Savages Read online

  A flood of relief; it seemed to start in his chest, and reach his knees and elbows simultaneously. His head, by contrast, felt completely numb. “I guessed it was something like that,” he mumbled. “What—?”

  “His heart,” Hosculd said, and Aimeric noticed that the top of his head was now almost completely bald. “It was all very sudden. We found him at his desk. I thought he’d dozed off, but—”

  Aimeric lowered his head a little. His father often fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon. “Well, then,” he said. “So, what else is new?”

  Hosculd knew him well enough to ignore that. “The funeral was the day before yesterday,” he said. “I came as quick as I could, but you know what it’s like trying to get anywhere these days, with the war and everything.”

  Aimeric drew a deep breath. “Does she want me to come home?”

  Hosculd nodded. “Better had,” he said. “Things aren’t—well, they could be better.”

  For the first time, it occurred to Aimeric that his father’s death might not be the whole story. He put the thought firmly back where it had come from. “I’ve got mid-term Collections in three days,” he said, “so I can be ready to leave, say, this time next week.”

  “Sorry,” Hosculd said. “She’d rather you came on straight away, if that’s all right.”

  Clearly he didn’t understand. “No,” Aimeric said, “mid-term Collections are quite important, the results are part of my degree. I can’t just not—”

  “I’m sorry,” Hosculd repeated. “You’ve got to come home straight away. You’re needed at home.”

  “For the first time ever.” Aimeric hesitated. There were a great many people in the world he wanted to shout at; Hosculd wasn’t one of them. “It’s just so bloody inconvenient,” he said. “It’ll mean I’ll have to repeat the whole year.” As he said it, he realised he wouldn’t mind that, not at all. Another year at the university, away from his family, among his sort of people, away from the war. At the rate things were going—Butcher Calojan slaughtering the enemy on all fronts—in a year’s time it might even be over, and it’d be safe to come home for good.

  Hosculd was one of those people who know when not to say anything. Aimeric looked at him, but for once he wasn’t quite sure he was reading him quite right. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll come. I’ll need to explain, and pack a few things. Have you got somewhere to stay?”

  “We really ought to get going straight away.”

  “Hosculd, it’s the middle of the night.” He stopped. Hosculd knew that. He tried to catch his breath, found it surprisingly difficult. “What’s going on?”

  The evening before the battle, Calojan was in his tent, staring at a chessboard. On it were two white knights, one red bishop and a red pawn. He was concentrating so intently that he didn’t notice the deputation until the senior deacon cleared his throat.

  Calojan looked up. “Gentlemen,” he said.

  The senior deacon was dressed all in white. There were tiny traces of blood under the fingernails of his left hand. He looked happy. Calojan tipped over the red bishop with the tip of his forefinger. “You’ve taken the auspices.”

  “We have.”

  “And?”

  “Excellent,” the deacon said. “Primary indications in the front east chamber of the heart, and corroborative features in the corresponding quarters of the liver. I think I can safely say that victory is inevitable.”

  Calojan gave him a big smile. Since the last time, he’d taken the trouble to read the standard text on haruspicy. Primary indications was augury-speak for nothing out of the ordinary. Corroborative features meant a buildup of fat. Since they force-fed the sacred goats brewers’ mash, that wasn’t all that surprising. “I’m so glad,” he said. “Thank you.”

  The deacon hadn’t finished. “Also,” he said, “there’s been a portent.”

  Calojan maintained the smile. “How exciting.”

  The deacon beamed at him. “Not only will you win the battle, you’ll also take the city.”

  “Ah.”

  “Quite so. This morning, when the junior suffragan lector went to unlock the cubiculum to fetch the sacrament, he found a snake coiled around the key.” He paused, then went on, “The fifth book of Gennadius’ Omens—”

  “Excuse me.” Calojan was still smiling, but there was a hint of that slight weariness at the corners of his mouth that warned experienced staff officers to make excuses and leave. “That’s not a portent.”

