The Belly of the Bow f-2 Read online

  The boy stared into the fire, as if trying to see what Loredan was looking at. ‘Is this what you used to do,’ he said, ‘before you came to the City?’

  ‘Not really, no. We were farmers, just like everybody else. But that meant you had to know all sorts of things. We never bought anything we could possibly make ourselves. I learnt this trade along with a couple of dozen others, and thought no more of it. I mean,’ he added with a grin, ‘it’s not exactly difficult, is it?’

  The boy pulled a face. ‘I think it’s difficult,’ he said.

  ‘You would,’ Loredan replied pleasantly. ‘I don’t suppose you can shoe horses, either. Or build a house, or make nails, or cast pots, or weave rope. I can. Not well, mind you,’ he added, ‘but well enough. But I’ll admit, I was always better at this line of work than most people. And it’s light work and by no means disagreeable. Not a bad living, either, in these parts. This is a remarkably cack-handed race we’ve found ourselves among.’

  ‘Farmers,’ said the boy. ‘Oh, sorry, no offence.’

  Loredan shook his head. ‘Not farmers,’ he said, ‘peasants. There’s a difference. I didn’t use to think so, but it’s true. Still, that’s none of our business. Thank the gods for the military, that’s what I say. All the work we can handle and they pay on delivery.’

  The boy sucked his teeth. ‘I thought they specified yew or osage,’ he said. ‘Why’re we cutting ash?’

  Loredan chuckled. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘that lot couldn’t tell the difference between a yew tree and a stick of celery. They just said yew or osage because that’s what they read in some book. Ash’ll do just fine, so long as we back it with rawhide.’

  He threw another lump of dead wood on the fire and lay back, his hands behind his head. Far away, down in the valley, a wolf howled. The boy sat up with a start.

  ‘Calm down,’ Loredan said, with a grin.

  The boy looked at him nervously. ‘That was a wolf,’ he said.

  ‘Sure. Now go to sleep.’

  ‘But surely…’ The boy looked round, as if expecting to see the glint of eyes at the edge of the firelight. ‘Shouldn’t we climb a tree or something?’

  Loredan yawned. ‘ You’re welcome to climb a tree if you really want to,’ he said. ‘Assuming you can find one, of course. I think we just cut down the last one. On the whole, though, I think you’d be better off getting some sleep. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning.’

  The boy was clearly not convinced. ‘Well, at least one of us should keep watch,’ he said. ‘Just in case, you know.’

  ‘Please yourself.’ Loredan sat up, reached out for his toolbag, pulled it under his head and lay back again, closing his eyes. ‘Good night.’

  Almost at once, he was asleep. He knew he was asleep, because he was standing on the ramparts of the great gatehouse of Perimadeia (which wasn’t there any more) and he was looking past the tents of the plainsmen towards the east, where the river seemed to flow upwards into the sky. Beside him on the walkway was his brother Gorgas; and in this dream they were on speaking terms, almost friendly, because Gorgas was telling him about the war in Scona, and he wasn’t really listening. Other people’s war stories are usually very boring.

  ‘You should come out to Scona,’ Gorgas was saying. ‘This city’s had its time. They’re going to win, and you don’t want to be here when that happens. I could use you back in Scona, a man with your experience.’

  Loredan saw himself shaking his head. ‘No thanks,’ the dream-Loredan said. ‘What’s the point in sailing halfway round the world to fight a war when I’ve got one right here? Besides, I’m not a mercenary.’

  Gorgas frowned at him, as if offended. ‘It wouldn’t be like that,’ he said. ‘You’re family. We should stick together.’

  ‘I’d steer clear of that subject if I were you,’ this other Loredan replied. ‘If I ever do leave the City, I’ll go somewhere I can earn an honest living without people trying to kill me all the time.’ He shrugged. ‘I might even go back to farming. Hey,’ he added, ‘did I just say something funny?’

  Gorgas grinned at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just the thought of you back on the farm, that’s all. It’s enough to make a cat laugh.’

  ‘All right,’ Loredan said, ‘then I’ll set up in a trade. There’s all sorts of things I could do.’

