by K. J. Parker
He met the courier at the forty-seventh milestone: a tall, handsome young Imperial in a fur-lined riding coat, his teeth chattering in the comparative cold. “Take this letter to C7,” Tzimisces told him. “Extremely urgent. All necessary measures to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Understood?”
The Imperial nodded. “One for you,” he said, and handed over a tiny square of parchment, folded over and over again to make it as small as possible.
“Thanks,” Tzimisces said.
The Imperial saluted and rode away. Tzimisces sighed as he watched him go. Suborning Imperials was ruinously expensive, at a time when money was tight; a Permian civilian would’ve done just as well and would’ve been delighted to be paid a tenth of what the Blueskin must be getting. Still, he could see the logic behind the standard operating procedure; with enemies, as with senators, always buy the best you can afford. He unfolded the letter he’d been given and frowned as he read it.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Cuniva said, for the fifth time.
Iseutz sighed. “Oh for pity’s sake. Look, why don’t we play something else?”
“No, please.” Cuniva looked troubled. “I’d like to learn, really. Could you go through it again just once more, and I promise I’ll pay attention.”
They’d been driving through the defile for nearly an hour. “All right.” Addo had come up with a new patient voice they hadn’t heard before. It was slow and soft and gentle, and Giraut wondered if it meant he was on the point of losing his temper completely. “It really is very simple. I say, ‘The minister’s cat is an affable cat’ – affable starts with A, all right? The person sitting next to me then says, ‘Because he’s not angry.’ Angry also starts with A, but it’s the opposite of affable. Well,” he added, “sort of, anyway. Then the person sitting next to him – that’d be Iseutz in this instance – says something like, ‘The minister’s cat is a blue cat’ – blue starts with B, you see – and then Phrantzes, who’s next to Iseutz, he says, oh I don’t know, ‘Because he’s not brown.’ And then you say …”
“Excuse me,” Cuniva said, deeply ashamed, “I still don’t follow. Brown isn’t the opposite of blue.”
“Yes, but if you’re brown you can’t be blue, so it counts. Like, if you’re angry you can’t be affable. So now you say something like, maybe, ‘The minister’s cat is a cheerful cat’ …”
“Because he’s not cross.” Cuniva beamed like the sunrise. “Is that all right?”
“Yes.” Iseutz closed her eyes for a moment. “I do believe you’ve finally got there. Right, can we get on, please? Whose go was it?”
“Suidas,” Giraut said. “On G.”
Suidas yawned. “You know what, I think I’ll just look out of the window for a bit.”
“You dare,” Iseutz snapped, and he shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “All right, the minister’s cat is a gratuitous cat.” He smiled, and said, “Your turn, Captain.”
Cuniva looked stunned. “Gratuitous.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Suidas said. “The minister’s cat is a gratuitous cat. And?”
“Because he’s not …” Cuniva twisted his face and bit his lip. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t think of anything.”
“Suidas, for pity’s sake.” Iseutz glowered at him. “It’s his first time playing. Why did you have to pick such a hard one?”
“It’s perfectly fair,” Suidas replied, “within the rules of the game. Naturally, I play to win.”
“All right, then, you think of one.”
“It’s not up to me,” Suidas said smugly. “Sorry, Captain, you’re out and that’s ten points to me. So, it’s me to start again, isn’t it? The minister’s cat—”
“Quiet,” Addo said. “Listen.”
They heard it much more clearly up on the box, where the two Imperials grabbed for their shields, which they’d stowed under the luggage in the rack. The driver turned his head to see where the yelling was coming from, saw, and stared in horror, then looked back at the road just in time to pull back on the reins as they swung into the tight corner. An arrow went past his head, making that soft swish-swish sound as it spun. The Imperials looked round for their Aram Chantat escort, and noticed for the first time that they’d disappeared.
“We’ve stopped,” Iseutz said.
Suidas’ eyes were very wide. “Everybody get out of the coach,” he said, in a level, brittle voice.
