Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  None of which would be worth a damn if we couldn’t keep the bastard steelnecks off our backs. You remember the dog at Leuco’s; how it used to sit there while you were eating, watching your every move, waiting for the slightest chance to jump up and snatch the bread off your plate or the meat out of your sandwich? That’s what the generals have been like, ever since I got the job. Dreadfully bad luck on them, of course, that for the first time in a decade, the Empire’s at peace with its neighbours. The only crack they could possibly get a knife into is Tremissis; and boy, haven’t they been trying their best. But—thanks to you—I’ve been able to smile sweetly at them, thank them for their offers of assistance but assure them that my governor and I have the matter entirely under control and expect a satisfactory resolution in due course. And there’s not a damn thing they can do about it. They pace up and down like caged jackals; and meanwhile, I’m quietly stripping away their funding and their support mechanisms. If we can only hold things together up there, I’m hoping I can get rid of the whole pack of them, and then the Empire will be safe from the greatest threat of all.

  No pressure, Phormio. But—I’m telling you the truth—what you’re doing is the single most important thing in the whole business. Without you, the steelnecks would have my head on a spike, and it’d be civil war, business as usual. Just thought I’d mention that.

  Now, here’s something really strange. You asked me to go through the military and find out which officers answering the profile can’t be accounted for. Well, the answer is, none. We’ve checked up on everybody who fits that description under the age of eighty, and none of them can be our man. So we’ve started again and we’re checking out their sons and grandsons, their adjutants, Academy lecturers, foreign asylum seekers with military experience; I know, it doesn’t make sense. You think someone, no military experience or background but extremely bright, could pick up the Book and learn it well enough to put it all into practice?

  Rather more luck with the money. It’s a bit like the story about the invisible man; you couldn’t see him, you could only see his shadow. Menestheus’ people are trying to trace the money by the wake it leaves behind as it passes, if that makes any sense (if it does, please explain it to me). For example; the Philargyrus Brothers are very scrupulous about paying their taxes. When they make a big payment, it’s a sign they’ve done a big deal. Likewise, if a bank cuts its lending rate, it can mean they’ve just had an unusually large deposit. Stuff like that. It makes my head hurt, but Menestheus appears to understand it, so I don’t have to. He reckons that large sums have been moving about since roughly a year before the insurgency started—a bit nebulous about the early stages, because of the chaos during the last stages of the War—and there’s no indication of where it came from to begin with; it just appeared out of nowhere, and that simply doesn’t happen, apparently. Unfortunately, at various stages this mysterious fortune vanishes completely. Menestheus reckons it leaves the jurisdiction; gets shoved into Perimadeia for a while to cool off, throw the likes of us off the scent. Still, as the Treasury boys keep telling me, it only needs them to make one mistake and we’ll have them. Indeed. My breath, however, remains resolutely unheld.

  Full reports enclosed. In with them, somewhere near the bottom of the third tin, if memory serves, there’s a copy of the new and utterly definitive edition of Form & Substance—yes, it would appear that Doc Stesichorus (he must be nearly ninety by now) has finally finished revising and mucking about with it and handed it over to the copyists. Amazing. I can only assume it’s because we’re not there any more to get under his feet and bother him with idiot questions. If that’s not an omen of the end of the world, I don’t know what is.

  Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, to His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun, father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, greetings.

  Phormio begs to inform His Majesty that the insurgents have breached the defensive barrier, burnt Theano and demolished the bridge at Zapontus.

  From Stesichorus, Form & Substance, book IV, chapter 7, paragraphs 7a to 9d (the new edition);

  “If therefore we postulate an abstract, objective measure of freedom, of justice, of good and bad government, of right and wrong, what then? What means are we justified in using to attain our ends, to bring about the desirable outcome? Is it acceptable to wage war in order to bring peace; to murder a bad king in order to replace him with a good one; to oppress in order to liberate; to damn ourselves in the cause of our redemption? Can an objectively bad act be subjectively good; and if so, can there be any objectivity in morality? But if we withdraw our hand and, fearing to transgress, abstain from action and thereby suffer the wrong to be perpetuated, is that not also a misdeed—worse, arguably, since compounded with the sins of prevarication and cowardice?”

  Just thought I’d share that. Forty-six years in the writing, and what does he give us? An answer? No, a rhetorical bloody question. Thanks, Doctor.

  I was reading Stesichorus when they told me about the raid. You know that wretched feeling you get when the worst thing that could possibly happen happens? You simply can’t help taking it personally, even if it quite obviously isn’t. So; I don’t really believe that the bad guys went to all that trouble and effort just to spoil what, up till then, had been a really quite pleasant day; but it felt like it. It felt spiteful and petty and mean, and I wanted to hit someone, and there wasn’t anybody to hit.

