The Belly of the Bow

by K. J. Parker

  Alexius sat quite still for a few minutes, making sure that the hospitable nuisance had actually gone, and hoping (rather optimistically) that his headache would go away. When it didn’t he hauled himself to his feet and was nearly out through the door when the innkeeper called him back and told him that his friend, the one who left in such a hurry, had forgotten to pay for the drinks.

  ‘What can you see?’ the boy called out.

  ‘There’s people moving about,’ Bardas Loredan replied, ‘but I can’t make out whether it’s them or us.’ He shifted carefully and put more weight on his elbows, painfully aware that his perch up among the rafters by the hole in the roof was unstable at best; if the roof-ties realised he was there, they’d be well within their rights to collapse under his weight and let him drop to the ground. ‘They seem to be heading for that other ruin down in the dip there, but it’s too far for me to be able to see clearly in this rain.’

  ‘Why don’t I creep out and see if I can get close enough to take a proper look?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Loredan replied.

  The boy muttered something, and went back to whittling a bit of stick. Loredan shifted a little more, trying to get out from under the persistent drip that was landing square on the back of his neck. His left hand had gone to sleep.

  ‘If it’s us,’ the boy said, ‘we should go down and tell them what we’ve seen. And if it’s them, they’ll be to busy to bother with us. We might even be able to gather useful intelligence.’

  ‘I don’t think you could spare any, even if you managed to get hold of some. Now shut up and let me concentrate.’

  The boy abandoned his bit of stick, which he’d reduced to a thin shaving, and started sharpening the arrowheads on a piece of broken whetstone he’d found in his pocket. The slow scraping of steel on stone is, of course, one of the most irritating noises in the world.

  ‘Pack that in,’ Loredan snapped. ‘They’re perfectly sharp as it is, you’ll only take the edge off.’

  ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘Then consider yourself extremely lucky. Now for gods’ sakes keep still and quiet, before I lose my temper.’

  ‘I still think—’

  ‘Quiet! ’ Loredan peered down, trying to see past the rafter end that was blocking his view. He’d caught just a glimpse of two men coming round the side of the slope towards the base of the tower. ‘Get over there in the shadows,’ he called out softly, ‘and keep absolutely still. I’m coming down, if I can get out of this—’

  He wriggled, bumped his head and dropped and slithered back to the footholds he’d found in the wall, taking skin off the palms of his hands in the process. He landed awkwardly on the ground and shuffled across to where the boy was crouching, picking up his sword on the way. He had pins and needles badly in his left leg; not what you want if you’re likely to have to fight at any moment. ‘Where’s the bow?’ he whispered.

  ‘I thought you’d got it.’

  ‘Oh, for—Well, we’ll just have to make do. Now shut up and stay still, and pray they’ll go away.’

  There was a shuffling and a squelching in the doorway, and something obscured the light that shone weakly through it. ‘Hello?’ someone called out. ‘Is there anybody there? Colonel Loredan?’

  Bardas Loredan held his breath; but the boy stood up and called out, ‘Over here! It’s all right,’ he added, ‘they’re us, it’s archers. We’re over here,’ he repeated, as the two strangers peered round, their eyes not yet accustomed to the darkness. ‘By the back wall.’

  Wearily Loredan tried to stand up, but his leg refused to co-operate. ‘Are you hurt?’ said one of the strangers, seeing him wobble and sink back. ‘There’s a surgeon coming with the relief force, he won’t be long.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Loredan replied, ‘just a touch of cramp. You were looking for me.’

  The two men came closer. One of them stopped by the window and pulled open the shutter. ‘Chief Executive Loredan’s orders,’ the other one said. ‘We’ve been searching for you for hours.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve found me,’ Loredan replied. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We’ve got the raiding party pinned down,’ the solider said; he was a sergeant, quite a senior man by the look of him. ‘Over the hill a way, at Penna, you know it? They aren’t going anywhere in a hurry. Are you fit to move?’

