The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  "Funny man," Basso said sourly. "And it doesn't work, because you're not me."

  "Accepted," Bassano said. "In which case, yes, I promise. Malice isn't my primary motive."

  "Fine," Basso said. "What is?"

  "You know what, I have no idea." Bassano shrugged. "I just asked myself, 'do I want to do this?', and I answered myself, 'yes, I do.' " He raised his eyebrows. "Is that a valid reason, do you think?"

  Basso said solemnly, "It's the only one that's any good at all."

  Twelve

  "All I have to do," Basso said, "is write a letter, and twelve thousand Cazars drop what they're doing and come running. Must be a strange place, where you come from."

  Aelius laughed. "I think you'd find it very strange," he said. "Basically, it's a mess. If you'd ever been there, you'd understand why its population's so mad keen to escape."

  Basso frowned. "Oh come on," he said. "It can't be that bad."

  On the table between them lay the muster requisitions, now duly ratified by the House. They authorised the First Citizen to hire soldiers, at his unfettered discretion, for the Mavortine war. Basso himself had insisted on a maximum of fifteen thousand for a period of six months; the House would have given him twice that, or simply left the number, duration of service and scales of pay entirely up to him.

  "If I say it's a sea of grass," Aelius said, "you'd think it was just a cliche. Also, the sea's flat. The Peninsular is--well, it's like the desert, only it's green, not white or red. We haven't got hills so much as dunes in the grass. And open, as far as the eye can see."

  "That doesn't sound so bad," Basso said.

  "Then I'm not describing it right," retorted Aelius. "For one thing, there's no trees. There used to be a few, but my people cut them all down and split them up really small to make into arrow-shafts, or charcoal for steelworking. Talking of which, all the weapons and bits of armour are really old; there's nothing left to burn, so we can't make anything any more, and we can't afford to import, not even pick-ups from other people's battlefields. Everything's old and mended so many times you can't see what it used to look like when it was new. Everywhere's so overgrazed now, we kill most of our calves at ten months, and then we have to sell nearly all the meat to buy grain for the winter."

  Basso nodded. "Cazar veal," he said. "I assumed it was your traditional delicacy."

  "Hardly." Aelius grinned. "On the rare occasions we eat beef, it's some stringy old brood cow that's gone barren or dropped dead. Literally, it hurts your jaws chewing it, and it's always undercooked because we're so short of fuel for our fires. We sell all our wool and hides, we get pennies for them because the Auxentines have basically got a monopoly and decide the prices. We live in turf shacks in the winter and tents in summer, because there's no building wood and no stone worth a damn; it's all chalk." He shook his head sadly. "In all our history we've never been conquered by foreigners, and you know why? Not because we're such wonderful fighters. It's because we haven't got anything worth conquering us for."

  "Except lead," Basso said quietly. "And tin, and a bit of silver."

  "Why bother?" Aelius was scowling. "When we'll dig it out of the ground for you and deliver it to the beach, in return for less wheat and barley than you'd feed to your chickens. We can't use it ourselves, nothing to melt it down with. The worst part of it," Aelius added, "is that it's all our own fault. Can't blame wicked imperialist foreigners, because we've always been left alone. The fact of it is, the land sucks, but the worst thing about it is the people."

  Basso made a maybe-you're-right gesture. "The strange thing is," he said, "Cazars over here are as good as gold--they work hard, they're happy with low wages and rotten living conditions, they don't cause trouble; they make the best soldiers in the world. Why aren't they like that at home, I wonder?"

  "On their best behaviour," Aelius replied sourly, "for fear they'll get sent home."

  Twelve thousand men, out of thin air. The recruiting officers said that the only problem had been choosing who to accept out of so many eminently suitable, desperately eager candidates.

  They arrived on grain freighters, lumber boats and stone barges, all wearing identical light brown woollen shirts, trousers and shaggy-fringed cloaks, each man carrying a goatskin bowcase and quiver and an empty satchel woven from dried rushes, which had contained their three days' rations for the journey.

