by K. J. Parker
The hooded man dumped him at a way station in the middle of the Great Southern Marsh, in the early hours of the morning. Fortunately it was a clear night and the moon was almost full, so he managed to find the door. He bashed on it for a while, and the porter came and let him in. The next coach was due at noon the next day. Until then, he was welcome to use the hospitality suite—
Which turned out to be a redundant charcoal cellar, swept out (more or less) and fitted with a bedstead made from old rafters, a corn sack for a pillow and one blanket. The trumpet woke him two hours before dawn, and he slouched across the yard to the mess hall, where he was issued with military porridge and grey bread. Nobody spoke to him or seemed to realise who he was.
The mail arrived exactly on time, and he was pleased to see he had the coach to himself, at least as far as Malestan. He took the opportunity to plan ahead, with no danger of interruptions.
The military staging post at Malestan was one of the biggest supply depots in the West. The upland wheat arrived in gigantic wagons and was stored in towering stone silos. Cattle and hogs came in along the Military Droves. They were herded into the vast stockyards on the north side of the camp, where they stayed until they were driven to the slaughterhouse, reputedly the biggest in both empires. The salting and drying sheds alone covered eleven acres; the tannery was three miles upwind of the station perimeter, for obvious reasons. The textile factory, vehicle maintenance sheds and munitions plant were inside the wall, which was really a high bank topped with a palisade and surrounded by a deep flooded ditch. There was also a ceramics and glass works, said to be the most advanced in the world, barns, charcoal sheds, an acre of stables, three watermills, two enormous ponds (dug in the fond hope of farming carp; they all died, poisoned by the run-off from the slaughterhouse; the ponds were stagnant now, and nourished millions of mosquitos in the warm weather), the inevitable parade grounds and drill yards for the garrison, barracks for the soldiers, rather smaller quarters for the civilian workers, various administrative buildings and the Prefecture, a modest Third Kingdom manor house in the local stone which was the only building that was standing when the station was first built. The station had its own internal messenger relay—two dozen experienced riders mounted on fast ponies doing nothing but carry messages within the station precinct—as well as a temple, a lodge house and a theatre, used once a year for Empire Day.
That was Malestan when Oida saw it last, about four months ago.
The driver was as surprised as he was. They both got down from the coach, neither of them saying a word, and walked up to where the main gate had been. The bank was still there, but the palisade had mostly gone; firewood, and a litter of chunks of rock half buried in the ground—it was a moment or so before Oida made the logical connection. The foregate was a confused mess of wagon tracks; rainwater pooled in the ruts, and it hadn’t rained the day before. The gate itself had been burned out, which was theoretically impossible. There was no smoke, and only a faint smell of burning.
They paused in the gateway, listening for any sound whatsoever, but the place was dead quiet.
“There ought to be crows,” the driver said.
Oida pulled himself together. “Not if Ocnisant’s been here,” he said.
“Ah, right,” the driver nodded, as if the clarification had somehow made it all better.
Oida’s theory appeared to be borne out by what they found inside, which was more or less nothing. No dead bodies, for one thing, human or animal, but there were newly filled-in trenches across the main parade yard in the central square. Ocnisant prides himself on neatness—Just-So Ocnisant, they call him in the trade. The wooden sheds and barns were all gone, their footprints marked by black patches on the ground. The brick and stone structures were roofless shells. Oida stirred the cinders with his foot in several places, but couldn’t find so much as a single fire-browned nail; all the metal fittings—hinges, pintles, latches, braces, brackets, hasps—had gone. Someone had even lifted the cabbages in the kitchen garden; there were rows of cut stalks, but not a single leaf remaining.
“He does a cracking job,” the driver muttered, “I’ll give him that.”
Of more immediate concern, there was no hay (no hay barns, come to that) and no human food of any description. The driver made a fire from scraps of shattered palisade stakes, then wandered off with his bow in the forlorn hope of finding a deer. Oida sat down on a spent catapult stone and warmed his hands over the remains of the defences of Malestan. Interesting, he thought.
