Sharps

by K. J. Parker

  “We were defeated, weren’t we?” Addo said.

  “The name rings a bell,” Suidas said. “But I was never with the Third Army.”

  The coach came to a halt. Suidas yawned and stretched; Tzimisces reached past him and opened the door. “Last I heard,” he said as he stood up, “there was a squadron of Imperials stationed here. I might just be able to persuade them to take us to Beaute, instead of the Aram Chantat. Don’t get your hopes up, mind, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  The post-house door was at least twelve feet high and six feet wide, green bronze, decorated with embossed friezes of human-headed winged lions and bird-headed men. In the very middle, someone had stuck a piece of plank to it with tree gum. On the plank was written, USE OTHER DOOR. Tzimisces, flanked by two oddly nervous Aram Chantat, walked up to it and gave it a gentle shove with his fingertips. It opened, smooth and totally silent. “Wait here,” he said, and went in.

  “Did you notice,” Addo said quietly, “it’s a different driver.”

  Giraut looked back. On the box he saw an old man in a coat two sizes too big for him. But he wasn’t the same old man who’d picked them up from the livery yard, and there was no fourteen-year-old grandson on the bench beside him.

  “All right,” Suidas said, after a moment’s silence. “The other driver refused to go on, so they replaced him.”

  “When?” Addo said. “I don’t suppose the Aram Chantat patrols take spare coachmen around with them, just in case.”

  “We did stop twice for water,” Phrantzes said mildly. “Perhaps they changed drivers then.”

  “In the middle of nowhere,” Iseutz pointed out.

  Phrantzes sighed. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t suggesting anything,” Addo said. “I just thought I’d mention it, in case it mattered.”

  The Aram Chantat, Giraut was uncomfortably aware, were grouped between them and the coach. They were talking to each other quietly in high, soft voices. “I get the idea they aren’t too keen on going inside the building,” Suidas said.

  “I’ll be so glad to see the back of them,” Iseutz whispered.

  “You’ll be glad. Hello, he’s back,” Suidas said, as the door opened and Tzimisces came out. “Well?”

  “There’s an Imperial garrison here,” Tzimisces said wearily. “It’s manned by Imperials because the Aram Chantat won’t stay here. Bad luck or something. I think the artwork’s not to their liking. Anyway, that means the Imperials can’t leave them in charge here to come with us. However,” he went on, drawing a breath, “neither will they take us to Beaute, because this is the limit of their beat. The Imperial CO says he’ll send a rider to the next house along; he’ll borrow five men from there and give us five of his own, which is all either of them can spare, and the combined unit will take us to Beaute. With any luck, forty-eight hours. Till then, we’re stuck here. Sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”

  Phrantzes pulled a sad face, but Giraut and Iseutz grinned. “A couple of days off,” Iseutz said. “I don’t mind that.”

  “We’ve got a match booked at Beaute,” Phrantzes said. “If we’re stranded here for two days, we aren’t going to make it.”

  “That faint sound you can hear is my heart breaking,” Iseutz said cheerfully. “Now, I don’t suppose there’s even the remotest chance of getting a bath in this godforsaken place.”

  There was every chance. The bathroom was square and marble-lined, with an impossibly high ceiling, on which was painted a fresco of a sea battle in the late Archaic style of the Middle Empire. There were nine baths, side by side, scooped out of single blocks of grey basalt. Water came through a splay of lead pipes from a massive porphyry cistern supported by four fluted marble columns, still showing faint traces of their original gilding. It was stone cold and smelt very slightly of rotten eggs.

  The station commander was an exquisite young Imperial by the name of Captain Baudila. He greeted them wearing what looked disconcertingly like a monk’s robe, except that the hood was lined with tiger fur. He wore red boots, with parallel rows of nine silver hooks in the form of eagles’ heads running up the fronts. He would have been extremely good-looking if his nose hadn’t been cut off almost flush with his face.

  (“That means he was in some sort of political trouble back home,” Tzimisces explained. “Noblemen who get caught taking part in plots and conspiracies have their noses cut off. It means they’re still fit for active service but they’ll never be promoted or eligible for high public office. The technical name for it is ‘the divine clemency of the Emperor’. Try not to stare,” he added helpfully.)

