Savages

by K. J. Parker

  The man in the leather apron came back and called out, “Right, that’s it.” Everyone else put down their charcoal sticks and their saws, but Raffen was three-quarters of the way through a cut, and didn’t want to stop. He heard his saw against a wall of silence, which made him feel a bit silly; but two more strokes of the saw finished the job and he put the completed triangle on top of the pile and stepped back from the bench. The kind man on the right, who’d taught him all he knew about carpentry, was scowling at him.

  “All right, clear off,” said the man in the leather apron. “Not you.”

  Not-you was Raffen. He stayed where he was; the rest of the shift walked round him, as though he was a rock in the sea with the tide going out. One or two of them looked at him; curiosity, hatred, pity. When they’d all gone, the man who’d been staring and the leather-apron man came up to him.

  “You’re good at this,” the staring man said.

  “Thanks,” Raffen replied.

  “And quick,” said the leather apron man.

  “Am I?”

  “I was counting,” the watcher said. “In the time it took for the rest of them to do two planks, you did three.”

  Raffen frowned. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  The leather apron man pulled a face Raffen wasn’t supposed to have seen and couldn’t quite parse. “It’s fine,” the watcher said. “No problem with that. Like I said, you’re a good worker.”

  “Ah well,” Raffen said. “Back home I was a wainwright, see. You had to be handy with a saw in my line of work.”

  “They were supposed to send us only skilled men,” leather apron said mournfully. “Half these monkeys don’t know one end of a saw from the other.”

  “You fancy something a bit more interesting than cutting out triangles all day?” the watcher said. “There’s more money. A bit.”

  “Sure,” Raffen said. “What have I got to do?”

  “Planing and facing, a bit of jointing. Right up your street, I should imagine.”

  Raffen had a vague idea what planing and jointing would be; he’d never heard of facing. “If you like,” he said. “How much more money?”

  The two men looked at each other. “Thirty trachy,” the watcher said.

  Trachy? The men in the woods had talked about trachy, but hadn’t explained what they were. Still, thirty of anything sounded good. “That’ll be fine,” he replied, which seemed to surprise the two men, though they tried not to show it. “Thing is, I’m not used to the sort of tools you people use here. They’re all different, back home. Cruder.”

  Leather apron laughed. The watcher grinned. “Like the saw, you mean?”

  “Exactly, yes.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Ulfilas here’ll give you a crash course in the morning. You’ll get used to them in no time, smart man like you. What did you say your name was?”

  “Raffen.”

  “Good man. Be here, seven sharp, and we’ll show you where to go.” They started to walk away. “Excuse me,” Raffen said.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Where do I go now?” he asked. “Only, I didn’t happen to see which way the others went.”

  Leather apron seemed to find that mildly amusing. “You haven’t got lodgings, then,” the watcher said.

  “Lodgings? No. Should I?”

  The two men looked at each other again. “Out of the gates,” the watcher said, “turn left, keep on going down the hill till you come to a big archway. Through that, and you should see a load of your lot milling about. They’ll tell you where to go. And if you reach the river, you’ve gone too far. That’s odd,” he went on, talking to leather apron, “I thought Ledulf was sorting out billeting arrangements.”

  “Oh, him,” leather apron grunted. “He’s no bloody good. Gone home early, I’ll bet, and doesn’t give a damn.”

  They seemed to have lost interest in him, so he started to walk away. He hadn’t got far when the watcher called him back. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “Have I?”

  “Your wages,” the watcher said slowly, as to a child. “You want them, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes. Where do I—?”

  “Office. Out of here, turn right, it’s a little shed thing. Hurry up, or she’ll have gone home.”

  He hurried. The woman in the shed ticked his name off a long list, then handed him a little cloth bag.

  “What’s this?”

  She didn’t seem inclined to reply. He thanked her, left the shed, walked a dozen yards until he reached some steps, sat down and opened the bag. He peered into it, then spilled its contents out into his hand. He found his palm filled with a heap of tiny thin copper discs, irregular in size and shape and slightly dished. The biggest one was the size of his thumbnail. He peered at it and could just make out two little human figures, stick men holding objects too stylised to identify. He counted the bits of copper. There were a hundred and six.