  Loredan shook his head. ‘We’re fine,’ he said, ‘don’t you worry about us. You get back and rejoin your men, we can take care of ourselves.’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘Chief Executive Loredan’s orders,’ he repeated. ‘He wants to be sure you’re all right.’

  ‘Well, you can set his mind at rest. Thank you for your trouble, but we’re going home now. We’ll be fine.’

  The sergeant took a deep breath, and Loredan felt sorry for the man, a good soldier trying to deal tactfully with difficult civilians. ‘If you’ll please just come with us,’ he said. ‘Chief Executive Loredan’s orders.’

  Loredan closed his eyes for a moment. It was a ludicrous situation; they’d come to rescue him and here he was refusing to be rescued, and he got the distinct impression that they weren’t going to take no for an answer. He had no wish to see his brother; the question was whether it was worth fighting two men over. He thought about that for a moment.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, ‘but I can’t come with you right now.’

  The boy was looking at him as if he’d gone mad. Loredan took a step forward, so as to be between the soldiers and the boy. He realised that he had the broadsword, still in its case, in his hands, and that that might be taken as an aggressive gesture.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the sergeant said. ‘But you’ve got to come with us.’

  ‘Oh, all right, then,’ Loredan said. He carefully put the sword down, swung fast and drove his fist into the sergeant’s face; then he stepped over him, kicked the other soldier in the groin and punched him hard on the jaw as his head came down. He felt the skin on his knuckles tear against the sharp edge of the man’s helmet.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Don’t swear,’ Loredan replied. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Scona chargé d’affaires was called to the offices of the Foundation and asked politely what the Bank thought it was playing at. The chargé d’affaires replied that as far as he knew (and all he’d heard was the official Shastel version), his people were simply defending themselves against an act of unprovoked aggression, just as the Bank’s team of advisers had done here on Shastel when the Foundation’s armed forces had attacked them for no readily apparent reason when doing whatever it was they were doing in that village. In fact, he went on, he was prepared to say that the Bank took a grave view of recent developments. The Shastel spokesmen replied that the Foundation also took a very grave view of the whole situation and deplored the recent violence and loss of life. The chargé d’affaires replied that the Bank always deplored violence and loss of life, whatever the circumstances.

  Having reached agreement on the fundamentals, the two sides became more specific. The Bank, said the chargé d’affaires, was a purely commercial organisation and had no military or political agenda whatsoever; all it wanted was to be able to go about its business, which was primarily the lending of money on the security of agricultural property, without fear of violence being offered to its staff or customers. The spokesmen for the Foundation replied that they too represented an organisation that, although not wholly commercial in its outlook, had substantial financial interests to protect and mortgagors who looked to it to safeguard them against such unsupportable burdens as raiders, brigands, pirates and other lawless elements; that was why the Foundation felt it necessary to maintain security forces on a permanent basis. That, surely, was something that the Bank ought to be able to understand better than anybody.

  The chargé d’affaires thought for a moment and said that although, clearly, there were some issues on which they would
find it hard to reach consensus in the short term, surely they were both agreed that armed conflict was in the interests of neither party, and the first priority ought to be an immediate halt to hostile activity on both sides, followed by a period of restructuring and general negotiation which might in time lead to a more fundamental settlement between the two sides.

  ‘In other words,’ the spokesman reported back to his superior, ‘they’re planning to make us pay through the nose for the hostages and they’re going to take their own sweet time about it. It’s a disaster.’

  ‘The hell with that,’ the superior agreed. He was one of the five deputy wardens of the Poor, a member of the Soef family and the holder of two doctorates, in Linguistics and Applied Mathematics, and the thought of being held to ransom by a Perimadeian whoremonger wasn’t something he was very comfortable with. But he was also an intelligent man, and one of the hostages was a Bovert. ‘We’ve got to get the hostages back,’ he said, ‘and we’ve also got to get out of this without sending a message to the hectemores that we’ve lost our grip and given up. I’m going to have to take this to Chapter and see what they want to do, while we’ve still got a few options.’