  Dinner was in the post room, a vaulted chamber taller than the Victory Tower back home. Baudila sat at the top of a long table – “during the day, we use it for sorting the mail” – with his guests clustered round him at the top. Twenty or so Imperial soldiers ate quietly at the bottom end. They had roast lamb garnished with rosemary and flat white bread, slightly stale.

  “By the sound of it, you were lucky to get out in one piece,” Baudila said with his mouth full. “Apparently the Aram Chantat went a bit mad and carved up a bunch of the locals. They’re not happy. I haven’t heard anything about trouble anywhere else, but it’d be a minor miracle if it doesn’t spread to some of the other big mining towns. Nothing for you fellows to worry about, of course. Your next stop’s Beaute, isn’t it? You’ll be fine there. Different sort of place altogether.” He paused, then shot a shy glance at Addo. “I believe I have the honour of dining with the son of General Carnufex,” he said.

  Addo looked up and nodded glumly. “Adulescentulus Carnufex,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “I studied your father’s campaigns at the military college,” Baudila said. “And my elder brother fought against him in the Hook River campaign.” He made it sound like they’d been at school together. “Absolutely remarkable tactical mind, my brother always said.”

  They noted the past tense, but nobody said anything. “He speaks very highly of your people,” Addo said awkwardly. “He told me once he was only ever scared of two things in his entire life, and one of them was the Imperial heavy cavalry.”

  Baudila looked delighted. “And the other thing?”

  “My mother,” Addo replied. Baudila thought that was a great joke. He wanted to discuss some of the finer points of the Verjan Delta campaign, but Addo politely declined. “I’m the civilian of the family, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m deplorably ignorant when it comes to my father’s battles. I’m sure you know a great deal more about them than I do.”

  Later, when Addo was shown up to his room (on the third floor; the torso of a gigantic statue rose up through the floorboards and disappeared into the ceiling, suggesting that when they’d divided the upper space into storeys, they’d been unwilling or unable to demolish it and had built round it instead), he found a book on his pillow: Inguiomer’s Commentaries on the Campaigns of Carnufex of Scheria, Vols I–IV. He sighed, and put it carefully on the floor.

  Breakfast in the guardroom, a small space with a low ceiling. The room was crowded with tables and chairs, and three of the walls were covered by racks of spears, their blades polished, their cornelwood shafts shining faintly with newly applied oil. On the fourth wall was a mural, in a totally different style to the frescoes and mosaics that they’d seen elsewhere. The colours were startlingly bright against a white background, the style was crude but vigorous, and the title (painted in foot-high letters across the top) was The Glorious Victory of Shinnath 15/7 1435 AUC. It was a battle, mostly. On the left, a huge army of red and blue men, sticks for arms and legs, bobbles for heads, marched towards a blue wavy line, presumably a river. The same wavy line was repeated in the middle, where the red and blue stick men were beating the hell out of a small group of green and orange stick men. On the right, the red-and-blues escorted a long column of green-and-oranges to a grey box, some kind of building, and cut off their heads. Beside the pyramid of heads on the far right, in tin
y gold cursive script: Eternal Victory to Glorious Permia and Death to the Scherians.

  “Good morning,” Baudila said, beaming at them. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Very well, thank you,” Phrantzes said, deliberately not looking at the painting. He was trying to position himself so as to block Suidas’ view of the wall, but he was too small and the wall was too big. Iseutz was looking straight at the plate of sausages on the table in front of her.

  “Sit down, please,” Baudila said. “I’m afraid there’s only wine or goat’s milk to drink. You simply can’t get fruit juice here, and the water’s not worth the risk.”

  They sat down. Suidas was looking at the painting and frowning. Addo said, “Excuse me, but is that a Stiban Urosh?”

  Baudila nodded cheerfully. “He was stationed here, during the War,” he said. “Do you like it?”

  “My father collects Urosh,” Addo replied. “We’ve got a lot of them at home, so I sort of grew up with them.”

