The Last Four Things tlhogt-2

by Hoffman, Paul

  ‘Do you realize,’ he said, ‘what the Curia will do when they find out about these eruptions? They’ll make such a bonfire out of every one of us they’ll be able to warm their buttocks on it in Memphis. Do you and this loon have no idea what you’ve let loose today?’

  ‘What we’ve let loose, Lord Redeemer,’ shouted back a furious Cale, ‘is the one sure way to defeat an army who’ve already wiped the floor with you. And if they do it again they can march all the way to the throne of the Hanged Redeemer in Chartres without anyone to so much as piss on them.’

  This extravagant but substantially true claim seemed to startle them both into silence. Princeps and Hooke as Fancher looked on in amazement at this fishwife exchange between the great prelate and the boy who was not a boy but the indignation-of-God-made-flesh. In control of himself now it was Cale who spoke again first.

  ‘If I lose there will be no second chance. This is what you wanted from me.’

  ‘The time is not yet right to move against the Curia.’

  ‘What other time will there be?’

  It was not possible to disagree and once Bosco realized that everything he had worked towards for thirty years had come to the great pinch of action he said little more. If it was not now it would be never.

  ‘We must go now if we are to prepare events in Chartres. If you have a victory, send news, surely and quickly. If not the Laconics will bring the news for you.’

  And that was that. He left the tent without saying anything more but returned almost immediately with a letter in his hand. ‘I meant to pass this on several days ago. It’s from your replacement on the veldt. Thought you’d be interested.’ With great show Cale put it in one of his ostentatiously numerous pockets – ostentatious because acolytes were forbidden to have pockets, which stood in the Redeemer faith for all that was secretive and hidden in the human soul. ‘Pocket’ was a nickname for the devil himself.

  Twenty minutes later Bosco and Princeps were on their way to Chartres and Cale was finishing telling Vague Henri what had happened while he was outside the tent trying to listen in. They sat in silence for some time.

  ‘Now might be a chance to slip away – if you wanted to try,’ said Cale.

  ‘I thought you said it was too risky.’

  ‘Could be wrong. And now Bosco has to trust me whether he wants to or not. No one will be coming after you. It’s risky if you stay – fifty-fifty.’

  ‘I can’t go.’

  It was clear Vague Henri had something else in mind.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t leave the girls.’

  Cale groaned in disbelief. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them.’

  ‘So I should walk away?’

  ‘If there’s nothing you can do, why not?’

  ‘What if you win? What will you do about them?’

  ‘What I can – which is probably not much. Or anything. I don’t know what to do about myself – or you.’

  ‘But you know how to beat the greatest army ever put into a war.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘How can that be right?’

  ‘Because beating the Laconics is possible but flying into and out of the Sanctuary on the wings of angels isn’t.’

  ‘You want to fight them, don’t you?’

  ‘Because I’d rather take my chances doing what I’m good at than running away, which I’m obviously not.’

  ‘It’s not just that – you want to fight them. You like this.’

  ‘Tell me what choice I have.’

  ‘Run away.’

  ‘I told you. No. A worse choice isn’t a choice.’

  ‘But it’s all right for me?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Why are you trying to pick a fight?’

  ‘Look who’s talking. Picking a fight is just what you do. It’s what you are. You could pick a fight with a one-eyed sloth.’

  ‘That doesn’t even make sense. What’s a sloth?’

  ‘They have them in the zoo in Memphis.’

  ‘Amiable?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘If you go up with Hooke on the Golan you should be as safe as anywhere.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So – you’re not going to insist on staying with me in the thick of battle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Showing some sense at last.’

  ‘Are you going to be in the thick of battle?’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘You thought that at Eight Martyrs.’

  ‘I’ll try to learn from my mistakes.’

  ‘You better not make any this time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can’t leave them.’

  ‘We can. Bosco won’t kill the girls just for the sake of it.’

  ‘You didn’t always think so well of him.’

  ‘I don’t. I just know him better. What he thinks I can do matters more to him than his own life. It matters a lot more than the girls in the Sanctuary.’

  ‘And what do you think you can do?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Not sure. Maybe it means that you’re beginning to like the idea of being a God.’

  ‘You’re the one who thinks I can pluck girls out of thin air, not me. All I’m trying to do is stay alive – and, for reasons I can’t put my finger on, do the same for you.’

  ‘Tell me you aren’t looking forward to tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I don’t care what you believe.’ There was a silence while they both tried to think of something nastier to say. Oddly, it was Cale who backed down.

  ‘He won’t kill the girls even if we run,’ said Cale.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because if he keeps them they might be useful.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘No – but it’s what I think.’

  ‘It’s what you think I want to hear, that’s what you think.’

  ‘That, too. But it’s true all the same. Everything he does is for a reason. I used to think he hit me because he was a shit. But it’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘You like him?’

  ‘I admire him.’

  ‘You like him.’

  ‘He’s as mad as a sack of cats – but he thinks everything through. I admire that. I like that. It’s a quality that will save me – save us – if I can get him right.’

  ‘If you end up understanding Bosco, you better watch out.’