  Just before this meeting, he’d been talking to Doctor Gannadius, another of these Perimadeians who seemed to be getting into everything these days, but for once the Doctor had had something interesting to say. Of course, he’d be a complete fool to base policy decisions on the word of a foreign mystic; on the other hand, he was enough of a scientist and a philosopher himself to be able to keep an open mind when it came to things he didn’t understand. The obvious priority here was to keep a sense of balance and neither rush into anything nor dismiss anything out of hand. As for the hostages, well, he hoped they were somewhere warm and dry in this foul weather, because whichever option was eventually chosen, it was likely to take some time.

  ‘It’d depress me to think I was going to be stuck here for the rest of my life,’ muttered the young soldier, peering up at the drops of water falling from the leak in the roof, ‘if it wasn’t for the moderate certainty that the rest of my life won’t take very long.’ He shuddered and threw another piece of wood on the fire. ‘Looked at from that angle, a man could get to like it here.’

  Master Renvaut nodded. ‘Well, by my calculations I’m dead already,’ he said. ‘Or at least, I ought to be. But the medicine that butcher of an orderly gave me was so foul, I think it made me too ill to die.’

  The young soldier nodded. ‘Blue bread mould in garlic juice,’ he said. ‘It certainly adds a new dimension of horror to serious illness. I mean, nobody’s saying death is a barrel of fun, but it’s got to taste nicer than that.’ He grinned. ‘I take it you’re feeling better,’ he said.

  Renvaut nodded. ‘I think I sweated out the fever in my sleep. I still feel a bit shaky and not the least bit hungry; which is fortunate, from what I can gather.’

  ‘That’s true,’ the young soldier agreed gloomily. ‘We’ve got enough for a week, maybe two if we really torture ourselves, and that’s about it. At least drinking water isn’t a problem,’ he added, as a raindrop fell in his eye.

  ‘Marvellous,’ Renvaut sighed. He rolled over on his back and stared at the black patches in the thatch where the water was seeping through. ‘Your first mission, is it?’

  The young soldier laughed. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘I’m in the third year of my degree course, and like a fool I chose to do my six months in the ranks early, so as to get the feel of what soldiering’s really all about.’

  ‘You got lucky,’ Renvaut grunted. ‘This is pure concentrated essence of soldiering, as far as I’m concerned. Now, when I was your age, I pulled every string I possibly could and got assigned to the secretariat.’

  The young soldier grinned. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I reckon it’s a good rule. After all, if you’re going to command men in combat, it helps to know what makes them tick.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Renvaut said. ‘And what is it you’re studying?’

  ‘Oh, mostly the usual, Ethical and Economic Theory, with a bit of Literature and Metaphysics thrown in. After that I’m going to specialise, but I haven’t quite made up my mind yet. I’ll probably go for Ethics because that’s what I’m good at, but secretly I’d rather have a go at the Philosophy of Commerce course. After all, that must be the key to understanding what the Foundation’s all about.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Renvaut said, straight-faced. ‘Mind you, it’s a big subject.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ the young soldier replied. ‘But since all the leading texts are written in the Shastel dialect, it’ll save me three months learning Old Perimadeian and Southern and Bathue; I was always useless at languages. About the only subjects you can take where there isn’t a whole lot of language work are Phil. Comm. and Military Theory, and,’ he added with a wry smile, ‘I reckon if I get out of this alive, I’ll have had all the Military Theory I can take.’

  ‘Mil. Theory graduates usually go straight into teaching,’ Renvaut said with a yawn. ‘Which explains a lot, don’t you think?’

  The young soldier shook his head ‘Our society is run on unique and original lines,’ he said. ‘Arguably, it should tend to produce the ideal: the altruist, the scholar, the soldier and the practical man of business all rolled into one. I’d feel rather more sanguine about the concept if we weren’t in this shed surrounded by the enemy.’

  Renvaut shrugged. ‘You only really start to get problems when you can’t control all the human elements in the equation. It’s pointless trying to apply scientific method to something as completely random and perverse as human nature, particularly human nature en masse.’

  ‘People are a nuisance, you mean?’ the young soldier suggested.

