. Anywhere in the empire so many bodies would’ve attracted attention from miles away. As it was, they could easily have passed by without finding this place; you’d never find it if you didn’t know it was there. The nomads had chosen a spot where the ground fell away sharply into a steep-sided bowl; quite possibly there had been an oasis there once, which would explain why someone had been to the trouble of dragging rocks into a circle. The wooden stakes – thirty thousand or so of them, a huge drain on the nomads’ slender reserves of timber – were a new addition, though you could see them as a long-term investment. Wood doesn’t rot in the desert; they could last hundreds of years, as could the sun-dried corpses nailed to them, unless some busybody came along and interfered. Forza made a mental note to do just that, at some point.
“Well,” Forza said, “we’ve found the Erithryans. Though I guess better late than never doesn’t really apply.”
No way of knowing how long they’d been dead, though perhaps an expert on the desiccation of human tissue might have ventured an opinion. The absence of visible wounds on the bodies suggested that they’d been alive when they were nailed to the stakes. That made a sort of sense; they’d been given to the Sun god to do as He liked with, and He’d chosen to dry them out like raisins. Indeed. They’d keep better that way, practically indefinitely. Desert logic.
He was upsetting her, he could tell. She didn’t much like gallows humour. His instinct, when faced with genuine horror, was to fight back instantly with a joke, like using archers and slingers in open order to slow up the advance of a pike formation. “What are you going to do?” she said.
He looked back over his shoulder to the top of the rise. “Nothing,” he said. “We can’t bury them, we don’t have time. They’ll keep. Also, I don’t think we want to tell anyone about this. Men don’t tend to do as they’re told when they’re angry.”
She frowned at him. “I’d have thought— Well, motivation.”
“Too much of a good thing,” he said, with just a hint of what he felt. “We’d better get back; they’ll be wondering what the hell we’ve been up to.”
They rode back over the rim of the hollow. The adjutant gave him an enquiring look but he shook his head. “False alarm,” he said. “Right, on we go.”
The whole of the fifteenth book of Cartesuma’s Life of Forza Belot is devoted to the campaign against the nomads, but the battle of the Twenty-third Oasis occupies a mere two pages. Understandably enough; all the imagination, vision, technical brilliance and élan was expended in luring the enemy out into the middle of the desert and then reaching the only oasis first and fortifying it against them. Cartesuma describes in loving detail the night marches and the remarkable skill of the navigators, the cunning measures taken to disguise the movements of the army, the triumphs of intelligence gathering and misinformation, and quite rightly makes the point that Forza Belot, in this campaign, completely revolutionised the science of desert warfare, with consequences for the history of the empires that cannot be overestimated. The battle itself, he points out, was practically an anticlimax; for the connoisseur of the Belot style, there’s very little of interest. All Forza had to do was keep the enemy from reaching the water for two days, and this he achieved by the simple expedient of a strong natural defensive position quickly but effectively fortified and defended by an adequate number of archers supplied with a sufficiency of arrows. The genius of the Twenty-third Oasis lay in the preparations, not the fight itself; the battle had been won long before the first shot was loosed, and total victory was by that point inevitable. Having launched wave after wave of horsemen against the oasis, until all their arrows were spent, their horses exhausted, their casualties insupportable, their spirit utterly broken, the defeated nomads reeled away into the desert with what little water they had left and to date no trace of them has ever been found. The prophet Goiauz and a handful of companions were the only survivors, and for obvious reasons they chose not to dwell on the events of the Twenty-third Oasis, ascribing the defeat to the wrath of the Invincible Sun over a catalogue of offences against doctrine committed by the prophet’s political enemies some time earlier.
Fully a third of Cortesuma’s account is taken up with a narrative of the remarkable way in which Raico Belot took command and held the line towards the end of the battle, while her husband was cut off from the army and wandering lost in the desert. For scholars interested in the so-called Raico Question, indeed, this incident provides the only point of real interest in the battle. Pro-Raico authors use the accounts of her conduct of the defence as telling evidence that she was indeed a major contributor to her husband’s success and a considerable strategist and tactician in her own right; the anti-Raico school maintains that by that stage in the proceedings there was precious little that needed to be done except to encourage the men to keep shooting, and to conceal the fact that the general was missing, presumed dead; the accounts of her initiative and inspirational leadership were subsequently either grossly expanded or entirely fabricated by Senzaite historians expressly to detract from Forza’s own achievements and, by giving credit to his wife, to belittle Forza himself. Clearly there is more than a kernel of truth in these allegations, and it is unlikely that, in such a politically charged and sensitive area of Imperial history, the actual course of events will ever be known.