  ‘Name three.’

  Loredan thought before answering. ‘I could set up as a wheelwright,’ he said. ‘Or coopering. I used to mend all our barrels, remember.’

  ‘They leaked,’ Gorgas said. ‘You could never quite get the new staves to fit flush. Remember that year the damp got into the seedcorn, and when we took the lids off, it’d all sprouted?’

  ‘All right, not coopering. There’s still plenty of other things. I could be a coppersmith. I’d be good at that.’

  Gorgas bit his lip and smiled. ‘I can see you now,’ he said, ‘with your pack on your back, trudging round the villages mending pots. Admit it, brother, for anything that doesn’t involve spilling blood, you’re useless. You should stick to what you’re good at, like I’ve done. That’s what I’m for; it’s all a question of the right tool for the job. I was designed for making money. You were designed for killing people. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘The hell with you,’ the other Loredan said in disgust; and the Loredan who was watching all this was heartily grateful that no such conversation had ever taken place, or ever would now that the City was in ruins. ‘That’s a nasty thing to say, and I don’t think it’s true, either. You make me sound like the knacker’s cart, with a swarm of crows always hovering around it just out of stone’s throw. And I don’t know where you get this idea of yourself as a straight-up businessman from,’ he added irritably. ‘If there’s anyone in this family who’s made his way in the world by cutting throats, it’s you.’

  Gorgas leant his elbows on the parapet and studied the distant tents for a while. ‘I won’t deny that,’ he said. ‘I’ve done a lot of things I’d have preferred not to, over the years. But it was always as a means to an end; I never made a career of it. And if we’re going to be brutally honest here,’ he added, turning slowly and looking this other Loredan in the eyes, ‘then I’ll just make the point that at least I have made my way in the world, as you put it. You’ve spent your life simply floundering along, and every day some new fight to the death; you always win, of course, and the other poor bastard always dies, but where the hell has it ever got you? At least when I’ve shed blood, it’s always been for a purpose, and nearly always unavoidable.’ He sighed and looked away. ‘I’ll be straight with you,’ he said. ‘If I were in your shoes, I’d have trouble sleeping at night.’

  – Which was apparently some sort of cue, because Bardas woke up and saw that it was first light, and a cold, weak sun was swimming in thin grey clouds. The boy was fast asleep a few feet away; Bardas smiled and prodded his shoulder with his toe.

  ‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘The good news is, the wolves didn’t get you after all.’

  The boy grunted and turned over, tugging at the blanket. Loredan pulled it away. The boy grunted and sat up, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

  ‘Get the wedges,’ Loredan said. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do. You’d better pay attention, because this is important.’

  The boy mumbled something as he dragged himself up off the ground, but it was too indistinct to make out and Loredan was pretty sure he didn’t need to hear the words in order to get the general idea. He sat down opposite the log-end and examined the growth rings.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Fetch the saw,’ Loredan replied. ‘We’ve got to trim off the branches before we do anything else.’

  The sun was high by the time they’d finished dressing up the log. There was no wind, and even a slight suggestion of warmth. ‘We’ll get four good staves out of this one,’ he said. ‘Maybe even five if we go steady. A lot depends on how cleanly it
splits. Right, you sit on the log, I’ll drive in the first wedge.’

  He placed the blade of the wedge on the line he’d chosen and tapped it gently but firmly with the back of the axe-head, one-handed, until he was sure it had bitten into the wood. Then he stepped back with the axe in both hands, left hand in the curve at the end of the handle, right hand just below the head. He fixed his eye on the head of the wedge, concentrated and swung. The back of the axe-head hit the wedge pretty square, and the first signs of a split began to show along the line he’d hoped he’d seen.

  ‘Got that?’ he said, straightening up.

  ‘No,’ the boy replied. ‘I can’t see anything from here, remember.’

  Loredan sighed. ‘Come round here and take a look,’ he replied. ‘See how it’s just beginning to go?’

