by K. J. Parker
The reports were incomplete and unhelpful, drawn from refugees and the very few survivors, and it took a while to piece them together into a coherent narrative. What seemed to have happened was that the latest messiah, who went by the name of Goiauz, had taken it into his head to be mortally offended by the fact that the Belot brothers had chosen to fight their appalling waste-of-time battle on the edge of Mavida land; specifically, after the battle one side or other (unknown which) had disposed of some of the dead bodies by dropping them down a well, which by unlucky chance had tremendous spiritual significance to the Mavida sect to which Goiauz belonged. Prompted by Goiauz, who was said to have been speechless with rage for an entire day, the Mavida elders had cried out for vengeance; unfortunately, since both Imperial armies were long gone and the few Imperial outposts had been either stormed or evacuated during the Belots’ campaign, there was nobody left to be revenged on. By now, however, Goiauz had built up such a head of steam among the tribes that something had to be done, if only to keep them from turning on each other. He therefore launched a surprise attack on the nearest walled city, the southern Blemyan regional capital, Seusa.
The Seusans knew the Mavida as peaceful traders, and were aware that the Imperials had been fighting recently in their territory. When they saw a large nomad caravan approaching the city, therefore, they assumed it was refugees, hastily got together all the food, tents and blankets they could spare and opened the gates to them. A few hundred Seusans survived by hiding in water cisterns and crawling out along an aqueduct; the rest were massacred in the space of a few hours.
By chance, just possibly something to do with the antics of the Imperials, General Raxilo and the Fifth Army were conducting manoeuvres fifty miles north of Seusa. The army, eight thousand regular infantry and two thousand tribal cavalry, marched day and night and caught up with the retreating raiders just before they crossed through the Split Hoof Pass. Slipping past them under cover of darkness, they took up a strong position in the pass itself. The intelligence they’d received suggested that the Mavida might number something in the region of three thousand combatants. The intelligence was wrong, by at least a factor of ten. The ensuing battle was very short. Afterwards, Goiauz sent four prisoners, with General Raxilo’s head preserved in a jar of wild honey, to inform the queen that a state of war now existed between the Mavida and the Kingdom of Blemya. He added that the forces deployed at Seusa represented only a tiny fraction of the manpower at his disposal, all of whom would be honoured to fight to the death to avenge the defiling of the holy well. Tell your queen we are coming, he said. Tell her the sky is about to fall.
You couldn’t really call it a letter. Letters are written on paper or parchment, in ink. They aren’t generally inscribed in the wax seal of a jar of ginger preserved in syrup. Of course, a subject, even a Grand Logothete, never writes personal letters to a queen.
It’s bitter cold, he wrote, which is stupid, because it’s also unbearably hot. I mean unbearable. Hours at a time, you sit there thinking, I just can’t deal with this any more, I want it to stop now, please. Yes, I’m whining. And, yes, I’ve got it really, really easy, because I’m lolling about in a covered chaise fanning myself with a great big fan, I think it actually did come from a tart’s boudoir, it’s all pink feathers and tastefully drawn erotica, which is an enormous joke for the men. They’re the ones who are really suffering, because we’re marching in full armour, day and night. They have to sleep in full kit because we have no idea when the bastards are going to attack. They haven’t yet, but we can’t take the risk. And then, at night, it’s absolutely freezing, and no wood or anything for a fire, just a few blankets. We have about a hundred thousand gallons of water in oak barrels on pack horses, but the ration for the men is two pints a day; I really want to stick to the same as they’re getting, but sometimes I just give in and beg for more water, which of course they give me; and you know what, they brought ice. Yes, really, ice, just for me, in a huge insulated packing case. I was so angry when I found out, I made them smash it all up and distribute it to the men – well, there wasn’t nearly enough, there’s forty thousand of them, but everyone in C company, first battalion Life Guards got a tiny little splinter. Now I really, really wish I hadn’t done that. Ice, for crying out loud. I’d sell my soul for a fistful of ice, round about noon. Now, of course, I’d sell my soul for an extra blanket. I’m pathetic, aren’t I?
