Evil for Evil

by K. J. Parker

  “Who finally beat you, you mean.” Ducas’ smile widened. “I don’t know,” he said. “Wish I did. Whoever it is seems to be doing a good job; better than me, anyhow. It comforts me to know that the war is in better hands than mine.” He frowned. “I never really expected to be a soldier,” he said. “Oh, I was trained for it, of course, because it was one of the things a man in my position needs to know how to do. War, administration, good manners and chasing animals, and it doesn’t hurt if you can play a musical instrument. On balance, I’m a slightly better rebec player than I am a general, but I wouldn’t want to have to earn a living doing either; not if I had to compete with professionals.” He shrugged. “You’d better get some rest now,” he said. “The men will be back soon, and they’ll have spent the hottest part of the day burying the dead, they may not be in the best of moods. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.”

  So, Miel thought, as he turned his back and walked away, that’s Phrastus Gyges. Younger than I’d expected; otherwise, pretty much like I’d imagined he’d be. And now, I suppose, I’d better think about leaving. I guess that means stealing the horse.

  Standing against the middle of the wall was a big old wooden feed bin. He’d noticed it earlier, and what was inside it. Presumably such things were so familiar to them that they no longer noticed them; careless but understandable. Casually, he lifted the lid and peered inside.

  Mostly it was sidearms, assorted various; he could see the scabbard chape of a Mezentine Type Fifteen, the scent-bottle pommel and wire-bound grip of a good-quality Eremian double-fullered backsword, the brass stirrup-guard and horn scales of a village-made hunting hanger. Any of them would do, since he wasn’t proposing to use it; just something to wave in the face of anybody who tried to stop him. He was pretty sure they wouldn’t fight him to keep him from getting away, just in case he managed to hurt someone — that’d mean a man off work, possibly for a long time or even permanently, and they couldn’t afford to carry the loss. The horse, on the other hand; horses, he knew from eavesdropping and his own experience, were a serious problem in this war. Not enough of them to go round; if, after a battle, you had to choose between rounding up the spare horses and seeing to your immobilized wounded, you had to go for the horses whether you liked it or not. They might well fight him for the horse. Unfortunately, he needed the head start. If he tried to get away on foot, with his recent injuries and vague knowledge of the local geography, he wouldn’t really stand a chance. He wished that, at the very least, he had some money, so he could leave them enough to buy another horse. Come to think of it, he’d never stolen anything before. Never needed to, of course.

  The stupid thing is, he thought, I don’t really want to leave. I’d be happier staying here, learning to patch up chainmail and bury corpses. Now there’s an interesting comment on my life so far.

  Nobody seemed to be watching; just in case, though, he turned his back so as to mask what he was doing, and slid his arm in under the lid of the bin until his fingers connected with something. By the feel of it, the stirrup-guard hanger — not his first choice, but he was hardly in a position to be picky. He fished it out, got it over the edge of the bin, nearly dropped it, point downwards, on his foot, and shut the lid as quietly as he could. He didn’t look down at the short sword dangling by its guard from his little finger; instead, he drew it flat against his stomach and walked slowly away, waiting for someone to yell at him. No yell. His first act of theft — his first crime — successfully carried out.

  The idea was to steal a weapon now, while the place was empty and there was nobody about to see. He couldn’t leave until much later, because the men hadn’t brought the horse back yet. Once they’d come home he was going to have to wait a couple of hours, at least, until they’d finished their work for the day; also, the horse would be tired too, and not in the mood for further strenuous exercise. What he needed now, therefore, was somewhere to hide the sword until it was time to make his move. He hadn’t realized how complicated a life of crime could be.