  Coins, presumably. He thought he knew about coins. They were silver, about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and a sixteenth-inch or thereabouts thick, with a man’s profile stamped on one side, some sort of bird on the back. That man, the other one, had had a big pot full of the things, in among the rest of the silver, though of course he’d measured silver by weight, like any other commodity. Nine ounces of good silver paid compensation for a day labourer; twelve for a stockman; fifty for a free man’s sister, ninety for a son or a brother. The other one had received a hundred and thirty ounces for his father, killed by a single axe cut to the head while counting sheep beside the river, but that was a special case, because he was a man of considerable importance and standing in the community, therefore much more expensive. When the other one killed the men who’d ordered his father’s death, he only paid a hundred and ten for the pair, though of course there’d been trouble about that—

  He shovelled the bits of copper foil around the palm of his hand with his fingertip. A hundred and six. Well. Then he put them back in the bag and went where he’d been told to go.

  Turned out he wasn’t rich after all. A bed for the night (eighteen inches of a sort of shelf sticking out of a wall, shared with twelve other men) cost him forty-six trachy. Some sort of soup with bits in was twenty-five. Beer was twelve trachy a jug, but he couldn’t be bothered.

  “Two million.”

  Aimeric smiled at him.

  Calojan looked vaguely stunned. “But the order was for one million. Look, here in the contract.”

  “You said two million would be nice.” Aimeric shrugged. “So.”

  Calojan leaned back in his chair, and Aimeric felt the full force of his attention. It was like looking directly into the sun; don’t ever do it, his father had told him once, so of course he had. He’d counted up to six before his nerve failed him, and here he was, still able to see. “So this is by way of being a nice surprise.”

  “I suppose you could call it that, yes.”

  “Even though it’s not my birthday.”

  Aimeric felt cold. It was just possible that he’d misread this man completely, in which case everything would soon start collapsing around his ears. He realised he was holding his breath.

  “Don’t ever do anything like that again,” Calojan said. “Understood?”

  Aimeric nodded. He nearly said something—an apology, something of the kind—but decided at the last moment that silence would be better. He waited.

  “That said,” Calojan went on, “two million. That opens up a certain number of possibilities I hadn’t even bothered to consider.” He shook himself, like a wet dog. “How the hell did you manage it, just out of interest?”

  Aimeric nerved himself and smiled. “Trade secret.”

  “Not from me.”

  Fine. “I simplified things,” he went on. “Like, for example, it’s a skilled job applying the fletchings. You’re apprenticed seven years to a master fletcher, who teaches you how to space the feathers evenly around the end of the shaft, all by eye. But then all
you do is dab on a bit of glue and press the feather down.”

  “So?”

  “So I had these jigs made up, lots of them. Two wooden triangles, with a hole in the middle. You stick the shaft through the hole. You glue a feather on the top. Then you turn both triangles onto their second side, if you see what I mean. Stick a feather on the top. Third side, stick on a feather. Job done. You could train monkeys to do it. The whole mystery and craft of the fletcher rendered irrelevant in one easy step.”

  Calojan frowned. “And that works, does it?”

  Aimeric nodded at the arrow lying on Calojan’s desk. “Judge for yourself.”

  “I might just do that.” Calojan stood up, crossed the room, opened a cupboard in the panelled wall that you’d never have seen if you didn’t know it was there. From it he took a long red lacquered case, hinged down one side, which he laid on the desk. Inside was a beautiful Aram no Vei horn-and-sinew composite bow, its back dappled and deeply shining, unstrung, so that it bend backwards like a half-moon. Calojan strung it effortlessly, with a movement Aimeric didn’t quite follow; it was supposed to take two men and a special jig, though of course the savages had some clever knack they never showed anyone.

  “Stand up,” Calojan said.

  Aimeric did as he was told, though he could barely move for sheer cold terror. “Short-range accuracy is a notoriously poor indication of long-range stability,” he said, “but we haven’t got time to traipse out to the Artillery Yards, and besides, I’m not that good a shot. Now, I’d like you to stand perfectly still.”

