K Parker: Devices and Desires

She just looked at him. Oh, he thought, and he had enough conscience left to hate the part of him that added, Well, never mind. 'We can't hang around,' he said, then remembered he'd forgotten something; his manners. 'Will you come with me?' he asked.

She didn't say anything for a very long time, maybe as long as a third of a second. Then she nodded.

'Here, you take my horse,' he said. He held out the reins. She was looking at the horse; how am I supposed to get up there? He winced; he really wasn't handling this very well, but seeing her made him feel seventeen and mortally awkward again. 'Give you a leg-up,' he said.

Her foot in his hand; a sharp stab of pain, as her weight aggravated the strained tendon. Then she was reaching down for the reins, as two of his captains rode up fast. Their faces told him they'd been looking for him, expecting not to find him alive. He turned to the nearest of them. 'You,' he said, 'find me a horse. You, with me.'

She was saying something, and he couldn't hear; the helmet-padding, probably. 'What?' he asked.

'Orsea,' she shouted back. 'He led the counterattack, but I don't know what happened. You've got to-'

Valens knew perfectly well what he'd got to do without having to be told. 'I know,' he said. 'Can you take me to where-?'

She shook her head; and then a voice somewhere behind him and to the right said, 'I can.' he looked round and saw the little brown-faced man, the one he hadn't managed to kill a moment ago. 'I know where he fell,' this incongruous man said, 'I was watching from the tower. Before I came to find you,' he added, to her. 'I can show him.'

She nodded rapidly and said, 'Please'; and for a moment, Valens felt violently jealous. For pity's sake, he told himself. 'All right,' he said-the captain had come back with a riderless horse; quick service, he'd have to remember that-'you can take us there.' He hopped into the saddle and grabbed the reins. And then we really do have to leave,' he shouted to her.

The little man looked up at him and sort of waved his hands-what about me?-at which the captain, clearly a man of initiative, reached down, grabbed him round the waist and pulled him up behind him on his horse. The other captain closed in behind them as they rode off, following the little man's pointing finger. If he's lying, Valens promised himself, I'll have him gutted alive.

It was delicate work, picking a way through the dead bodies. The horses didn't really want to tread on them, and stepped tentatively, like ladies in good shoes on a muddy track. Before they got to where the Mezentine was taking them, he sent the other captain to call off the attack and regroup the men, ready to leave as soon as they were through with looking for Orsea.

'Around here,' the little man was saying-he wasn't used to riding; he was pointing with one hand and clinging grimly to the captain in front of him with the other. 'I know I saw him go down; he was wearing a helmet with a white horsehair crest-'

'That's right,' she said.

Valens was listening, but he was also looking at a big, tall man standing a few yards away. He'd been leaning on a poll-axe, a picture of complete exhaustion. There was so much blood on him that he glistened like a fish, and he appeared to be bewildered, almost in a daydream. He must have heard the horses' hoofs; he snapped upright and levelled the poll-axe in a high first guard; as he did so, a panel of his ruined brigandine flopped sideways and hung out at right-angles.

She screamed; she was calling out a name, which he didn't catch.

'Is that him?' he shouted.

'It's-' The name was Jar-something, Jarno or Jarnac. She urged her horse forward; the blood-covered man dropped his axe, stumbled and caught a handful of mane to hang from. 'Jarnac, where is he?' she was yelling in his face. 'Orsea; do you know-?'

The man said, 'He's here,' in a loud, clear voice. 'He's alive.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Valens noticed that there were a lot of dead men on the ground, all Mezentines, all horribly smashed and cut about. For some reason he thought of the boar at bay, and of the hound that won't leave its injured master. 'Fine,' he said loudly. 'Let's get him and go home. Him too,' he added, nodding at the man called Jarnac; because, by the look of it, he was too useful to waste. 'Horses over here, quick.'

She half-turned in the saddle to look at him. She didn't smile. He hadn't expected her to, it wasn't the time or the place for smiling; but the expression on her face said, It never even crossed my mind that you'd come for me, but I understand why you did; and yes, I accept the gift for what it is. In that moment, Valens felt something he couldn't begin to identify, but which he'd never felt before, and he knew that it justified what he'd done, no matter how devastating and evil the consequences might be. Then she turned away from him. She was watching as two of his men lifted a bloody mess of a man's body on to a horse. He thought about that, too, and realised he couldn't lie to himself. He wished that Orsea had been dead when they found him, and he hoped he'd die, now or very soon, and he knew that he'd do everything in his power to keep him alive.

'Right,' he said. 'Now let's get out of here.'

Miel Ducas lifted his head. He was alone.

He could see out of his left eye. His right eye was blurred and it stung. He closed it and wiped it with his right hand; just blood, that was all. Then the pain in his left arm started, or he noticed it for the first time. Under other circumstances it'd have monopolised his attention, but he couldn't afford the luxury. He was alive, for now, but everything else was pretty bad.

He was alone in the Horsefair, with a lot of dead people. His left arm was broken, and something bad had happened which had left a wet red patch on the left side of his shirt, hand-sized, just above his waist. He could hear hoofs clattering in one direction, and men yelling in another. Clearly not out of the woods yet, then.

He remembered. Orsea; he'd set out to find Orsea, death, or both. Instead, he'd been hit, fallen over his feet, blacked out. The city had fallen to the enemy, and presumably a massacre was in progress. All bad stuff; but for some reason he'd been left over, as though Death had declined to accept him. He grinned. For the first time in his life, the Ducas was apparently of no importance, finally-at the end of the world-relieved of duty.

I will no longer try and do anything beyond my capabilities. Other people's excessive expectations of me brought me to this pass, and I've had enough of them. Instead, let's see if I can stand up.

There'd be no commemorative fresco in the cloister of the Ducas house to celebrate it-would there still be a Ducas house, this time tomorrow?-but he achieved it, nonetheless; he pushed with his knees and straightened his back, and he was on his feet. He swayed dangerously, took a step forward to catch his balance. Let the word go out to every corner of the duchy. The Ducas was standing up.

Nobody seemed to have noticed, which was no bad thing. He staggered a couple of paces and stopped to rest. He couldn't bring himself to feel any sense of urgency, even though he knew time was short. Something had happened while he'd been lying on the ground, dead to the world; something important, and he'd missed it. Whatever it was, it had emptied the Horsefair of Mezentines, but he had a shrewd idea they'd be back soon enough. It would be nice to be somewhere else by then.

(Where? He had nowhere in the world to go. He thought about that. It also meant there was nowhere he had to go, no appointments made for him or obligations requiring him to be present anywhere. That was a very strange feeling indeed.)

There was a horse. It was standing about twenty yards away, its head neither up nor down, its reins tangled around its front nearside hoof. As he stared at it (come on, haven't you ever seen a horse before?), something snagged its attention and it started to walk away; but the movement tightened the rein and, being a well-schooled horse, it stopped. Miel grinned. Allegory, he thought; even at this late stage, the world puts on a moral fable for my benefit. A horse, on the other hand, could take him places, always assuming he could get up on its back.