The Escapement e-3

by K. J. Parker

  He particularly hated it when one of the four chairmen was a few inches taller than the others. It meant that one corner of the chair was always higher, while the man diagonally opposite was taking more than his fair share of the weight, which meant he stumbled on cobbles.

  As a result, Psellus found it impossible to concentrate on what he'd been told, as the chair lurched and wobbled through the back alleys, heading for the Ridgeway gate. That was unfortunate; he needed time to clear his mind, before people started talking at him in loud voices. All he'd managed to grasp while they were waking him up and putting his slippers on his feet was that the enemy had somehow managed to burst the banks of the flooded ditch; there was also some ridiculous talk about a sortie-he'd sent a runner ahead to forestall that-and other stuff about monstrous unmanned digging machines. He'd let it flow over him; he'd have to deal with it when he got there, and the world stopped swaying.

  The first face he saw as the chair stopped and he yanked back the curtains was Dilao Zosoter, colonel-in-chief of the artillery; a pompous, braying man who'd bounced his way up the hierarchy of the Pipemakers'; but when he saw him, Psellus couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He looked empty, as though someone had tapped his ear and siphoned out his personality.

  "Dilao." He felt gingerly with his foot for the folding step, and scrambled out of the chair on to blessed motionless earth. "What's all this about draining the ditch? What's going on?"

  Zosoter told him. To do him credit, he was clear and concise, an indication of how badly shaken he must be. He ended his narration with the admission that he'd told the artillery crews to go home. "I've sent runners to fetch them back," he added wretchedly, "but it's got to take time. I can't understand, actually, why the enemy haven't started bombarding us. If they're going to press home an attack tonight…"

  Tempting providence. While Zosoter was speaking, Psellus felt the ground shake under his feet, and heard the dull, soft thump of a round shot landing. There was silence for one second, before everybody on the embankment started shouting at once. Typical Mezentines, Psellus thought; they're telling everybody else to take cover while standing perfectly still themselves.

  Which reminded him. He dropped to his knees-mercifully, the earth where his troublesome left knee landed was soft and free of stones-as another shot passed by, close enough for him to feel the slipstream and hear the unmistakable swish-swish-swish noise of the spinning stone ball. The thump shook him up like a coughing fit.

  Zosoter had been knocked off balance by the shaking of the ground under his feet, but he scrambled up again straight away. He was screaming orders, but Psellus couldn't make out a word of what he was saying over the background noise. Psellus looked past him, to the edge of the circle of light thrown by the palisade lanterns. He saw four men frantically spanning the windlass of a scorpion, as a round shot dipped out of the sky and landed no more than five yards away from them, lashing them with a hail of dirt and smashed brick. Another shot skimmed overhead and crashed into the wall behind him, and Psellus suddenly thought: that's not possible, they can't reach the wall, it's outside their maximum range. So they must have advanced their batteries, quietly, while all the commotion was going on. In which case, we'd better drop our sights, or when we get going again we'll all overshoot…

  Another groundquake and thump, further away this time; and then a thought hit him, unexpected as shrapnel. They couldn't have advanced their batteries, or else the hero who'd raised the alarm, Boerzes, would've noticed them as he came back to the Mezentine lines. In which case…

  He scrabbled himself upright and grabbed Zosoter by the shoulder. "Listen," he shouted (shouting always made him hoarse, very quickly), "whatever you do, when you return fire, don't lower your sights. Got that? Keep the solutions exactly as they are now."

  Zosoter was shaking his head. "We've got to drop our aim," he said. "Their shot's hitting the wall, which is seventy yards further than they were able to reach last time. They must've moved up, which means-"

  "They haven't moved," Psellus croaked back. "Trust me, I know exactly what they've done. Don't change the solutions, do you understand?"