  “I beg your—”

  “Now if the key had been coiled round the snake, that’d be a portent. Or even if the snake had coiled round a key that hadn’t previously been smeared with honey. Those little midges,” he went on, as kindly as he could, “the ones you find around stagnant water. They get their legs stuck in the honey, and the snake licks them off.” He picked up the red bishop and dropped it back in the box. “Thank you so much, and don’t let me keep you from your duties.”

  When they’d gone, he set the pieces out again; four white knights on one side, two red bishops and five pawns facing them. He used an ebony ruler for the river, and his hat for the mountains.

  Field-marshal Mardonius—that wasn’t his name; they couldn’t pronounce it, so they took the first four consonants and added their own vowels—had drawn up his heavy cavalry in four rectangular squadrons on the north bank of the river. Each squadron was just over ten thousand men. Two hundred yards behind them stood the heavy infantry, in three continuous lines. Light infantry and archers guarded the wings, and thirty thousand light cavalry formed the mobile reserve, five hundred yards away on the lower slopes of the mountain.

  “Retreat,” one of the staff officers said. “Nothing else for it.”

  Calojan turned his head slightly. “You think so?”

  “Well.” The staff officer thought for a moment. “As soon as we start to pull back, he’ll throw his light cavalry across that ford over there. They’ll make a real mess of our rearguard, but with any luck, we ought to be able to salvage at least some of the Seventh and the Thirteenth. Better than nothing.”

  “Right,” Calojan said. “We’ll do that, then.”

  There was a moment of silence so profound that its like can’t have been heard since the beginning of the world. “You agree.”

  “Why not? See to it, would you?” Calojan added. “I need to take a leak.”

  He heard the words, “Who, me?” shouted after him as he walked away. He made it look as though he hadn’t heard. Instead, he walked up the slight rise and sat down behind the easel he’d had set up, at the point that gave the best view of the field. It had belonged to his father, but he’d had the frame with the grid of thin wires added. If you looked through it, you saw the field divided into squares, like a chessboard. Artists use something similar to gauge perspective.

  He watched the courier galloping down the hill with the order to withdraw; a short delay—he could imagine the colonel of the Ninth saying, “He said what?”—and then the shuffle rippling through the ranks as the unit started to turn. He lined himself up so that the whole of the first company fitted inside one square.

  He thought; how ridiculous, how utterly absurd, that the mind, the will, the cleverness of just one man can shape the future of the world. It’s unfair, it’s barbaric, it’s hideously precarious—for example, what if I’d woken up this morning with a headache, and couldn’t think? There really should be proper procedures for this sort of thing; a grand committee, perhaps, recruited from the wisest men in every nation, chosen by the people and constrained by a rigidly defined mandate, all important decisions requiring a seventy-five per cent majority. And if that was how it worked, what would I do? Easy. I’d blockade the council chamber with two companies of Aram Cosseilhatz, and not let the delegates out to use the latrine until they agreed to do what I wanted. My justification? If I didn’t do it, someone else would, and quite possibly he wouldn’t be as enlightened and benign as me. So, instead we have wars.

  He raised his hand
, and immediately an aide materialised two steps away on his left.

  “Go to the Fifteenth,” he said. “Tell the colonel, exactly how we planned it. Repeat that for me.”

  “Exactly how we planned it, sir.”

  Calojan nodded; the aide vanished. A few seconds later, he crossed a square diagonally, riding recklessly fast. Calojan frowned. He’d allowed plenty of time for the courier to get there at a sensible pace. If his horse stumbled and fell, that’d be the battle lost, the war, civilisation as we know it. Why do people insist on gestures?

