At the time this warning had seemed of dubious relevance, given that he had no memory of ever having seen a woman. His experience in Memphis, though it had very much expanded his experience of women in some ways, was not helpful when it came to tears, the whores of Kitty Town not being given much to weeping.
‘Shut up,’ he said.
She reduced the sound to a grizzling and the occasional heavy sob.
‘What the hell were you doing with these desperadoes?’
She could not answer at first, trying to bring herself under control with wet gasps of emotion.
‘They kidnapped me,’ she said, which was not true or not entirely true, ‘and they all raped me.’ His time in Memphis had made Kleist familiar with the term. He had heard a number of puzzling amusing stories about rape and had caused even more laughter by asking for an explanation. He was shocked by the answer and did not approve. She was clearly a liar but she looked as distraught as even Kleist would have expected. But then a few minutes ago she’d been laughing at him.
‘If you’re telling the truth, I’m sorry.’
‘Let me have one of the horses.’
‘That would mean you could keep up with me. I don’t think so.’
‘You’ll have the best horse – the others are just kick-bags.’
This was true enough.
‘I could sell them in the next town. Why should I give one to you when you’re a thief? Or worse.’
‘They’re both branded. They’ll hang you for a horse thief if you try to sell them.’
‘Well, you look as if you’d know,’ he said, tying his newly filled bag onto his horse saddle.
‘Please. Two of them are still out there.’
‘One of them isn’t going to be following anyone for quite some time.’
‘But the other one could.’
‘All right. Just shut up. But you go in that direction,’ he said, pointing to the west. ‘If I see you again, I’ll cut your bloody head off.’ With that he mounted his horse and set off, leaving the girl sitting on the forest floor, next to the kneeling man, still wheezing and whistling. If his actions in leaving the young woman in the clearing were ignoble, they were in the light of the appalling consequences of his only other experience of rescuing young women in distress at least understandable.
‘Do you think he’s right?’ asked Gil.
‘What do you think?’ said Bosco.
‘I think he’s wrong,’ replied Gil, ‘I think the Purgators are where they deserve to be. Their fate is their character. If God has not been able to change their hearts not even someone who is the anger of God made flesh can change them, blessing be upon him.’
‘We must hope, Redeemer, that you are wrong. Cale is full of surprises.’
‘Now I know why I never loved him.’
They both laughed.
‘Should I continue?’ said Gil. ‘With the plan to invest Bose Ikard?’ Bose Ikard was the Burgrave of Switzerland, notionally second only to the notorious King Zog of that country, but a very close second. With the Materazzi empire having collapsed Bose Ikard was now the most powerful of all the rainmakers in the four quarters. He had made, in Bosco and Gil’s eyes, the mistake of allowing a remnant of the Materazzi to take refuge in Spanish Leeds, something they rightly regarded as hostile to their interests. What they did not realize was that Bose Ikard took the same view and only a screaming fit by King Zog had forced his hand to allow the Materazzi to take refuge in Spanish Leeds. The Redeemer Diplomatic Service was not adept at either diplomacy or the gathering of intelligence and Bosco had limited access to its findings, which in any case did not include the fact that Bose Ikard had done everything possible to encourage the Materazzi to go away. Beyond simply allowing them to stay he offered no help and no money, a lack of assistance he hoped would effectively starve them into moving on somewhere else where they would no longer be his problem. Understandably he did not want their presence to give the Redeemers an opportunity to cause trouble. However, Bosco knew nothing of this reluctance and could only infer Ikard’s attitudes from his apparently hospitable treatment of the Materazzi. He’d thought it might be a good idea to have him killed to mark Zog’s card and to discourage anyone else who might be thinking of harbouring the Materrazi or anyone else the Redeemers had taken a dislike to.
‘No. We must delay his death until ... for several months at any rate – until we have some idea whether Cale can turn the Purgators.’
‘It’s risky to delay.’