  It was beautiful, in its way: simple, patient, the perfect moment so perfectly chosen. In all the previous artillery exchanges, the enemy had been dropping short deliberately, to give the Mezentines the impression that their engines were less powerful than they actually were. Maybe they'd lowered their elevation, they may even have slackened off the torsion springs, and lightened the counterweights of the trebuchets; however they'd done it, their motive was suddenly and blindingly clear: to fool the Mezentine batteries into thinking they'd moved up, at this crucial moment in the assault, and make them alter their solutions and so drop short.

  Briefly, he considered trying to explain that to Zosoter, at the top of his voice, with huge rocks falling out of the sky. Instead, he grabbed the nearest part of him he could reach, his knee, and shook him, bawling, "Do you understand?" Zosoter gave him a look of terrified fury, and nodded. If we're still alive in the morning, Psellus vowed to himself, I'll explain it to him. But not now.

  "All right," Zosoter was yelling. "So what do you want us to do? Can we return fire?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "You're sure?"

  Psellus had often wondered about violence: why some men chose to initiate it when they didn't have to. Now he could cheerfully have smashed Zosoter's face in. "Yes. Get on with it. Please," he added, on the off chance that politeness might succeed where a succession of direct orders had apparently failed. Zosoter gave him a last resentful look, and darted away to talk to the engine crews.

  With only a fifth of the engines manned and operational, it wasn't much of a return volley; but the enemy weren't expecting it. The bombardment stopped for two minutes, almost but not quite long enough for the Mezentines to span and loose again. Instead, the allies' next shot fell just as the crews were loading their projectiles into their slings and sliders, an operation that could only be done standing up. This time, the allies had loaded with junk instead of finished shot-bricks, rocks, chunks of smashed shot, bits of broken timber, gabions filled with flints and small stones which burst on landing and shredded anybody within ten square yards down to the bone. They learned that from us, Psellus thought, staring at a dead body a few feet away. Chips of flint had torn away one side completely, and a tangled mess of guts hung out, spoiled with patches of dust. He thought about the hundreds of cartloads of broken masonry his side's engines had hurled at the allied lines over the past few weeks. He thought: war is a curious sort of reciprocal mirror. We never see the slaughter and injury our shot causes, only the results of the inevitable retaliation. Hardly any wonder, therefore, that we fall into the error of believing that it's the enemy who are to blame, rather than ourselves…

  "The ditch is empty," someone was shouting in his ear. He vaguely recognised the voice, but couldn't put a name or a job description to it. "All the water's drained away down their big trench. What do you want us to do?"

  What did he want them to do? What a very challenging, complex question. He wanted to say: stay here, defend the embankment against the attack in force which should be along at any moment, die (but keeping within the parameters of politically acceptable losses) and give me a few hours while I save the city by doing something so terrible, you wouldn't believe me if I told you about it. That's all.

  Instead, he replied, "Keep up the bombardment and get as many armed men up here as you can." Then, as he noticed blood on his ridiculous nightgown, and realised (he felt surprised, bemused even, because he hadn't felt anything when it happened, and it wasn't hurting at all) that his left leg had been sliced open just above the knee, he added, "And find my sedan chair and get it over here as quickly as possible. I'm going back to the Guildhall."

  The look in the man's eyes hurt him. "If you're leaving, who's in command up here?"

  Psellus smiled. "My dear fellow, you are. Now, please hurry up and find my chair." They were shooting round sho
t rather than scatter, which meant they were trying to take out the engines rather than simply kill artillerymen. The general wasn't happy about that, coming as it did on top of the failure of the carefully planned undershooting ploy. He'd been banking on getting artillery superiority before sending the sappers up to start work on the embankment. By now, the scorpion batteries should have given up or been pounded into the dirt. Instead, they were maintaining a slow but steady fire-shooting blind in the dark, true enough, but they were still able to blanket a significant area. That left him with a choice between moving forward and thereby betraying his numerical strength, and staying where he was and taking thirty per cent more casualties than he'd budgeted for. He had no option but to choose the latter course, and he was quite obviously annoyed about it. Needless to say, it couldn't possibly affect the outcome, but it was sure to spoil his projected casualty ratio; and all for nothing.