  Ten or twelve hard blows opened the split up to just on five inches; long enough to admit the next wedge, which Loredan drove in from above with another dozen carefully weighed blows, each of them being nothing more or less than the weight of the axe-head falling from the top of his swing. ‘That’s really important,’ he said, stopping to catch his breath – was he really short of breath after a few swings with an axe? Getting lazy, or old. ‘Remember what I told you. Just let the weight of the axe do the work.’

  ‘You said.’

  Two more blows were sufficient to widen the crack far enough for the first wedge to fall out. Loredan picked it up and pressed the blade a quarter of an inch into the top of the crack. ‘And so on,’ he said. ‘Are you paying attention?’

  ‘Sure,’ the boy replied guiltily. ‘I was watching, honest.’

  Loredan grunted. ‘You ought to be watching this carefully,’ he said reproachfully. ‘There’s a lot more to it than you’d think. It’s not just a case of splitting it any old how, it’s got to be clean and straight or we’ll have wasted our time and a perfectly good tree. Did you find that axe-head you broke off, by the way?’

  ‘I’ll look for it later, I promise. Go on with what you were doing. I’m watching.’

  ‘You better had be. You’re going to be doing the next one.’

  Loredan was pleased with how it went, each wedge in turn opening the crack a little further, splitting the wood along his chosen line and releasing the previous wedge until it could be lifted free without effort. Curious, he mused, the way my life’s become a sort of celebration of mechanical advantage. It’s enough to fool a man into thinking he’s in control of things. The final wedge, driven in diagonally, split the last couple of inches and the two halves of the log rolled apart on either side of his synthetic line, as neat and consistent as a proposition in algebra. He nodded, and handed the axe to the boy. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘Split the halves into quarters. And if you cock it up, you’re walking home.’

  The boy looked at him resentfully, then stooped down to gather the wedges. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t get it right the first time you did it,’ he said.

  Loredan laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ he said, as the boy knelt down and studied the timber. ‘It was the second time when I wrecked the stave, chipped the wedge and broke the axe. It was two days before I dared show my face in the house again. So think on.’

  ‘Huh.’ Loredan watched the boy scrutinising the grain with all the fierce, brief concentration of youth, and suppressed a grin. It was like stepping back and watching himself, as if in a dream. He could remember that same furious indecision, the frustration of not allowing himself to ask advice. Look for the flaw, he wanted to say, there’s always a weak spot in every billet, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look. But he managed not to; let the boy work it out for himself, and then he’d know it for ever.

  ‘Got it,’ the boy said. He looked up and saw the stump of the tree, then slid the billet along the ground until it was jammed against it. Loredan nodded his approval, but the boy wasn’t looking. That was a good sign, too.

  ‘This time,’ he said, ‘for crying out loud don’t bust the axe. We’ll be here all week if we’ve got to stop and make new handles.’

  ‘All right,’ the boy replied, annoyed. ‘I’m trying to concentrate, you know,’ he added.

  ‘Sorry,’ Loredan said meekly. ‘You carry on.’

  The boy took a deep breath and started tapping the wedge. The axe was too big and heavy for him to be able to manage it single-handed with any degree of comfort, and the wedge refused to bite. At the third attempt, the boy rapped his knuckles and swore.

  ‘Want me to start it for you?’ Loredan asked.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the boy said angrily. ‘I can manage.’

  Loredan kept quiet. In the back of his mind he could see his father showing him the other way of starting the split, standing up straight with one foot bracing the wedge, holding the axe by the end of the handle and letting it swing gently like a pendulum to apply the small, measured degree of force necessary for the first bite. He could remember himself, raw-knuckled, red-faced and close to tears after he’d tried so many times and failed, and been told to get out of the way. On the other hand, this was a job of work, not an Academy seminar. ‘Stand up and brace the wedge with your foot,’ he said. ‘You might find it easier that way.’

  As the boy straightened his back, Loredan looked away and then down at his hands, noticing the calluses that fringed his palms, the thick pads of skin between the first and middle joints of his first three fingers, the shaven patch on his left arm just above the wide purple bruise across the inside of his wrist, the characteristic and unavoidable injuries of his trade, that had become part of him over the last two years; because every human occupation leaves its own very specific disfigurements, and these were at least preferable to many. An observant man would know at once from these who he was and what he did, or at least what he did now.

