The Last Four Things tlhogt-2

by Hoffman, Paul

  ‘Oh, he’s the Angel of Death all right – wherever Cale goes a funeral follows. He’s got funerals in his brain.’

  ‘But he can’t conjure spirits?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity – a friend who could conjure spirits a mile high would be pretty useful.’

  ‘Well, he can’t. And I told you, wherever he goes a lot of screaming goes with him. That’s why I was trying to put as much distance between him and me as I could. If I hadn’t met you I’d be on the far side of the moon if I knew how to get there.’

  ‘Oh,’ she sighed, full of sorrow. ‘My poor arsehole.’

  She said nothing further until the pain had subsided then handed him a jar with the cream the medicaster had sold her. ‘Put it on for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put it on for me.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘You do it.’

  ‘I’m too fat. I can’t reach that far. It’s easier for you to do it.’

  ‘Can’t you get your sister?’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting. Get on with it.’

  He knew well enough by now when she was not to be argued with. It was not that he lacked medical skill. The Redeemers were famously good at tending injuries on account of the fact that people were always trying to kill them. Treating piles was not an injury as set out in the Manifesto Catholico, their medical handbook, but at least being gentle with injuries was not unknown to him. Still there was a sharp intake of breath from the unfortunate girl.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  After a few more seconds he was finished and the pain in Daisy’s bottom began to subside.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Liar. I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d be doing this a year ago.’ Now Daisy just throbbed and she breathed a long sigh of relief. ‘Lie down with me.’ She waited as he did as he was told. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Promise you won’t sulk?’

  ‘Why don’t you just get on with it?’

  ‘You’re going on too many robberies. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Believe me I know what risk is – and I don’t take them. I never get within five hundred yards of anything sharp.’

  ‘I do believe you – about you staying safe. But we’re going on twice as many raids as we used to because of you.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The Musselmen aren’t going to just let that go on. There are Musselmen mercenaries who know how to fight better than we do.’

  ‘Anyone can fight better than you do. Dropping a rock on someone’s head when they’re not looking only gets you so far.’

  ‘There you are then. Everyone’s got greedy. It can’t last.’

  ‘Your father – he’ll have a stroke if I refuse to go. And I’ll be as popular as a case of piles if I refuse to help.’

  ‘You understand what I mean, though?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll talk to my father. I just wanted to talk to you first.’

  ‘And if I’d said you couldn’t?’

  She looked at him, more astonished than annoyed.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  It was said of the tragically unfortunate Sharon of Tunis that she was doomed always to tell the truth but never to be believed. The Klephts may not have been hostile to women who showed a will of their own but they were no more enthusiastic about opinions they did not care to hear than people generally are. At first her father’s irritation was solely directed at Daisy, who was angrily told to keep her big nose out of matters that had nothing to do with her. Affronted by his father-in-law’s abrupt manner of speaking to his wife, Kleist defended her reasons and so brought on the general accusation that this was his idea all along and that he was using his wife as a shield for opinions that were really his, a strategy so common among the Klephts it was known as turning the cat in the pan. He was accused of laziness, cowardice and ingratitude, normally qualities that the Klephts positively admired when they were the source of them. No one except Daisy’s sister and a few of her friends would speak to them and it was made clear that if Kleist refused to help there would be trouble in the shape of a vote – foregone – to ostracize them both.

  The pair were faced with either leaving in the cold weather, with Daisy heavily pregnant and nowhere to go, or staying and doing as they were told. If there was a choice Kleist didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t giving in that bothered him. Daisy burned with indignation and let her father know it but Kleist was more used to a lifetime of hostile but silent obedience. Still, it was a glum pair who backed down.

  More news about Cale also made him uneasy. It was only partly that it stirred up unwelcome feelings of guilt – not about Cale but about Vague Henri – but also that it raised the ghost of something buried even deeper, so much so that he had never quite faced it directly. While Vague Henri had never once taken seriously the idea that there might be something unhuman about Cale’s talent for killing, the garbled rumours that had made it to the Quantocks, however ridiculous he would normally have held them to be, stretched a nerve in Kleist’s soul. From a distance the idea of Cale as a kind of living ghost going around the place causing supernatural catastrophes made a kind of ominous sense. He’d had his chance to put oceans between himself and Cale but that chance was gone. The itch along his spine was too much like the one you were supposed to get if someone walked over your grave.

  ‘As my grandmother never used to say,’ observed Daisy, ‘people believe what they want to believe.’

  ‘You’re not wrong there,’ said Kleist to his young wife.

  19

  ‘Why aren’t they advancing?’ Bosco both wanted to hear what Cale had to say about the incomprehensible inaction of the Laconics and also to reassure himself that Cale realized just how incomprehensible it was.

  Cale did not look up at Bosco as he asked this but kept on examining the half-dozen Materazzi helmets strapped to their wooden heads.

  ‘Do you expect to find out?’ he said to Bosco, still not looking up.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Then why worry about it?’

  ‘You’ve turned very insolent.’

  This time Cale did look at Bosco.

  ‘Am I wrong?’

  Bosco smiled, still never a pretty sight.

  ‘No. You are not wrong.’