  They must’ve approached the barrier the long way, right round the top of the woods, because our scouts didn’t see or hear a thing. What was so clever, they broke into the trench right at the extreme western end, where we’d only just finished propping and boarding in. I imagine they must have started just after dark, because it would’ve taken them at least six hours to work their way along, slowly and carefully sawing through the load-bearing props—not all the way through, of course, they left just enough to keep them from caving in; roughly half-way, they piled up a great big heap of the dry brushwood bundles we were using to reinforce the parapet; then they carried on sawing through the rest of the props. When they set the brushwood heap on fire, it burned through the main beams of the lower gallery, which made it collapse at that one point, which put a strain on the adjoining chambers, which was enough to snap off the nearly-sawn-through props, which made the whole bloody trench collapse in on itself in less than a minute. It really is a shame none of our people saw it, because it must’ve been the most amazing sight. All the dirt we’d spent all that time, effort and money digging out and piling up into a bank, just quietly sliding back down where it came from. It was so quiet, it didn’t wake up the workers in their camp, a hundred yards away. I went and had a look for myself, and honestly, I had trouble seeing where the ditch had been, it was filled in so neatly.

  You’ve got to admire people who can do something like that.

  Well, so much for finesse. Wasn’t much of that in evidence when they broke into the camp. There were three hundred and sixty men asleep in there; we found a hundred and sixty-eight bodies. A few survivors trickled back out of the woods when we showed up, but the rest just kept going, and I can’t say I blame them. It’s bloody obvious we can’t protect them, so they’d have to be mad to go back to work, even if we decide to rebuild the trench.

  By this time, it was about an hour before dawn. They must’ve walked pretty fast to get to Theano by first light. I gather the scouts saw them coming and raised the alarm, but by the time the garrison was awake and ready to do anything useful, the bad guys were already inside the gates and setting fire to anything with thatch on it. The garrison commander, Major Lonaras, very sensibly decided to leave them to it and get his men, and as many civilians as he could, out of the southern gate before the fire reached it and trapped them all inside the town. It was a good decision; it’s just a pity that the bad guys had anticipated it, and were waiting just outside the gate. Lonaras and those of his men who were still obeying orders at that point managed to get betw
een them and the civilians long enough for them to get away. It was a brave thing to do, but in the event he needn’t have bothered; the bad guys headed straight for the Zapontus bridge and cut them off there. All told, out of two thousand civilians and nearly a hundred soldiers, so far we’ve got thirty-odd civilian survivors; sixteen hundred confirmed dead, including nearly all the garrison, and Lonaras, of course.

  After that, they broke up a jetty about two hundred yards downstream, piled up the dry planking on the middle of the bridge and set fire to it. The bridge is repairable, but that’s not the point. They did it so the Mesoura garrison had to take a fifteen-mile detour in order to cross the river, and when they got to Theano, needless to say, it was all over and the bad guys were long gone. We tried following their trail, but it petered out in the foothills. We didn’t catch a single prisoner or recover a single body. For all I know, they may have pulled it off without losing a man.

  So, there you have it. I suppose you could try asking your generals what they think they might have been able to do to prevent it, or catch the bad guys before they got away. It might shut them up, at least in public, because I really don’t see what we could’ve done. We can’t put out pickets along the whole length of the frontier. That was the whole idea of the barrier—and I suppose we’ve proved it would’ve been a good idea; it must’ve worried them, to make them go to so much trouble to stop us doing it. But they have.

  Nico, I don’t want to add to the horrendous problems this mess is about to cause you; but just think for a moment and be perfectly honest with yourself; am I really the right man for this job? If you can think of anybody else, maybe I should step down and go home. To cope with something like this, you don’t need a plodder, an honest man doing his level best. You need a genius; someone even cleverer than the clever bastard who planned that whole operation. Seriously. Think about it.

  Meanwhile, I’ve only got one suggestion, and personally I think it stinks. Rebuild the barrier; not just put it back how it was, but extend it, right down to the sea at the western end and the Hog’s Back to the east. It would, of course, be an undertaking of truly staggering proportions. We’d need at least ten thousand men working on it, with certainly no less than five thousand soldiers to guard them; materials, plant and equipment, food, shelter and general support. I haven’t even considered how much all that would cost. But; I don’t know. I’m trying to put myself inside the mind of my enemy, trying to think; if I was him, what could that clown Phormio possibly do in response to the raid that might in any way alarm, inconvenience or even annoy me? And the answer came back; build the barrier. Build a bigger, longer, better specified barrier. Build a fucking wall.

  Apart from that, I have only one suggestion, which relates directly to the Stesichorus quote. The only alternative to a wall, that I can think of, would be to bring up another two divisions, then do a fast, thorough sweep of everything within five miles of the border; burn every house, intern all the people, burn or impound all livestock and food reserves; then, when we’ve done that, cross the border and make a similar dead zone for five miles on the other side, put in a garrison, build forts; if that doesn’t work, increase the cross-border zone to ten miles, bring up even more troops, and so on until the insurgency stops.