“Don’t be stupid, they’re shooting arrows.” Cuniva was leaning over Phrantzes, scrabbling for the blinds. “It’s open ground, there’s no cover.”
Suidas leaned forward slightly, drew his left hand back a little way and punched Cuniva on the point of his jaw. His head snapped back, his eyes closed and he slid down into his seat. “If we stay in the coach, we’ll be killed,” Suidas said gently. “Come on.”
He edged across a little, drew his knee back under his chin and kicked the door with the sole of his boot. The door flew open and Suidas dived, as though into deep water, on to the ground. “Come on,” he yelled as he scrambled to his feet. Then he burst into a frantic, jinking run.
“But where’s the escort?” Phrantzes asked, in a dazed voice.
“Dead, probably,” Addo replied. He was crouching in the doorway, peering out. “We’d better go,” he said. “Iseutz, you next.” He jumped, landed on his feet and swung round to grab Iseutz by the wrist and haul her out. An arrow sailed over his head and glanced off the roof of the coach. “Phrantzes,” he shouted, and then he ran, dragging Iseutz behind him.
Cuniva was sitting up, staring at the open door, registering the empty seats. “Shit,” he wailed, and launched himself through the door. He ran five yards then dropped to his knees. He was still alive.
Phrantzes stared at Giraut, who just shook his head. He hesitated, then opened the other door, dropped bonelessly out of it and crawled under the coach.
Giraut sat perfectly still. I’m not going out there, was all he could hear himself say. He watched as Addo came tearing back, grabbed Cuniva by the arm and neck, hauled him upright and threw him forward, forcing him to find his feet. They staggered out of sight. An arrow hit the side of the coach, making it shudder slightly. Giraut could see half an inch of sharp, triangular point sticking out of a split in the woodwork. In his mind, it had hit him in the knee, socket-deep in bone, unendurably painful. He stayed where he was, and a voice in his head said, The others have gone, so they’ll think the coach is empty. So I’ll just sit here, for now. He was shaking, and he felt sick and chilled all over. He could hear his mother’s voice, when they’d first tried to teach him to swim: Don’t be such a baby. But all he’d been able to think of was water covering his eyes, filling his ears and mouth, and nothing they could say or do would induce him to let go of the big stone in the riverbank. He’d thought, I’m safe here; and then his uncle had lifted his fingers, one by one, until he lost his grip, and he’d been in the water, kicking desperately against nothing, and the water splashed into his nose, and he’d choked …
He dropped to the floor and crawled as far as he could get under the seat.
Later, Suidas could remember scrambling up the side of the defile – he’d missed his footing several times and landed on his knees, rasping the skin to pulp on the sharp shale – but nothing after that until he came to, as if waking up, and found himself standing over a dead body. There was a messer in his hand (he couldn’t say for sure where it had come from) and his face and hands were wet and sticky. He hoped the blood was someone else’s.
Someone had killed four Aram Chantat, with a messer. Whoever it was, he’d been hitting too hard, generally a sign of fear or panic; he’d cut through one man’s right leg and deep into his left, and the man he was standing over was all but decapitated. Suidas frowned.
He made an effort, cleared his mind and tried to get a grip on the situation. Archers had been shooting at them from up here, but the dead men didn’t have bows or quivers. The coach had stopped, so presumably the road ahead had been
blocked. He had no idea how many of the enemy there were, or where. He had no shield or armour, and he was standing upright on the skyline.
He knelt down quickly and looked round. From where he was, he could see the roof of the coach, with a dead man lying across it; the horses were dead in the shafts. The far side of the ravine was a vertical wall – if he’d only left the coach by the other door, he’d have been in good cover, because there couldn’t be any archers on that side. But of course he’d jumped out of the left-hand door because it was the closest to where he’d been sitting. Idiot.
This is wrong, he thought. They’ve won, so what are they hiding for?