  He looked round. His pretext for leaving the barn would be going outside for a leak. Nearly everybody went round the south side of the barn, simply because it was sheltered from the wind. If you went round the east side, you ran a substantial risk of coming back in wearing what you’d gone out to dispose of. Fair enough. He wandered over to the door, doing his very best to look like a man with a mildly full bladder. He had no illusions about his abilities as an actor, but nobody seemed interested in him anyway, so that was fine. Once outside, he turned left, round the corner, and looked carefully about. When he was sure nobody could see him, he reached up and shoved the sword into the loose, ragged thatch of the eaves, until only the little rectangular knob of a pommel was showing. It’d be dark when he came out to retrieve it, but he’d be able to find it by touch.

  He paused and frowned, noticing how he’d been feeling ever since he lifted the lid of the feed bin. I’m afraid, he thought, and that surprised him. It had been quite a while since he’d been afraid of anything — haven’t had the time or the attention to spare, he realized. When he’d been leading his men into an ambush there was simply too much else to think about. Now, with nobody to consider but himself, he could afford to be self-indulgent. Stupid, he thought; all I’m doing is stealing a twenty-shilling horse, not cutting up a column of Mezentine cavalry at odds of three to one. Maybe, if I manage to get away with this, I can find the time to develop a sense of perspective. It’d be nice to have one of those for a change.

  Perspective, he thought, as he went back inside the barn (it was pleasantly cool indoors; nice to be back). Perspective is mostly about value; what things are really worth, in context. Not so long ago (he sat in the corner nearest the door and stretched his legs out), I was a wealthy nobleman. If someone had come up to me and asked me how many swords and how many horses I owned, I’d have had to ask the steward; and he wouldn’t have known offhand, he’d have had to check the house books. Now, when I actually need them, I’m reduced to stealing them from men who have next to nothing.

  (Outside, heavy wheels were grinding on stones; the cart was coming home.)

  So, Miel thought, I’ve come down in the world. So what? When I was a boy, I used to worry about that all the time. What’d become of me if we suddenly lost all our land and our money? I used to have nightmares about it; I’d be in my room and nasty men would come bursting in to take away the furniture; they’d throw me out into the street, and all the poor people and ugly beggars and cripples would jeer at me and try and take my shoes. Apparently I used to wake up screaming sometimes; the servants used to ask what on earth the matter was, and of course I refused to tell them.

  Any moment now, the door would open and the men would come in. Once they did that, everything would become irrevocable. Someone would tell Juifrez Stratiotes about their latest acquisition, and Juifrez (a pleasant enough man, and painfully shy when talking to his ex-landlord) would make the inevitable business decision, based on cost-efficiency and the availability of the horse. Miel thought about that. If he was Juifrez, he’d tell a couple of his men to keep an eye on the Ducas, just in case he’d put two and two together; don’t be obvious about it, he’d say, but don’t let him too far out of your sight. He considered the practical implications of that for a moment, decided on a plan of action and put it out of his mind. I wish I didn’t have to go, he thought. But it’s not up to me. That made him smile. The pleasure, the release, had been in not being in control of his own destiny for a while; but because he was the Ducas, as soon as he stopped being his own master he turned into valuable property, with potentially lethal consequences. He therefore had no choice. His holiday was over, and the best he could hope for was getting away from this place in one piece, preferably without having to hurt anybody. Beyond that, he didn’t want to speculate; didn’t care.

  The door opened. In came the men; silent, too tired to talk. The woman, Juifrez’s wife, had gone with them. It occurred to him that he’d have liked to say goodb
ye to her, but clearly that was out of the question. Now she’d remember him as the man who’d stolen their horse.

  If he hadn’t already known what they’d been doing all day, he’d have had no trouble at all figuring it out from the smell they brought in on their clothes and boots. He’d done many things in his time, but no digging. He’d always drawn the line at it, even in the kind of military crisis where rank and status were unaffordable luxuries, and even the Ducas was no more than another pair of hands. Digging, in his mind, was about as low as you could sink; miserable hard work, exhausting, tedious, repetitive, the epitome of his old morbid fears of poverty and destitution. Digging graves for strangers in the thin, stony soil of the northeastern hillsides would, by that reasoning, have to be the worst job in the world, and he was fairly sure he wouldn’t be able to do it. Half an hour at the most and his soft, aristocratic hands would be a squishy mess of blisters, his back would be agony, and everybody would be jeering at him. He’d rather face a platoon of Mezentine heavy cavalry on his own than dig a hole. He watched them sitting, slowly unlacing boots, resting their forearms on their knees and their backs against the barn wall, their minds empty, their bodies finally at rest. If they had cares and troubles beyond aches and fatigue, they gave no sign of it. Whatever else they might be, they were firmly anchored in the present, with nothing more or less than the people and possessions within easy reach of their seats. It would be so very easy to envy them, Miel realized.