  He’s playing a game with me, Aimeric told himself. Calojan was rubbing a little block of beeswax up and down the bowstring. “On the desk,” he said, not looking up, “you’ll see a copy of Essays on Military Logistics. I want you to pick it up. Go on.”

  The book was roughly the size of a roof tile. Aimeric took hold of it, dropped it, picked it up again.

  “Splendid. Now, holding it by the edges, rest it upright on the top of your head.”

  “I don’t—”

  Calojan looked at him. He did as he was told.

  “That’s the idea. Now, keep absolutely still. If you flinch, assuming you survive, we’ll just have to do it all over again.”

  He felt as though there was something big and cold inside him, right in his centre. Calojan took the arrow and clipped the notch onto the bowstring, drew back half an inch against the string, walked backwards five paces, lifted the bow. He could see Calojan’s right eye directly over the arrowhead. He knew he had to watch the eye, because if he looked away for a split second, he’d flinch, move, fall down; the eye knew what it was doing; the eye gave him strength. He heard a faint sigh and a creak, the ox-horn belly of the bow compressing as Calojan drew. He had his feet wide apart, and his shoulders were splayed like the wings of a panicky chicken.

  Oh well, Aimeric thought. His hands, fingertips on the edges of the book, were perfectly still.

  The book was snatched away from him and then he heard a whacking noise; later he realised, like his mother beating the carpet. He stayed exactly where he was.

  Calojan held his position for a full second, then slowly lowered the bow. “Always wanted to do that,” he said, “never found anyone stupid enough to let me try. Now, let’s see.”

  Aimeric felt so fragile that, if he tried to move, he’d break a bone. Calojan walked past him, stooped to pick something up. Very carefully he turned to look.

  Calojan was examining the book. It had a hole torn right through it, top left but comfortably inside the rectangle. Bits of feather stuck out of the hole. A few yards further on, five feet or so from the panelled wall, the arrowshaft lay on the ground, lacking head and feathers. Calojan was examining the wall.

  “Not bad,” he said. “It’s gone in the full length of the head and a quarter-inch of the tang. Mind you, that’s a hundred-and-ten pound bow. Not a great shot,” he added sadly. “After all, ten yards, it’s a pretty big aiming mark. On a regulation target, that’d have scored me four out of a possible six.”

  Aimeric said quietly, “Did you have to do that?”

  Calojan had his back to him. “Traditional way of proving arrows among the Aram Cosseilhatz. Actually, they don’t do it as a matter of routine. But the purchaser has the right. I shall, of course, have to offer myself as a target when I deliver these arrows of yours; they may take me up on it or they may not, depends on what mood they’re in.” Now he turned to face Aimeric. “Just so you appreciate,” he said. “Supplying the government may be no big deal. Supplying me is different. All right?”

  “I don’t suppose you ever made my father—”

  “No,” Calojan replied, “I didn’t. I never met him. He dealt with the Armoury Board. You chose to deal with me. I’m a rather different proposition.” He smiled. “Drink?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Calojan put the bow down carefully on the desk and poured two glasses from a decanter. “It’s all about the spine of the arrow, you see; that’s how stiff it is, the degree to which it bends. Well, you know that, obviously. Spine too weak or too strong, shot goes high or low, or it flounders or fishtails, could go anywhere. I’m really pleased you got the spine just right.”

  Aimeric had forgotten about spine; most definitely hadn’t mentioned it to the suppliers. “The Cosseilhatz have these tall cylindrical felt hats,” Calojan said. “Rather smaller target than the book there, but of course they’re much better shots than me. Wish me luck.”

  Aimeric tried not to gobble the drink all at once, but didn’t quite manage it. “So you’re happy with the order.”

  “Bloody ecstatic,” Calojan said. “I can now fight two major battles back to back. Lucky me.” He shrugged. “Seriously, you may have won us the war. Or I might lose a battle and then we’re all dead. In any event, I’ll see to it you get paid before I leave.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down now? My legs are a bit wobbly.”

  “Sure, help yourself. It does that to you, the first time. Actually, first time I did that, I pissed myself good and proper. You’re clearly a man of steel. Another?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Then you might as well go home. We’ll talk about the next contract when you’re feeling a bit less fraught. Want the book? As a souvenir?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself. Thanks for calling in.”