  He joined the sappers, and went up the trench with them,. It was hard going. The floodwater from the ditch had turned the loose soil in the bottom of the trench into thick glue which tugged at their boots, like scavengers after a battle stripping the dead. There were no lanterns to spare, so they followed the gleam of faint moonlight reflected in puddles. Enemy shot whistled and twittered overhead, urging them to hurry, trip and sprawl. Occasionally they trod on dead men partially buried in mud and silt. As they approached the ditch, the lights on the embankment seemed almost welcoming-the friendly inn at the end of a long night ride-but they could hear the sharp clack of the scorpion sliders hammering against their stops: not friendly at all.

  Crossing the ditch was a problem nobody had considered. The mud was knee-deep and aggressively sticky. The only way to get through it, once both your legs had sunk in and there was nothing firm to push against, was to lay your shovel sideways on the surface and lean over it, pushing against it with your arms until you'd levered one leg out of the mud; get a knee on the shovel handle and drag up the other leg; half crawl and half swim a yard ahead, then repeat the process. It was easier once your boots had been sucked off your feet, but the sheer effort was exhausting, harder work than anything the sappers had ever done in the trenches or the mines.

  When the general arrived and saw the problem, he sent some men back to pull fascines off the trench wall. The first fifty or so sank into the mud without a trace, but gradually they were able to build a sloppy, dangerous causeway that could be crossed on hands and knees; and someone had the wit to fetch a rope, which was stretched across the ditch for a handrail.

  By now, however, the Mezentines had seen what was happening, and they were shooting arrows down into the ditch. It was too dark to aim, but that scarcely mattered. A wound was as good as an outright kill, if it was enough to hinder the use of an arm or a leg. The effect, however, wasn't what the Mezentines would've wanted; bodies, shot or drowned in mud, made better duckboards than bundles of brushwood, and once the ditch bottom was nicely clogged with dead men, crossing was much easier.

  Once they were across the ditch, the sappers were safe from the Mezentine arrows. They had no choice but to rest for twenty minutes or so; then they started to work. It was perfectly straightforward: dig out the base of the embankment, throwing the spoil back into the ditch, until they'd undermined it enough to cave it in. The earth was relatively soft and loose, and they propped as they went with spars and planks. The Mezentines were rolling masonry blocks down the embankment at them, but all that achieved was to help fill in the ditch and make it easier to bring up timber and fresh digging crews. The Aram Chantat had brought archers to shoot at the helpfully backlit defenders; the palisade took most of the arrows, but that hardly mattered; the intention was to make the enemy keep their heads down, and it worked well. The bombardment continued, of course, and observers at the ditch were able to send more accurate solutions back to the artillery captains; the priority now was to smash up the palisade and loosen the embankment directly above the sap, to make the job of undermining easier. The Mezentines were still shooting blindly into the dark, trying to find the allied artillery. They were doing a good job of it, but it really didn't matter: for every mangonel and trebuchet Daurenja had deployed in the artillery park, he had two more in reserve, to be brought up for the final assault. The machines the Mezentines were shooting at were really nothing more than bait. Vadani observers out in the plain noticed a concentration of lights moving about on the embankment. They took this to mean that the enemy had brought up as many men as could be crowded in, to defend against an assault in force. When he was told about it, the general didn't seem unduly bothered; in fact, he said, that would make the job easier rather than more difficult. He then sent an order back to the quartermasters, who queried it. He sent it again, ordering them to do as they'd been told. As it happened, Ziani Vaatzes was in the quartermasters' store when the confirmation came through. He grinned when he heard it.

  "Flour," the quartermaster repeated. "Twelve tons of flour. What's he planning to do with it, feed the buggers to death?"

  "Is it in sacks or barrels?" Ziani asked.