Forza launched a wild diagonal swing at the tribesman’s head; with a grin, he raised his right arm and blocked it easily. Splendid. As quickly as he could, Forza pulled down, drawing the concave cutting edge of the backsabre deep into the tribesman’s forearm. For a moment there was an almost comical look of dismay on the poor fellow’s face, as he realised he’d been taken for a fool; then Forza rammed the point into his stomach and twisted the hilt through ninety degrees. The tribesman’s mouth opened but no words came out, only blood. He staggered a little, then stepped back, then fell over. Well. Served him right for not moving his feet.
Forza wiped the dead man out of his mind, straightened his back and looked round quickly. Five yards away, he saw the last man of his escort shot in the face at point-blank range; the arrow went in just to the left of his nose and the point poked through at the base of his skull. The archer swung round, searching for the next target, not looking down as he fumbled the next arrow from his quiver. There was no time. Forza threw the backsabre at him. Sheer luck, it hit him on the bow hand, side on, with just enough force to loosen his fingers and make him drop the bow. He stooped to pick it up. That meant his chin was at a wonderfully convenient height, a mom
ent later, for Forza’s boot. Forza felt the man’s jaw crack, but that wasn’t enough on its own. Luckily, the backsabre was just in reach, if he was quick. He grabbed it without stooping and swung, missed the neck, hit the side of the head, cutting off the top half of the ear. The man yelled, so still alive, but unlikely to be a problem. Forza looked back and saw a little gap between two rapidly converging tribesmen. I’m not that fast, he thought, I won’t get there in time. Other possibilities, none.
Cursing himself for having no options, he ran at the gap. A tribesman had closed it; he’d drawn and was taking aim. Forza threw himself forward, landed on his elbows, heard the swish of the arrow passing over his head. He kicked at the sand, found his feet, shot up like a startled bird. A tribesman loomed into his field of view; Forza stretched out his right arm, holding the backsabre, and felt the edge run up against something as he passed. He heard a scream, so that was probably all right. He ran, waiting for the impact of the arrow in his back. He heard another swish, the flapping noise of the fletchings as they spun in flight, changing pitch as they went past him. He kept running.
As he ran, all he could think was: she’ll be all right, the diversion worked, we drew them off. He had absolutely no way of knowing if that was true, because there were about a thousand tribesmen blocking his view. He tried to visualise – the breach in the barricade, the enemy surge, like floodwater; they’d closed it up a bit with dead bodies, shooting them as they nudged and elbowed through the gap, but not enough. He tried to remember how many reserves he’d had at that point in the line, but he couldn’t. Nothing he could do about it now. Why hadn’t they shot him yet?
He ran for a while, and then his chest hurt too much, nothing he could do got any air into his lungs. His throat was burning, he guessed it was a bit like drowning. His foot caught on something and then he was nose down in the sand. Ah well. He didn’t bother trying to move. Enjoy breathing while you still can; won’t be long now.
But he lay there, and nothing much happened. Gradually he started getting some air past the cramps and the burning sensation. He concentrated on breathing in deep, and his head began to clear. He wondered if there was an arrow sticking out of his back. Sometimes you don’t feel it go in, apparently, or maybe the pain he’d taken as cramps was a puncture wound. He wriggled his back, felt no impediment. She’d be all right, wouldn’t she? He tried not to think about it. The urge to get up and go back, to save her, while there was still time, was like a halter round his neck, dragging at him, choking him. He tried blocking it with logic. What could you possibly do, on your own? They’d kill you before you got anywhere near. You’re in no fit state.
He raised himself on to his hands and knees, and a fit of coughing nearly split him in two. His knuckles brushed against something sharp; he looked at his hand, and saw he’d cut himself slightly on the edge of the backsabre. That made him want to laugh, but he couldn’t spare the breath.
It took a bit of twisting and wriggling, but he turned himself round and sat up. All he could see was sand, with a double line of deep, scuffed footprints. Had he really run that far? He couldn’t see anyone, standing or lying dead on the ground. Suddenly he felt the sun, like an extraordinary weight. His head swam, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything until it cleared. The sensible thing, surely, would be to close his eyes, just for two minutes.
When he came round, it was beginning to get dark. The temperature was dropping. He started to get up, but found he’d carelessly mislaid his strength. He remembered that there was something terribly important, but he had no idea what it might be.
The next time he woke up, he was shaking. That, it turned out, was because of the cold. It was pitch dark to start with, and then his eyes adjusted. A little faint moonlight became enough to see by. He tried to swallow but his throat was too dry. Oh hell, he thought, I’m going to die in the desert. He closed his eyes but he was too cold to sleep. He couldn’t control the shivering, and there was nothing to crawl under or wrap himself in. He tried rubbing his legs, but his hands were numb, stupid useless things on the ends of his arms that wouldn’t do as they were told. For some reason, when his eyes were closed, he could see the dead Erithryans, hanging off their posts like a lot of limp flags. Of course, if you die lying down, sooner or later drifting sand will cover you up. He thought, if I’ve been wrong all these years and there really is a fire god and an afterlife, it’s going to be dreadfully embarrassing when I get there. Something in the order of a hundred thousand Easterners; oh, it’s you, they’d all say, we want a word with you.