  “Really.” Baudila was impressed. “I didn’t think the Naive school was particularly well known outside Permia.”

  “Actually,” Addo said, “I believe he’s got the companion piece to this one. Shinnath, but from right to left. He’d love this.”

  Suidas laughed. Giraut asked, “Are they valuable? These paintings you’re talking about.”

  “Back in the Empire, I believe they’re seriously underappreciated,” Baudila said. “But recently there’s been an increasing level of interest in the Naives. I was lucky enough to acquire a small Brenna myself not long ago. In, say, fifteen or twenty years’ time …”

  “Our colour sergeant lost a leg at Shinnath,” Suidas said.

  “My father was a young cavalry subaltern,” Addo said. “But his side of the army wasn’t in the heavy fighting. It was the left who broke and ran.”

  Phrantzes cleared his throat. “I was wondering,” he said. “Is there any chance we could borrow a room here, to practise in? Only, since we’re going to be here for the next couple of days …”

  Baudila beamed at him. “I was just going to talk to you about that,” he said. “My men and I are – well, enthusiastic amateurs is the best we can say for ourselves, nowhere near good enough to give you a fight, naturally. But if you felt like it, and if it’d be any help with your training programme, we’d be delighted to offer ourselves as sparring partners.” He hesitated, then added quickly, “Of course, if you’d rather not, we’d quite understand.”

  “No, that would be most helpful,” Phrantzes said. “Most helpful. Do you think we could possibly borrow some equipment? We seem to have lost ours.”

  Equipment wasn’t a problem. Giraut finally managed to narrow his choice down to a matched pair of foils, first-quality Mezentine, belonging to Baudila’s second-in-command. Suidas couldn’t choose between the longswords, so he closed his eyes and picked one at random. There was only one smallsword foil, but it was a beauty; Iseutz’s face lit up when she saw it, and its owner blushed and begged her to take it as a present. There weren’t any messers, but Addo already had one of his own.

  Giraut fenced five bouts with Baudila. He was pretty good, though his style was distinctly old-fashioned, and the stoccata came as a complete and terrible surprise to him; he stood looking down at the foil blade arched against his chest, as if wondering how in hell’s name it could possibly have got there. Giraut taught him the move, together with the volte and the scanso dritto in straight time. “There’ll be no stopping you when you get home to the Empire,” he said.

  “I won’t be going home, I’m afraid,” Baudila said quietly. “Made it a bit too hot for myself, I’m afraid. Still, never mind about that.”

  Suidas was showing off. He’d spent an hour practising disarms, which he was very good at already, and he found the painting was getting on his nerves. “The hell with this,” he said, giving back the sword he’d just taken away from a bemused-looking Blueskin. “Let’s try something else.” He leaned his sword against the wall and smiled. “Right,” he said. “I want you to kill me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Suidas frowned. “You heard,” he said. “You’re armed, I’m not. Try and cut my head off. Pretend it’s still the War or something.”

  The Imperial looked at Baudila, who nodded; then he took a long step forward, dropped into a high back guard and froze. Suidas sighed.

  “That’s no bloody use,” he said. “Imagine I’m a helpless old man and you’re going to cut me in two. Come on.”

  The Imperial frowned and transitioned from high back to middle. “Oh for pity’s sake,” Suidas said, and kicked him on the shin. As the Imperial staggered forward, he took his sword and pushed him over. Then he reached out a hand and helped him up.

  “You know, I don’t remember you people being quite so damned diffident at Mons Cauta,” he said. The Imperial looked at him. “Were you in the War, soldier? You look old enough.”

  The Imperial nodded slightly. Suidas grinned. “Me too,” he said. “I was one of the poor bastards holding the top of the ridge when your commander threw half a brigade at us. Of course, we sent you home in slices, but it was interesting there, for a while. Were you in that one, by any chance?”

  The Imperial shook his head without saying anything. Phrantzes cleared his throat, but nobody was interested in him.

  “Just as well for you,” Suidas said. “Well, don’t just stand there like a slab of pudding. Kill me.”

