by K. J. Parker
The Belly of the Bow
( Fencer - 2 )
K J Parker
K J Parker
The Belly of the Bow
CHAPTER ONE
The sergeant was pulling at his sleeve. ‘Get out of here, Father,’ he said urgently, only just audible over the shouting and the nearby clatter of weapons. ‘They’re coming. You’ll be killed if you don’t get out now.’
Doctor Gannadius stared at him and grabbed his wrist. It felt solid enough. ‘This is wrong,’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t be here.’
‘Get out!’ the sergeant screamed; then he pulled his wrist free and set off at a clumsy skidding run down the corridor, crashing into a book-case as he went and scattering book-rolls on the floor. In the other direction, far away but getting nearer, Gannadius could hear more shouting – orders, by the sound of it, yelled by an officer at the end of his tether, but he couldn’t make out the words or tell whether it was the enemy or his own side.
‘This is wrong,’ Gannadius repeated softly. ‘I was never here. I left before this happened.’
A few yards away from him, a shutter flew open and a man’s head appeared through the window, backlit in orange. It was a nightmare face, foreign and dangerous, and Gannadius instinctively shrank away. Logically, he should be running. Very far back in second place was the notion of grabbing one of the discarded weapons that lay on the floor and trying to kill this intrusive stranger before he got through the window. Gannadius couldn’t do either. In the back of his mind, he was making a note on the effect of blind terror on the unwarlike, sedentary individual: paralysis, involuntary bladder activity, an apparent extension of the moment, as if time was frozen or no longer applied.
‘But this is wrong,’ he insisted loudly, except that his voice didn’t work. ‘I escaped from the City before it fell. I was never here.’
‘Tell it to the judge,’ grunted the enemy soldier as he wriggled his left shoulder through the window frame. ‘I expect you’ve got a note from your mother, too.’
An enemy soldier shouldn’t be talking with a strong City accent, using City phrases. But on the other hand, Doctor Gannadius, Perimadeian refugee currently domiciled in Shastel, shouldn’t be here talking with him. Someone was breaking the rules, he thought, how horribly unfair; but once he’d been killed, who would ever know?
The sordid and uncomfortable feeling of piss running down his leg, and the smell of burning bone filtering through the window – how much more real can it be? I’m here. Damn.
‘Please,’ he said. The enemy soldier grunted again, swung one leg through the window and put his foot to the ground. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘run. Well?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Gannadius replied. ‘I can’t. I don’t seem able to move.’
The enemy soldier shrugged and reached behind his back for an arrow. I’m not really bothered, his eyes said, one way or the other. You can run if you like, or I can kill you now. You’re dead anyway. Gannadius closed his eyes: it would be too horrible to watch the arrow actually coming towards him, and with time running slow like this he was sure he’d be able to see it in the air, observe for himself the operation of the phenomenon known as the Archer’s Paradox, whereby the arrow actually bends round the bow at the moment of loose. A true scientist would want to see that. Not me, he said aloud, but the words didn’t work any more. I don’t understand. Unless this is some horrible mess-up in the operation of the Principle, which means that instead of going forward, I’ve been hauled back, maybe to where I should have been all along. Is that the way it works? We think we can spot the flaws in the Principle, prise open cracks in the points in the future where momentous things happen and slide in our acts of intervention. But what if it works both ways, and the flaw’s closing up on me? In which case it’s all Alexius’ fault, and mine for getting involved. Perhaps-
Something prompted him to open his eyes; and he saw the enemy soldier staring at him, his face suddenly contorted with a fear that mirrored Gannadius’ own. There was an arrow in the man’s chest that hadn’t been there before.
‘Loredan,’ he said, then turned round. A man stood in the archway, a short black bow in his hand, his face frustratingly in shadow. Loredan, yes; but which one? Not that it mattered if he was safe now, but there were two Loredan brothers, and one was good and one was bad, and the elder of them was taller and bald-headed (but he still didn’t know which one he was looking at).
Whichever Loredan it was took a step forward, then called out, presumably some warning. It came too late, because Gannadius could see the arrow coming, spinning elegantly around the axis of the shaft-
So I died here, after all. How ironic.
Someone touched his arm, and he jerked round. It was a girl, one of his students, not the most promising of them but terribly enthusiastic. She was smiling, amused to see an old man fallen asleep in his chair, so peaceful.
‘Doctor Gannadius,’ she said. ‘I’m here for my tutorial. It was today, wasn’t it?’
His mind was still fuzzy with sleep, because he replied with something like, ‘I thought so too, but it turned into then, and now it’s now again.’
‘Doctor Gannadius?’ She was staring at him, eyes puzzled and worried; very sweet she looked, too.
‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed, stretching his legs and finding them afflicted with pins and needles (maybe they explained the arrow). ‘It’s this hatefully comfortable chair. The moment I sit in it I’m fast asleep, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.’ He had a splitting headache, too.
‘If you like, I can come back later.’ Oh, how disappointed she looked, and how brave she was trying to be – was he ever that enthusiastic about anything, ever in his life?
‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘No, stay. I’m awake now. Please, sit down.’
