The Two of Swords, Volume 2

by K. J. Parker

  Something in the way he said it, a hint of distaste for both alternatives. “Excuse me,” Genseric said, “but is this Blemya?”

  “East or West?”

  “West,” Genseric said. “We were heading for Atrabeau, and there was this sudden storm which came out of nowhere. We don’t want to be any trouble to anyone, so if you could just—”

  “Sergeant,” the officer said. At once, the troopers fanned out, forming a half-circle. Their lance points were universally level with Genseric’s head, a really quite impressive display of drill. One of them slid out of his saddle, planted his lance firmly in the sand, advanced on Genseric and pulled his hands behind his back. “Tell your men to put down their weapons.”

  “We haven’t got any,” Genseric said; then he remembered Orderic’s sword. “We’re on a diplomatic mission,” he said, but nobody seemed interested.

  The officer had ridden past him, and was looking at Lysao. “Who’s that?” he said.

  “We’re on a diplomatic mission,” Genseric repeated, “escorting a representative of a—”

  “This man is armed,” the officer snapped. The half-circle shifted and reformed around the ship, as Orderic raised both his hands in the air. “If you’re diplomats, where’s your credentials?”

  “We lost them in the shipwreck,” Genseric said, “along with everything else, but I can assure you, we’re properly accredited—”

  “He’s lying.”

  She hadn’t shouted, but she didn’t need to. There was a nasty moment of silence, and then she went on, “I’m a citizen of Beal Defoir, an independent state recognised by the Blemyan crown. Several days ago these men attacked my home and abducted me by force. I demand that you arrest them.”

  Genseric recognised the glazed look that froze on the young officer’s face. He’d worn it himself, in his time, when some routine job had suddenly sprouted horns and wings and metamorphosed into something horribly difficult. Under other circumstances he’d have sympathised. “Don’t listen to her,” he said, trying to sound scornfully confident. “The fact is, she’s a convicted criminal. Extraditing her was our mission. She’ll say any damn thing just to keep from being taken to Atrabeau.”

  The officer looked at him, then back at Lysao. There was a wretched weariness in his face that would have melted a heart of stone. “Has anyone got any papers or means of identification?” he said. No answer. “Fine,” he sighed. “Corporal, go back and get seven horses, no, forget that, bring a cart. The rest of you, I want this wreck searched. Anything you find, bring it to me.” He slid off his horse and tethered it to the keel, then wiped sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “Sergeant, gather this lot up and keep them together, I don’t want any of them going anywhere.”

  Genseric watched the corporal gallop away. One less, he thought; that’s probably as good as it’s likely to get. She had a particularly insufferable smirk on her face. He glanced at Orderic, who was looking straight at him, waiting; he didn’t dare nod, but he flicked his eyes quickly at the officer, then at the sergeant, then looked away. He let his left hand hang by his side, closed his fist, lifted first the thumb, then the index finger, middle finger, ring finger, little finger; and then he threw himself at the officer and dragged him to the ground.