Still, I’m glad I came. Let me qualify that. I really, really hate myself for being so stupid, I shouldn’t have come, I have no place here, I’m an intolerable nuisance they really could do without and I’m suffering more than I thought humanly possible. But I promise you, if you aren’t here, if you aren’t going through all this hell, there’s no way in a million years you’d ever begin to understand. Not that me understanding matters a damn, of course. But – amazing, and I can’t understand it at all – I’m doing good being here. Honestly, these people are amazing – amazingly brave, amazingly strong and enduring and uncomplaining, amazingly cheerful. And they really do appreciate me being here – the Grand bloody Logothete, out in the desert with them, leading them. I’m doing no such thing, of course, I’m being carried in a covered chair. I’m – well – luggage. It’s the idea of it that matters. It’s always the idea – like you on the stupid throne, ten feet up in the air, like all those bloody stupid ceremonies and rituals, they make the idea, and the idea matters, it genuinely matters and makes a difference. These men are here, suffering all this, because of the idea – of Blemya, of a gold and ivory queen on a gold and ivory throne ten feet up, glorious, wonderful, divine. They love you so much. Honestly, they do. It’s such an easy thing to say, the men love you so much they’re willing to die for you, for you and Blemya. But, so help me, it’s actually really true. Because of the idea. Because the idea is so much more real to them than the heat and the sweat and the thirst and the pain, and don’t get me started on scorpions. Those things are just temporary, commonplace. Blink, and you miss them. One man in an army this size is so small you can’t see him. But the idea is vast, eternal, hugely eternally true. I understand that now, like I never could back home. You and I, doing it every day, mistake it for a lie and a sham. You have to see it from a distance, like the frescoes on the ceiling of the White temple. Seen from a long way away, from here, you suddenly realise it’s all true.
No space left. Look after yourself. Back as soon as I can. Dax.
He put the nail away carefully in the hole in the little folding table, so that only the head was visible. Then he replaced the cloth cover on the jar and bound it as tightly as he could with the original hemp string. It wasn’t perfect. The string was too short to get a firm grip on, and tying the knot was incredibly fiddly. He did the best he could.
He opened the tent flap and called for a messenger. There was always one on duty, day or night, ready to saddle up and ride. He handed him six brass rolls of official despatches, a silver roll for the Council, two gilded rolls for the lodge. Then, as the messenger was about to leave, he called him back. “Do me a favour,” he said. “This jar. It’s just ginger in syrup, but I happen to know it’s the queen’s favourite. Mind you give it to her senior lady-in-waiting, tell her it’s got to be tasted before it goes through to Her Majesty. You got that? Splendid, thank you.”
He sprawled on the camp bed and tried to sleep, but he was freezing cold and his clothes were still wringing wet with the day’s sweat. He lay on his back and tried to think of something useful, but no luck.
He was therefore wide awake an hour before first light, when some gorgeous creature in a gilded breastplate and helmet twitched back the tent flap and said that, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, the general would be grateful for a moment of his time. Oh God, Daxin thought; he stuffed his feet in his sopping wet shoes and stumbled awkwardly out of the tent into the pale blue darkness.
It was the only time of day when it was neither freezing nor roasting; the only time when anybody’s brain worked worth a damn. The gen
eral was sitting outside his tent, in an old tunic with a faded regulation cloak over his shoulders. There were a dozen gilded men standing round him. There was also the usual folding table, covered in maps weighted down with stones and small glass bottles.
The general waited until the man who’d summoned Daxin had gone. Then he waved his hand, and one of the gilded men unfolded a chair. Daxin sat on it.
“Nobody here but us grown-ups,” said General Ixion. Daxin liked him. He didn’t look like a general, although he had a reputation as a diehard steelneck. But he was long and thin, bald, with a huge forehead; long, thin fingers, weedy clerk’s forearms. You’d have said he was a book-keeper or at best an academic. He was notoriously short-sighted, and deaf in one ear. “I thought we could talk about a few things.”