‘It’s risky not to. We are midstream in a spate. It’s dangerous to go forwards, it’s dangerous to go back. Meanwhile I mean to spread Cale’s name and reputation. I want you to take him to Duffer’s Drift.’
‘Because?’
‘Because he will solve the problem.’
‘You seem very sure.’
‘Take him and see. Clearly you have less faith in the power of God’s exasperation than you ought.’
‘Mea culpa, Redeemer.’
Bosco sniffed, now out of sorts at Gil’s lack of zeal.
‘What about Hooke?’
‘Reluctant as I am to have my hand forced by Gant we must avoid provocation until Cale succeeds or fails. If Hooke is to die we must make a show of it, and we must swallow the humiliation like it or not by broadcasting it wide. Invite persons of note.’
There was a knock on the door and Cale was shown in. He was told he was to be sent south with Gil to deal with the Folk. He didn’t argue or even ask any questions.
‘I want him. Hooke, I mean,’ said Cale.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve read his tally and seen his drawings. Some may be what you say but his machine for storming walls looks right – maybe even the giant crossbow. There are good ideas everywhere. You said his water gate was a fine piece of work.’
‘He has offended the Pope.’
‘You intend to kill the Pope.’
‘Not so. But if I did I wouldn’t offend him first.’
‘Hooke’s engines could help you not to worry about offending him.’
Bosco sighed and walked over to the window. ‘There are many irons in the fire and unlimited kettles boiling over them. I have to balance conflicting needs.’
‘My needs come first.’
‘You are the resentment of God – not God Almighty himself. There’s a considerable difference, as you’ll learn if you push your luck too far.’ He laughed at Cale’s expression. ‘My dear, this is not a threat. If you fail, I fail with you.’
‘I used to think you were so powerful no one could stand against you.’
‘Well, you were wrong. We stand on the edge of a gnat’s wing, you and I. Let me say this. If you succeed at Duffer’s Drift then I can use the power this will give both of us to delay Hooke’s execution. I don’t have the power to stop it and that’s that. Set him to work while you’re away. Succeed at Duffer’s Drift with your Purgators and who knows? It’s in your hands.’
*
It took Cale, along with Redeemer Gil and two others, six days to reach the Drift. They had made more than seventy miles each day, changing ponies at horse stations placed at twenty-mile intervals until the last eighty miles, where Antagonist outriders were causing too much trouble for anything permanent. When they arrived, Cale was exhausted, his shoulder was killing him and his finger hurt like hell itself, as bad almost as the day Solomon Solomon had cut it away in the Red Opera.
‘Get some sleep, sir,’ said Gil as Cale was shown to a tent made from blue sacking. Cale never slept easily but two minutes served when he hit the hideously uncomfortable cot laid for him. Gil woke him with a cup of foul-tasting liquid eight hours later. It occurred to Cale as he drank that he must now be as soft as lard compared to only a few months earlier. Then he would have thought this muck was bearable.
‘This,’ he said to Gil, who was watching him thoughtfully, ‘is bloody horrible.’
Gil looked genuinely disconcerted. ‘I’m sorry.’ He took the mug and tasted it to see
what was wrong. ‘It tastes all right to me.’ They looked at each other – a pointless exchange. ‘Go and have a look around the camp. Get the measure. There’ll be something here to eat when we come back.’
‘Can’t wait.’
The veldt of the Transvaal is a wide-open prairie four hundred miles to the south-west of the Sanctuary. The people there, who call themselves the Folk, farm and hunt across its great spaces and are recent converts to Antagonism. For that reason and because they are an odd bunch by any standards, their beliefs are rigid and intense. They have two ranks: the ordinary Folkhusbands and a leader, the Folk Maister, now nearly always a Predikant, or pastor, who never has authority over more than a thousand souls. Not having been of the Redeemer faith before their conversion and having had little to do with it, their loathing and hatred of their monkish assailants were intense to the point of insanity. It was said, an exaggeration of course, that the Folk were born onto a saddle and with a bow in their hands. The trench warfare of the Eastern Front was useless as a model for fighting such people in such terrain. The Folk did not fight in armies but in commandos of between a hundred and four hundred men – but often less and sometimes more. If they were attacked they just retreated into the endless veldt. A trench system against such methods was like trying to kill a fly with an axe.
