by K. J. Parker
They saw the coach in the distance, and immediately the driver slithered out from under his end of the pole and broke into a run. Oida lowered his end slowly and pushed it away so it wouldn’t smack him on the way down. From the top of the rise he could see for miles. There was no sign of the horses.
Oida was one of those men who does cry, but not for sorrow. Beauty moved him to tears, and acts and stories of great courage and endurance; certain passages of music had him in floods, no matter how many times he heard them. He often cried for joy, relief and gratitude; but mostly for anger. It was a weakness he was aware and ashamed of, but he couldn’t help it, and there it was.
The driver came back at some point and stood looking at him. “For God’s sake,” he said, “pull yourself together.”
Oida sniffed hard, swallowed and dabbed at his eyes. It was a good time to say something, but he couldn’t.
“It’s all right,” the driver was saying scornfully, “they won’t have gone far. I found their tracks, the ground’s good and soft. I’m used to catching them up. There’s nothing to get in a state about.”
Oida looked at him through a salty blur. He read confidence in his face, the all-in-a-day’s-work look he’d seen at various critical times on the faces of doctors and lawyers; you think you’re screwed, but I know about these things and it’ll be fine. He took a deep breath, considered apologising and decided that would only make things worse. “You stay there,” the driver said. “Do some deep breathing or something. I’ll be back directly.”
He walked away briskly, and Oida saw him pick up the trail and follow it out on to the moor. When he was too small to see, Oida got up, pulled the pole out of the axle hole, hauled the wheel upright on its rim and slowly and carefully began to roll it down the hill. It took a long time, but he had time to burn. He propped the wheel against the side of the coach, got down on his hands and knees and examined the end of the axle. It would redeem matters slightly, he decided, if by the time the driver came back with the horses, he’d managed to get the wheel on all by himself.
After a bit, he got up again, went back and retrieved the pole. Leverage: Lodge doctrine has a lot to say about leverage, though mostly in terms of metaphor and mysticism. But Oida knew what a fulcrum was, and he’d read about how they built the Single Span Bridge at Exesti. He looked around and found a dozen big stones, which he eventually managed to scrabble out of the peat with a lot of effort. The flattest stone became his fulcrum; if he sat on the end of the pole, he could lift the cart so that the axle was level with the hole in the propped-up wheel. Problem was, he couldn’t reach the wheel to slide it on to the axle without standing up and taking his weight off the lever. It was fortunate that patience and concentration were special virtues of his; also fortunate that he was alone, with nobody to see the contortions he went through, trying to sit down and reach out at the same time, or offer advice, which he hated beyond measure when he was trying to think. He eventually cracked it when he found he could stand with one foot on the lever and get his elbows on the ground, which gave him enough strength and purchase to lift the wheel. He had a couple of nasty spills, when the lever moved under his foot, got away from him and flipped him over like a pancake. At maybe the fiftieth attempt, he felt the axle slide into the hole and take the weight. Very carefully he lifted his foot off the lever and was overjoyed to see that the wheel didn’t move and the cart stayed perfectly still. The wheel was now jammed on the very end of the axle, blocking the hole for the cotter pin. He had to bash it down the axle with a rock, an eighth of an inch at a time. Finally, however, he managed to drive the pin home with a stone, and the job was done. He stood up (his back was so stiff he was afraid he’d snap it when he tried to straighten it), looked at what he’d managed to achieve and felt wonderful. Then it occurred to him that he’d been playing with the stupid wheel for a very long time, and the driver wasn’t back yet.
It was getting dark. He knew plenty of stories about men who’d gone wandering about in the dark on the moors, unable to see the bogs and sinkholes. Typically, either they vanished without trace or all that was ever found was a hat, or a single boot. He decided that the driver knew the same stories and had settled down with the horses in a known dry place for the night. So he made himself as comfortable as he could on the seat of the coach, dragged the blankets over him, and had no trouble at all going to sleep.
In the morning, he set out to follow the driver’s trail. He didn’t know very much about tracking, but it was mostly common sense, and footprints and hoofprints in the soft patches of black peat were easy to follow. They petered out among the tussocks of couch grass and heather, so he held on as straight a line as he could. The landscape was open, with little in the way of dips and dead ground. Six horses would stand out like a temple spire.
