K Parker - Evil for Evil

He paused, listening. He could hear the river, the creaking of the tall, spindly birches behind him on the slope, the distant miserable voices of crows. Nothing unusual or disturbing, nothing to put him on his guard. Maybe he couldn't see the hunter for the same reason the deer hadn't been able to see him; not that it mattered. So, he told himself, now I know: there'll have to be a war, and I won't survive it. Query, though: if I'd cheated and shot the drake sitting on the water, thereby scaring off the buck, would that have made a difference?

It was only a pricket, no more than thirty-five pounds dressed-out weight, but lugging it back up the hill on his shoulders left him aching and breathless. The warmth of its blood, trickling down under his collar and mixing with his own sweat, made his skin itch, and he had to stop halfway to adjust his grip, to stop the carcass sliding off his back. He startled the life out of the sentry at the sally port, now closed for the night, as he staggered out of the wood covered in blood.

He left the carcass for the guards to carry the rest of the way, and hurried up the back stairs to his tower room for a wash and a clean shirt. Unfortunately, there was someone lying in wait for him on the landing, hidden in the shadows. He was about to tell whoever it was to go away when he recognized the voice saying his name.

"Oh," he said, "it's you."

Ziani Vaatzes; staring at him as though he was some sort of extraordinary monster. "I'm sorry," Vaatzes said, "it's obviously a bad time. I'll come back later."

Valens grinned. He was exhausted, bloody all over and visibly in no fit state to conduct official business; but Vaatzes was an outsider and didn't count. "Don't worry about it," he said. "Come in and talk to me while I get cleaned up."

By the time Valens had pulled off his sodden, sticky shirt, three middle-aged women had appeared out of nowhere with hot water and towels. Valens knew who they were-he knew everybody in the castle, naturally-but he had no idea how they'd got there, and it wouldn't have occurred to him to ask. He dipped a towel in the water jug and scrubbed the back of his neck.

"So," he said, "what's on your mind?"

Vaatzes was looking away. "You wrote me a note asking for suggestions about how to block up the silver mines," he said. "I've been thinking about it."

"What? Oh, yes. Excellent. What've you come up with?"

"That depends," Vaatzes said to the opposite wall, as Valens poured the rest of the water over his head. "Really, it's a case of how thoroughly you want the job done."

"I see." Valens nodded. "Well, you know the reasoning behind it. First priority's got to be making sure the Mezentines can't open the mines up again in a hurry. If they got hold of them and got them back into production, they'd have all the money they need to pay for the war against us. On the other hand, if and when the war's over and the Mezentines have gone away, we'll need to get the mines going again as soon as we can. Basically, it comes down to cost-effectiveness. Our labor won't cost us anything, because we can use the army or conscripted workers. They've got to pay labor costs and make a profit. Is that any help? It's all right," he added, toweling his hair and pulling on his fresh shirt, "you can look round now and it won't be high treason."

Vaatzes nodded. "Seems to me," he said, "you want to make it look like the mines have been sabotaged beyond economic repair, enough to fool the Mezentine engineers, but really you've only damaged them a little."

"Exactly." Valens sat down on the bed and dragged off his muddy, ruined shoes. "Not much to ask, but presumably you're going to tell me it's not possible."

"Oh, it's possible," Vaatzes replied. "Everything's possible in engineering; it's just that some things take more time and money than they're worth."

Valens shrugged. "Go on," he said.

"Well." Vaatzes hovered for a moment, then rested his back awkwardly against one of the bed pillars. Not someone, Valens decided, who thinks well standing up. "Everybody knows how you collapse a mine. You stuff the weight-bearing gallery full of brushwood and charcoal, soak it down with gallons of lamp oil, set light to it and run like hell. You might need to set up a few big double-action bellows at the outlets of the ventilation shafts, but in most cases the fire'll draw enough air on its own to do the job. Anyhow, you light your big fire, which burns out the prop shafts, and down comes the roof. Entirely effective, but if you want to open the mine up again, it'd be easier to dig new shafts than try and clear out the old ones."

Valens nodded. "Everybody knows that, do they? That's encouraging. Sorry, carry on."

Vaatzes shifted his back a little. "My idea," he went on, "is to build a reinforced chamber, sort of like a cage, about a hundred yards down the main gallery. Instead of wooden props, you use iron, and you have a big, thick iron fire door to close it off. You burn out the first hundred yards in the usual way, but because the reinforced chamber's got iron props, they won't burn out, and the fire door'll stop the fire spreading past the chamber and damaging the gallery beyond. So long as the enemy don't know about it, they'll assume you caved in the gallery and the mine's useless. Once they've gone home, you'll have to excavate the first hundred yards, but the rest of the mine ought to be intact." He paused, then went on, "It's fairly simple and straightforward, but it'd have to be done right. The ironwork needs to be pretty massive, and it'll have to be prefabricated above ground, carried down the mine and assembled down there in the dark, so you'd need precise measurements and close, fine work." He hesitated, though Valens was fairly sure it was mostly for effect. "To be honest," he went on, "I'm not entirely sure you've got enough skilled workers available to do the job."

Valens smiled at him. "Except, of course," he said, "I've got you."

"Me." Vaatzes smiled. "I'm flattered, but I don't think I'd be quite enough, somehow. I've done a few rough calculations, and I reckon you'd need a dozen good blacksmiths, plus strikers and men to work the bellows, so that's three dozen; then you'll need carpenters, masons, carters…"

"Fine." Valens shrugged. "I'll have them recruited. We do have skilled artisans in this country, you know."

"Actually," Vaatzes frowned, "you don't. Not what I'd call skilled, anyhow. No disrespect intended, it's simply a fact. You've got men who can make horseshoes and door hinges, but that's not the same thing."

Valens looked up at him. "Is that right?" he said.

"I'm afraid so. I've been wandering around the city over the last few weeks," Vaatzes went on, "poking my nose in, that sort of thing. I've visited pretty well every smithy in town, but I haven't seen anybody I'd give a job to. It's perfectly simple," he added. "The Vadani are a nation of shepherds who suddenly came into money about a century ago, when the silver mines were opened. Since then, you haven't needed home-grown craftsmen; you've got the money, so it's easier to buy stuff from abroad than make it here. You go into any barn or workshop and look around, you'll find most of the tools that aren't a hundred years old were made in Mezentia. Mass-produced good-quality hardware, everything from nails to scythes and plowshares. The Republic trades with your merchants, finished goods for silver; the merchants sell the stuff to the pedlars, who go round the villages and farms and take payment for what they sell in wool, cheese, flour, whatever. It's actually a pretty advanced way of running an economy-you concentrate on doing what you do best, and leave manufacturing to specialists. The problem comes when you're cut off from your supplier-or when you suddenly need home-grown craftsmen, as you do now. Has it occurred to you that every time one of your archers shoots an arrow, you can't replace the arrowhead? All imported, from the people you're currently at war with. Same goes for armor; I've been taking a professional interest, so to speak, and all your guards' kit was made in the Republic. Best-quality munitions-grade equipment, but there's no more where that came from. I'm sorry," he added, "I'd have thought you'd have been aware of that."