K Parker: Devices and Desires

'Who's that?' she heard herself ask. 'They can't be ours, all our horses are stabled on the west side.'

Still more horsemen came in through the arch. A pattern was becoming visible. They were forming up to charge, in the direction of the palace. She looked round, and saw that Vaatzes was smiling, almost as though he'd been proved right about something.

'Excellent,' he said. 'Thank God for romance.'

That was a very strange thing to say, as the unidentified cavalry-several hundred of them by now-burst into a fast canter, followed by a gallop, heading very close to where they were both standing. Vaatzes swore and grabbed her arm, pulling her behind him as he turned and ran. It took her a moment to understand; whoever they were, standing in their way wouldn't be a good idea.

They ran a short distance and stopped, and the cavalry flowed by like a lava stream; they were close enough to be more than just shapes now, and she made out men in armour, their faces visored, on tall, powerful horses. They didn't look like Eremians; she had no idea what Mezentian cavalry were supposed to look like. 'Who are they?' she asked again, but the clatter of hoofs drowned her out.

Footsoldiers had appeared from somewhere-she hadn't been paying attention, so she didn't know where-and the cavalry ploughed into them, so hard she could feel the impact through the soles of her feet. She tried to pull away and run, but Vaatzes was holding on to her, his fingers tight on her arm. She didn't know what to make of that; it felt like he wanted to keep her, as if she was some valuable thing he was determined to take with him. Now he came very close, and shouted in her ear, 'Can you see him? I don't know what he looks like.'

She shouted back, 'Who?'

'Duke Valens.'

She thought she'd misheard him; then she realised, as though she'd just been told the answer to a silly riddle a child could've guessed, who the horsemen were. Valens had come to rescue her.

It was a complete shambles, of course. Dead bodies everywhere, both the enemy and the Eremians scattered all over the place; he'd come expecting to fight a hopeless battle against ridiculous odds, but instead he'd turned up late, when it was all over; picked a fight with the Perpetual Republic, and all for nothing.

A footsoldier made the mistake of being in front of him. Valens twitched his left rein, urged his horse on with his heels and held his sword out just a little as he passed. No need to strike or anything like that; the sword's edge touched the man's neck, and momentum did the rest. Elegant; but he'd wanted to let off steam by hitting something hard.

All around him, his men were slaughtering the enemy like sheep, which wasn't what he was here for. Instead, he needed to find someone he could talk to; he needed to find her, and the fool Orsea, and then get out again as quickly as possible. Anything else he did here, such as killing Mezentines, was just making a bad situation worse.

Pull yourself together, he thought, this is getting out of hand. In front of him-while he'd been agonising, the battle had overtaken him, proving once again that War has deplorable manners-his colour squadron had surrounded a large unit of Mezentine infantry, jamming them close together so that they could hardly move, let alone fight back. He watched his men drive their horses tight up against the Mezentines' bodies, barging them back, while their riders hacked resignedly at heads and arms showing above an arbitrary line; it was like watching tired men cutting back a hedge, their hooks turning blunt, their dexterity worn down into mere flailing and bashing. It was a disgusting sight, and it had come about because the Vadani Duke was a hopeless romantic, who couldn't resist the thought of snatching his beloved out of the jaws of death. Busy as he was, and preoccupied with more practical matters, he had to stop and consider that. From the ugliness of his life he'd sought escape and redemption in pure and selfless love, and the upshot was lacerated flesh, cut and smashed bone, and the weariness of men worn out with the sheer hard work of killing.

Then he pulled himself together, as previously resolved, and forced himself to become the efficient, dispassionate professional. Thanks to surprise and his enemy's lack of imagination, he'd carried the field, for the time being. Such Mezentines as remained alive inside the Horsefair were penned up and harmless, but reinforcements would already be on their way from other parts of the city; his cavalry were good at attacking but not at being attacked, he lacked archers and infantry support, and he could expect no help from the shattered fragments of the Eremian forces. At best he had a quarter of an hour, in which he had to find her, and Orsea as well if possible. After that, he had to leave or face extermination. Fine.

It stood to reason she'd be in the palace; Orsea too, if he had any sense (but of course he hadn't). He could see the palace dead ahead of him, but he hadn't paid enough attention to the fine detail of how you got there from here. The map of Civitas Eremiae he'd studied earlier marked streets, gates and arches, but so far it had proved less than entirely reliable (should've known better than to trust a map he'd bought from a woman in a red dress). If, as he feared, there were narrow streets and alleys between here and the palace, it'd be a stupid risk to take horsemen in there. All in all, he was beginning to wish he'd stayed at home.

And then, unexpectedly, he saw her. She was quite close to him, no more than twenty yards away; there was a man with her, a brown-skinned man, therefore by implication a Mezentine or one of their mercenaries. He wasn't in armour, which suggested he was a diplomat or other civilian; not that it mattered. It was her, unmistakable, just the same as she'd been the one time they'd met, ten years ago.

He yanked his horse's head round and dug his heels in. Some fool of a footsoldier darted across his line of sight; probably only trying to get away, but for half a second he was inside Valens' reach, and that was the end of him. Valens didn't notice anything about him, wasn't entirely sure where the cut had landed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw him go down and his experience in such matters assured him that living men don't drop down at that angle. He felt a mild tingle of pain in his sword-arm, just above the elbow, where he'd abused the tendon.

She saw him approaching; froze for a moment in panic, then looked round for somewhere to run to. The fool with her had pulled out a sword (a short, single-edged huntsman's falchion, he noticed automatically; loot, presumably, and much good it'd do him) and was trying to get between her and the presumed approaching danger. No time for that sort of thing; Valens swerved left, leaned forward a little, smacked the falchion out of his hand with the flat of his sword, and completed the engagement with a short, stiff thrust to the heart.

He noticed in passing that the thrust was turned and didn't penetrate, but that was of no concern. The fool had fallen over, and didn't matter any more. She was standing quite still, her mouth open in horror and no sound coming out. 'It's all right,' he yelled, 'it's me.'

Of course, she didn't recognise him, even with his bevor up. Why should she? It was ten years ago, and they'd only chatted for a few minutes. 'It's me,' he howled, 'it's Valens. I'm come to save you.' Melodrama, he thought; what a crass thing to say. 'Please, stay still, it's all right.'

She was staring at him as though he had wings and a tail. She said something but he couldn't hear. The hell with it, he thought, and slid off his horse. He landed awkwardly, turning his ankle over, and swore.

'Valens?' He heard her this time. 'What are you-?'

Explanations; for crying out loud, no time. 'Soon as I heard about the assault,' he said. He was lying; it had taken him a day, a night and a morning before the pain had got too much for him to bear and he'd ordered out the cavalry. 'I came to get you. And Orsea,' he added, wishing it hadn't sounded such an obvious afterthought. 'Where is he?'