  The crisp chime of the axe-head on the wedge made him look up. ‘It’s starting to go,’ the boy said proudly. Loredan nodded. ‘Steady does it,’ he replied, ‘don’t go mad.’ The boy didn’t reply, he was concentrating on what he was doing, and without having to be told. Loredan turned his back. He could tell if the boy was doing it right by the sound of the axe-head. It didn’t sound too bad.

  ‘There, all done,’ the boy said. ‘Come and tell me if that’ll do.’

  Loredan examined the work gravely, like a colonel inspecting his troops. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Now you can do the other one, while I make a start on stripping the bark off.’

  ‘Oh.’ The boy picked up the axe again, a little less enthusiastically this time, while Loredan walked over to the cart and took the drawknife out of the box. The sky was clouding over. It’d be a good idea to get a move on if they didn’t want to have to finish the job off in the pouring rain. He felt the edge with his thumb; it was sharp enough for sloughing off bark, for which purpose a slightly dull blade is marginally preferable. As he turned to walk back, he heard the sound of the axe pecking the wedge.

  ‘That’s the ticket,’ he called out. ‘You never know, we might make a bowyer of you yet.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was late afternoon by the time Gorgas Loredan’s ship dropped anchor in Scona Bay, and he decided to put off making his report until the next morning. There was, after all, no hurry; the enemy would still be dead tomorrow, and quite probably the day after as well, and he could see no pressing reason why he should toil all the way up the steep hill to the Director’s office and hang about there for an hour or so until his sister condescended to see him when he could be at home, with his boots off and his feet up on a footstool, watching the sun set over Shastel with a mug of hot spiced wine in his hand.

  From the Quay he strolled down the long sweep of the Traders’ Dock, making a mental note of the ships that had arrived since he left and checking them against his comprehensive mental register: two more ore-freighters from Colleon (Why all this activity in the copper trade? Was someone trying to corner the market?); a huge timber-ship from the South Coast with thirty enormous cedar logs stacked pyramid-fashion the whole l
ength of the ship; a handful of light, fast cutters from the Island, three of which he’d never seen before. It was good to see the dock this busy; it suggested confidence.

  As usual at this time of day, the Dock was crowded with people taking the pre-dinner stroll around which the life of Scona seemed to revolve. This was the time of day when the shops and stalls did their best business, while merchants gathered under the white awnings of the taverns to put deals together and deplore whatever it was that was threatening them all with penury and ruin that week. Craftsmen and shop owners walked slowly with their families along the curve of the sea-wall at the top end of the Dock, husbands and wives arm in arm, their eyes fixed straight ahead in case they caught sight of someone they didn’t want to have to stop and talk to, while the children ambushed each other from behind the barrels and bales that stood outside the warehouses of the Bank. The deep hum of voices in pleasant conversation that pervaded the place always reminded Gorgas of sleepy bees on a hot day, and put him in mind of the seven hives that used to stand at the top of their home orchard, a perpetual terror to him when he was a boy; perhaps it was that association that always made him uneasy here on the Dock in the early evening. He preferred to take his walk in the Square, and let his children play round the base of the grand fountain, with its three sad-looking bronze lions.

  He left the Dock and walked uphill along the Promenade into the Square, passing the vast bulk of the Bank’s new offices on his left. Half the facade was still covered in scaffolding, masking its outline like three hundred years’ growth of ivy, so that he still didn’t really know what the building was going to look like. Given the awesome scale of the thing it was almost self-effacing; a stranger could quite conceivably walk past it and not notice. Partly this was because it had been chipped out of the side of the great rocky outcrop that dominated the town, so that the frontage was just a small panel cut into the side of the hill, like the worked face of a quarry. Mostly, though, it was because they couldn’t be bothered with grandiose columns and porticoes and all the other clutter of which builders were so fond. There was no need to tell the people of Scona that this was an important building. They knew that already.