  Food and drink went round: cheese, an old store apple each, half a dense, gritty loaf. Miel knew all about that kind of bread. It was made from flour ground from the last of the previous year’s grain, the two or three inches left over in the bottom of the bins when they had to be cleared out to make way for this year’s newly threshed corn. Perfectly wholesome, of course; but because it was dredged off the bin floor, it was inevitably full of dust, grit, shreds of stalk and husk. Sensible estate managers bought it cheap for poultry feed and to make bread for the seasonal casual workers. You could break a tooth on it; the old joke said it was better than a stone for sharpening scythe-blades. The Ducas, of course, had outlawed its use on his estate, and made a point of giving away the bin-end grain to the poor (outcasts, beggars, men who dug for a living). The silly thing was that, apart from the grit, it didn’t taste too bad at all.

  He glanced across at Phrastus Gyges. Stratiotes was there talking to him, keeping his voice down, like a man at market buying his neighbor’s sheep. They’re talking about me, Miel thought. Half an hour and I’ll have to make a move. A pity, but what can you do?

  When he got up, he stood for a moment or so and yawned. Nobody was looking at him; he wasn’t important enough to merit anybody’s limited reserves of attention. He stretched. No need to fake the cramp in his legs. He walked slowly toward the door, the very picture of a man reluctantly compelled to make the effort to stagger outside for a piss. It was only as he smelled the night air outside that he realized there were two men behind him.

  Oh well, he thought.

  He followed the outside of the barn, past the usual place. Someone called out: “Where do you think you’re going?”

  He paused, didn’t turn his head as he replied, “Need a leak.”

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  “I don’t like the smell.”

  “Is that right?”

  He carried on until his way was blocked. One man behind him, following; the other had gone round the other way to cut him off. He looked at the man in front of him, trying to feign irritation. “Do you mind?” he said.

  “You carry on,” the man replied. “Never seen a toff piss before.”

  Miel laughed. “You haven’t lived,” he said. “Pay close attention, you might learn something.”

  He could just make out the frown on the man’s face as he turned to face the wall, his left hand reaching for his fly, his right hand apparently resting on the eaves just above his head. Not there; and the horrible thought crossed his mind that someone might have found it and guessed why it had been put there. Then his finger traced something cold and smooth. He explored a little further and found the junction of the grip and the stirrup-guard. He straightened up, the way you do, and used the movement to pull the hilt of the sword out far enough to get his hand round the grip.

  Maybe it was moonlight glinting on the blade as it pulled out of the thatch, or it could have been some slight carelessness in the way he lifted his arm that sent a danger signal. “Just a minute,” the man to his right said. Miel took a long step back to give himself the right distance, and held the sword out in front of him in a loose approximation to the middle guard.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  The man on his left got the message. The other one didn’t.Either he hadn’t seen the sword or else he had the mistaken idea that toffs couldn’t fight worth spit; he took a stride forward and reached for Miel’s arm, quickly and confidently, like a stockman roping a steer.

  The middle guard is a good, solid basis for defense, but it lacks flexibility. Against a threat coming in front and high, it can only be developed into a thrust in straight time.

