Iain Banks: Matter

“Thank you for all you’ve said and done, dear tyl Loesp,” he told the older man. He was very aware of the contrast between the two of them; he the slight prince, barely out of childish clothes and dressed beneath his thrown-back cloak as though preparing for bed, the other the all-powerful conquering warrior, still in his battle armour — flecked here and there with all the marks of war — three times his age and barely any younger or less impressive than the lately killed king.

Harsh-breathing, stern-faced, still stinking of blood and smoke, bearing all the signs of mortal combat and unbearable grief, tyl Loesp towered over him. The drama of the scene was not lost on Oramen. This would make a good painting, he thought, especially by one of the old masters — say Dilucherre, or Sordic. Perhaps even Omoulldeo. And almost at the same moment, he knew what to do; he’d steal.

Not from a painting, of course, but from a play. There were enough old tragedies with like scenes and suitable speeches for him to welcome back a dozen dead dads and doughty combateers; the choice was more daunting than the task it might relieve. He’d recall, pick, edit, join and extemporise his way through the moment.

“This is indeed our saddest day,” Oramen said, raising his voice, and his head. “If any energies of yours could bring our father back, I know you’d devote them to that cause without stint. That vigour instead will be turned to the good interest of all our people. You bring us sorrow and joy at once, my good tyl Loesp, but for all the misery we feel now, and for all the time we must rightly hence devote to the mourning of our incomparable fallen, the satisfaction of this great victory will still shine brightly when that rite has been most fully observed, and my father would surely want it so.

“The sum of his most glorious life was cause for fervent celebration well before the great triumph of this day, and the weight of that result has grown only more majestic with the exploits of all who fought for him before the Xiliskine Tower.” Oramen looked round the gathered people for a moment at this point, and attempted to raise his voice still further. “My father took one son to war today, and left one, myself, at home. I have lost both a father and a brother, as well as my king and his loved and rightful heir. They outshine me in death as they did in life, and Mertis tyl Loesp, though having no lack of other responsibilities, must stand in place of both for me. I tell you, I can think of no one more fitted to the task.” Oramen nodded towards the grim-faced warrior in front of him, then he took a breath, and, still addressing the assembled mass, said, “I know I have no share of this day’s glory — I think my boyish shoulders would fail beneath the smallest part of such a load — but I am proud to stand with all the Sarl people, to celebrate and to honour the great deeds done and pay the fullest respect to one who taught us celebration, encouraged us to honour and exemplified respect.”

This fetched a cheer, which rose raggedly then with increasing strength from the congregation of people gathered around them. Oramen heard shields being struck by swords, mailed fists beating on armoured chests and, like a modern comment on such flowery antiquity, the loud crack of small arms fire, rounds spent into the air like some inverted hail.

Mertis tyl Loesp, who had kept a stony face during Oramen’s reply, looked very briefly surprised — even alarmed — at its end, but that briefest of impressions — which might so easily have been the result of the uncertain light cast by the carried travel lanterns and the wan glow of a still unrisen minor star — was close to uncapturably short-lived, and easily dismissible.

“May I see my father, sir?” Oramen asked. He found that his heart was beating hard and his breath was quick; still he did his best to maintain a calm and dignified demeanour, as he gathered was expected. Nevertheless, if he was expected to wail and scream and tear out his hair when he saw the body, this impromptu audience was going to be disappointed.

“He is here, sir,” tyl Loesp said, indicating the long carriage pulled by hefters behind him.

They walked to the carriage, the crowd of men, mostly armed, many with all the appearance of great distress, parting for them. Oramen saw the tall, spare frame of General Werreber, who’d briefed them at the palace about the battle just the night before, and the Exaltine Chasque, the chief of priests. Both nodded to him. Werreber looked old and tired and somehow — despite his height — shrunken inside his crumpled uniform. He nodded, then cast his gaze downwards. Chasque, resplendent in rich vestments over gleaming armour, formed the sort of clenched, encouraging half-smile people sometimes did when they wanted to tell you to be brave or strong.

They climbed on to the platform where Oramen’s father lay. The body was attended by a couple of priests in appropriately torn vestments and lit from above by a single hissing, sputtering travel lamp casting a white, caustic light over the bier. His father’s face looked grey and still and drawn-down somehow, as though he was pondering — eyes shut, jaws set — some overwhelmingly demanding problem. A silvery sheet embroidered with gold covered his body from the neck down.

Oramen stood looking at him for a while. In time he said, “In life, by choice, his deeds spoke for him. In death, I must be as mute as all his undone undertakings.” He clapped tyl Loesp on the arm. “I’ll sit with him while we return to the city.” He looked behind the gun carriage. A mersicor, a great charger, dis-armoured though in full regalia, was tied to its rear, saddle empty. “Is that…?” he began, then made a show of clearing his throat. “That’s my father’s mount,” he said.

“It is,” tyl Loesp confirmed.

“And my brother’s?”

“Unfound, sir.”

“Let my mount be tied to the end of the carriage too, behind my father’s.”

He went to sit at his father’s head, then, imagining Fanthile’s face, thought that might be held inappropriate, and repositioned himself at the foot of the bier.

He sat there at the trailing edge of the carriage, cross-legged, looking down, while the two mersicors loped along just behind, breath steaming in the increasingly misty air. The whole aggregated column of men, animals and wagons made the rest of the journey to the city in a silence broken only by the creak of wheel and axle, the snap of whip and the snort and clop of beast. The morning mists obscured the rising star of the new day almost until the walls of Pourl itself, then lifted slowly to become a layer of overcast that hid the higher city and the palace.

On the approaches to the Nearpole Gate, where a conglomeration of small factories and what was effectively a new town had sprung up within Oramen’s lifetime, the temporary sun shone only for a little while, then was gone again behind the clouds.

Choubris Holse found his master in the eighth of the distinct places where he thought he might actually be, which was, of course, a significant and most propitious location to discover somebody or something a person was looking for. It was also the last place he knew of to look with any purpose beyond simply wandering randomly; indeed, with this in mind, he had left it to the afternoon of his second day of searching specifically with the hope that this might finally be where Ferbin had fetched up.

The folly looked like a small castle poised on a low cliff overlooking a turn in the river Feyrla. It was just a hollow round of walls, really, with crenellations, and had been built, pre-ruined, as it were, to improve the view from a hunting lodge a little further down the valley. It had been a place, Choubris Holse knew, where the King’s children had played while their father — on one of his infrequent spells at home from his various Wars of Unity — went hunting.