He found the driver purely by chance; it would have been so easy to miss him. He was lying face down in a dark brown pool, his left ankle lodged in a tangle of exposed heather roots. The slimy black mud was barely churned up at all, so at least the poor devil drowned quickly.
No tears. Instead, he debated whether to head back to the road or keep on looking for the horses; at which point he realised that he’d got himself turned round and had completely lost his bearings, with not a clue as to which direction the road was in. But there were hoofprints, unequivocally clear, leading away from the pool. He conjectured that the horses had come to the pool to drink (presumably the driver had come to the same conclusion). He knelt down and studied the hoofprints, wishing he’d read a book about tracking so he’d know what he was looking at. Well; the prints were sharp and clear and there wasn’t any water in them, whereas other prints he’d seen earlier had been partially flooded with water seeping up through the peat. Therefore (logic suggested) these prints weren’t all that old, and the horses – hobbled, so they’d be walking slower than a man – couldn’t be all that far away.
He stood up and looked round, and noted that the mist was starting to come down. The stories had been eloquent about mist on the moors. A sensible man would stay put until it lifted, but that could be hours, or days. But horses aren’t sensible. Are they? He realised he didn’t know. Nor did he have any idea how long the approaching mist would take to reach him. Could he outpace it by walking fast, or would it be all round him in ten minutes? No data. He shrugged, and followed the hoofprints.
Horses, it turned out, were very sensible indeed. They’d found a little shelf in the peat, worn away by the backs of generations of itching sheep and just tall enough to provide a little shelter from wind and rain, almost high enough for a man searching for them in bad light to mistake them for dead gorse or a granite outcrop.
Tears were dribbling down his cheeks as he walked up on the closest horse, taking care to avoid eye contact (which makes horses wary), not going straight up to it, standing beside it for a count of twenty to let it get used to him before reaching out and grabbing a handful of mane; then a slow, patient ritual of greeting, patting, rubbing between the ears, before squatting down to cut the hobbles with his sadly inadequate toy penknife. The peat shelf made a marvellously convenient mounting block. No bridle or saddle, of course, and the wretched thing’s back was as broad as a highway; just as well that, when he was twelve years old, his father had insisted that he learn to ride bareback without a bridle, controlling the horse with just the pressure of his legs and feet. He felt bad about the other horses, but he couldn’t risk dismounting again just to cut their hobbles.
All that, he decided, had been the easy bit. Now he had to find the road again.
Easy enough for a man with a good memory who’d once looked at a map, provided that he could see the sun. But instead he could see mist, and not much else. Well; he’d already established that horses are sensible, therefore unlikely to stumble into bogs. He nudged the horse into a slow, easy stroll, direction irrelevant, for now the priority was building a relationship with the horse so it’d do as it was told.
When the mist lifted some hours later
, it turned out he’d been heading due east – not ideal, but not too disastrous, either. He made the necessary adjustment and rode on until it started to get dark. By this point he reckoned he and the horse understood each other well enough for him to risk dismounting. He knotted the ends of the severed hobbles together as best he could, lay down in the heather and closed his eyes.
Cramp woke him four times in the night, thirst twice and horrible-sounding animal noises once. The last item didn’t bother him; he knew from his experience as a traveller that the more bloodcurdling the cry, the smaller and dopier the animal or bird. When he awoke the fifth time, the sun was high in the sky and he was being stared down at by a dozen armed men. He blinked at them. Unlike the infantry, the cavalry of the two empires looked nothing like each other. These were Easterners; Imperials, swathed in woollens and furs over their mail shirts and shivering with cold. They wore the distinctive pillbox off-duty felt hats of the Seventeenth Lancers, a skirmishing and reconnaissance unit particularly favoured by Senza Belot.
One of them wore a twisted golden collar, identifying him as a squadron commander. He cleared his throat, took a deep breath and said, “You’re him, aren’t you?”
“My name’s Oida. Do we know each other?”
“I saw you in Choris. You did a concert in the hippodrome.” The officer pursed his lips. “Sorry, I’ve got to ask. What the hell are you doing out here?”