  The master blacksmith he’d been waiting for arrived and Cale showed him a spare helmet.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Cale.

  ‘Good workmanship and good steel but the rust is too bad on this one I’d say. I wouldn’t want it protecting my head. Can I look at the others?’

  ‘When I’ve finished. Stand back.’

  And with that he gave each of the six Materrazi helmets a ferocious set of blows with one of the curved Laconic swords. ‘Help me take them off,’ he said to the blacksmith when he’d finished. Three had held up well, one was damaged, two had been broken through.

  ‘By tomorrow we should have a couple of thousand of these delivered.’

  ‘In the same condition?’

  ‘Probably. Not sure.’ He gestured at the helmets that he’d pierced.

  ‘Can you repair them – weld an iron plate to the top.’

  The blacksmith examined them carefully for a full minute.

  ‘Master, I think I could do something to strengthen them. How long do I have?’

  ‘I don’t know. A couple of days, at least, maybe longer. Do them as quickly as you can. Order in as many smiths as you can get here. The first batch will be here this afternoon. The Quartermaster has been told to give you everything you need. Come direct to me if there are problems. You’re not to go through anyone else. Understand?’

  The blacksmith looked at Bosco. Cale thought about making a point and decided against it. Bosco nodded.

  ‘Yes, master.’

  After he’d left Bosco could not stop
himself from asking: ‘Why do you need the dogs?’

  ‘When I was in the veldt the Folk always left a dead animal in the water tanks to make life awkward. If there was a well they’d leave one there too.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t see,’ said Cale. ‘With standing water you can’t hide the fact it’s poisoned because of the smell. The Laconics are taking their water from the stream that runs past their camp. The dogs are going in upstream where the Laconics won’t be able to smell anything.’

  ‘If it’s running water the poison will be diluted.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Redeemers at Silbury Hill all had the squits and they still won.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know that poisoning water is a mortal sin?’

  ‘Then it’s lucky for me I have no soul.’

  The twelve dead dogs turned into eight dead pigs and a box of pigeons all suitably rancid and carefully placed by Vague Henri and twenty Purgators as close to the Laconic camp as they dared. In the middle of the night in freezing water and handling large amounts of putrid animal it was as pleasant a task as you might imagine.

  Four days had passed and still there was no movement from the Laconics. The state of the helmets brought by Vague Henri could have been better, could have been worse and the smiths were well on the way to Cale’s lowest target of two thousand strengthened helmets.

  ‘Will you discuss your tactics with me now?’ Cale was thrown a little by Bosco’s cool but respectful tone. He considered stalling not because his tactics were unready but simply in order to be awkward. On the other hand much as he hated Bosco he was, besides Vague Henri, the only person who could properly appreciate his brilliance. Besides, he wanted to test it out against his old master and Princeps. It had been Princeps who had won the actual victory of mud and violence at Silbury even if the campaign had been planned by Cale. He was sure that his plans to destroy the Materazzi at Silbury would have worked no matter who was in command but after they’d made such a ballsucking tooze out of the whole battle how could you tell for sure? Granted he had made mistakes on the veldt but nobody was perfect and he’d learnt from them and the Folk were now banged up on their miserable prairie and not a squeak out of them in two months. Still, he could not afford a mistake against the Laconics. He needed to test his ideas but only against people he respected. And with the exception of Vague Henri the people he respected he also hated.

  So it was that sensitive to criticism and also pleased with himself, Cale set out the map of his plans to defeat the strongest army the Laconics had ever put into the field at one time and whose record of loss under such circumstances was unrecorded, presumably because it had never happened.

  ‘The Laconics move more easily and quickly than any soldiers I’ve ever seen or read about. From the bluff I could see they only strengthened the right wing of their attack two minutes before they struck – that’s where they break their opponents. They have their best men on the right and in a moment they move men out of the middle and are suddenly twice as strong where they’re already strongest.’

  ‘And so?’ said Bosco.

  ‘We must double the strength on the left.’

  ‘Simple as that?’ said Princeps.

  ‘Not so simple.’ He didn’t mind this, Cale, a good question he had an answer to. ‘Make them this deep without preparation and they just become a crowd – pushing and shoving and falling over each other. I’ve had them practising twelve hours a day to do it this deep. The more the Laconics delay an attack the better we get.’

  ‘And the helmets.’

  ‘There are only enough to go four deep on the right and two deep on the rest of the line.’

  ‘Isn’t there any chance to get more?’

  ‘No. Most of them rusted out in the open. The ones we saved were buried deep in the pile. It was a great waste leaving them there.’

  There was a silence enjoyed by Cale but not by Bosco or Princeps, though it was hardly their fault. ‘In any case, if the Laconics break through further than four deep on the right I don’t think we’d have much chance anyway. We lost so easily at Eight Martyrs because the late Van Owen, God rest his soul, was kind enough to plan to their every advantage.’

  ‘And you won’t?’ said Princeps.

  ‘No. If they do come on and avoid attacking the Heights then there’s a point here where I’ll try to fight.’ He placed a finger on the map.

  ‘It looks as flat as Eight Martyrs,’ said Princeps.