  ("They travel light, then," Basso said.

  "Not difficult," Aelius replied. "That's all they've got.")

  Basso had appointed a man called Choniates, a senior supervisor from the Severus shipyards, to deal with housing, feeding, clothing and equipping them. It was an appalling task, which Choniates carried out calmly and efficiently; all Basso had to do was approve and sign the book-thick sheaves of bills that arrived on his desk twice a day. Choniates requisitioned the old, disused cattle market, two miles outside the City. The sheds he had built there were brutally sparse (still better than anything you'd find back home, Aelius said), but the roofs were weathertight and the chimneys drew; the men slept on fleeces on the floor and ate three meals a day, porridge, bread and bean-and-bacon stew. The building materials, fleeces and most of the food were supplied to the government by a specially formed trading consortium, financed and largely owned by the Bank of Charity & Social Justice, at five per cent above cost; because the company's buyers had struck such good deals with suppliers in Scleria and the West, the company made good money and the Treasury paid less than market wholesale. Any other mercantile concern in the Republic wouldn't have broken even at those prices. Military equipment, everything from helmets to boot-nails to corn-mills, had to come from the Arsenal, which meant that deliveries were late or non-existent, and the quality was embarrassing. On Basso's instructions, Choniates had every item inspected, and everything that didn't meet the Arsenal's own specifications (well over half, as it turned out) was stamped with a Condemned mark, returned and not paid for. Very soon, furious questions were asked in the House, and the Arsenal's monopoly, enshrined in law for a hundred years, was quickly withdrawn. The resulting tender was won by a specially formed manufacturing consortium, financed and largely owned by the Bank. Production got under way astonishingly quickly--Basso had been quietly buying up plant and equipment and poaching the Arsenal's best workers ever since the war was first debated--and both quality and productivity were well above specification, for a fraction more than the Arsenal would have charged.

  ("You can call it that if you like," Basso said to Bassano. "I call it business. All good stuff, all on time, under budget. I can't help it if we make money at the same time."

  "Yes, Uncle," Bassano said, grinning.

  "Besides." Basso frowned. "The Bank needs the money. There's a good chance we'll be lending a whole lot to the Treasury before all this is over. If we haven't got it, we can't lend it."

  "True," Bassano replied. "And do you think it makes any difference that, to all intents and purposes, you'll be lending the Treasury its own money?"

  Basso considered that for a moment, then said, "No.")

  As well as the twelve thousand infantry, Basso had hired three thousand Hus light cavalry. They, however, would be shipped direct to Mavortis when the time came. They had everything they needed already, and they came with a reputation for not being able to tell the difference between friendly civilians and the enemy.

  Aelius lent Bassano a book. It was, Bassano said later, the most incongruous moment of his life. "In a way, it was like someone pouring an eggcupful of water into the sea," he said. "After all, I've spent my entire life reading books, it's really the only thing I'm any good at. And there's Aelius: only ever owned one book in his life, and he's lending it to me."

  Basso raised an eyebrow. "What's it called?"

  "The Art of War," Bassano said. "By Jotapianus Tacticus."

  "Never heard of it."

  "Nor me," Bassano confessed. "And I've been through the Academy library, and the House library, and all the booksellers; I thought I'd got the
complete set of military manuals."

  "Read any of them?"

  "Every one," Bassano said. "No, really. I've always been a quick reader. Right now I'm gorged with strategic and tactical information, like a flea full of blood. How much of it I'll remember in two weeks' time is anybody's guess, but right now, I'm probably the world's leading expert on military theory. Stress on the word theory," he added with a grin. "As far as I'm concerned, it's four-dimensional chess, plus an enormous amount of administration and bureaucracy. I can tell you exactly how to compile a composite materiel status database, as recommended by Chrysostomatus."

  Basso winced. "Please don't."

  "You don't know what you're missing," Bassano said. "But anyway, I went through all the summaries and epitomes and concordances, and there's no references anywhere to Jotapianus Tacticus; he's not part of the orthodox canon, which would tend to suggest he's no good."