  Aimeric walked quite normally from the palace to the corner of Coppergate and Straight Acre. Then he had to sit down on a low wall, and stayed there for some time until he got the use of his legs back. Among the thoughts that crossed his mind; just as well, as things turned out, that the arrow he’d taken with him had been the original one Calojan had given him as a sample.

  Tradition required that the Great King of the Sashan should be a man of unpredictable moods and volatile temper, as reluctant to forgive failure as to neglect to reward success. Consequently, he had already been obliged to execute three of his four genuinely talented generals, and promote worthy but uninspired thirty-year men to take their places. He was uncomfortably aware that he now had only one man left capable of giving Butcher Calojan a run for his money. So, although the Sashan army still outnumbered the Imperials eight to one, his territories were still largely intact, his treasury tolerably full and his front line still only sixty miles from the gates of the Imperial City, the Great King had no option but to regard the immense expeditionary force that left Limes Sasani the day after the autumn Fire Festival as his last serious chance of winning the war and avoiding a generation’s worth of miserable attrition. He sent Atrabanes, the expedition’s commander, the usual commission. It was inscribed on silk in gold ink, and the immaculate Classical calligraphy set out the King’s demands; seek out the enemy and destroy them, burn their cities, enslave their women and children, drive off their herds and flocks; above all, do not fail. With the commission inside the message tube (ivory, with gold filigree decoration) was another, shorter message, written on a scrap of linen paper in
the King’s own handwriting; You will be careful, won’t you? We’re all depending on you. I simply don’t know what’ll happen otherwise.

  Atrabanes had a pretty idea of what would happen. If he lost, he could predict at least one consequence with absolute certainty. He tried not to think about that. Instead, he concentrated his remarkable mind on the problems facing him, not the least of which was the quite ridiculous size of the army he now commanded.

  It was the traditional proud boast of the Sashan that, wherever they went, their armies drank rivers dry. In this case, unfortunately, it was quite true. Small rivers, anyway; and most of the few rivers between the frontier and the Imperial City were small. True, the Macour and the Quento were in spate; more than enough water there, in fact rather too much, since he had to find some way of getting just over a hundred thousand men, forty thousand animals and an unascertained number of carts and wagons across them without disaster or excessive delay. His reward for doing so, should he get that far, would be the chance to play chess for his life with Calojan, the White Death of the Sashan, somewhere on the moors or in the cabbage-fields beyond them. No pressure.

  Calojan, he knew, would already know the full size and nature of his army, and of course he’d be familiar with every inch of terrain westwards from the City to the frontier. Thus informed, he would by now have predicted every step of the invasion and worked out foolproof strategies, based on what any good Sashan commander would be most likely to do. A man like that, with his unparalleled record, didn’t just make it up as he went along. Therefore—

  Instead of marching west on the main coach road, Atrabanes headed north, following the Quento until he reached the coast. He moved quickly, covering the seventy miles in four days. He then went west, methodically sacking the north-coast ports; their governors made no effort to resist, but concentrated their efforts on evacuating the civilian populations by sea. All eight of the String of Pearls were entered, looted and burnt to the ground inside a fortnight, and as yet Atrabanes hadn’t shot an arrow or seen an Imperial soldier. He hated to think of what it would cost the Great King to rebuild all that, once it was his; by some educated estimates, a fifth of the Imperial economy was now ashes, rubble and junk. There was also the small matter of where a third of a million refugees had been taken to; his reports said, the City, but that didn’t make sense. The last thing the emperor needed, with the very real prospect of a siege, was yet more hungry mouths to feed inside Florian’s Wall. What was Calojan playing at? He called staff meetings, set up think-tanks and working parties, the best minds in the King’s dominions. They reported back with a wide range of hypotheses, none of which made any sense at all. He moved on, until he was in sight of the golden spire of the Lesser Studium at Mondhem, the second city and second greatest port in the empire. It was utterly inconceivable, he was sure, that Calojan would simply evacuate and let him destroy it. Wrong again.