K Parker - Evil for Evil

This time it was Valens who paused before speaking. "How many of you are there?" he said.

Laughter again; a different sound, like the barking of a very small dog. "How delightful, that you feel sufficiently at ease already to ask such a direct question!" Then the pitch of the voice changed again; lower, quite businesslike. "I regret to say that I don't have an up-to-date census to hand; five months ago, however, when we held the usual muster and games to celebrate my birthday, on the fifth day all the men of military age fit for active service paraded on the plain beside the Swallow River. As each regiment marched past its commander-in-chief, each man placed an arrow on a pile. When the parade was over, the arrows were gathered up into barrels, each holding one thousand. We filled seven hundred barrels, with a few hundred arrows left over. If you ask me what proportion of our people are fit for military service, I would estimate somewhere between an eighth and a tenth. Does that answer your question?"

"Yes." Valens thought for a moment, then said, "As far as I know, the total population of Mezentia is something around eight hundred thousand; it could be less, I'm pretty sure it's not much more. So yes, I think half a million men would probably be enough."

"You think so? I wonder." The voice was very faint. "Allow me to confess my ignorance. I have never seen a city. Come to that, I have never seen a stone-built house. Only a tiny handful of my people have seen anything of the kind. I admit to finding the whole concept both repellent and strangely fascinating; to live your entire life in a box, to see the same view every morning when you wake up; remarkable. But I understand that Mezentia has the highest, thickest walls in the world, with massive gates and high towers, and extraordinary machines that hurl rocks and spears to defend them. I am told that when an enemy shuts himself up in such a very strong box, the only way to deal with him is to keep him there until he starves, and either comes out or dies." A click of the tongue, faint but perfectly clear. "I assume that this process takes time, and I think I have explained why I am in something of a hurry. Yes, I believe that five hundred thousand cavalry could shut the Mezentines up in their box, for a little while, until they themselves began to feel hungry and so were obliged to move on. Do you think the Mezentines' city can be taken? I really don't know enough about these things to form a sensible opinion."

Valens thought: I wonder who made the decision to start the war. I wonder what passed through his mind, just before the scales tipped slightly more one way than the other. He said: "I think it's possible. You see, I have a man…"

"Ziani Vaatzes."

"Yes, him. He nearly managed to defend Civitas Eremiae against them. I've come to know him, a little. I think, give him a long enough crowbar and he can pull apart any box on earth."

"I know a little about him," the voice said softly. "And I would tend to agree." Another pause, and Valens wished there was enough light to show him the little man's face. "I must confess, I'm given rather to flights of fancy. I picture things in my mind that I have never seen; picture them the way they should be, if you follow me, rather than how they are. I have a very clear picture in my mind of Ziani Vaatzes. At some point, I suppose, I shall see him in the flesh, and be vastly disappointed. Of course, I have never seen a Mezentine. I understand that their skins are brown. I shall ask my soldiers to bring me some dead bodies from the oasis. Did you know that the Rosinholet are experts at curing and preserving dead bodies? When a particularly famous and valuable man dies, they cure his skin and stuff it with wool bound tight on a wooden frame, to simulate the bones. Sometimes they mount their illustrious dead on horses, or sit them on the boxes of their wagons. I shall see if we have any Rosinholet embalmers among our slaves, who could manufacture a dozen or so Mezentines for me. It would be appropriate, don't you think? The Mezentines are wonderful makers of things, so I don't see why they shouldn't be made into things themselves. Perhaps, given his rather special skills, Ziani Vaatzes could build appropriate mechanisms to go inside them, so that they can do more or less everything they could do when they were alive. Who knows, maybe we could improve on the design a little in some respects, unless Foreman Vaatzes considers that would constitute an abomination." A soft, dry sound, like a dusty carpet being beaten. "Forgive me, I wander off sometimes. Here's an idea. Let's send for Foreman Vaatzes and ask him for his professional opinion. What do you think of that?"

"There you are," Daurenja said, materializing suddenly in the doorway of the tent.

Ziani looked up and scowled. "Not now," he said. "I'm busy."

"Are you?" Daurenja ducked, his ridiculously long neck bending like a drawn bow, and stepped inside the tent, blotting out the light for a moment or so as he came. "Doing what?"

"Resting. Go away."

Daurenja folded his legs and back and sat down on the ground next to him. "Really," he said cheerfully. "That's no way to talk to your business partner."

"I haven't got one."

"Yes you have." He was sitting unpleasantly close, his back to the tent's center pole. His hair was wet and hung loose down his back in rat-tails. He was wearing a pristine white robe, like the ones the Aram Chantat nobles wore, and on his feet were a pair of curly-toed red velvet slippers. "That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Not the main thing, though. Mostly, I wanted a few quiet minutes to tell you how brilliant you are."

Ziani sighed and started to get up. A hand with a grip like a bench-vise grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down, so fast and so smooth that he had no chance to resist. "Please stay and listen," Daurenja said. "Surely you can spare a few moments to hear a few nice things about yourself."

Ziani picked the hand off his shoulder; touching it was like drawing the guts out of dead poultry after it's hung for a week. "If they're nice," he said, "they probably aren't true. I've never gone much on fiction."

"Don't worry on that score," Daurenja said with a mild giggle. "Everything I'm about to say is perfectly true. Well, you can be the judge of that."

Ziani tried to get up again, but his knees were too weak. "I don't want to talk to you," he said.

"In a minute you will." Daurenja yawned. "Where's the best place to start? Shall we begin with the Duke's wedding day, when you betrayed the hunting party to the Mezentines?"

Ziani felt cold, and all his joints appeared to have seized. "That's bullshit," he said. "And you know as well as I do, it was Duke Orsea who-"

"Ah. Poor Duke Orsea. But I think we'll come to him later. Actually, on reflection, I think we ought to start at the beginning, or as close to it as makes no odds. Tell me; after you ran away from the city, were you actually heading for the Eremian camp, or was running into them a fat slice of sheer good luck?"

This time, Ziani lashed out. He was aiming for Daurenja's chin, but when his fist reached the place where the target should have been, it met nothing but air. Almost simultaneously, something very hard and fast hit Ziani just above the right ear. More surprised than anything else, he folded his arms and legs, like a spider killed suddenly on its web, and dropped to the floor.

"As I was saying." Daurenja's voice, blurred and distant, reached him through the pain like a far-off light glimpsed through mist. "Did you deliberately set out to find Orsea from the start? I suppose what I'm asking is, was the plan already more or less complete in your mind at that early stage, or were you still making it up as you went along?"

Ziani felt sick and dizzy; it was like being very drunk and having the hangover at the same time. He tried to gauge the distance between Daurenja's legs and himself, but it was too much effort.