  The Ninth had begun its withdrawal. It wasn’t going well. Everybody knows that heavy infantry are at their most vulnerable when manoeuvering in the face of the enemy. Every infantryman relies for protection on the shield of his right-hand neighbour, just as he shelters the man on his left with his own—a fine metaphor for the well-ordered body politic, but a hopeless liability on the battlefield. The man on the extreme right of the front line will always try and keep his exposed side away from the enemy. The result is a lot of edging and shuffling, with the right wing getting over-extended. Bad enough in a straightforward face-to-face collision of shield-walls; when you’re trying to do something complex and sophisticated, like a hundred-eighty degree turn, it’s a recipe for catastrophe—

  And now the Sixth, on the Ninth’s immediate left, began their own manoeuvre; a slight advance to fill the gap left by the Ninth’s withdrawal. It was quite painful to watch, as the two units appeared to drift helplessly toward each other on an inevitable collision course. Calojan looked away for a moment; when he looked back, he saw the Ninth’s bunched left crash into and get tangled up in the Sixth’s straggling right. The foul-up immediately became the fulcrum for the Ninth’s over-extended line, which swung wildly forward on the right until the river blocked its way and it could go no further. Stuck, like a cart in the mud.

  It’s moments like this, Calojan reflected, that decide the course of human history. Pathetic.

  From where he was sitting, he couldn’t see Mardonius. He didn’t have to. He could picture him so clearly in his mind’s eye; the look on his face as he recognises the perfect mistake, the perfect opportunity. From what he’d gathered about his opponent’s command style, he felt safe in assuming that Mardonius would be astride his milk-white stallion, with the divisional commanders on his left and his six trusted advisers on his right. Mardonius points; look, the bloody fool’s got himself all jammed up. A moment of doubt; but he can see for himself, that’s no ruse, it’s a genuine godawful balls-up. He now has seven minutes to end the war. He’s given to huge arm movements, so he flings his left arm out to the side; that means, get the light cavalry across the ford, ignore the Twelfth, hit those clowns before they can untangle themselves. Now he’s thinking hard, three, four moves ahead; the Twelfth will fall back and wheel to close the door, so they’ll be in flank to the river. Take them out of the picture, the whole of that side collapses. Calojan’s got reserves, but not enough. He’ll have to abandon the Ninth and Sixth, he’ll try and save what he can, he’ll draw everything back—in which case…

  He doesn’t want to do it. Swimming his heavy cavalry across the river is the only conceivable way he could lose the battle. No, he reassures himself, there’s no danger, because by then Calojan’s front line won’t be there any more, it’ll be a hundred yards back and still retreating. There’s no serious danger, and we’ll win, I’ll win the war. His mouth is suddenly dry; he has to swallow a couple of times before he can say the words and give the order.

  He says it quite calmly; everything across the river, now (or words to that effect). Then he takes a moment to consider what he’s just done; changed the world, permanently; destroyed the greatest empire the human race has ever known—

  Indeed, Calojan thought. Lucky for us we’re the second greatest empire.

  Up till now.

  “Piece of cake,” Calojan said.

  He couldn’t see the river any more. It was so thoroughly clogged with bodies that it was no longer distinguishable as a geographical feature. They’d have to clear it out in the morning, or there’d be flooding down on the plains.

  “I knew I couldn’t win the battle, not from that position,” he went on. “So I had to make the other lot lose it.”

  He was putting on a performance, and he was ashamed of himself for it. But he’d gradually allowed the after-battle briefing to become an established part of the Calojan style; and the style was all he was. The First Minister’s man was staring at him with the sort of awe usually reserved for talking pillars of fire. Get a grip, for pity’s sake.

  “Luckily,” he went on, “practically any battle can be lost, if you really set your mind to it. So I thought; if I was him, what would I most want me to do? Easy, I thought. So I did it.”

  The First Minister’s aide’s aide was writing it all down. Calojan winced, but spoke slightly more slowly.

  “That’s why I couldn’t tell the Ninth and the Sixth what I had in mind,” he went on. “When you’re lying to someone, there’s nothing better for giving the essential illusion of authenticity than the real thing. If Mardonius had suspected for one moment that I was having him on, we’d have been screwed. As it was—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. He could see the tall, lame captain approaching, the man he’d sent to get the enemy casualty figures. For a variety of valid strategic reasons, he needed the number to be more than seventeen thousand. Less than that, and the whole exercise would be pointless—

  “The men,” the aide was saying, “are calling you the Miracle-Worker.”

  Calojan closed his eyes for a moment. “No,” he said, “not me. Can I help it if the enemy’s an idiot?”