  "Have you read it?"

  Bassano nodded. "It's pretty basic stuff," he said. "Large chunks are just copied out of earlier books, and the original material is either banal or bizarre. I think it's probably a potboiler slung together in five minutes by some hack, a hundred and twenty years ago."

  Basso shrugged. "Ah well."

  "Quite. Only," Bassano went on, "Aelius obviously worships it like it's the true revelation of the Invincible Sun. It's practically falling to bits, and it's been lovingly stitched and pasted back together again I don't know how many times. I get the impression he carries it with him everywhere he goes, and reads a chapter every night before going to sleep. Which is crazy," Bassano added, "since Aelius has forgotten more about soldiering than this Jotapianus character ever knew."

  "Make a point of thanking him," Basso said.

  "Oh, I will." He grinned. "I believe he'll be vastly relieved to get it back. He's asked me twice already if I've had a chance to look at it yet, and what did I think of it?"

  Bassano went further. On a whim, he hired the best firm of professional researchers in the City, and when they discovered a copy of Further Observations on the Art of War by Jotapianus Tacticus in an obscure sub-faculty library's reserve stacks, he had it copied out (with the illustrations) and gave it to Aelius when he returned his book. Aelius was stunned and couldn't think of anything to say. It was quite embarrassing, Bassano said, and he was glad to get away without being cried over. Basso, however, thought that the kindest thing Bassano did was not tell Aelius about the brief article on Jotapianus the researchers found in the General Summary, a three-hundred-year-old Auxentine encyclopedia. Jotapianus, it turned out, was a schoolteacher from a small town in the Eastern Empire, author of over a hundred books, ninety-eight of which had not survived, on a range of subjects from astronomy to fish recipes; his entire output was summed up by the encyclopedia with the single word "worthless".

  "We need a proper map," Basso said.

  The two officers from Intelligence looked at each other. "Unfortunately..."

  "There isn't one," Basso said. "I know. Get one drawn."

  The senior intelligence officer opened his mouth to explain why that wouldn't be possible, then thought better of it. He went back to his office at the war department, sent for his adjutant and said, "We need a brand new map of Mavortis. The whole of it, not just the bits near the coast that we know about."

  "Can't be done," the adjutant replied. "Even the Mavortines don't--"

  The senior intelligence officer raised his hand for silence. "That's a direct order from the First Citizen," he said.

  "Big deal," the adjutant said. "He can order me to steal the stars and string them into a necklace for his wife; doesn't mean it can be done. You'd need to carry out a complete survey. Men with rods and tapes and compasses, triangulation points, the whole business. We can't send two hundred surveyors into Mavortis. The locals'd eat them."

  The senior intelligence officer looked at him. "It's now your responsibility," he said. "Think of something."

  The adjutant, second-generation military, City-born with a Cazar father and a Jazygite mother, newly enfranchised under Basso's law, obtained a labour requisition which gave him the power to conscript civilians into military service. He then rounded up a hundred and seventy-five Mavortines, most of them unskilled labour from the docks and the building trade. They were going home, he told them. That didn't go down well, until he explained that once they'd done a job for him, they could come back; they'd also be paid more money than they'd ever seen in their lives. Even so, eleven refused to cooperate, and were discharged.

  The remaining hundred and sixty-one needed a lot of intensive training. They were taught how to walk in measured strides, each stride exactly one yard, and trained to count silently up to one hundred thousand. They were taught how to take precise bearings using only the sun and a known reference point; how to draw a map; how to hide a map from a thorough intrusive search. They were then given five nomismata each, which they were not allowed to spend. They were sent to Mavortis, where they explained that they'd just been paid off by the Vesani government after completing their contract, and had been given an unexpected bonus of five nomismata, which they proposed to invest in land. On the pretext of looking for somewhere to buy, they proceeded to walk the length and breadth of Mavortis, counting their strides, carefully noting their bearings, establishing clandestine triangulation points, recording their data secretly at night, often in the dark. They'd been given a month to do the job, at the end of which a ship would anchor off the White Rocks. If they missed the ship, they were told, they needn't bother coming back to the City ever again.