  The cloak helped; Genseric was able to drag it over the officer’s head with his left, which meant he could draw that handsome ivory-hilted sword with his right and use it to stab its owner just above the thigh, where there’s a gap between the bottom row of plates of the regulation cuirass and the top of the cuisse. He put an extra bit of strength behind it, just to relieve his feelings, until he felt the blade grate on bone; then he jumped up, letting the impetus drag the sword out of the wound, and looked round to see if Orderic had read his signals. Apparently yes: the sergeant was staggering backwards, as Orderic lunged forward to stab one of the troopers, who’d been a bit slow figuring out what was happening. Then another trooper monopolised his attention for a moment or so; a tricky customer who feinted a skull-splitting chop to bring his guard up, then started to shift into a groin-level stab; Genseric read him right, pivoted on his back foot and cut down on his outstretched arm, catching him just above the wrist. He was overdoing it—the hand came off and went flying, and Genseric stumbled forward, briefly losing his balance. That could have been disastrous if there’d been anyone behind him, and it was pure luck that there wasn’t. But he recovered well and was nicely poised on the balls of his feet when a trooper lunged at him with a lance. He shifted left, caught the lance just below the head with his left hand, reeled the trooper in like a fish and cut his throat with a little backhand flick. As the trooper went down, he saw the helmsman topple over backwards; he reversed the dead soldier’s lance and threw it at the man who’d killed the helmsman, missed but drew him forward into a simple feint-high-cut-low. As he killed him, he thought he saw a shadow cross the dying man’s face; without looking, he pulled out the sword, reversed it and stabbed blindly behind him, registered an impact against something too hard to pierce; turned as tightly as he could and brought his sword up just in time to block a half-hearted cut; angled his blade so the cut would slide off and converted the block into a downward thrust that slithered off the scales of the cuirass down into an improvidently advanced knee. The pain and shock of that bought him enough time for a step back and a rather belated assessment of the situation, which he concluded with a rising cut under the chin—again, overdoing it, he cut right through to the poor devil’s teeth. Another step back and count the men standing—three. Orderic, one marine and the other sailor. Victory, apparently. He caught his breath and forced his mind clear, so difficult to do after a scrimmage. He was covered in blood, but he was pretty sure none of it was his, so that was all right.

  An awful thought struck him and he looked round; but she was still there, frozen stiff, a look of pure horror on her face. “Get her,” he snapped, and Orderic snapped out of whatever dream he’d been in, bounded across and grabbed her by the wrist; she screamed, and Orderic bellowed, “Quiet!,” and she stopped. Genseric stooped over the fallen marine; all over with him, poor sod, his head was split open down to his eyebrows. The helmsman he knew about. “You,” he called to the marine, “get those horses.”

  “Major.” Orderic pointed with his sword at the dead bodies. Yes, but there wasn’t time: the corporal would be back with his cart—the corporal, who’d heard everything, names, the request for asylum; damn. His idea had been to leave the mess and let the sea clean it up; by the time the bodies were found, they’d be over the border. He’d forgotten about the corporal. But an extra enemy might well have turned the fight against them, he’d done well to shorten the odds; it’s never perfect, and you have to do the best you can. He shook his head. “Get her on a horse,” he said. “Better tie her to the girth or something, I can’t be bothered with any more fuss.”

  Fortuitously there was some rope, just about enough, one end of a broken line tied to a cleat hook on the side of the catboat. He guessed she was still in shock; it occurred to him for the first time that maybe she’d never seen anything like this before—if so, a slice of luck, she’d be numb with it and no bother to anyone. Now then, which way? Happily, even he knew the answer to that one. The sea is north, therefore left is west, just follow the coast to the border. As he hauled himself into the dead officer’s saddle his mind was buzzing with mental arithmetic; let x be the time it takes for the cart to get here, plus another x for it to go back, a third x for the soldiers to arrive—

  Orderic handed him the reins of her horse. He didn’t look round. This was going to be hard enough as it was.

  Maybe an hour later. The sun was going down. Orderic said, “We could lay up for the night in that stand of trees over there.”

  Genseric shook his head. “Let’s keep going,” he said. “It can’t be much further, surely.”

  “I don’t like riding at night without a lantern,” Orderic said. “And the horses need a rest: they’re dead beat.”<
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  Genseric wasn’t listening. He was looking straight ahead, unable to be sure what he’d just seen in the failing light. “It can’t be,” he said. “How could they have got ahead of us?”

  Fanning out from the wood were at least fifty horsemen, possibly more; small men on light, slim horses; not something you want to see in Blemya. He heard Orderic sigh and say, “Well, that’s that, then.”

  “It’s a shame,” Genseric said. “We must be nearly there.”

  “You did your best,” Orderic said.

  Yes, but that wasn’t the point. Maybe if this had happened before they’d killed the patrol; no, still not the point. Failure; it was all that mattered. He could hear his father saying, “The best man always wins.” With a sigh, he drew his sword and dropped in on the ground; then he unwrapped the reins of her horse from his wrist and dropped them, too. “I hate losing,” he said.

  “I’d sort of gathered.”

  “None of the evil crap you do matters if you win.” He turned round in his saddle and looked at her. “Horse-archers,” he said. “We don’t mess with them. You’re free to go.”