  "Both," the quartermaster replied. "We've got fifty tons in barrels and a hundred and seventy-five tons in sacks. What's that got to do with anything?"

  "Send the barrels," Ziani said. "And they'll want lamp oil, say thirty gallons. Did they ask for that?"

  "No."

  "Ah." Ziani looked smug. "Just as well I'm here."

  The quartermaster looked at him blankly. "You know what he's up to, then?"

  "Yes," Ziani said. "It makes no sense," Psellus repeated furiously, dismissing the bearers who'd brought him back from the Guildhall. They were glad to go, pushing a way through the crowd of soldiers and artillarymen crowding towards the line of craters where the palisade had once been. "It'd take them a week to dig in far enough to undermine this position effectively. And he must know that as soon as the sun comes up and we can see to aim…"

  He realised he was shouting, and he didn't even recognise the man he was shouting at: some junior infantry officer, reporting the arrival of his unit. But he wanted to shout; because his whole view of the assault was founded on the assumption that General Daurenja was a good commander who'd do the right thing, sensibly and predictably; and yet here he was, making an obvious mistake. If you can't trust your enemy…

  "Ignore me," he said calmly, and that seemed to alarm the poor young man more than the yelling. "I'm just thinking aloud. You go ahead and get your men in position. But be prepared for a long wait. I really can't see what he thinks he's playing at."

  The young man bounded away, clearly relieved to have escaped from the leader of his people, who'd finally broken his spring and was raving. Not, Psellus had to admit, an entirely inaccurate assessment. I'm doing no good at all up here, he realised, I'm just getting in the way and upsetting people. I'm being self-indulgent, playing at being a king or a duke. And not making a very good job of it, he added. A king or a duke wouldn't be crouched in a shot-crater in a muddy nightgown and slippers.

  Besides, he knew what was going to happen here, sooner or later. Nothing he could do about it; and he had a war to win, in his office at the Guildhall.

  A slab of rock about the size of a horse's head had turned the hated sedan chair into kindling. Not to worry, he thought cheerfully, I'll walk back. People I pass in the street can stare at me, it'll take their minds off the war.

  On his way down, he stopped a half-platoon of soldiers en route to the front. "Excuse me," he said, "do you know who I am?"

  Embarrassed horror; I've done it again, he thought. "What I mean is," he went on, "do you recognise me?"

  "Of course. You're Chairman Psellus."

  He smiled. "Excellent," he said. "I'm sorry, I'm still not used to being able to order people about. I keep expecting them to ask me who the hell I am, issuing orders. Very well. Come with me." He wiped the smirk off his face and added, "This is very important, do you understand me?"

  He was relieved to find that the streets were empty. He'd sent someone to is
sue a proclamation that everybody not on active service should go home and stay there, but he hadn't really expected it to be obeyed. He made it as far as the Guildhall gates, but then his knee gave way and he couldn't walk any further.

  "I'm very sorry," he said, "but you'll have to carry me."

  He'd been quietly dreading something like this, but the soldiers didn't seem at all put out. Two of them held a spear at approximately knee height, and he sat on it like a child on a swing, his arms round their shoulders to stop him falling off backwards.

  The stairs were rather tricky, but eventually they got him to his office and into his chair. The familiar feel of it revived him to a remarkable extent, and he gave them the names and locations of the people he wanted them to go and fetch. "And do please be quick," he added. "I know it seems unlikely, but this is the most important thing in the City right now."

  They left; and for five minutes or so he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He'd never thought of himself as an old man, as so many of his colleagues and contemporaries did, as soon as they passed fifty. In fact, he realised with a jolt, he had no real idea of himself at all. If he was anything, he was simply an observer, a point of view drifting through events great or trivial, hardly able to distinguish between them from his off-centre, ill-informed standpoint.

  Until now, he thought. If it's true that you're as old as you feel, I'm well over ninety.