K Parker - Devices and Desires

He knew what the people said about him, of course; he was the best Duke in living memory, he was a bastard but a clever bastard, he was ten times the ruler his father had been.

Well, he knew the third one was lies. The second one he was prepared to acknowledge, if put to it. The first one he dismissed as unlikely. It was good that they said it, however. If they admired him, they were likely to do as they were told,' just so long as he stayed successful. But there was no reason why he shouldn't. If the hunt had taught him anything, it was the inestimable value of thinking in three dimensions. To hunt successfully, you must know your ground, your pack and your quarry. You must learn, by fieldwork and reconnaissance, where the quarry is likely to be and what it's liable to do once disturbed. You must know the capacities and weaknesses of the resources-men, dogs, equipment-at your disposal. You must be able to visualise at all times where everybody is, once you've sent them to their stations to do their assigned tasks. You must be aware of the interplay of time and distance, so you can be sure that the stops and the beaters are in position when you loose the pack. You must be able to judge allowances-the angle to offset a drive so as to head off the quarry from its customary line of escape, how far ahead of a running stag to shoot so as to pitch your arrow where it's going, not where it's just been. Above all, at all times you must be in perfect control, regardless of whether things are going well or badly. A brilliant mind is not required; nor is genius, intuition, inspiration. Clarity and concentration are helpful; but the main thing is vision, the ability to draw invisible lines with the mind's eye, to see round corners and through walls. It's a knack that can be learned fairly readily; slightly harder than swimming, rather easier than juggling or playing the flute.

Well; if he wasn't going to hunt today, he'd better go to the council meeting. Nothing useful would be achieved there-he would do all the work himself, it'd take him just under half an hour-but it was necessary in order to keep his leading men, his pack, alert and obedient. He'd been at pains to train them over the last few years, encouraging, rewarding, culling as needed, and they were shaping well; but time had to be spent with them, or they'd grow restive and wilful. He swung his legs off the table on to the ground, a brisk, almost boyish movement that he certainly wouldn't have made had anybody been watching, and walked quickly across the yard, composing the agenda for the meeting as he went. On the stairs he met the master cutler, who told him the new case of rapiers had finally arrived from the City. He thanked the man and told him to bring them along to his study an hour after dinner.

The meeting lived down to his expectations. The council had wanted to debate whether or not to launch an attack on the Eremians while they were vulnerable and desperate. When he told them he'd already sent food and doctors, they had nothing left to say; they hadn't thought ahead, and so the buck had slipped through the cordon and left them standing. As it should be; it was easier to tell people what to do if they didn't interrupt. He delegated to them the simple, unimportant matters that he hadn't already provided for, and sent them away with a sense of bewildered purpose.

To his study next, where he had a map of the mountains. It was big, covering the whole of the north wall (there was a hole for the window in the middle of the Horsehead Ridge, but that didn't matter; the ridge was sheer rock capped with snow, and you needed ropes and winches to get there); it was a tapestry, so that he could mark positions with pins and tapes if he chose to, but that was rarely necessary. He fixed his eye on the place where Orsea's army had last been seen, and calculated where they were likely to be now.

An attack would be feasible-not straight away, there were two possible escape routes and he couldn't get his forces in place to block both of them before the Eremians moved on; tomorrow evening or the morning of the next day would be the right time. He could bottle them up in the long pass between Horn Cross and Finis Montium, and it ought to be possible to wipe them out to the last man without incurring unacceptable losses. It could be done; now he had to decide whether he wanted to do it.

That was a much bigger question, involving a complex interplay of imperatives. His father, or his grandfather, greatgrandfather and so back four degrees, wouldn't have thought twice: kill the men, absorb the women and children, annex the land. They'd been trying to do just that, through war, for two hundred years. The hunt had, however, moved on; thanks to the long war, and the recent short interval of peace, Valens knew he didn't have the resources, human or material, to control the aftermath of victory to his satisfaction. He'd be occupying a bitterly hostile country, through which his lines of communication would be stretched and brittle. Facts duly faced, there wasn't actually anything in Eremia that he hadn't already got an adequate sufficiency of. Get rid of the Eremians and take their land, and he'd find himself with two frontiers abutting the desert instead of just one; two doors the nomad tribes might one day be able to prise open. A preemptive massacre would cause more problems than it solved.

He considered a few peripheral options. He could secure Orsea himself and keep him as a hostage. The advantages of that were obvious enough, but they didn't convince him. Sooner or later he'd either have to kill his cousin or let him go; at which point he could expect reprisals, and the Eremians had just proved themselves capable of gross overreaction. They would send an army; which he could defeat, of course, but then he'd be left with heavy casualties and the same undesirable situation he'd have faced if he'd taken this opportunity to wipe the Eremians out in the Butter Pass. Forget that, then; forget also bottling them up in the pass and extorting concessions. A republic or a democracy might do that, trading a vote-winning triumph in the short term against a nasty mess at some time in the future (hopefully when the other lot were in government). Valens was grateful he didn't have to do that sort of thing.

Decided, then; if he wasn't going to slaughter them, he must either ignore them or help them. Ignoring them would be a neutral act, and Valens found neutrality frustrating. Helping them would create an obligation, along with gratitude and goodwill. He who has his enemy's love and trust is in a far better position to attack, later, when the time is right. The cost would be negligible, and in any event he could make it a loan. It would send the right signals to the Mezentines (mountain solidarity, the truce is working); if he made a show of siding with the Eremians against them, it'd incline them to make a better offer when they came to buy his allegiance.

He sat down and wrote seven letters. As anticipated, it took him just under half an hour-admirably efficient, but not quick enough. It was far too late for hunting today, and the twelve-pointer would be three quarters of the way to the river valley by now. Best not to dwell on wasted chances.

(And then there was the real reason. If he sent food and blankets and doctors, she'd be pleased. If he sent cavalry, she'd hate him. So; he had no choice in the matter, none whatsoever.)

He spent the rest of the day in the small, windowless room at the top of the north tower, reading reports and petitions, checking accounts, writing obstreperous notes to exchequer clerks and procurement officers. Then there was a thick stack of pleadings for a substantial mercantile lawsuit that he'd been putting off reading for weeks; but today, having been cheated of his day in the fresh air, he was resigned and miserable enough to face anything, even that. After the snakelike meanderings of the legal documents, the diplomatic mail was positively refreshing in its clarity and brevity: a letter of introduction for the new ambassador from the Cure Doce, and a brusque note from a Mezentine government department he'd never heard of requiring him (arrogant bastards!) to arrest and extradite a criminal fugitive with a difficult name, should he attempt to cross the border. Neither of them needed a reply, so he marked each of them with a cross in the left-hand corner, to tell his clerk to send a formal acknowledgement. Dinner came up on a tray while he was making notes for a meeting with the merchant adventurers (tariffs, again); when at last he'd dealt with that, it was time to see the new rapiers. Not much of a reward for a long, tedious day, but better than nothing at all.