  She looked at him, then nudged her horse forward. “Don’t do that,” he said, “it’ll step in its reins and get tangled. Here.” He swung out of the saddle—God, but his legs were stiff—picked up the reins and handed them to her. “You might put in a good word for us,” he said. “We tried to be nice. Really.”

  She looked down at him, and the question that had been at the back of his mind all quietly answered itself. Worth every stuiver, he thought. “I will,” she said.

  He told the whole story, complete and accurate, to the Blemyan officer at the fort. When he’d finished, the officer called for the guards and had him marched off to the cells.

  He didn’t think much of them. They were wood, not stone; a glorified shed, with a tiled roof and just one bolt on the door. But he was worn out, and he hadn’t slept properly since before the raid. I’ll escape later, he promised himself, and went to sleep.

  When they woke him up, it was screaming bright sunlight outside; he was politely escorted into the drill yard, where he saw Orderic sitting on a mounting block, polishing his boots.

  “I get the impression they don’t know what to do with us,” Orderic said cheerfully. “Are we murderers, prisoners of war or very badly behaved diplomats? By the way, I don’t know about where they put you, but mine was so flimsy I wouldn’t keep a goat in it. And the stables are over there.” He indicated the direction with the slightest of nods. “I’ll give it a go if you want.”

  Genseric shook his head. “Have you seen her Ladyship?”

  “No. Better quarters than ours, I’d imagine. Is it true Beal Defoir counts as an independent sovereign state?”

  “No idea. And I don’t suppose they know, either.”

  “We could try and snatch her,” Orderic said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “I mean, there’s two of us and only a hundred or so of them.”

  “They don’t pay me enough,” Genseric said firmly. “I suggest we stay quiet and try not to annoy them any more. The way things are going, we could probably do worse than sit out the rest of the war in a nice sunny place like this.”

  Orderic beamed at him. “Restful,” he said. “I think I’d like that. I wonder if the food’s any good.”

  Three days of peace and rest under a blue sky; and, yes, the food was perfectly acceptable—

  (“What the hell is this supposed to be?” Orderic demanded. “It looks like maggots. I’m not eating this.”

  “Your loss,” said the guard. “It’s yummy. Also, it’s all there is. We call it rice.”

  “What is it, some kind of edible larvae?”

  “It’s basically grass seeds. I’ll have it if you don’t want it.”)—once you got used to it, and the guards lent them a chess set and some bowling balls—no, sorry, no cards, strictly forbidden to military personnel. And when they found out that Genseric played the rebec and Orderic knew the flute, they lent them instruments and made up a quintet. Their repertoire was limited (Scantia, Procopius, Ermanaric; do you know any Oida? Yes, but nobody’s perfect) but they were competent and enthusiastic musicians, and it had been a long time since Genseric had heard anything decent. “The truth is,” Captain Dapha, the guard commander, told him, confirming his suspicions, “we aren’t really sure what you are. So we’re treating you as honoured guests who aren’t allowed to leave. I hope that’s all right.”

  A sharp poke in the ribs. Genseric opened his eyes, but it was too dark to see.

  “On your feet.”

  “Dapha?” Genseric scrubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “What’s the matter?”

  “On your feet,” Dapha repeated. “You’re moving out.”

  “All right, just give me a moment.”

  A hand closed in his hair and pulled up. He rose, protesting, and something hard hit him in the pit of the stomach. Through the partition, he heard Orderic shout something and then abruptly fall silent. Ah, he thought. Clarification of status has been received.

  He was being towed by his hair. “Can I put my boots on?” he asked, and took the impact of a spear butt against his ear as meaning no, he couldn’t. Well; he couldn’t blame them. Nobody wants to get into trouble.

  Outside in the yard, by torchlight, he saw a coach. It wasn’t an elegant thing; it was built of inch planks, like floorboards, and there were no windows. Nothing to sit down on, either. Once he and Orderic were inside, the door slammed and he counted three bolts. He realised he hadn’t had an opportunity to ask about his men—the marine and the sailor—but consoled himself with the thought that he wouldn’t have been given an answer.