“It’s that bloody Senza Belot,” was the driver’s theory. He’d managed to shoot a badger, which turned out to be surprisingly palatable. “If he’s on the rampage, it’ll all be over soon. Bastard,” he added, without any particular malice.
“The East is bankrupt,” Oida observed. “They can’t afford to stage a sustained campaign, let alone a long-term occupation. I’m guessing this was just a raid, to show he could. Showing off.”
The driver shrugged. “Nothing to stop him now, is there?”
Oida grinned. “Last I heard, the West had a quarter of a million men under arms. That’s about fifty thousand more than the East.”
“Then Senza’ll kill them all,” the driver said. “No big deal to him. We ought to pack it in now, save ourselves the grief. Should’ve done that back when Forza bought it. Bloody obvious back then we’ve got no chance.”
Oida sighed and threw a slab of wood on the fire. “Ten years ago,” he said, “I could’ve bought into Ocnisant’s for a relatively trivial sum. But I thought, no, bad idea, the war’ll be over by midsummer. Ah well.”
“Bet you wish you had.”
“Indeed. I’d be retired by now, with an estate the size of Aelia.”
“Now there’s a man who’s in the right business,” the driver said. “If I had any sense, I’d see if he wants drivers. Must need a lot of ’em, in his line.”
“You could do worse,” Oida said. “You get your keep but no wages, and everyone gets a share in the net. They’re not bad people to work for, if you don’t mind hard graft. Stick at it long enough and you could put by a nice little stake for your old age: it’s better than working for the government.”
The driver grinned. “Don’t reckon there’ll be a government much longer.”
“Oh, there’s always a government,” Oida said. “That’s a rule of nature. But you’ll be all right, you’ve got a trade. Come what may, people will always want stuff shifted from A to B.”
“True,” the driver said, “very true. What line of work are you in, then? You’re not military.”
For a moment or so, Oida couldn’t speak. Then he said mildly, “I’m a musician.”
“Is that right?” The driver was slightly impressed. “Well, there you are, then. That’s another good trade. Always work for a good fiddler. Freelance?”
Now that was actually a very good question. “Yes.”
“Best way,” the driver said wisely. “You can go anywhere you like. Travel a lot, do you?”
“Quite a lot, yes. I’ve just come back from Blemya.”
“Where’s that, then?”
Oida told him; the driver looked blank. “Lot to be said for it, moving around,” he said. “You’ve always got options, that’s what I say. If it all goes tits up in one place, go somewhere else. All right if you’ve got no ties, of course. You married?”
“No.”
The driver nodded his approval. “Best way, if you’re on the move all the time,” he said. “Take my old man, now. Freighterman, he was, never home more than three weeks a year. That’s no way to bring up kids. No, love ’em and leave ’em is my motto. It’s not like there’s any shortage, specially these days, with all the men going to the war and getting killed.”
“War does have that advantage,” Oida said.
The driver grinned. “So,” he said, “you reckon it’d be worth giving Ocnisant’s a go?”
Oida looked at him. “I take it you think you might be out of a job sometime soo
n.”
“I think the job’ll still be there. It’s whether I’ll get paid I’m worried about.”
“Talking of which,” Oida said. “The thing is, I was supposed to change here and get the military mail to Rasch. I suspect that service isn’t running any more.”
The driver shrugged. “Might be,” he said. “I mean, all this can’t have happened very long ago or we’d have heard about it. Maybe they don’t know about it in Rasch yet.”
“That’s possible,” Oida conceded, “but I don’t fancy camping out here in the ashes on the off chance the mail’s still running. What about you? What’s your schedule?”
The driver frowned. “I was meant to wait here two days, then take a service back to the coast. Don’t see that happening.”
“Tell you what.” Oida’s hand was in his pocket, identifying coins by feel. “I think that, in the circumstances, it’s your duty to go to Rasch and report this, just in case they don’t know about it yet, and then see where they want to assign you next. After all, they’re going to have to draw up a whole new schedule now.”