They made him tea, on a dear little portable stove, and gave him oatcakes, and dressed his blistered shoulder, and lent him a fur cloak that must’ve weighed ten pounds, and scraped the caked mud off his boots and gave them a good rub-down with dry bracken and sheep’s-wool grease. “This is amazing,” said the officer (his name was Timao), “they’re never going to believe me back home, we all absolutely love your stuff, my whole family, especially my sister, she plays the flute and the bass viol, she’s always playing your tunes. They’re going to be so jealous.”
Of course he could ride with them; they would be delighted to lend him a horse – they had a couple of remounts with them, standard procedure, but if neither of them suited Timao would be honoured to lend him his mare – and where was it he was going exactly? Ah. Unfortunately they couldn’t escort him all the way there, on account of it being hostile territory in the middle of a major campaign, they hoped he understood, orders are orders and so forth; in point of fact he was highly unlikely to run into any soldiers, since the Seventeenth had wiped out the last remnants of General Sallaco’s forces and was heading back to rejoin the main force for the big push against Rasch, so nothing to worry about there. The war? Oh, yes, going swimmingly. Nothing between Senza and Rasch except a few hayfoot local levies and the stub end of the Western Twelfth, and then the war would be over and everybody could go home. Meanwhile, it was an awful imposition, naturally, but could Oida possibly see his way to scribbling just a few words to his sister Hilditunn?
Oida smiled graciously and jotted down a tune that had been running through his head at various times over the last few days. He added, for Hilditunn, the sister of the man who saved my life, signed it with his usual squashed-crane-fly squiggle and handed it to Timao, who stared at it open-mouthed for a moment, then stuffed it into the lining of his helmet.
They were supposed to be hunting down stragglers from the recent battle (in which Senza had been outnumbered six to one, and had smashed the Western centre with a lightning charge before enveloping the bewildered wings and slaughtering them like sheep; same old Senza), but instead they escorted him as far as Epoi Esen, three days along the Great West Road. There they caught sight of a substantial body of horsemen in the distance, which Timao reckoned had to be the advance guard of the Western Eleventh Army, hurrying to the relief of Rasch. Oida assured him he’d be fine, thanked him profusely for his help, and urged him to be on his way before the Eleventh noticed him. Timao insisted that he should keep the horse and gave him food for four days, his personal silver cup and bowl and the portable stove. “My sister will be so pleased,” he said for the fifteenth time, then dressed his troop into column and galloped away.
Oida rode into Epoi, which was deserted apart from a small garrison posted in the Prefecture. The town had been evacuated, the garrison commander told him; he had no idea where the townspeople had gone, north maybe. Meanwhile, he’d be honoured if Oida could join him for dinner, and if afterwards he felt like singing a few numbers, the men would appreciate it very much.
The Eleventh, Oida learned, was heading for Rasch by way of Celeuthoe. The garrison commander didn’t know why, it seemed an odd decision to him, but of course he didn’t know all the facts and couldn’t see the bigger picture. Yes, the situation was pretty bad. Senza had smashed up every force sent to oppose him; the policy now seemed to be to keep what assets remained out of his way and let him go straight to Rasch, where he could cool his heels in the shadow of the impregnable walls until hunger, dysentery and mountain fever decimated his army and sent him creeping home; at which point the Eleventh, the First, the Seventh and about a million local levies would come down on him like a ton of bricks and the war would be over by Ascension Day. Which might just work, the garrison commander added, though personally he was inclined to doubt it.
Oida exchanged his horse for a hot bath, a razor and a seat on the internal mail to brigade headquarters at Estin; the journey took three days and was blissfully dull. He spent the time working up the tune he’d given to Timao’s sister into a ballad, which he was fairly sure would pay for his expenses and lost luggage and show a tidy profit on top. He decided to call it “The Soldier’s Homecoming”, and made a mental note to get some words written for it as soon as he had the chance.
Estin, to his great relief, seemed to be normal and in full working order. He got out at the Eastgate, thanked the driver and walked down to the Flower Market. The bath-house was still there, and he paid extra for a full massage, haircut and manicure. The barber-surgeon told him his shoulder was healing up just fine – there would be a scar, but interesting rather than off-putting – and the aches and pains in his chest and back were just pulled muscles and nothing serious. After his bath he walked up Empire Way to Tailors’ Row. The outfit he ended up with was solidly classic, if a bit provincial, and he managed to pick up a fine pair of plum-coloured boots with a small silver buckle. After a light lunch in a tea house on the Square, he visited the stationer’s and a couple of bookshops, and finally the cutler’s on the corner of Victory Row and Old Temple.