  ‘But it isn’t. I noticed when I went through here and I’ve ridden over it half a dozen times since. The rise here in the middle of the plain, it’s really gradual but it deceives. It’s much more like a hill than it looks and it cuts the plain in two. You couldn’t advance an army in a line down here like at Eight Martyrs – you’ve got to go one way or the other. I’m building a stockade on this rise for bowmen – the Laconics won’t make it to the clashing point without taking twice the dead and wounded they did before. And I think I can make it worse. Over here is the slope of the Golan – too steep and far away for archers. I need to show you.’

  It was half an hour later on the plain in front of the camp and the light was beginning to go. Hooke was, of course, missing his hideous red beard and his head was completely shaved but Bosco recognized him immediately.

  ‘This is Chesney Fancher,’ said Cale.

  ‘Master Fancher.’ A nod from Bosco, a silent nod from Princeps.

  The problem in trying to introduce new ideas to a Redeemer (and what is a good weapon but a good idea made murderous flesh?) was that they disapproved so much of them. Ideas came out of thinking and thinking was something human beings were extremely bad at doing. But as St Augustine of Hippo, the nearest thing to a philosopher the Redeemers possessed, once said: ‘The human mind is poorly formed for thinking. Like amputation, it should be performed only by the highly trained, and then rarely.’ Even Bosco and Princeps, dangerously independent thinkers in their way, were not going to be easily convinced. In the callous way of youth Cale had wanted to use live pigs in his demonstration of the use of Hooke’s adapted mortars. Hooke had persuaded him that, aside from his own squeamishness, the impossibility of strapping armour designed for a man on to inevitably recalcitrant pigs would be asking for trouble. Reluctantly Cale agreed. But not for the second demonstration. For this Cale insisted on live animals. At least, Hooke comforted himself, however hideous the second demonstration would be quick.

  Cale gave the two Redeemers a tour of the two sites to the suspicious bewilderment of both. The first was a line of sixteen dead pigs, two deep, with bits of Materazzi armour strapped to the carcasses where they could be made to fit. The second, fifty yards away, was a pen with a dozen live pigs grunting happily next to three large wooden boxes tightly bound with rope.

  Having retired behind a five-foot-high wall of thick logs about a hundred yards from the dead pigs and with Hooke having taken hold of a large red flag on the end of a pole, the Redeemers watched as Cale signalled him to begin. Hooke waved the large flag energetically in the air. Nothing had happened for about thirty seconds when the two expectant Redeemers saw a dense cloud appear in the air high up over the pigs and then land all at once with a series of light and heavy thwacking noises. Cale led the two priests back to the line of pigs and invited them to inspect the damage. Within an area of forty square yards the ground was thickly covered in the eight-inch-long bolts from the two dozen mortars positioned about eight hundred yards away on the Golan. Of those bolts that had hit the pigs not much more than an inch was sticking out of their flesh. But even the bolts that had struck armour had penetrated the flesh beneath to a depth of three or four inches.

  ‘We can put fifty of these mortars on ledges halfway up the Golan. From that high up we can reach more than a mile into the valley. As long as I can force the Laconics to come up the left channel we can reach their right flank at least and probably deeper.’ They asked questions but not many. It was hard not to be i
mpressed. From fifty yards away the live pigs grunted at them as if in persuasive agreement.

  ‘We’ll need to go back,’ Cale said to the two men. But this time a nervous-looking Hooke did not go with them but walked over to the pig pen, where one of Cale’s Purgators was waiting with a lighted torch. Behind the wall of logs Cale, nervous himself but hiding it better than Hooke, signalled him to begin. He walked away from the pen along with the Purgator but the latter stopped about thirty yards from the pen while Hooke continued and suddenly disappeared into a large trench. There was a shout from Hooke, then the Purgator dropped his torch on the ground and, specially chosen for his speed, legged it over the field like a man pursued by Hummity and vanished into the trench beside Hooke. About five seconds later the gates of hell opened in the pig pen and a vast pit of fire erupted around the animals with a bang! like the end of the world.

  Even Cale, who knew what to expect, nearly split his skin but Bosco and Princeps had been so shocked and startled they had fallen to the ground, driven not only by fear but by an irresistible physical convulsion away from such hideous power. In his heart Cale enjoyed their humiliation almost as much as the successful carnage he could see had taken place in the pig pen. He gave them five minutes to recover themselves and then led the appalled men over to Hooke and the Purgator, who were standing by the pig pen, and what was left of the pigs who once occupied it, waiting for their inspection. It had, as Hooke as Fancher hoped, been quick but the damage was beyond anything either of the two priests could easily grasp. The grisly process and effect of executions was something they had witnessed frequently – but these judicial deaths had been slow and laboured – that, after all, had been the point. What they saw in front of them, these bigger-than-human bodies scoured of internal organs, legs and heads was the mark of a power that was terrible but not human. This was the violence of another world and it was ungraspable to them. They could not have been more shocked if the devil himself had flown here and torn the pigs apart with his bare hands.

  Nevertheless, Cale and Hooke were still astonished when an hour later, and still white with horror, Bosco refused to let Cale use this abominable engine against the Laconic mercenaries.