From his position, he couldn’t see the coach well enough to shoot at it, not at the angle the arrows had been coming from. Therefore the archers must have been somewhere below him. He had no reason to suppose they’d still be there.
He turned his head and looked the other way, across the plateau. It was completely open, a flat tabletop of bare rock. If they were Aram Chantat, they’d have horses. A man on foot wouldn’t stand a chance against horsemen on the flat. There was also the slight possibility that at least some of the others were still alive somewhere.
His skinned knees were starting to stiffen, and something he’d done recently had pulled a muscle in his back, but he had no choice. He glanced at the dead men, hoping for a shield, or something that might do for one, but they were infuriatingly unhelpful: shirts, trousers, bare feet, armed with sabres or singlehand axes, no bloody use to anybody. A thought struck him; he frowned, then shrugged, and reached out with his left hand for the head of the dead man lying beside him. It was still attached to the neck by a flap of skin, which he sliced through with his messer. He took a firm grip on the long hair and swung the head in a circle, until the hair was wrapped twice round his hand. It wasn’t a shield, but it was something.
Going down the side of the defile made him wonder how the hell he’d ever got up it. The shale was practically a liquid, only taking his weight for a fraction of a second before falling away. He ended up running down, in a race with the shale to see who got to the bottom first. Just before he lost the race, he jumped.
He landed well, and found himself on the floor of the defile, about ten yards from the coach. He saw three men, Aram Chantat; they were kneeling beside the coach, prodding underneath it with their sabres, laughing. Suidas couldn’t figure out what they were doing, but it didn’t really matter. Miraculously, they hadn’t heard him come crashing down the slope, so he had the element of surprise; that, a messer, and some poor fool’s head for a shield. He sincerely hoped that that would do.
Instead of just running straight at them, he headed away ten yards or so, walking quietly until he reached the front, where the dead horses lay. That way, he could tackle them in column rather than in line; one at a time, rather than four at once. Of course he didn’t know if there were more of them round the other side. He’d find out soon enough, if he lived that long.
The closest man saw him and jumped up, a single smooth transition from hands-and-knees to a modified low front guard. Suidas took two long strides to close the measure and swung at his right arm with the head. He savoured the horrified look on the man’s face as he flinched away, thereby opening the left side of his neck. Suidas took care not to hit too hard this time, so as not to exacerbate the pulled muscle in his back.
He thought, as he closed in on the second man: I like this messer, balance nicely forward, I wonder where I got it from. The third and fourth blurred into one; he smacked the left-hand man in the face with the head while draw-cutting the right-hand man’s left hamstring. He killed left-hand on the ground; right-hand would keep. He peered round the side of the coach and saw two more. They were nearly too quick for him, but not quite.
He went back and dealt with the man he’d hamstrung, then stepped back and looked round. He was far too open and exposed, and there were no enemies to shield him if there were still archers out deep, but nothing bad happened. He counted: four up there, six here, ten. A typical Aram Chantat detached half-platoon was ten plus an officer. Damn.
“Suidas?” The coach was calling his name. He stared at it. “Suidas, is that you?”
“Phrantzes?”
“I’m under here.”
It took a moment for that to make sense; then he laughed. “You clown,” he said. “It’s all right, you can come out now.”
“No,” Phrantzes said, “I can’t.”
At which point, Suidas figured out what the Aram Chantat had been doing on their knees in the dirt. “Are you all right?” he asked, which was a stupid question.
“You’ll have to pull me out.”
Suidas thought for a moment. “Stay there,” he said. “I think there’s one of the fuckers still loose.”
“Suidas …”
“I’ll be back for you as soon as I can. What about the others?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Stay there,” Suidas said. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
He took a few steps away from the coach, but he had no idea what to do next. The bastard couldn’t have a bow, or he’d have shot by now. If he had the brains he was born with, he’d have taken his horse and …
Point. Horses. If I were the Aram Chantat, where would I have left my horses? Nowhere he could see; not behind, the way the coach had come, or they might have been seen. In front, therefore, round the bend.