There was nothing he could do except crouch, his hands wrapped round his knees, and wait for the sun to rise. It took its own sweet time about it. At some point during the long wait he remembered – Raico, the attack, he had no idea if she was dead or alive. He could feel the panic, it was like an itch, or, rather, it was like being full of ferocious energy while also being unable to move; he couldn’t sit still, but he could barely lift his arm. For God’s sake, he thought. He strained his eyes staring at the sky, willing it to change colour.
When at last the dawn came, he stood up. For a while he didn’t dare move; he was like someone standing on a very narrow bridge or a ledge, one slight misstep and he’d be gone. Somehow he managed to get his legs swinging, short steps to begin with; it didn’t matter, because it couldn’t be very far and he’d be at the oasis. Ridiculous, really; he’d been there all night in the vicious cold, and the oasis and the army couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards away. He could do that crawling on his hands and knees, if needs be.
Think of something else. So he tried to order up images of home, of his house, the park, the barn where they laid up the store apples, wrapped in straw, on shelves; of her. He realised after a while that he was making up fake images and fake memories, because the real ones didn’t seem to be there any more. Even her face was becoming indistinct, obscured, turned away, in shadow. He stopped. He’d come a long way, he was sure of it. He shot a glance upwards at the sun and saw it was high in the sky. He looked round. Then it slowly dawned on him that he’d been walking in the wrong direction.
Here lies Forza Belot, who died of stupidity. He sank to his knees, outraged at the sheer bitter unfairness of it. He tried to swallow and found he couldn’t. The heat was like lead ingots strapped to his arms and legs. Of all the bloody ridiculous things, he thought, and a shadow fell across him.
Where they’d come from, he had no idea; he’d looked round a moment ago and seen nobody. But there they were: four tribesmen, on horses. They were looking at him. Then one of them leaned down and took his bow from the case that hung beside his leg. It wasn’t strung; he watched the tribesman string it one-handed, very neatly done, with the elegant grace of long practice. He watched him choose an arrow. The distance was no more than twenty yards. The other three were watching him, as if they were going to mark him out of ten on his performance.
The backsabre was long gone, of course, lying forgotten in the sand somewhere. Made no difference; he knew he wouldn’t have had the strength. He realised he felt nothing at all, no fear, no sudden spurt of survival instinct; he felt as if he was a long way off, watching something unimportant happening to someone else. The tribesman nocked his arrow, fixed his eyes on the target, pushed out with his bow hand, pulled back with the arrow hand, looking at Forza over the arrow tip. When his left arm was nearly straight, the power of the bow would drag the string out past his bent fingers and launch the arrow, it was a simple matter of geometry, a certain point on a straight line. The tribesman closed one eye, concentrated, approached the critical point; then he fell sideways off his horse and hit the sand face first.
His three companions had absolutely no idea what was happening. They leaned forward to peer, saw the arrow in their dead friend’s back, swung round in their saddles; another one toppled backwards over his horse’s arse. One of the remaining two dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and yelled; he got about five yards, then slowly drooped sideways and toppled off.
The last man just sat there, until an arrow hit him in the ear.
Unbelievable, Forza thought. Absolutely fucking mad.
That said, there were now three horses there for the taking. He tried to get to his feet, but it was as though his feet were caught in something. The hell with that; the horses were about to spook, any moment now they’d be off and that’d be that, the last ludicrous twist of the farce. No sudden movements, he told himself, rather superfluously. He stared at the nearest horse, trying to catch its eye, then remembered: horses don’t like eye contact, it scares them. Let’s all keep perfectly calm and still, and—
Quite suddenly, the horses put their ears back and sprang into a gallop. Forza tried to yell, but he couldn’t make a sound. He watched them sprint away, no catching them now, not without twenty riders with ropes. Just so, so unfair. He closed his eyes, and then thought: so who shot the four arrows?
The answer was riding straight at him at a brisk trot: a dozen men in flowing white robes, so presumably they were angels or something. As they got closer, he realised they actually were angels, because they were too big to be ordinary humans, stupidly tall and absurdly broad across the shoulders, though it struck him as faintly ludicrous that angels should choose to ride stocky little black cobs; the angels’ feet were so low they were practically trailing on the ground. But no matter; he’d reached the stage where he was seeing angels, and he knew perfectly well what that meant. He wondered if he’d hallucinated the four tribesmen, too. No, he decided, they looked pretty real, dead on the ground with arrows in them, lying in the unique carelessly dropped postures that are impossible for living men ever to fake. Four real men, and they’d been shot. By imaginary angels? In a way he was glad he was nearly out of it all. Trying to make sense of it would’ve been so very tiresome.