  Two of the surveyors didn't make the rendezvous. One of them was known to be dead, from mountain fever; the other one was presumed to have met some similar fate. On the two-day journey back to the City they presented their maps to a team of military cartographers, who began the horrendous job of correlating them and producing the component parts that would make up the finished map. By the time the ship docked (there were carriages waiting, to take the cartographers and the surveyors straight to Intelligence) there was already a first draft: a huge, unruly thing, covered with scrawled numbers and scraped-out lines, but mostly--amazingly--coherent. It was a miracle, the cartographers said, the way the surveyors' findings dovetailed together. The results actually matched; which simply wouldn't have been possible if the data wasn't fundamentally accurate. A hundred and fifty-nine illiterates, walking carefully and counting under their breath, had produced a map the Vesani could go to war by.

  "Told you it was possible," Basso said to the intelligence officers, when they handed him the first fair copy. He spent two hours alone with it, then sent it to Aelius.

  "Did you know," someone asked him, "that at the University of Gopessus in Scleria, they've got a Faculty of War? One full professor, six or seven lecturers, and I do believe there's a Reader in Artillery Studies."

  Basso hadn't known that. He thought about it for a while, then wrote a letter to the Vesani charge d'affaires, to be sent by the fast post.

  Fast post meant the first available ship, followed by a non-stop relay of riders, changing horses every fifteen miles. The letter reached Gopessus two days and six hours after Basso had blotted it with fine white sand. It was addressed to the Professor of War.

  As requested, the professor wrote back by return. His reply took two days and fourteen hours, because of the prevailing winds. It was written on the back of Basso's letter, to save time, and read:

  Delighted to accept. Will bring lecs in tactics & supply and reader in art stud

  "I offered him two thousand nomismata," Basso explained, "plus seven hundred each for any of his colleagues he chose to bring with him. Nothing like getting advice from the best in the business."

  The professor and his associates arrived by the fast relay service: non-stop coaches, three days and two hours. They crawled out of the carriage like men released from intensive interrogation, and were helped up the steps of the Severus house, where they'd be staying. As soon as he'd been told they'd arr
ived, Basso had sent for Aelius, Bassano and the entire general staff, together with six members of the House war oversight committee. They crowded into the long dining room, where Basso's father used to stage his political dinner parties. Grudgingly, he allowed them time to change their clothes, wash and shave; but food, he insisted, could wait until after the lecture.

  When the last speaker had finished talking, there was a long silence. Then the professor asked nervously if there were any questions. There were. Most of them started "Did you know" or "Are you aware", and Basso couldn't help but admire the way they managed to avoid answering them. Not bad, he felt, for four exhausted men who'd been shaken to death in a succession of fast mail coaches. When the questions had petered out, he thanked them for coming and got rid of them. Their money was waiting for them on their beds.

  "Well," Aelius said. "We've learned one thing. We now know we're a damn sight better informed than the Sclerians."

  "Worth every penny, in that case," Basso said. He leaned to his right. "Colonel Doricho," he said. "What was all that about effective ranges of heavy torsion artillery?"

  "Bullshit," the colonel said. "That clown wanted us to believe the maximum range for a ten-ton-counterweight trebuchet throwing a two-hundredweight stone is two hundred and forty yards. I've got one in the yard right now that can chuck two hundredweight three hundred and ten, and that's an old model. The one we're building for the war should be able to do three hundred and fifty, no trouble."

  Basso smiled. "And the glass bombs," he said. "That sounded interesting."

  "Load of rubbish," put in a Jazygite brigadier. "He got that out of a book. You try and lob a glass ball full of Vesani fire mixture from a standard trebuchet, it'll shatter before it leaves the sling. It's been copied from book to book for hundreds of years, but nobody's ever been stupid enough to try it."

  "He believed it, though," Bassano said.