  The Imperial lunged. It was a business move, quick and angled. Suidas avoided it by a thumb’s width, disarmed him and threw him over his shoulder. “That’s more like it,” he said, and kicked the sword across the floor towards him. “And again.”

  The Imperial didn’t move. He was looking at Baudila, who shrugged. Then he got to his feet, picked up the sword and lunged again. He was a quick learner. He left no room for sidestepping; but just when Giraut was convinced the thrust was about to go home, Suidas reached out with his hands wide and open, clapped them on either side of the blade, lifted it over his head, stepped under it and stamped down hard on the Imperial’s instep. He collapsed, and Suidas stepped back, holding his sword.

  “That’s how you grab someone’s blade without getting your hands all cut up,” he announced to the world at large. “One of the best tricks going, if you can do it, makes you next best thing to immortal. Trouble is, unless you can get it exactly right the first time you try it, you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to pick your nose with your thumb.”

  Baudila coughed gently. “Would you mind terribly not damaging my soldiers?” he said. “They may not be much, but they’re all I’ve got.”

  “Perhaps you could show me that.” Addo took four long strides and put himself between Suidas and the Imperial, who showed no signs of wanting to get up off the floor. “It looks like just the sort of move I could do with.”

  Suidas looked at him as though he didn’t understand; then he shrugged and said, “Of course. What we need is a long, thin piece of wood. Captain?”

  Baudila was only too happy to oblige. Addo wore heavy gloves the first three times, but couldn’t get the hang of it; Suidas hit him three times in the solar plexus, knocking out all his breath, until Iseutz yelled at him and he grinned.

  “Of course you can’t do it in gloves,” he said, “you can’t get the traction. Now try it with your bare hands.”

  This time Addo caught the pretend sword and was able to maul it out of the way. He beamed with pleasure, and Suidas laughed at him. “Told you,” he said. “Now, again.”

  The Imperials had gathered round to watch. Suidas didn’t seem happy about that, and muttered something about not teaching his best move to the enemy, but Addo made him do it again. This time he got a long splinter in his palm of his hand.

  “That’s because you’re still trying to grab,” Suidas told him. “What you should be doing is squeezing. Try again.”

  Addo didn’t make the same mistake again. After four perfect captures of the piece of wood, he sai
d, “Can we try that with the sword?”

  “If you like,” Suidas replied. “Up to you. Don’t blame me if I break your fingers.”

  Addo took a step back, and Giraut handed Suidas the blunt-edged longsword. Suidas took a low middle guard and closed the measure; then, instead of thrusting, he lifted the blade and chopped down at Addo’s head. Addo caught the blade perfectly, lifted it and closed in to block Suidas’ arms.

  “Now you’re getting it,” Suidas said. “It’s knowing you can do it that makes it possible.”

  “A bit like flying,” Addo replied. “Can we try it with the messer, please?”

  Suidas frowned. “I’m not going to grind the edge off my half-decent messer, thanks all the same,” he said. “You never know when I might need it.”

  “That’s all right,” Addo said. “Leave it sharp.”

  Suidas looked at him, and it was like looking into a mirror. “The thing is,” he said, “I’ve never tried this play with a messer myself. The blade shape’s different, and the balance. I don’t know if it can be done.”

  Addo smiled at him. “Like flying,” he said. “I’m willing to give it a go, if you are.”

  Phrantzes started to say something, and Iseutz said, “Addo, don’t be so stupid,” but Addo wasn’t listening. Suidas looked at him again and said, “I don’t like the idea. We’ll grind off the edge. There’s no point taking stupid risks.”

  “I thought the risk was the whole point,” Addo said mildly. “Otherwise it’s not really training, it’s just playing a game.”

  “We’ve got a big wheel grindstone in the armoury,” Baudila said briskly. “I’ll get my armourer to do it, it won’t take a moment.”

  Addo shook his head. “There’s no risk,” he said, “really. If we don’t do it properly, we might as well not bother.”

  There was a look of horror on Suidas’ face. “Sorry,” he said, “you’ll have to get someone else, in that case. Messers aren’t things you play around with.”