Iain Banks: Surface Detail

Perhaps they were expected to tunnel up inside the castle rock when they got to it, burrowing up through solid stone, or maybe they were meant to place a gigantic bomb against the base of the rock; these seemed no less absurd and pointless as tactics. Maybe the high command, immeasurably distant from this far (and, if rumour was to believed, increasingly irrelevant) front, had been misinformed regarding the nature of the castle’s foundations, and — thinking that the fortress’s walls rested on the plain itself — had ordered the mining as a matter of course, imagining that the walls could be sapped conventionally, and nobody nearer to the reality of the situation had thought, or dared, to tell them that this was impossible. But then who knew how the high commanders thought?

Vatueil put one fist to the small of his back as he stood looking out to the distant fortress. He was trying to stand up straight. It was getting harder to do so each day, which was unfortunate, as slouching was looked on unfavourably by officers, especially by the young junior captain who seemed to have taken such a dislike to him.

Vatueil looked about at the litter of grey-brown tents which made up the camp. Above, the clouds looked washed out, the sun hidden behind a grey, dully glowing patch over the more distant of the two ranges of hills that defined the broad plain.

“Stand up straight, Vatueil,” the junior captain told him, emerging from the major’s tent. The junior captain was dressed in his best uniform. He’d had Vatueil put on his best gear too, not that his best was very good. “Well, don’t malinger here all day; get in there and don’t take for ever about it. This doesn’t get you off anything, you know; don’t go thinking that. You’ve still got a shift to finish. Hurry up!” The junior captain clouted Vatueil about the ear, dislodging his forage cap. Vatueil bent to retrieve it and the young captain kicked his behind, propelling him through the flap and into the tent.

Inside, he collected himself, straightened, and was shown where to stand in front of the board of officers.

“Conscript Vatueil, number—” he began.

“We don’t need to know your number, conscript,” one of the two majors told him. There were three senior captains and a colonel present too; an important gathering. “Just tell us what happened.”

He briefly related prising the rock away from the face, sticking his head through the hole and smelling that strange, cave-like darkness, hearing and seeing the water running in the channel beneath, then wriggling back to tell the junior captain and the others. He kept his gaze fixed somewhere above the colonel’s head, looking down only once. The officers nodded, looked bored. A subaltern took notes on a writing pad. “Dismissed,” the more senior major told Vatueil.

He half turned to go, then turned back. “Permission to speak further, sir,” he said, glancing at the colonel and then the major who’d just spoken.

The major looked at him. “What?”

He straightened as best he could, stared above the colonel’s head again. “It occurred to me the conduit might contribute to the castle’s water supply, sir.”

“You’re not here to think, conscript,” the major said, though not unkindly.

“No,” the colonel said, speaking for the first time. “That occurred to me, too.”

“It’s still a long way, sir,” the junior major said.

“We’ve poisoned all the nearer sources,” the colonel told him. “To no obvious effect. And it is from the direction of the nearer hills.” Vatueil risked nodding at this, to show he had thought this too.

“With their many springs,” the senior major said to the colonel, apparently sharing some private joke.

The colonel looked at Vatueil through narrowed eyes. “You were with the Cavalry once, weren’t you, conscript?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Rank?”

“Captain of Mount, sir.”

There was a pause. The colonel filled it himself. “And?”

“Insubordination, sir.”

“Down to conscript tunneller? You must have been spectacularly insubordinate.”

“So it was adjudged, sir.”

There was a grunt that might have been laughter. At the colonel’s instigation the offisorial heads were brought together. There was some muttering, then the more senior major said, “There will shortly be a small exploratory force sent along the water tunnel, conscript. Perhaps you might care to be on it.”

“I’ll do as ordered, sir.”

“The men will be hand-picked, though volunteers.”

Vatueil drew himself up as straight as he could, his back complaining. “I volunteer, sir.”

“Good man. You might need a crossbow as well as a shovel.”

“I can handle both, sir.”

“Report to the senior duty officer. Dismissed.”

The calf-deep water was cold, swirling round his boots and seeping into them. He was fourth man back from the lead, lamp extinguished. Only the lead man had a lit lamp, and that was turned down as low as it would go. The water tunnel was oval shaped, just too broad to touch both sides at the same time with outstretched arms. It was nearly as tall as a man; you had to walk with head lowered but it was easy enough after so long being bent double.

The air was good; better than in the mining tunnel. It had flowed gently into their faces as they’d stood in the water, ready to move off from the breach leading from the mining tunnel. The twenty men in the detail moved down the partially filled pipe as quietly as they could, wary of traps or guards. They were led by a fairly old, sensible-seeming captain and a very keen young subaltern. There were two other tunnellers as well as himself, both more powerful than he though with less combat experience. Like him they carried picks, spades, bows and short swords; the larger of the two also carried a pry bar slung across his broad back.

These two men had been chosen by the young junior captain. He had not been happy that Vatueil was being allowed to go on the exploration of the water tunnel while he himself was not. Vatueil expected further unsubtle persecution when he returned. If he returned.

They came to a place where the tunnel narrowed and horizontal iron bars ran across the channel, set at heights that meant they had to clamber over them one at a time. Then came a section where the floor of the tunnel angled down, and they had to brace themselves two-by-two, each with a hand on one wall, to stop themselves from slipping on the slimy surface under the water. The tunnel all but levelled out again after that, then another set of bars in a narrow section appeared out of the gloom, again followed by another downward sloped section.

He had not dreamed this, he realised as he walked. This was easier than anything he had imagined in his nightmares, or — as it felt — that they had imagined for him. They might stroll all the rest of the way to the castle without having to dig another spadeful. Though, of course, the way might be blocked, or guarded, or might not lead to the castle after all. And yet the water was here, in this carefully constructed tunnel, and where else would it be going on this otherwise near deserted plain if not to the castle? Guards or traps were more likely, though even then the castle was so old that perhaps those within just drew the water unthinkingly from a deep, seemingly unpoisonable well and knew nothing of the system that brought it to them. Better to assume that they did know, though, and that they or the water tunnel’s original designers and builders would have set up some sort of defence against enemies making their way down it. He started to think about what he would put in place if he had been in charge of such matters.

His thoughts were interrupted when he collided softly with the back of the man in front. The man behind him piled into his back, too, and so on down the line as they came to a halt, almost without a sound.