  ‘Blab! Blab! Blab! Are you talking or is it just the sound of the wind exhafflating from your backside?’

  ‘There’s no such word.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  20

  ‘How can I help you, IdrisPukke? Or to put it another way, what have you got to offer that I could possibly want?’

  The man talking was Señor Bose Ikard sitting across from IdrisPukke on the other side of a desk as large as a king’s mattress. His expression was one of self-satisfied and cynical certainty – a look that said I’ve-got-your-number-and-don’t-think-I-haven’t. He was renowned throughout the four quarters as a lawyer, a natural philosopher (he had invented a method of preserving chicken in snow) and, most famously of all, an advisor of great men, particulary King Zog of Switzerland, a man famous as much for his learning as for his stupidity and unsavoury personal habits. It was not a matter of great doubt in the world at large that Switzerland would have lost its renowned ability to stay out of any sort of war for the last five hundred years had it not been for Bose Ikard – but there was considerable doubt as to whether in the widely predicted coming storm even a man so clever and unprincipled would continue to be able to do so. This explained his hostility to the presence of IdrisPukke, a man who had brought that storm right into the heart of Spanish Leeds and Switzerland.

  It had been more than ten years since IdrisPukke and Señor Bose Ikard had spoken and even then it was not a conversation in the normal sense, u
nless you count the latter passing a sentence of death on the former and asking him if he had anything to say before he did so. Ikard knew perfectly well that IdrisPukke was not guilty of the charge of murder for the simple reason that he had himself ordered the killing for which IdrisPukke was in the dock. There were no particular hard feelings between them because the verdict was itself a way merely of putting pressure on the Gauleiters who then employed IdrisPukke. At the time the Gauleiters valued him highly enough to hand over one of Bose Ikard’s political opponents who had taken refuge, as he thought, with them on the grounds that they were sympathetic to his cause (a complicated one, passionately avowed, few could now be found to give any kind of coherent account of it). In fact the Gauleiters actually were sympathetic to his cause – but not enough to prevent them agreeing to the swap of IdrisPukke for the exile who on his enforced return was summarily executed.

  These days Ikard was in a more or less continuous state of political irritation. For himself in everyday matters he was a pleasant enough fellow and would continue to be pleasant even as his henchpeople were shoving your remains into an isolated hole along with half a bag of quick lime. He was, as Vipond described him, ‘almost your standard political villain but much more sly. His greatest weakness is he thinks that everyone who will not admit to seeing the world as he does is a hypocrite.’

  It was Vipond’s presence in Spanish Leeds, the largest of Switzerland’s border cities, that was the cause of Ikard’s concern. Admittedly it was not Vipond as such who was the problem but the spavined but still substantial remains of the Materazzi who had fled there. They had, in Ikard’s opinion, disgracefully easily lost their empire only to descend on his determinedly neutral country and become a serious bloody nuisance, and were threatening to be something worse. He had tried to pursue his standard policy when it came to allies who were no longer useful – offer them all aid short of help. Unfortunately King Zog of Switzerland was a sentimental snob and insisted on providing shelter and financial assistance to fellow royalty in distress. Ikard regarded this as both ruinously expensive in itself and fertile ground for God knew what unforeseeable problems. It was trying to work out what these problems might be that had made him decide to talk to IdrisPukke, having made the ostentatious point of refusing to do the same for his half-brother on the grounds that the most sensible course was ‘to encourage the old bastard to feel as unwelcome as possible’.

  ‘So,’ he said to IdrisPukke. ‘What can you do for me?’

  ‘Your honesty is, as always, refreshing, Señor.’

  ‘I’m sorry you think so.’

  ‘As it happens, I can be of use.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am in the way of being able to arrange a defection that will be, in my view, of enormous advantage to you.’

  ‘The last time I heard someone beat about the bush so they were trying to sell me shares in an expedition to Eldorado.’

  ‘It’s a Redeemer soldier, very young, so valuable to them that he alone was the cause of their attack on the Materazzi. You haven’t heard of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then your intelligencers are very much less competent than they used to be.’

  ‘All right. Thomas Cale.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Considerably more than you.’

  ‘I am very willing to listen.’

  And that’s what he did. It was certainly most interesting and certainly most peculiar.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Of course not. Have the Redeemers made contact with you?’

  ‘Ye-ees.’

  ‘You don’t seem sure.’

  ‘No. I distinctly remember. Absolutely frightful pair. One of them had teeth that were positively green.’

  ‘And they wanted?’

  ‘To express their disapproval of our help to the Materazzi.’

  ‘Such as it is.’

  ‘That merely sounds ungrateful. I think, all things considered, that we’ve treated them rather better than old man Materazzi would have done, peace be upon him, had the positions been reversed.’

  ‘It suits you to think so.’

  ‘True – but it’s still what I think.’

  ‘And what did you tell them?’

  ‘The Redeemers? I told them to fuck off.’

  ‘How very gratifying.’

  ‘This monstrous prodigy of yours. What does he want and why should I give it to him?’

  ‘He wants safe passage over the borders.’

