K Parker: Devices and Desires

Big assumption. Still, he wasn't busy. A yard at a time, nice and slow, conserving his meagre strength and not startling the horse with sudden movements (an elegant economy of motivations), he approached it, until he was close enough to bend forward-that hurt surprisingly much-and tweak at the reins. Obligingly, the horse lifted its foot, releasing the tangle. Of course, it hadn't known to do it for itself. A fellow slave of duty.

He looked up at the saddle. Might as well ask him to climb a mountain on his knees. What he needed, of course, was a mounting block. He thought about that. He was in the Horsefair, which was called that for a reason. Over on the far east side there was a row of three dozen mounting blocks. If he could get there, he might be able to scramble up on to this horse's back and ride away, possibly even to the nebulous and unimaginable environment known as Safety. At the very least he could try. After all, if the world had wanted him to die here, it wouldn't have issued him with the horse.

A third of the way there his knees gave up. He hung for a quarter of a minute from the reins and a handful of the horse's mane, grabbed together in his right hand. He was too weak to pull himself upright by them, too contrary to let go and slide to the ground. In theory, he could call on rugged determination and force of character to spur him on to that last spurt of effort. Not in practice, though. The mane hairs were cutting into the side of his hand, and his bodyweight was pulling the curl out of his fingers. He knew that if he slumped to the ground, he wouldn't be able to get up again. It was a quiet, low-key way for the Ducas to fail. He was almost prepared to accept it.

At the last possible moment, the horse grunted, raised its head a few degrees and started to amble forward. It was only a very slight movement, but it was enough. The horse dragged him along, the toes of his slippers trailing on the ground; it had spotted the hay-nets that hung on the east wall, behind the row of mounting blocks.

On the neck of the pass that overlooked the road to Civitas Eremiae, Valens halted his men and looked back. Smoke was drifting up into the still air. It was mid-morning on a bright, warm day.

'What's happening?' asked one of his captains.

Valens narrowed his eyes against the glare. 'They're burning the city,' he said.

The captain thought about that. 'Didn't take them long to evacuate the civilians,' he said.

'I don't think they bothered with that,' Valens replied.

It took the captain a moment to grasp what he'd heard. 'So what are we going to do?' he said.

'Us?' Valens sighed. 'We're going to go home, of course. We've done what we came for.'

'I thought we came to save the Eremians.'

'No.' Valens shortened his reins into his left hand. 'No, that'd be a mistake. Let's get moving.' He was glad to get over the pass, back on to the road that led to the border, where he couldn't see the smoke. He was pleased when they brought him the casualty report-twelve dead, seventeen injured, mostly minor cuts and grazes; his men had acquitted themselves extremely well under difficult circumstances. He could be proud of them. In fact, the only man who'd done badly in his small army, failed in his duty and brought disaster down on his comrades-in-arms and the entire Vadani people was himself. My prerogative, he thought; and he cast his mind back to when he'd first heard about Duke Orsea's insane idea of a pre-emptive strike against the Mezentines. Deliberately picking a fight with the most powerful, most ruthless nation on earth, people who never forgave, never forgot, took quiet pride in the total extermination of their enemies… Ordinary stupidity wouldn't be enough, you'd have to be actually deranged to do something like that.

Quite, he thought.

She was riding alongside the hastily improvised travois they'd rigged up for Orsea and his ferocious bodyguard whose name Valens had already forgotten. A travois was better than tying him on to a horse's back, but that was the best you could say for it. Every rut and pothole jarred him; he winced, cried, yelled with pain, while she watched and said nothing. The other one, the big, tall man, had passed out as soon as his head touched the cloth. He bumped and shifted and carried on sleeping, still and quiet as dead game carried home on a pole from the hunt. Behind the travois the little Mezentine trotted, clinging with both hands to the pommel of his saddle while a compassionate sergeant led his horse on a leading-rein. How exactly he'd come to acquire this oddity, Valens wasn't entirely sure. He'd trailed after Veatriz like a stray dog following you home from the market, and Valens couldn't see any particular reason to send him away. Besides, he was the man who'd built all those clever war engines, the ones that had slaughtered the Mezentines by the tens of thousands and still failed to preserve the city. Someone like that might come in useful if things went badly with the Perpetual Republic, as Valens was fairly sure they would.

There was an old story about a great conqueror who laid siege to a mighty city for ten years. Finally he took it by some cunning stratagem, burst in, looted everything worth taking, set fire to the buildings and withdrew. He had an army of fifty thousand men as he started the journey home; less than two hundred eventually crawled across the border, the only survivors of the plague they'd contracted from the rotting corpses of their enemies, unburied because their starved and emaciated countrymen lacked the strength. He'd remembered the story as a fine allegory of the hateful futility of war, destructive to losers and victors alike. Wouldn't catch me doing something stupid like that, the pompous voice of his thirteen-year-old self brayed inside his memory; it can't really be a true story, because nobody'd be that clueless.

She hadn't said more than a few words to him since they rode out of the gateway, but he'd made a point of keeping his distance (and besides, he had an army to lead, and they weren't out of danger yet, not by a long way); he was afraid of what she'd say to him, now that they were face to face at last and in this ghastly, impossible situation of his own making. Everything between them would be ruined, he knew that-that was another thing about the old stories, the ones where the knight-errant rescued the beautiful princess from the dragon or the ogre or the murderous stepfather; there was always a bland presumption of love, happiness-ever-after, which was plainly absurd if you had even the slightest understanding of human nature. The next time Veatriz looked him in the eyes, she'd see the man who'd risked his life and the lives of his entire people to save her; if he hadn't done this stupid, insane thing, she'd be dead; she'd see his love for her, and in it the ruin of his duchy and the disastrous end of their friendship, which had been the best thing in her life. I've spoiled everything, Valens realised, because I was too weak to bear the thought of losing her; and now, of course, I've done exactly that. He smiled; ride out to confront your worst fear, as Orsea had done against the Mezentines, and you can be sure you'll make it come true.

So; he wouldn't talk to her yet. Instead, he nudged his horse along and fell in beside the Mezentine, who was still clinging desperately to his saddle and muttering. Valens took the leading-rein from the sergeant and nodded to him to rejoin his troop.

'You're Vaatzes, right?' he said.

The Mezentine opened his eyes, saw the ground (too far away), let go, wobbled alarmingly, nearly fell off, grabbed the saddle again and said, 'Yes.'

Valens grinned. 'The knack,' he said, 'is to sit up straight and grip with your knees. All you're doing at the moment is loosening the saddle. Carry on like that, it'll slip over one side and you'll land on your head.'