Daxin nodded. “Whatever you like,” he said.
“Don’t mind them,” Ixion said, nodding at the gilded men. “My personal staff. You can pretend they aren’t there. Obviously they’re totally discreet, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Would you like some breakfast, while you’re here?”
Breakfast ration was a fist-sized chunk of munitions bread and a small cup of water. “Bit early for me.”
“You sure? We’re having pancakes and peach tea.”
“That’d be lovely, thank you.”
Ixion nodded, and one of the gilded men sort of melted away into the night. “Now then,” he said. “Excuse me speaking frankly, but we’ve only got half an hour before it gets hot and my brains boil. Why are you here?”
Speaking frankly. Oh well. “I thought I ought to be here.”
“Really? Why?”
“To see what war’s really like,” Daxin said, “and because the queen can’t lead her men into battle, but I believe it’s good for morale to have some sort of figurehead—”
“Yes,” the general interrupted, “it is. The boys like it. They like it that you’re mucking in, more or less. They know I don’t do that stuff, but that’s all right because they know and trust me. They say, Ixion likes his partridge soup and roast quail with onions, he needs to keep his strength up for all the thinking he does.” He grinned. “If I mucked in and ate bread and water, they’d reckon I was no good. Do you understand that?”
“I think so.”
“Good. You’re smart. Now then, we’re here.” He placed a delicate fingertip on the map, in the middle of what looked like blank space. “The main Imperial road is here, of course.” A pale red line. “Needless to say, we can’t use it, because that’s where they expect us to come from. So we’re cutting down across the flat here, with a view to getting between them and the water at –” the fingertip moved to a tiny blue spot “– here, quite a major oasis. No name on the map but the locals call it Long Side. We don’t actually know where the enemy is, out here somewhere, but as far as we can tell they’ve gambled on getting to the water before we do. That’s what it’s all about out here, getting to water. You have a certain amount of time to reach a certain place, or you’re dead. Interesting rules to play by, I must say.”
He paused for breath. Daxin thought about the huge oak barrels on the heavy carts. Lots of water, but not nearly enough. “How about us?” he said. “Are we gambling?”
“Of course,” Ixion said. “But we have an advantage. They don’t think very highly of us. They think we move more slowly than we actually do, and they think we don’t know the desert. Which we don’t, but, thank God, we can read books, and we can bully prisoners. They therefore believe that by the time we reach Long Side, trundling slowly down the road, they’ll be there waiting for us, and we’ll have to attack their prepared positions or else die of thirst. So, my idea is, we get there first, we prepare positions, they have to attack us or die of thirst. It’s horribly simple, but it was all I could think of. Well?” he said. “What do you think?”
Daxin was mildly stunned. “You want my opinion?”
Ixion nodded. “You’re a clever man,” he said. “I’ve been watching you, the way you run things, the way you manage people. The fact you’re here shows you’re smart but also fairly—” He smiled. “I was going to say green or inexperienced, but I think the word I’m looking for is young. Anyway, if I’m to call the whole thing off and march back to Carna, I want to be able to say I was only obeying orders.”
Daxin thought for a moment. “This is the point of no return, I take it,” he said. “If we go any further, we won’t have enough water to get back.”
Ixion beamed at him. “I have to say,” he said, “it’s the safe thing to do. It’s what I want to do. But I’m not going to do it unless someone orders me to, because if we can get to Long Side before they do and if we can kick the shit out of them there, we might just win this war and save Blemya. If we don’t, I don’t see how we’re going to beat them.”
“But I thought,” Daxin said, “we don’t know very much about them. So how do we know they’re going to beat us?”