  The interim provisional figure was nineteen thousand, seven hundred and forty-six, as against two thousand, one hundred and fifteen. Field-marshal Mardonius was found at the bottom of a heap of corpses, his gilded helmet and breastplate squashed flat, his body still inside it with nearly every bone broken; he’d tried to stop them running away, and they’d ridden over him, and then the Aram Cosseilhatz penned them up and slaughtered them.

  So, rather than join the general staff for the customary after-battle mutual congratulation session, he wandered down to the small hollow where the Cosseilhatz had pitched their tents. Before the battle there had been five thousand of them—fewer now, of course, but still, it was remarkable how they’d managed to find a patch of dead ground that could hide every trace of them from sight on what was essentially a prairie. You’d never have known they were there was the usual comment by travellers, geographers and diplomats; for over a century, the civilised world had believed the western steppes were completely uninhabited, until the Aram Cosseilhatz suddenly appeared in East Permia, burning cities and driving off livestock.

  The sight of the tents made him smile; they looked like dozens of fresh cheeses lying in the grass, or maybe some kind of particularly graceful fungus. Amazing, how such sophisticated structures (each one consisted of a dozen woven spar frame panels, covered by a two-inch layer of chalk-white felt) could be assembled and disassembled in an hour, and packed away on the backs of mules. Once you were inside, you could believe you were in a prosperous middle-class house in Tragus or Oeaea; rugs on the floor, icons on the wall, a three-legged bronze stove and elegant little occasional tables with brass jugs and pot-pourri bowls. I’ll retire from the army, he thought, and set up in business importing this stuff; I’ll start a fashion, and make a fortune, and—

  And there’ll be nobody to buy it, because if I retire they’ll give the command to Plotinus, we’ll lose the war and the City will be ashes. Ah well. Nice to have something to daydream about.

  He recognised the tall, slim middle-aged woman as the king’s mother. She smiled at him. “Tea,” she said; a prediction of the inevitable rather than an offer.

  “Thank you,” Calojan said. He hated the stuff; to start with it tasted of hot water, then like the foul stuff that collects in the bottom of your canteen when you’r
e crossing the desert. He looked round for something to sit down on. Usually they had a stool, for visitors.

  “My son will be home shortly.” She made it sound like he was late back from the office, rather than returning from battle. At least, he assumed he’d be returning (but surely they’d have told him if the commander of the auxiliaries hadn’t made it. Well, not necessarily). He squatted awkwardly on the floor, and a thirteen-year-old boy in a long silk gown handed him his tea, in a tiny bone cup.

  Protocol, he thought. “Thanks,” he said.

  The boy looked at him thoughtfully, as though he was an optical illusion; one of those puzzles where, if you hold your head slightly to one side, the two faces in profile turn into a goblet. “You’re welcome,” the boy said.

  “My grandson,” the woman said. “His name is Chauzida.”

  “Ah.” Calojan was one of those people who have no idea what to say to children. “Well, thank you, Chauzida.”

  The boy appeared to have solved him; at least, the look of scientific curiosity had gone, replaced by understanding and mild disappointment. “Did we win?” the boy asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The battle. Did we win?”

  Oh, that. “Yes. Yes, we tricked them into crossing the river, and your father—”

  “His uncle,” the woman murmured.

  “Sorry.” Calojan smiled weakly. “Your uncle Joiauz hit them in flank and rear, and they broke and ran. Quite a good outcome, actually.”

  The boy nodded. “Is my uncle all right?”

  “Yes, of course,” Calojan said quickly, very much hoping he was telling the truth. “He and all your people did marvellously well today. You can be very proud.”

  The compliment sort of drained away into the boy’s fixed expression, making Calojan feel more than a little foolish, though he wasn’t quite sure why. To cover his discomfort he nibbled at his tea, which was still boiling hot. He felt the roof of his mouth turn raw. What sort of people, he wondered, deliberately burn themselves with hot liquids, for pleasure? Or maybe their mouths were lined with scales of horn. Of course, you’d have to dissect one to find out.