The last man did have a bow after all, but he was either a lousy shot or too overwrought to aim straight. Suidas found him on the other side of the heap of stones they’d used to block the road. He proved to be a handful, smacking the messer out of Suidas’ hand with a wild swipe and then lunging. Suidas was quite calm as he traversed right, warded off the thrust with the head and punched him at the point where the jaw met the neck. Then he retrieved the messer and finished the job while the man was still trying to get to his knees. Ten plus one. So that’s all right.
Then he looked down, and saw the man lying at his feet. He’d fallen on his side, but his hips and legs were twisted round and faced upwards. The messer had cut through his neck to the bone; a good cut, strong enough but not too strong, it sort of made up for his earlier deficiencies in technique. There were fat spots of coagulating blood in the man’s hair; odd, the things you notice. He had a nice-looking silver archer’s ring on his right hand, but it wouldn’t come off.
Suidas straightened his back and winced; his shoulder definitely wasn’t right. He realised he still had the head tied to his left hand by its hair. The face was a bit the worse for wear after fending off several cuts and being used as a morningstar. He turned his wrist to unravel the hair, let it fall and booted it away.
Fencing practice, he thought. Well. He realised he felt completely calm, which was ridiculous, given the desperate situation he was in.
Phrantzes, he remembered, oh hell. He ran back to the coach, to find Phrantzes sitting with his back to it, and Giraut standing over him. A glance told him they were both more or less all right; enough to leave, at any rate.
“Giraut,” he said, “the others. Any idea?”
Giraut shook his head. “I saw Addo run off with Iseutz, and then he came back to get Captain Cuniva after he got shot. But after that …”
Just a moment, Suidas thought. He did the mental geometry: sight lines. “Where were you?”
Giraut tried to look away, but couldn’t seem to manage it. “In the coach.”
Suidas frowned, then grinned. “Smart boy,” he said. “Phrantzes, what about you? Did they get you?”
Phrantzes shook his head. “They were poking at me, but they couldn’t quite reach. They were laughing. I kept expecting them to turn the coach over, but I suppose they didn’t think of it.”
“But you’re all right.”
“Cramp,” Phrantzes said. “I couldn’t move. Giraut had to—”
“Cramp!” Suidas exploded. “You bastard, I thought they’d cut your feet off or something.”
“I’m sorry, I …”
“Forget it,” Suidas said. “And get up, for God’s sake, you look pathetic. We’ve got to look for Iseutz and the Carnufex boy, and that Blueskin. Cramp, for crying out loud.”
Giraut looked at him. “What happened?” he said.
“What?”
“The enemy. What happened? Where did they go?”
Suidas noticed that the messer was still in his hand. He found it hard to let go of it, but he sheathed it (there was a sheath hanging from his belt; so that was where it had come from). “They’re dead,” he said. “At least, I think so. I found eleven, ten plus one; that’s usual for a half-platoon.”
“You killed eleven men?”
He sounded surprised; it made Suidas want to laugh. “Well, obviously I did, or I wouldn’t be here. You two, that way. I’ll start over there and work my way back.”
Giraut found Addo; or rather, the other way about. Addo jumped out at him from behind a rock, shoved him to the ground and was about to drive his thumbs into Giraut’s windpipe when he suddenly froze, let go and said, “Sorry.”
Iseutz emerged a moment later, looking white as paper but unhurt. “Cuniva’s dead, I’m afraid,” Addo said. “What about Suidas and Phrantzes?”
“They’re fine,” Giraut said, massaging his neck. “Suidas killed the enemy. All of them.”
Addo looked worried rather than surprised, but he said, “Well then. What about the coachman, and the guards?”
Giraut hadn’t even thought about them. “I don’t know,” he said, just as he remembered seeing bodies that weren’t Aram Chantat. “I don’t think so,” he added. “And they killed the coach horses.”