  ‘I can’t think it would be a good idea to bring in a fellow when the Redeemers are ready to risk so much to get him back. Quite how the Materazzi managed to collapse so pathetically I’ll never understand but I’d say that on the basis of the evidence it was unwise to go anywhere near him.’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On?’

  ‘Whether you want this monstrous prodigy – a good term for him by the way – on their territory pissing into yours or on your territory pissing into theirs.’

  ‘He seems a very troublesome young person.’

  ‘He’s coming here anyway.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because they’ll use him to destroy the Antagonists and when they’ve finished with them they’ll come for you. And leading them will be a not at all happy Thomas Cale, very displeased that you told him to fuck off when he only offered you the hand of friendship. The Redeemers absolutely will not stop. Whether you’re a heretic or a non-believer it’s all one to them.’

  ‘Why would they go on a crusade now? They haven’t bothered in six hundred years.’

  ‘Because they’re changing. And if you don’t buck your ideas up you’re going to go the way of the Materazzi.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘You know something, I’m almost offended. Help me to bring Cale in.’

  ‘I’ll have to consider all this.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take too long if I were you.’

  Señor Bose Ikard was certainly very much more alarmed after IdrisPukke had left than before he arrived. He fancied he could tell when he was bluffing but today he sounded altogether too convincing. On the other hand he knew, as IdrisPukke did not, that the Laconics had finally agreed to march on the Golan. Once the Redeemers and their adolescent monstrosity had been in a real fight with those murderous pederasts from Laconia he’d decide whether they were a threat or not. Till then IdrisPukke could go and whistle ‘Paddington Polly’ – and his murderous brat along with him.

  Go into any corner bibliothèque and you will find a hundred books on the flight of the Materazzi after the fall of Memphis: books fantastical, magical, mystical, historical, rough and ready, elegant mythical, hard-boiled tragical, plain and to the point, blackly embroidered, red with blood and suffering – somewhere in all of it will be the truth. To tell a tenth of it would be dull beyond enduring, in that one tale of horror and pain in such a time of bitter cold and scantiness becomes much like another. It’s dreadful to say but there it is. A hard time they had of it before the four thousand escapees made it in half that number to Spanish Leeds, where their welcome had not been much warmer than their journey there.

  ‘Well?’ said Vipond when IdrisPukke wandered back to the recently vacated Jewish ghetto, the Chief Rabbi having decided that the Redeemers being in the ascendant it was time to put as great a distance between them and his congregation as was humanly possibly – which was to say so far that any further and they would be on their way back.

  IdrisPukke gave his half-brother a summary.

  ‘Will he see me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘To be fair, neither would I in his position.’

  ‘You men of the world,’ mocked IdrisPukke. ‘So shocking.’

  ‘Will he see you again perhaps?’

  ‘It depends. You know his type – always want you to know they’ve got a finger up your arse.’

  ‘So to speak.’

  ‘He’s uncerta
in what to do next, for all his vanity. But he wants you off his municipality as soon as he can. Depending on that old bastard Zog’s kindness isn’t much of a guarantee.’

  ‘No.’ There was a long silence.

  ‘What do you think Cale will do?’

  ‘What can he do but wait? Ikard has put most of his troops to the margins. Cale and Vague Henri are facing six hundred miles of Antagonist trenches and a two-hundred-mile line of twitchy Swiss border troops. He’ll be staying put, I’d say.’

  There was a knock on the door which was instantly opened from outside. The guard, all reverence and solicitude, showed Arbell Materazzi into the room. She might well be the last ruler of the Materazzi, a rump now so diminished as to be barely thought of as being ruled, but at least she looked like the almost queen she was. Older, more beautiful, suffering having given her a kind of grey power to her looks. Everything had changed in only a few months, her world destroyed, her father dead, now first among the remaining Materazzi, married to her cousin, Conn, and heavily pregnant.

  21

  It was another four days before the Laconics began to move, as Cale had hoped, around the back of the Golan and directly to take Chartres. Whatever the losses they had taken of their profoundly precious soldiers during the victory on the Machair these deaths had to be balanced against their need for Antagonist silver. Their only alternative to the money gained from hiring out military power was the wealth provided by the vast number of Helot serfs who lived in Laconia and the enslaved countries that surrounded it on nearly all sides. They could terrorize the Helots and purge their leaders but doing so only decreased the Laconics’ income – a dead slave was a dead slave – and ensured that the Helots repeatedly threatened to rebel because the Laconics killed them in large numbers whether they did so or not. Every cull of a few thousand Helots made them smug in the short term but more suspicious in the long. Unafraid of death they were nevertheless terrified of annihilation. This was what drove the Laconics back to the battlefield and the attack on Chartres.

  Cale’s immediate concern was that the Laconics might have worked out that the Redeemers were going to try and stop them with the wall of the Golan on one side and, admittedly, only a slight rise on the other. The rise did little more than inhibit their level of sight of a much bigger field of battle, but for all its apparent unimportance it was almost as good as a great stone wall in that it would serve to funnel them into a much narrower space than anything before or after it. Once Cale could engage them not even the Laconics would be able to rearrange themselves mid-battle.