It had become the Redeemers’ forgotten war. Most of their troops were bogged down in the great attrition of the Eastern Front. But even if there had been more in the way of Redeemer soldiers there was no obvious way of using superiority of numbers against such a fluid and skilled group fighting on ground they knew and loved. In addition, the Redeemers used cavalry rarely and were not very good when they did. In a straight fight it was true a force of Redeemers would annihilate even a vastly superior number of the Folk. But they never gave them a straight fight.
Because the war on the veldt was regarded by the Pope and his close advisors as of minor importance, Bosco and Princeps had been allowed greater freedom to decide on new tactics, something always considered with suspicion on the Eastern front. Even before Bosco and Princeps had been drawn to attack the Materazzi by Bosco’s desperate need to recapture Cale, they had changed the conduct of the war against the Folk in dramatic fashion. A string of thirty forward forts had been established. They were not forts in any normal sense with solid walls and defined defensive barriers, but, so it was intended, fluid defensive positions to guard all the most important strategic points in the veldt. Behind them would be eight much larger conventional forts from which each of the forward positions could be reinforced when they inevitably came under attack. It was the most original plan in Redeemer military history. Unfortunately the problem with all great plans is that they must be put into practice. Lacking the presence of Princeps, now moved to the more pressing assault on the Materazzi, the execution of the new tactics by his clueless replacement created a terrible crisis. Instead of large numbers of Redeemers standing in trenches defending territory the Folk had no intention of attacking, they had now ventured out into territory where none of their hideous military virtues were of any help and all of their weaknesses could be punishingly exploited. The result was a change from a war that was going nowhere to one that was coming close to collapsing into defeat. The advance forts were relentlessy attacked and taken over by the Folk with heavy casualties for the Redeemers and few for their assailants. When they attempted to retake the forts the Redeemers again took heavy losses. But the Folk always knew when to make their retreat quickly so that their casualties were light. A few weeks later, having attacked the forts furthest away towards the Drakensberg they would be back and the whole bloody process would start again. Bloody, that is, almost solely for the Redeemers. Duffer’s Drift had won its lamentable name because it was the most important of the advanced forts and had been lost to the Folk so often.
Imagine a great U formed by a river bend. The land inside the U is twenty feet lower than the land outside it, except towards the back, which is dominated by a low hill. Past this hill runs the all-important road that crosses the river and straight out the other side, cutting the U into two equal halves. A few hundred yards down this road is a large tabletop hill. The twenty-foot difference between the north and south bank meant that for eighty miles in either direction no wagon could make its way up the near vertical sides except for on this one road at the Drift. The entire field of defence was barely two thousand yards wide. Cale’s problem was as easy to set out as it was difficult to solve. There were perhaps fifty of these choke points on the veldt and not enough troops to hold them by conventional means. To cut down the movement of the Folk and their ability to resupply from the sea, nearly all the points had to be held nearly all the time. At the moment they were taking them at will, holding them while supplies passed through and then vanishing whenever the Redeemers showed up, and taking various other similar forts up and down the front line.
Cale spent nearly eight hours walking the U.
‘What do you think?’ said Gil, anxious to hear the answer of the great prodigy.
‘Tricky,’ was all he got in addition to a request to talk to survivors of the last attack. There were only two, this not being a taking prisoners kind of war. Nevertheless, Cale spent all evening talking to them.
‘How many are here now?’ he asked Gil.
‘Two thousand.’
‘How many can you keep here?’
‘Not more than two hundred. There aren’t the troops or supplies for them if there were.’
‘Send away eighteen hundred.’
Gil was too intelligent to ask why. There had to be few enough defenders or there would be no attack.