  I remember my father telling me something his father told him when he took over the family business. If a man treads on your foot, break his arm. If he spits on your shoe, kill him. Let them hate you, so long as they fear you. That was how he thought, and I have real problems with knowing that I’m descended from someone like that. The horrible thing is, though, that Grandad’s approach, in certain circumstances, does seem to work really well. It’s how Grandad made his fortune in shipbuilding; and if there’s anywhere on earth harder and nastier than the Callirhoe shipyard, it’s the Tremissis frontier.

  Please, please, please think of a third alternative.

  His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun, father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, to Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, greetings.

  By these presents, know that His Majesty has appointed the bearer of this letter, General Lamachus, as deputy commander of the Tremissis sector. Lamachus will assist Phormio with co-ordinating the defences and overall security of the province.

  You have a new number-one priority. Immediately find and secure the person of the leader of the insurgency, buy him lots of drinks and offer him a job. We need someone like that at Command.

  It won’t have escaped your notice, my brilliant and perceptive friend, that enclosed herewith, instead of oysters or a warm scarf or a nice book, there’s a steelneck. Sorry about that. Not—definitely not—my idea, can’t be helped, do the best you can. Your spot of bother has become my spot of bother, and thing aren’t looking good here at the moment. Lumbering you with an unwanted four-star arsehole was the best deal (for all of us) that I could cut in very uncongenial circumstances. Play nicely together.

  (If the seals on this letter were broken or showed signs of having been played about with, you’d better arrange an accident for him. But I don’t think that’s likely. I have no reason whatsoever to suppose that General Lamachus can read.)

  Fairly soon, you should also be taking delivery of;

  Item; two (2) divisions regular infantry

  Item; one (1) division auxiliary cavalry

  Item; one (1) division, the Imperial Corps of Engineers, with an architect, his pencil-sharpeners, cartographers, specialists and other assorted entourage, useful and/or ornamental, literate and semi-literate.

  I think we’ll build a wall. You can’t have too many walls. In years to come, the happy and contented subjects of the Empire can take their families for picnics among the picturesque ruins. It’ll be marked on all the maps as Nicephorus’ Wall, which means my name will live for a thousand years, which will be nice. Also, there is a desperate need here for me to do something, and building as wall is as definite and concrete (pun intended) a something as even the most intractable steelneck could ask for.

  Talking of the most intractable steelneck; General Lamachus served my father (not in itself a recommendation), and was never conclusively proved to have taken part in any serious conspiracy against him. In military circles, this means we’re practically engaged to be married. Be nice to him, keep him well away from the garlic and the wives of people you daren’t offend, and he’s not actually all that bad. He also knows a surprising amount about building walls (the wide bit goes in the ground, the crenellated bit sticks up in the air; all the latest cutting-edge technical stuff) and he’s worshipped as some sort of minor god by the Lusir Soleth, a whole division of whom you will soon have the pleasure of entertaining. Of the Lusir Soleth, the best thing that can be said is, they take some of the pain out of reading casualty reports. I’ve stuck you with them purely and simply because, if things turn smelly here, I want them as far away from the City as possible. Sorry about that.

  Menestheus’ financial wizards have drawn a blank on the money trail, and so have the chronic under-achievers who’ve been looking into the personnel records.

  Look on the bright side. We may be facing the final collapse of the Empire, the overthrow of all our hopes and our own violent and painful deaths, but at least neither of us will ever have to take an end-of-term philosophy exam again, or listen to Phylarchus lecturing on precepts of Nominalist theory, or eat another breakfast in Great Hall. You see? Once you put this stuff in perspective, it ain’t so bad.

  Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, to His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun, father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, greetings.

  Phormio begs to inform His Majesty that the reinforcements have arrived, general Lamachus has taken up his command, and work has begun on the Nicephorine Wall.

  (Happy now? Your place in history.)

  Really, Nico, you should try talking to people. Just because someone served your father faithfully throughout a long
and distinguished military career, it doesn’t necessarily follow he’s a total bastard—a safe bet, yes, but not an absolute certainty. If only you’d taken the trouble to share a glass or two of wine with my new best friend Lamachus, you’d have found out that underneath that bluff, grim, savage, raw-flesh-eating, human-sacrificing exterior beats the heart of a rather unpleasant person—but (and this is where I may have a slight edge over you, even if you are the second cousin of the invincible Sun) a rather unpleasant person who in his spare time collects old manuscripts. True, the sort of old manuscript he particularly likes tend to be mostly pictures of athletic young men and women with no clothes on, but at least it’s a start; a tiny bridge of shared humanity linking the human and the steelneck. Fact is, I happened to leave lying around in my study that copy of the Bedchamber Dialogues that Strato sent. When Lamachus came to report in, he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye and swooped on it like a vulture. Offered me HS 2,000 for it, cash. Apparently, it’s the rare sixth edition, with the extra woodcut in chapter nine. Take it, I said, as a gift. General Lamachus is now my friend.