She was one of those awkward perchers, the sort who balance on the very edge of a chair as if they’re afraid they’ll break it or that the person who’s really entitled to it might show up at any minute. Her name – absolutely no chance, he admitted to himself, of remembering her name this soon after waking up. Machaera.
Fancy remembering that.
‘Remind me,’ he said. ‘What were you doing for me this week?’
She straightened her back even more until she looked like a human plumb-bob. ‘Projection exercises,’ she said. ‘Like you showed us.’
(Hah! Savage irony, if you like. You want to stay well clear of projection exercises, my girl. They’re not safe. In fact, they could be the death of you.)
‘I see,’ he said, steepling his fingers and trying to look as if he had a clue about anything. The truth was that these famous secret Perimadeian projection exercises, which were basically what had got him this superb job, were little more than his garbled attempts to duplicate the techniques by which Alexius and he had (accidentally) managed to achieve a number of projections (with disastrous effects) shortly before the City fell. About the only thing that could be said in favour of these exercises he was now teaching was that they didn’t work. At least, he devoutly hoped they didn’t, or they were all due to be in ever such a lot of trouble.
‘Shall I…?’ she mumbled. She was embarrassed, like a patient taking off her clothes in front of a doctor. Gannadius nodded. ‘When you’re ready,’ he said.
‘All right.’ She huddled up in her chair, as if she was out in the rain without a coat, her eyes squeezed painfully tight. He could almost feel the gigantic effort of will she was making – counter-productive, of course. Which was all to the good.
Nevertheless: ‘Relax,’ he said, ‘try and-’ How to describe it? Not a clue. ‘Try and make everything seem as normal as you can. If you think about it, all you want to be doing is standing still in a room or
a street somewhere, which is about as mundane as you can get. The only difference would be, you’d be out then and not back now. Chances are you won’t feel any different at all. It’s not magic, remember; it’s a perfectly natural phenomenon, like dreaming.’
She relaxed – relaxed savagely – and Gannadius had to make an effort not to laugh. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I think it’s working.’
It can’t be, surely. ‘Are you sure?’ he said, forcing himself to stay calm. ‘Just look around you and tell me what you see.’
‘I’m not sure,’ she muttered. ‘It’s somewhere I’ve never been. The nearest place to it I can think of is the library. And there’s-’ She lifted her head, her closed eyes directly in line with his (although he’d moved since she closed them; how did she know where he was?). ‘Doctor Gannadius, you’re-’ Suddenly she screamed, a horrible, shrill, painful noise that seemed to vibrate along the very same nerves in his head that the headache was affecting. He jumped up and grabbed her hands, which she was paddling wildly in the air like a drowning cat; she pulled her hands free and pushed him in the face so hard that he fell over on his backside, and swore.
‘Doctor Gannadius!’ She was gazing at him with a mixture of horror and terminal shame, and her eyes were as big as catapult-shot. ‘What did I do?’
He picked himself up and made a humorous play of dusting himself down. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Nothing broken that I’ve used in a long time. Tell me what you saw.’
‘But Doctor-’
He sat down and looked at her. ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, ‘what you saw.’
She found a handkerchief in her sleeve and started twisting it. ‘Doctor Gannadius,’ she said, and the horror was already tinted with just the faintest flush of pride, ‘I think I saw the fall of the City. You know, Perimadeia. And-’ She swallowed and took a deep breath, as if she was about to dive off a high rock. ‘I think I saw you get killed.’
Gannadius nodded. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Tell me, how’s your head?’
She felt the back of her skull. ‘You think I might have banged it and I’m seeing things? I’m sure I-’
‘How’s your head?’
‘Fine. Well,’ she added, looking down at her hands, ‘I do have a bit of a headache, but apart from that-’
‘How did I die?’ Gannadius asked. He was perfectly still and his voice was perfectly even; only the palms of his crumpled-up hands were sweating. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I won’t be offended.’
‘You were shot,’ she replied in a tiny voice. ‘An arrow hit you in the face, it went right through-’ She stopped and made a succession of alarming noises, which sent Gannadius scurrying for a big copper bowl that usually held fruit. He made it back with the bowl just in time.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘It was the stress, it can take people that way sometimes. I should have warned you.’
She looked up, the lower part of her face muffled by the handkerchief. ‘So you do believe me?’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m so glad – oh, that sounds such a stupid thing to say, what I meant was-’
‘I know what you meant. If it’s any comfort,’ he lied, ‘I was sick the first time too. And I didn’t even see anything horrible.’
‘Doctor Gannadius-’ She stood up, sat down, stood up again. ‘I – please, do let me wash out the bowl for you. I am so terribly sorry-’
Not half as sorry as I am, Gannadius reflected, once he’d finally shooed her away to her cell. I think disasters must follow me round like a sausage-maker’s dog. A natural, someone who can break through into the Principle at will… A really sensible man would follow her back to her cell and cut her throat at once. But.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, flopping onto the bed and curling his legs round. As he closed his eyes, he thought of his former colleague Alexius – apparently still alive, by some miracle, and cooped up on the Island, miles away from this war and presumably safe. For a while he toyed with the idea of trying to reach him by projection – Are you out of your tiny mind? You don’t stop a fire in a timber-yard by setting light to your neighbour’s oil store. Remarkably soon under the circumstances he fell asleep; and though he had vivid dreams, he couldn’t remember anything about them when he woke up.