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Nothing,’ said Cale, ‘except leave.’
Cale was simply being annoying but he kept Gil swinging on his rope, following in the rear of the eighteen hundred as they retreated and doing nothing about the defence of the Drift. Having travelled some five miles with the withdrawal, Cale turned his horse to one side and the fuming Gil was forced, along with the two guards, to come with him. Soon Cale turned back towards the camp and a small rise some eight hundred yards to the rear of the Drift. It was probably not high enough nor close enough to attract Folk scouts when there were better, nearer lookouts they would visit first. Cale dismounted and gestured to the others to do the same. Then he started for the top of the rise and ended up crawling the last few yards. Gil, relief softening his fury, came up behind him.
‘Do you want something?’ asked Cale, hostile.
‘I’m just doing as Redeemer Bosco would tell me, sir.’
This was true enough so there wasn’t much point arguing, although this didn’t stop him thinking about it. He took what looked like a leather bottle without a top from his knapsack and two glass circles and fitting them in either end of the topless leather bottle he pulled two straps around the middle and tightened them so they were held fast. It was the telescope with which Bosco had shown him the imperfect moon and the identical twin of the one he had stolen from Redeemer Picarbo and which had been filched in turn by one or other of the soldiers who’d captured him in the Scablands. It seemed like half a lifetime ago.
The more awkward and taciturn Cale was with Gil, the more the Redeemer’s earlier bad temper at being treated as if he were of no importance seemed gradually to change. His initial confusion about Cale’s change of status from expendable acolyte to manifestation of the wrath of God was a leap even for the most obedient of Redeemers. But the greater the contempt or indifference with which Cale treated him, the more Gil found himself able to let his decade-long familiarity change into awe and trust. He had a natural desire to worship and for all his intelligence it was as if the black intensity and seemingly total indifference that had come to dominate Cale in the last eight months was exerting its magic over a man very much sensitive to magic. Cale sensed the change, the respect, admiration and the fear that was more than physical – something he knew Gil barely felt. What surprised him more was
that he could feel the growing adoration working on him like the air he and Vague Henri used to blow into the soft animal skins that held the holy water in the sacristy so that they could bounce them up and down on the floor in blasphemous delight. To walk past a group of men and feel them diminish themselves at the sight of you – this was something.
Through the rest of the day Cale barely spoke between spying out the landscape and drawing maps of the field of battle in the dust, then scrapping, re-drawing and scrapping again. Throughout he tried to keep the intensely curious Gil from seeing or understanding what he could see of the diagrams he was drawing of trenches, heights, lines of sight and so on. This was not so much from any need he felt to keep things secret as a desire to annoy Gil. But, though frustrated, Gil only seemed the more impressed. In time, Cale began to enjoy the feeling of gawping admiration so much that he started making up marks and signs just to amuse himself by making his diagram insanely and meaninglessly complex in a way that clearly left Gil drowning in wonder.
Just before dark Cale backed down the hill and Gil followed. He started to arrange the rota for guard duty and was dividing by four when he realized something. Instead, and without facing a murmur of protest, he divided the night watch into three. His insolence, and he could feel it, increased their awe of him still further. Deeply satisfied with his deviousness he went back to the top of the rise and made himself as comfortable as possible before falling asleep and dreaming of Arbell Swan-Neck. Impossibly beautiful, she managed to keep eluding him as he tried to follow her in the corridors of the Palazzo as if he were a nuisance she must politely – but not too politely – deal with and not a once-adored lover. In his dreams of her often he was robbed of his anger and violence, stripped down to a humiliated supplicant who could not accept that he was now graciously despised while he preposterously hoped that if he could only get her to stay still and talk to him she would certainly be able to explain that her apparent betrayal had all been a terrible mistake. And it would be all right. He would be happy again. But always she turned away as if his presence was utterly unwelcome. He woke up just before dawn, miserable and burning with shame and anger at his weakness.
The Last Four Things tlhogt-2 Page 7