Ixion looked at one of his gilded men, who nodded. “We know enough for that,” he said, “simply from what we got out of the survivors.” He swallowed a long drink from his tea bowl. “Essentially, they fight like our own cavalry do – in quick, shoot fast and often, out again like lightning. Our boys who made it out of the battle say that their arrows went through sixteen-gauge steel like it wasn’t there. You’ve never seen our cavalry in action so you wouldn’t know, but, trust me, the thought of being on the wrong side of them’s enough to scare me rigid. By the sound of it, these people are like them, but better. You know how Tolois beat the Imperials, back in the War of Independence? Cavalry. Cavalry just like these people, and the Imperial regulars couldn’t do a damn thing about them; they just got shot up and died where they stood. Since then we haven’t evolved a strategy against swarm tactics by mounted archers, why should we, we thought we had the monopoly. Turns out that’s not the case. The same thing that’s made us invincible makes them invincible too. Also,” he added, lowering his voice, “you’ve got to ask yourself. Our tribal cavalry are marvellous soldiers, fight like lions, don’t know the meaning of fear, and their officers are good men; I’ve served with them for thirty years, it never occurs to me to think of them as different any more. But the plain fact is, they’ve got a hell of a lot more in common with these savages than they have with us. If we start losing battles, if they take another city or two – well, you don’t need me to draw you a picture. No, we need to beat them now, before it all goes any further. And not just beat them, wipe them out. Make sure only a tiny few ever get home to tell the tale. See, once they get the idea that the Kingdom’s not unbeatable—” He shrugged. “It’s all smoke and mirrors, isn’t it? The whole business.”
Daxin made himself take his time before answering. “I think we should turn back,” he said.
Ixion’s face didn’t change. “I see. Why’s that?”
Daxin said: “I think we’ll get to the oasis and find they’re already there. If it’s that important, and they’re anything like our tribes, they’ll be there. I’m not a soldier, I don’t know anything about tactics or the art of war or anything like that, and I can count how many tribesmen I’ve met in my life on the fingers of one hand. But I’ve met a few, and I’ve talked to them, and I’ve read a bit of history, and you say these invaders are like them only more so. If that’s the case, they’ll be at the oasis right now.” He shrugged. “That’s my opinion. You’re the soldier. It’s entirely up to you.”
Ixion leaned back in his chair. “That’s not a direct order, then.”
“No,” Daxin said.
“Pity.” Ixion swilled the dregs round in his cup. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong. I’ve got scouts out deep, they’ve got right up close to the oasis, and there’s no sign of them, no dust clouds, no tracks, nothing. A caravan that size is going to throw up a dust cloud you can see for miles.”
“Not at night,” Daxin said quietly.
“Can’t find your way in the desert at night,” Ixion said crisply. “Can’t
be done. If it could be done, we’d be doing it.”
Daxin nodded slowly. “If I wanted to win a really important battle,” he said, “I think I’d try and find a way of doing something that couldn’t be done. It’d give me an advantage.”
“Some things really are impossible,” Ixion said. “Like navigating the desert at night.” He waved his hand, and someone took away the breakfast tray.
“That’s all right, then,” Daxin said. He stood up. “Nothing to worry about.”
“You could give me a direct order.”
“There’s this thing called the separation of powers,” Daxin said.
“Not out here.”
Daxin tapped the side of his head. “In here.” He took a step back from the table. “If you really thought we were walking into a trap, you’d turn back. But you don’t think that. You’re just worried. I can understand that. I was born worried. Thank you for the pancakes.”
They went on until just before noon. Then they turned back.
Daxin asked to see the general. The general was sorry but he was rather busy. He would be delighted to speak to the Grand Logothete just as soon as he had a moment.
Ixion devised a drill, in the event of an attack. The column was to stop and fall back, forming a massive square, twenty shields deep, round the water barrels. They practised it three times, and the men’s performance was deemed satisfactory. After the third rehearsal, Daxin asked one of the gilded staff officers if the general had a moment yet. Unfortunately no.
“Only,” Daxin said – the gilded man was anxious to get away, but Daxin made it clear he wasn’t finished with him yet. “Only, it seems to me that all these manoeuvres to form a square are going to be pretty hard to do if we’re being shot at all the time. The men have got to fall back in order, so most of them at any given time are going to be just standing there, begging to be shot at. I don’t know if the general’s considered that—”