  “What d’you reckon?” Orderic said. “Sit up against the wall, or flat on the floor?”

  It was so dark he couldn’t tell which side of him Orderic was on. “Don’t suppose it’ll matter much.”

  He heard someone shouting something: couldn’t make out the words. “Do you think this is it?” Orderic asked. “You know.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” he said.

  When at last the door opened, the light burned his eyes and he cringed away from it; and he heard a voice saying, “Dear God, look at the state of you.” The voice’s tone was not sympathetic.

  He was hauled out by a man in uniform into a wide paved yard surrounded on all four sides by tall, impressive buildings. He was too weak to stand up, but they didn’t hit him. Someone said, “They can’t go in looking like that. Get them cleaned up and find them something to wear.”

  Nothing about food or drink, which was a pity, but Genseric was largely past caring. The coach had stopped at least a dozen times, but only for the time it takes to change horses. The rest of the time it had kept up a horrible bruising pace, no suspension on badly rutted roads. He felt like he’d been in a fight for days on end, and never landed a single punch. They had to carry Orderic out, like a sack of logs.

  He was helped rather than dragged across the yard, through an arch into a stable yard. There they sat them both down on a mounting block, peeled off their clothes and washed them down with brooms, brushes, curry-combs and cold water from a bucket until their skins were raw but perfectly clean. Long woollen gowns were then dragged down over their heads, and wooden-soled sandals strapped to their feet. A seven-foot sergeant in award armour stood over Genseric with a comb in his hand and looked at his loosened, tangled hair, shook his head and tossed the comb into the bucket, along with the contaminated brushes. “They’ll do,” said a young man in a shiny gold breastplate. “Come on, move. You know what she’s like if she’s kept waiting.”

  Genseric started to get up, but his knees failed; they caught him before he pitched on to his face and put him back on the mounting block. “You’ll just have to chair them,” the golden boy said. “At least as far as the portico.”

  Four men crowded round Genseric with spears. For a moment, all he could think of was Orderic’s question—do you think this is it?—but apparently not; one spear was for h
im to sit on, one went under the joints of his knees; the other two ran lengthways, to support his arms. It was actually quite comfortable, even at the jogtrot.

  Out into the yard again—that horrible coach had gone, thank God; death rather than another ride in that thing—and up the steps of the biggest, tallest building, through two impossibly tall bronze gates embossed with stylised fighting eagles, across a marble-floored hall to another set of bronze doors; then they were lowered until their feet touched the ground, the spears were slid out from under them and they were lifted upright and left to fend for themselves. Someone whispered in Genseric’s ear, “If you fall over, I’ll kill you.” He made an effort and put one foot in front of another. It was hard, like walking with numb feet, just before the pins and needles set in—but he reckoned it was worth the effort. The vast doors opened and a hand in the small of his back propelled him forward, into what appeared to be the House of God.

  It was slightly smaller than the great hall of the Imperial palace at Rasch, and the roof wasn’t quite as high as the Golden Mountain temple; nevertheless, Genseric realised at once just how country cousin and provincial those two places were: sad imitations of the real thing, in which he now stood. The floor was porphyry, polished to a watery gloss. The walls and ceiling blazed with gold mosaic, scenes that cried out and demanded to be gazed at, studied in detail and adored. Two rows of fluted, gilded columns strode down the hall, where stood a raised dais of white marble, supporting a throne tall and wide enough for the King and Queen of Heaven to sit comfortably side by side. As he tottered towards it, there was some bizarre optical illusion that made it look as though it was rising up into the air—and then he realised it was no illusion: that monstrous, unbelievable weight really was slowly lifting upwards, floating with no apparent support. There were people in the hall, row upon row of them, like worshippers in Temple; they weren’t looking at him, only at the slowly rising throne. When he was fifty yards away from it, he thought he could just make out a tiny human figure, probably a child, perched on the cloth-of-gold-drape bench seat. At twenty yards, a hand on his shoulder stopped him and pushed him gently to his knees. It never occurred to him not to kneel; he’d been waiting for an opportunity.