There were other customers in the shop, so he browsed quietly until they’d gone. Then he took the things he’d chosen – a chess set and writing kit to replace the ones he’d lost and a rather handsome bone-handled knife with silver mounts in the Mezentine style, though almost certainly modern – to the shopkeeper, who looked at him, scowled and said, “Where the hell did you get to?”
Oida smiled apologetically. “I got held up on the road. Sorry.”
The shopkeeper bolted the shop door. “In the back,” he said. “Leave all that.”
Oida dumped the chess set and the rest of the stuff on a chair and followed him through a curtain into a small, dark room that smelt strongly of cats. There was a lamp, a small charcoal stove, two chairs and an officer’s folding table, with one leg broken and mended with rawhide. The shopkeeper banged down an old-fashioned brass kettle on the stove, sat down in the comfortable looking chair and pointed at the other one. Oida sat.
“Of course, everything’s gone to hell,” the shopkeeper said. “Absolute chaos everywhere you look. I’ve had nothing from Division in three days and meanwhile I’m supposed to sort it all out and wipe everybody’s arses for them.” He glowered at Oida and added, “And now I’ve got you. Lucky me.”
“I’m sorry,” Oida repeated. “What exactly is happening? I’ve been out of touch for several—”
“Good question,” the shopkeeper said bitterly, “bloody good question. The first we knew about anything was bloody Senza Belot appearing out of nowhere like a djinn in a fair
y story, best guess is he came over the bay from Blemya, what he was doing there I would very much like to know—” He paused and gave Oida a foul look. “I was under the impression you were handling Blemya, but perhaps there was a change of plan and nobody bothered to tell me. Anyway,” he went on, before Oida could say anything, “Senza made pudding out of everything they threw at him, it’s practically certain he’s heading straight for Rasch, so all existing plans and projects are on indefinite hold, and it’s up to me to decide what the hell we do next.” He paused and massaged his forehead. “Now, then,” he said. “On the face of it you’ve had a wasted journey. Still, since you’re here, I take it you won’t object to making yourself useful.”
“Of course,” Oida said quickly. “If there’s anything I can do—”
The kettle started to steam. The shopkeeper got up and poured boiling water into a red porcelain teapot. “Let’s see if you’re as smart as they say you are,” he said. “Right. What’s wrong with this picture?”
Oida thought for a moment, then said, “Senza Belot is making an all-out attack on Rasch. His army is entirely cavalry. He’s got some good-quality horse artillery with him, but obviously nothing that’s going to make a dent in the walls of Rasch. He’s moved very fast, but still left enough time for the City Prefect to lay in stores.” He looked up. “It’s pointless,” he said. “There’s no way he can take Rasch.”
“Very good.” The shopkeeper nodded. “Unless—?”
“Unless,” Oida said, “he knows that when he gets there, someone will be waiting with a key to let him in.”
“Good boy.” The shopkeeper nodded again. “Of course, we don’t know anything because nothing’s getting in or out of Rasch, even for us, so we can’t be sure. But it stands to reason, Senza’s done a deal with one of the factions and they’re going to hand the city to him on a plate. You don’t need me to tell you—” He scowled again. “It’s a disaster. I’ve written to Division – and Central – but the way the roads are at the moment, I have no idea when they’ll get it, if they get it at all, or how long it’ll take them to reply. Nobody can tell me where Senza is right now, not even Ocnisant – he’s been warned off, would you believe – so there’s no way of knowing how long we’ve got. I mean, for all we know, Senza could be in Rasch right now, barbecuing the emperor over an open fire, in which case—” He broke off again, wiped his forehead on his sleeve and poured tea into two tiny blue bowls. “Why me, is what I want to know. Why the hell does absolutely everything have to be my fault?” He handed Oida a bowl, then dropped heavily into his chair. “All right,” he said. “Let’s just assume that Senza hasn’t taken Rasch yet. Is there anything – anything at all – we can do to make it better?”