  Miel didn’t see the point go in. No need; he knew what the inevitable outcome would be, and he needed to give all his attention to the other vector of threat. The other man, the one on his left who’d stopped dead in his tracks, had time and distance on him, making him an intolerable risk. Without hesitating to look at him, Miel took a half-step back and sideways, using the pivoting movement to power the cut. The technique uses only the first half-inch of the sword-blade to cut the jugular vein. Miel had been practicing it once a week for twenty-five years, but this was the first time he’d ever used it in live play. It worked just fine.

  The second man was dead before the first man hit the ground, and Miel was still moving (a half-turn and step away, to avoid the thick spray of blood from the severed artery). When he stopped, he found his right arm had swung up into a high hanging guard, to ward off a possible counterattack in second. He froze, thinking, What do I do now, I’ve forgotten; then he remembered. The fight was over, he’d won. Marvelous.

  They lay perfectly still, one on his face, the other twisted half sideways, like clothes dropped on the floor by a drunk undressing. Miel closed his eyes, opened them again, and lowered the sword, keeping the blade well away from him, as if it was some disgusting thing he’d just found. Just marvelous, he thought; and a voice in the back of his head was yelling at him for standing like an idiot when he should be stealing the horse and getting away from there. It was their fault, he tried to tell the voice (which wasn’t listening and didn’t care); they should have let me go, they should have realized, they were stupid. The voice replied: Well, what can you expect from people like that? No, Miel told the voice, but he couldn’t get it to listen. There was no point even trying to make it understand. Get the fucking horse, it kept on saying, and Miel knew it wouldn’t shut up until he did as he was told. He stepped backward, knowing that once he took his eye off them it’d be over and everything would change. You fool, the voice explained to him; any moment now they’ll wonder what’s taking so long, more of them’ll come out, do you want to have to kill the whole bloody lot of them? That made him angry, but he knew he couldn’t fault the logic. He turned his back on them and stumbled (don’t run, you bloody fool; tripping and turning your ankle at this point would be the supreme humiliation) toward the stable.

  He knew, of course, how to put a bridle on a horse. The stupid animal lifted its head and scowled at him, ears back. He put down the sword, lifted the bridle off its hook and stepped forward. The horse backed away. It can smell the blood, Miel thought, they’re sensitive to things like that. He swore at it, then clicked his tongue and chirruped, “Wooze, horse,” the way all the grooms he’d ever known had always done. It lifted its head and kept still as he guided the bit into its mouth and fumbled its ears through the headband. Noseband and throat-lash — the straps were swollen and greasy with saddle soap and wouldn’t fit through the
loops. Saddle; no, you clown, don’t stop to check the girths or shorten the stirrups. What with the shouting of the voice and the blur behind his eyes, he could hardly think; just as well this sort of thing was second nature, or he’d be screwed. He mounted awkwardly, dropped the reins and had to lean forward to gather them. He’d forgotten the sword; well, he’d just have to do without. No, couldn’t risk it. He dismounted, grabbed the stupid thing in his left hand, nearly cut himself to the bone on it as he remounted. Finally ready, like a woman going to a dance. He kicked the horse much harder than he needed to, and nearly forgot to duck as they went sailing out through the stable door.

  Warm night air; he had to work hard to remember where the path was. Light was spilling out of the barn doorway, he heard a voice but not what it was saying. He kicked the horse again, then smacked it spitefully with the flat of the sword. That got its attention. He made no effort to steer; it knew the area far better than he did. He realized that he didn’t have a clue where he was heading for; not that it mattered. The horse was too tired to do anything more than a grudging trot. Its back was uncomfortably wide and the stirrups far too short. All in all, Miel thought, I’ve had better days.

  He made the horse keep up its pace for as long as he could, then slumped into the saddle and let it amble. He noticed that he was still holding the sword; its weight was hurting his elbow, so he tucked it between his left thigh and the saddle. The voice was telling him to use the stars to find north. He ignored it. For the first time in his life, he felt totally, abjectly ashamed.

  Well, he told himself, at least now you can say you’ve met the common people. A decent enough bunch, in their way, and they certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve the likes of you.

  5

  “Vegetarians?” Valens frowned. “Are you sure?”