Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

“I can read what you’re going to do,” said Cale. “The instant you start to move. It’s just a fraction faster than before my injury, but it’s always enough. No one can read what I’m going to do, no matter how quick or experienced they are.”

“And that’s all there is to it?” said Albin. “A bang on the head?”

“No,” replied Cale, angry and not sure why. “All my life I’ve been trained to do one thing. I could have taken Conn Materazzi anyway, good as he is, just not as easily and not four others at the same time. So no, Captain, that’s not all there is to it.”

“How did the Redeemers react when they realized what had happened?”

Cale grunted, a kind of laugh but without amusement.

“Not the Redeemers-one Redeemer: Bosco, the Lord Militant, responsible for all training in the martials.”

“The martials-like our martial arts?”

Cale laughed, this time genuinely amused.

“There’s no art in what I do-ask Conn Materazzi and his pals.” Vipond ignored the mockery. “This Bosco, what did he do when he found out the result of your injury?”

“He tested me for months, against others much older and stronger. He even brought in five veterans, skirmishers from the wars in the Eastern Breaks under sentence of death, he said.” Cale stopped.

“And what happened?”

“Four days in a row he put me in a fight with them. ‘Kill or die,’ was all he said to both of us. Then, after the fourth day, he stopped.”

“Why?”

“He’d seen enough to be sure about me. A fifth time would be an unnecessary risk.” He smiled, not at all pleasantly. “After all, you never know with a fight, do you? There’s always a chance, isn’t there-a sucker blow.”

“And then?”

“Then he tried to copy me.”

“How do you mean?”

“He spent days measuring the wound in my head and matching it with some skulls he’d taken from the graveyards. Then he made a clay model. Then he spent six months trying to make it happen again.”

“I don’t follow. How?”

“He took a dozen acolytes the same age and size as me and he tied them down and struck a chisel he’d had made the same shape as my wound-he struck it with a hammer into the same point on their skulls. Harder, then softer, then softer again.”

For a moment no one said anything.

“What happened?” asked Vipond softly.

“What happened was that half of them died pretty much straight-away and the rest-well they weren’t themselves afterwards. Then no one ever saw them again.”

“Taken somewhere else?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“And then?”

“Bosco started taking my training sessions himself. He’d never done that before. Sometimes he’d keep me going for ten hours a day-finding any weakness, giving me a good hiding when I failed and then putting it right. Then he disappeared for six months, and when he returned, it was with seven Redeemers who he said were the best at what they did.”

“And that was?”

“Killing people mostly-people with armor, without, with swords, sticks, bare hands. How to organize a mass killing…” Cale paused.

“Of prisoners?”

“Not just prisoners-anybody. Two of them were sort of generals-one did tactics-battles, retreats, big set pieces. The other did the bandit stuff: small groups fighting in enemy territory, assassinations, how to terrify the locals into helping you and not your enemy.”

“And what was all this for?”

“You know, I was never stupid enough to ask.”

“Was it to do with the Redeemer wars in the East?”

“I told you, I didn’t ask.”

“You must have formed an opinion.”

“Formed an opinion? Yes. That it was something to do with the wars in the East.”

Vipond looked long and hard at Cale, who stared insolently back. Then it was as if the chancellor had made up his mind about something. He turned to Albin.

“Bring the other two to my house as soon as possible.”

Albin signaled the jailer and then they were gone.

Cale sat down on his bed, and IdrisPukke moved next to the bars.

“Interesting life,” he said to Cale. “You should write a book.”

Once Lord Vipond had finished talking to Vague Henri and Kleist, he made his way over to the palazzo of Marshal Materazzi, Doge of Memphis.

The Doge had many advisors because he was a man who loved to consult, to talk things over and at great length. The fact that he seldom took the advice was just a peculiarity of the kind that often afflicts those born into positions of enormous power. The one exception to this rule of talking without listening was Lord Vipond, who was himself immensely powerful by virtue of his own network of spies and informers and a hard-to-defy talent for being right. As the popular rhyme had it:

Chancellor Vipond is either reaping or sowing,

And what he doesn’t know it isn’t worth knowing.

It wasn’t much of a rhyme, but it wasn’t far wrong either. Marshal Materazzi was a man of considerable ruthlessness who had come to rule the largest empire the world had ever known. To have maintained control of it without challenge for twenty years required great military prowess, a talent for politics and considerable intelligence. But having had Vipond as his chancellor through nearly all of this, he had never quite managed to understand how Vipond had himself become almost as powerful. One day, about three years into his reign, he began to realize, to his horror, that Vipond had become indispensable. At first he became deeply hostile to Vipond-such a thing was intolerable and left him exposed to assassination or, even worse, to his becoming some sort of puppet. But Vipond had made it clear to the Marshal that he would always be a loyal servant as long as he did not interfere with his role as chancellor or continue to be a damned nuisance. Their relationship since then had been not uneasy exactly, but, as the peasants around Memphis say, more frit.

Shown into Materazzi’s presence, Vipond nodded and was invited to sit.

“How are you feeling, Vipond?”

“Very well, my lord. And yourself?”

“Oh, fine.”

There was an awkward pause; awkward for the Marshal because Vipond simply sat there smiling benevolently.

“I understand you met with the Embassy from the Norwegians today.”

“Indeed.”

One of the border races conquered by Materazzi more than fifteen years before, the Norwegians had enthusiastically seized upon the advantages offered by occupation-roads, centrally heated palazzos and luxurious imports-without abandoning their ferocious appetite for fighting. Five years ago the now war-weary Marshal, increasingly irritated by the expense of maintaining his vast empire, had decided that it should expand no more. The Norwegians, while touchingly loyal to their conqueror, were always stirring up trouble and trying to expand their own territory northward whenever they could and despite repeated orders to do no such thing. Endlessly devious, the Norwegians provoked their neighbors and generally used every trick they could to claim they were being attacked and that they had no choice but to protect themselves by invading their aggressors. As Vipond well knew, these attacks were in reality made by Norwegian soldiers disguised as the forces of such of their neighbors as they were keen on plundering.

“What did they have to say for themselves?”

“Oh,” replied Vipond, “the usual claim to be the victims-peaceloving victims, merely defending themselves and the empire of which they are such loyal subjects.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told them that I wasn’t born yesterday and if they didn’t return their army to barracks, we might consider offering them independence.”