“That’s true,” the driver said thoughtfully; “hadn’t thought about it like that. I mean, all the routes’ll be buggered up now. They’ll have to start from scratch, practically.”
Oida casually opened his hand. Two little gold quarter-angels poked up from the furrows between his fingers, like the first crocuses. “I’d quite like to get to Rasch as quickly as possible,” he said.
The driver looked at him. “There’s money in fiddling, then?”
“I’m a good fiddler.”
The coins chinked softly as they changed hands. “It’s your patriotic duty,” Oida said with a grin. “After all, someone’s got to tell them.”
The driver smiled at him and put the coins in his purse, a fancy thing with fiddly drawstrings. Maybe his mother had made it for him, or his sister. “Hell of a business, though,” he said gravely. “I mean, just think of all the trouble it’ll make for people. Main supply depot for the Western army.”
“I think Senza may have had that in mind,” Oida said.
“What the emperor ought to do,” the driver said, after a moment’s thought, “is offer Senza a shitload of money to come and work for us. I mean, he’s only human, isn’t he? And you know what they say: every man has his price.”
“Good idea. The trouble is, the Eastern emperor has lots of money, too.”
“Ah well.” The driver got up. “There’s blankets in the box under the driver’s seat,” he said. “Let’s get some kip and then we can make an early start.”
Next day, Oida rode on the box, next to the driver, who had a lot of questions to ask about the music trade. Must be interesting work, he felt; you must get to meet a lot of interesting people. Oida conceded that, yes, it was interesting. The driver confessed that he didn’t go much on music, though he liked a good tune. That Oida, for example, he could write tunes. The driver had seen him once, when he sang for the troops at Ceulasia, or was it Nas Mocant? Hadn’t actually seen very much of him, because he was stuck at the back behind a lot of tall bastards, but he’d heard most of it and it wasn’t bad at all. Of course, he didn’t make up his own tunes, but—
“How do you mean?” Oida interrupted.
“He doesn’t do the tunes himself,” the driver explained. “He takes the old tunes and messes them around a bit. But they all do that, don’t they?”
Oida frowned. “Give me an example.”
The driver thought for a moment. “Well, take that one about the man saying goodbye to his family before he goes off to the war. That’s just ‘The Miller’s Grey Cat,’ turned on its head.”
“I don’t think I know that one.”
“Of course you do. You know.” The driver hummed a bit. “Probably they don’t call it that where you come from.”
“Hum me some more.”
The driver did so, and Oida was forced to admit that it did sound horribly like “Loved I Not Honour More,” transposed into the major key and speeded up a bit. “Does he do that a lot?” he asked. “Steal other people’s tunes, I mean?”
The driver frowned. “I don’t think you can really call it stealing,” he said. “But take ‘Four Donkeys and a Mule.’ Know that one?”
“Not sure,” Oida said. “How does it go?”
A little later he consoled himself with the thought that great minds think alike; well, no, not great ones. Procopius’ symphonies and motets weren’t shot through with unconscious echoes of folk music: anything so basic and naïve would be hopelessly out of place. But mediocre minds, like his own—That said; it occurred to him quite out of the blue that if you took “Soldiers’ Joy,” slowed it right down and shifted it into the minor key, you’d have a terrific theme for a fugue; and who would ever know?
The first stop on the way to Rasch, coming from Malestan on the military road, is Losjors. They found it in ashes.
“You’ve got to hand it to Ocnisant,” Oida said, after they’d been staring for a while. “No job too big or too small.” The same newly filled-in trenches, along what had once been the street of shops and taverns that intersected with the main road, and not a bent nail or a roof tile to be seen. “At this rate he’ll definitely be taking on more staff. You should get in there.”
The driver seemed preoccupied and didn’t share Oida’s enthusiasm at the opportunity. “You think the bastard’s heading for Rasch?” he said.