Towards the evening of the second day they found a single straight ash tree growing in the ruins of a derelict cottage.
‘It’s not perfect,’ he said, ‘but it’ll have to do.’
Bardas Loredan let the reins slip through his hands and sat for a while looking at the ruins, the stones standing out through the light sprinkling of snow like elbows poking through a frayed sleeve. Burnt down, by the look of it, maybe fifty or sixty years before; even after all that time, the marks of fire were plain enough. This high up in the mountains, moss and ivy and the other types of vegetation that seem to regard it as their duty to cover up human errors don’t seem able to take hold on fallen masonry; there were a few patches of wispy grass growing in the cracks of the exposed mortar, two young rowan saplings perversely trying to make a living in the gap between the wall and the hard earth, and this fine, mature ash tree he had chosen to cut down, standing tall in what should have been the middle of the floor. If he was a superstitious man and one given to reflecting on past horror and glories, he might be tempted to make a connection between the fall of the house and the rise of the tree. But he wasn’t, and it was the only piece of straight timber he’d seen in two days.
Beside him on the cart’s box, the boy shifted impatiently.
‘That’s ash, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I thought we were after yew or osage.’
‘It’ll do,’ Loredan repeated.
The boy jumped down from the cart and saw to the horses while Loredan walked round the base of the tree, peering up into its branches and mumbling calculations under his breath. The boy watched him with his head on one side.
‘I thought you said this stuff was rubbish,’ he commented. ‘More trouble than it’s worth, you told me.’
Loredan frowned. ‘Maybe I exaggerated,’ he replied. ‘Get a fire going, then come and give me a hand.’
He lifted the big axe down from the cart and tested its edge with his thumb. It felt dull, and he licked it over with the stone before slipping off his coat and squaring his shoulders for the first stroke.
‘I can’t get this fire to light,’ the boy complained. ‘Everything’s damp.’
Loredan sighed. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it after we’ve done this. Got your axe? Right, you go round the other side and try and match me cut for cut, try and keep it even. And for pity’s sake watch what you’re doing with that thing. Take it steady, don’t go wild.’
He adjusted the position of his hands on the axe, left hand at the bottom of the handle, right hand just under the axe-head, then fixed his eyes on where he wanted the blow to fall and swung. The shock of impact jarred his shoulders and he felt an uncomfortable twinge in his back, warning him to ease off a little.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ he grunted. ‘Your turn.’
The boy swung; typical boy with a big axe, wanting to show how strong he was. It was a wild, flailing swing, and he missed, hitting the tree with the handle of the axe rather than the blade. Needless to say, the head snapped off, whistled past disconcertingly close to Loredan’s elbow and landed in a patch of nettles.
‘Idiot,’ Loredan said indulgently. He remembered doing exactly the same thing himself when he was just a kid; younger than this boy, of course – by the time he was the boy’s age he really had known everything there is to know about felling a tree, instead of merely thinking that he did. ‘Go and find the axe-head.’
‘It went in the nettles,’ the boy replied.
‘I know.’
He carried on cutting, swinging the axe in a slow, economical rhythm, letting the weight of the head do all the work. After twenty or so strokes he moved round to the other side and evened up the cut; then he started again a quarter-circumference round, until he’d cut throug
h to the core on three sides. He paused and leant on the axe-handle.
‘Found it yet?’
‘No.’
‘Gods, you’re slow, it’ll be dark soon,’ he said. ‘Come on, leave that and fetch the ropes.’
Together they roped the upper branches and made fast to what was left of the cottage’s doorframe. ‘Keep back,’ Loredan warned. ‘And don’t get under my feet.’
He finished the job then; and when he was all but through, the weight of the tree ripped away the last few splinters of heartwood and the trunk jerked sideways, came up against the restraint of the rope and slid off the stump, coming to rest more or less where Loredan wanted it to be.
‘That,’ he said, stepping back, ‘is the proper way to fell a tree. If you’d been paying attention, you might have learnt something useful.’
‘You told me to look for the axe-head,’ the boy replied. ‘Anyway, what’s the big deal about cutting down trees? You just hit them till they fall over.’
Loredan breathed out slowly. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Get the saw. There’s still just about enough light left to make a start.’
The boy yawned and fetched the long two-man bowsaw, and together they trimmed off the axe-cut point of the log, leaving a flat circle with the growth rings clearly visible.
‘That’ll do for today,’ Loredan said. ‘We’ll leave the next stage till tomorrow; that’s the important bit. Now find that axe-head while I light the fire.’
‘My arms are all stung,’ the boy pointed out mournfully.
‘Use the hook to cut back the nettles,’ Loredan said patiently. ‘Then you’ll be able to find the axe, and you won’t sting yourself.’
The boy grunted. ‘You might have told me that earlier,’ he said.
Loredan looked up from the pile of kindling and smiled. ‘I was hoping you might have worked that one out for yourself,’ he replied. ‘Get a move on, we haven’t got all night.’