  ‘That puts it rather well,’ Renvaut agreed. He yawned, stretched until he felt something twang painfully in his back, and stood up. He’d lost the best part of a day because of the fever, and there was a great deal to do and nobody else really competent to do it. A professional soldier, he reflected, is someone who’s not quite good enough at a range of administrative and managerial skills to earn a living at them (or else that’d be what he was doing for a living) and ends up exercising those skills for lives rather than money.

  ‘Any sign?’ he asked the sergeant in charge of the sentries, who shook his head. ‘They’ve been prowling around on the top of the ridge,’ the sergeant went on, ‘but just scouts, nothing serious. My guess is, they’re waiting for something.’

  ‘Reinforcements.’

  ‘Or siege gear,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Catapults and rams and stuff like that. Only they’d have a job getting anything too heavy up into these mountains; they’d have to take ‘em to bits and put ’em back together again when they got here. Too much like work.’

  Renvaut pulled a face. ‘Reinforcements are more likely,’ he said. ‘It all depends on what they’re planning. Myself, I don’t see them trying an assault. After all, why bother? If they bring up enough men to invest this place properly, they can starve us out in a week or so and never risk a man. Plus,’ he added with a wry grin, ‘we’re worth more to them alive - as hostages, or plain and simple commodities for sale.’

  The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’ Renvaut peered through the crack between the window frame and the hastily improvised and purportedly arrow-proof shutter at the steady and relentless rain outside. ‘Unfortunately, one thing they don’t teach you in any of the classes I took is how long you’ve got to hold a besieged position before it’s polite to surrender and you don’t have to worry about being court-martialled and killed by your own side. I think it’s safe to assume that once the food runs out, it’s all right. I mean, that’d be logical, wouldn’t it?’

  The sergeant wasn’t prepared to venture an opinion on that, and Renvaut left him to his duties and got on with his own list of things to do. Civilised commercial warfare, he reflected; buying and selling, trading and negotiating; it’s j
ust a pity we have to be stuck in this dump for a fortnight while they sort it all out. But it should be all right, he insisted, provided everybody keeps calm and nobody does anything stupid, like send another expedition to rescue us. And even we’re not idiotic enough for that.

  There was nothing to eat apart from slightly stale rye bread and the last of the red cheese, which neither of them liked particularly much. The boy stared to say, ‘Looks like I’ll have to go down to the village tomorrow and buy—’ He fell silent, and Loredan said nothing, went on chewing the disgusting food.

  ‘Do you think there’ll be any trouble?’ the boy asked after a long time. ‘About hitting those two soldiers, I mean?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ Loredan replied with his mouth full. ‘If you think about it, I don’t suppose my brother’d go to all the trouble of sending men to rescue me on the one hand, and then have me slung in jail for assault on the other.’ He paused, and frowned. ‘Although that doesn’t actually follow,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In fact, that’s just the sort of thing he would do. Then, after he’d left me to stew in the prison for six months, he’d petition the judge for a free pardon and make a great show of pulling strings and using his influence to get me out again. And then he’d expect me to be grateful. He’s a strange man, my brother. I don’t like him much.’

  The boy took a moment to consider. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Or is that a rude question?’

  ‘Because,’ Loredan replied. ‘And yes. If you don’t want that last bit of cheese, give it here.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I had a brother, back in the City. Did I ever tell you that?’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  The boy looked down at the wooden bowl in front of him, lifted up one side, put it down again. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I have this fantasy that he’ll just turn up one day; you know, walk in through the door without saying anything, just to surprise me. Oh, I’m sure he’s almost certainly dead, but I don’t actually know that. Like, I know my mother and father are dead, because I saw them getting killed, but my brother got left behind when we were running down the street, so it’s just possible—’ The boy picked up the crust of his bread and dropped it in the bowl. ‘I mean, it’s something to dream about; you know, suddenly finding him again, years later, when I’d been sure all that time he was dead.’ He stood up and collected the bowls and the breadboard. ‘Is he your only brother?’ he went on.