“Looking that way,” Oida agreed. “In fact, for all we know he’s there already. I’m not sure what there is in the way to stop him.”
The driver looked at him. “What about the Fifth Army?”
“I’d forgotten about them,” Oida lied.
A few miles beyond Losjors they came down off the moor and into farmland. Oida saw livestock grazing the stubbles, but no people. They stopped for the night at a farmhouse, but it was shuttered and boarded up, and the hay barn was empty. That didn’t matter too much, since there was grazing for the horses in the orchard. The driver found a crowbar in one of the barns and jemmied the farmhouse door. There was no fresh food, no hams or bacon, not even a jar of the dreaded fermented cabbage; but Oida found two sacks of barley at the back of the pantry. It was a bit black on top, but the grain underneath was sound. The driver ground a jugful in a hand mill in the dairy and made army porridge, slightly alleviated with a couple of windfall apples from the orchard.
“He could do it,” the driver said: “he could bash his way right through to Rasch, if the Fifth don’t stop him. But the city’s safe. He hasn’t got anything that’d put a dent in the walls.”
Oida had taken a good look at the catapult stones at Malestan and wasn’t so sure about that, but decided not to say anything. “He must be moving fast,” he said instead. “Mind you, that’s the Belot boys’ trademark. Not sure you can carry much of a siege train, though, if you’re travelling light.”
The driver shook his head hopefully. “I’ve seen the limbers for those things,” he said. “Bloody great big things, ox-drawn; horses aren’t strong enough. Make ten miles a day if you’re really lucky.”
Oida didn’t point out that whatever had pounded the palisade at Malestan into kindling must still be with the army, since they hadn’t overtaken it on the way. “I think this calls for a change of plan,” he said. “Suddenly, Rasch doesn’t seem the most sensible place to be. What do you reckon?”
The driver looked at him, but said nothing.
“And besides,” Oida went on, “my business isn’t actually in Rasch itself. I’m headed west; I was planning on taking the military mail into town and then hiring a chaise, because that’d be quicker than the public stage. But if I branch off on to the Western Supply at Foliapar, I can get on to the Great West at Autet Cross and not have to go into Rasch at all.”
“You could,” agreed the driver.
“I was thinking.” Oida’s hand was in his pocket again. “Looks like there’s an unhealthy amount of war going on at the moment. At times like these,
all sorts of military equipment and personnel go missing, presumed lost or destroyed, and nobody gives it any thought.” He paused again. “I wonder what that coach of yours would cost, to buy, I mean.”
“Don’t know,” the driver said. “Never given it any thought.”
“Must be two angels. A man could set himself up in business with a coach like that. Quite a good living to be made, I should imagine. And even if you decide you do want to go work for Ocnisant, it won’t do you any harm if you’ve got your own rig.”
The driver looked at him. “What, just go off with it, you mean?”
Oida shrugged. “Why not? Like I said, when there’s lunatics fighting huge battles all over the place, and there’s supply columns being cut up by the cavalry every day, and whole stations burned to the ground, who’s going to miss one little cart? Also, if anyone stops you, all you say is you found it abandoned and it’s lawful salvage.” He grinned. “Bear in mind it’s highly unlikely you’re going to get paid any time soon. Me, I’d consider it’s payment in kind in lieu of wages.”
“I don’t know,” the driver said. “I could get in all sorts of trouble.”
“And so could I,” Oida said, “if I don’t get to my appointment on time. A ride as far as the Great West is worth an angel forty to me.” The driver looked up sharply. “If you’re interested.”
“I don’t know,” the driver repeated. “Doesn’t seem right to me, somehow. We ought to be doing something, for the empire.” Oida put his closed hand on the table and opened his fingers. There was a little gleam as the candlelight caught on something. “Still, you’re right,” he said, “what can we do? A carter and a fiddler.”
“Quite,” Oida said. “And the answer is, the best we can, in the circumstances. This could be your big chance. In five years, who knows, you could have a fleet of coaches.”
