The Company Read online

  Not the wars, then; something else. Something even worse. Well, it could be anything, because nobody ever had more ideas than Teuche Kunessin. Anything from growing figs in the Stasin to gathering dried bat guano in the Iphthimous caves, and always the same tantalising promise to go with it: we could make a good living, we could put all this shit behind us, we could live like ordinary people, and nobody’d ever know. All my life, he used to say, I’ve wanted to be a stranger somewhere, I’ve wanted to go where nobody knows me. And they’d all grinned, and told him: fat chance of that.

  Just think of it, though, Muri told himself. Just think of a place where we could be nothing more than five middle-aged men on a beach, walking up the road into town.

  It’s my own stupid fault, he thought. I could’ve said anything, but I had to go and tell that man I was a linebreaker. Couldn’t resist, just once more, to see the shock in his eyes, the respect, the nervousness, the fear. They hate us really, Teuche used to say; they only tolerate us because they know we’re not going to live much longer. And then he’d grin and say, wouldn’t it be a laugh if we survived this war and went home? They’d have to either make us kings or poison our beer, or both.

  He peered down, past his toes. Not the first time he’d thought about doing it. A cliff made it so easy, so convenient. You just had to take one step forward, until you reached the point where your centre of balance was over the edge. If you were scared or got cold feet, you could shut your eyes, so you wouldn’t actually know when you’d passed that critical point. There’d be a short time, five or six seconds, when you’d still be alive, but falling, without any hope or possibility whatsoever of getting out of it. Then . . . It’d be over so quickly, you probably wouldn’t even know. It was something you could do practically on a whim, in the split second when it seemed like a good idea, and once you’d committed yourself to it, there’d be no turning back, no resolution-sapping possibility of changing your mind. One step, and that’d be that. For two pins . . .

  (His mother’s favourite phrase: for two pins. As soon as he thought of her, he knew he couldn’t do it; because just suppose there was a life after death, and when he got there she was waiting for him, bursting to tell him exactly what she thought of what he’d made of his life. It really was enough to make you determined to stay alive as long as possible.)

  As soon as he’d reached that conclusion, of course, he felt sick and dizzy, and a gust of wind nudged him a little bit closer to the edge. He whimpered, twisted, felt his balance go and threw himself backwards, landing painfully, sitting down hard on a big chunk of stone. The jarring of his spine made him squeal like a pig (and you think that’s painful, he pointed out to himself, think what it’d be like mashing your head on a big sharp rock. How stupid can you get?).

  Fine, he thought, once he’d got over the pain and the panic. That’s that settled, then. I’m going with Teuche Kunessin. But you’d decided that all along, hadn’t you; and all this was just melodrama.

  He turned his back on the sea and the cliff, as though it had insulted him, and limped back down the coast path into town. At the tanner’s yard, the boss was standing beside the fleshing tanks.

  “You’ve come back, then,” he said.

  “Yes,” Muri said, “but I’m not stopping. I’ve decided to quit. You owe me four days’ money.”

  “Oh, right.” The boss scowled at him. “That’s just fine. You take it into your head to piss off into the blue, and the hell with getting the order out on time, the hell with the penalty clause, I’m supposed to just hand over your money and wave you on your merry way. Well, maybe that’s how you did things in the army, but in this trade—”

  Muri nodded. “Point taken,” he said. “You’d rather I worked out my notice, right?”

  “You could bloody well say that, yes.”

  “Fine.” Muri made a show of closing his right hand. The boss was a head taller than him, two handspans broader across the shoulders. Like that mattered. “Of course,” he said, “if I smashed your face in, right now, you’d have no option but to sack me on the spot, and screw getting the order out. Otherwise you’d be a laughing stock.”

  The boss turned pale; not white, more a sort of dirty grey. Words seemed to have failed him.

  “And I’d forfeit my four days’ money, naturally,” Muri went on, “so we’d both lose out. Me, my thaler twenty; you, all your front teeth. So tell you what, let’s compromise. Well? What do you reckon?”

  Slowly, the boss dug in his trouser pocket, withdrew his hand and dropped two thaler coins on the floor. “Keep the change,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Muri said politely. He knew what was coming, of course. As he stooped to pick up the money, the boss aimed a kick at his head. It was a well-thought-out strategy; if he hadn’t been expecting it, he’d have been in trouble, even with his reactions. As it was, he caught the boss’s foot with his left hand and held it, firm as a rock, with just a little nudge to tilt him off balance until he’d finished picking up the coins. Then he let go, and the boss staggered back (just as Muri himself had done on the cliff: serendipity).

  “Goodbye,” he said, straightening up and smiling. It was a long time since he’d seen fear like that in anybody’s face. He’d forgotten how little he liked the sight of it; quite disgusting, like something rotting. He turned his back on it and walked away, heading up the road towards the Ropewalk and the Glory of Heroes.

  At the corner, he met Aidi Proiapsen. He was dressed in a beautiful new brocaded tailcoat, white breeches and black town shoes with silver buckles. It was enough to make a cat laugh.

  “Hello, Aidi,” he said. “How’s the shop?”

  “Sold it,” Proiapsen replied. “How’s the tanning business?”

  Muri grinned at him. “Here’s a riddle for you,” he said. “What have a shopkeeper, a tanner, a farmer and a fencing instructor got in common? Three guesses, and you still won’t get it.”

  Proiapsen nodded. “They’re all stupid,” he said. “You’re going to the big meeting, I take it.”

  “You really sold your shop?”

  “Gave it away’s more like it. Still, won’t be needing it where we’re going, wherever the hell that turns out to be.” He paused.

  “You seen Fly?”

  Muri shook his head. “You think he’ll be there?”

  “To be honest with you,” Proiapsen said, “I have my doubts. I’m not sure that wife of his’ll let him.”

  Muri shrugged. “Assuming he’s told her.”

  “Oh, he tells her everything, you can count on it. She’s got him on a bit of string. You never know, he might even refuse to go. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.”

  “Fly Alces won’t be left behind,” Muri said confidently. “He never could bear being left out of anything. Remember that time when—”

  “No,” said Proiapsen.

  Muri shuffled his feet. “Better be getting on,” he said. “Did he give you any idea what this is all about?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment, Muri’s face was blank. Then he grinned. “Come on,” he said. “You can buy me a beer.”

  Proiapsen yawned. “No chance,” he said. “And didn’t I hear you were off the beer these days?”

  Muri shook his head. “There’s a difference between forswearing and not being able to afford,” he said. “Of course, you’ve got a cellarful of the stuff back home . . .”

  “Had,” Proiapsen corrected him. “But that was this morning.” He shook his head. “This morning, I even had a cellar. Not any more.” He sighed. “It’s wonderful, being friends with Teuche Kunessin. You get to lose everything, over and over again.”

  “I can see the appeal,” Muri replied, “for someone like you. Gives you a chance to get it all back again, once he’s finished with you. You enjoy doing that.”

  Without noticing, they’d started to walk, Muri lengthening his stride to keep pace with the taller man: second nature. “Just a little hint,” Muri said. “I won’t tell him you
told me.”

  “No.”

  “But you’re going, right? Or else, why would you have sold up?”

  “Maybe because Teuche’s back in town, and I’m getting out before he can talk me into doing some stupid, dangerous thing. Or maybe I got a good offer.”

  “At least reassure me it’s not soldiering. I really have had enough of that.”

  Turning the corner, they walked into Kudei Gaeon. He was dressed in what were clearly his best clothes, and his boots were polished. He looked at them both for a moment or so, then said, “Kunessin?”

  “Naturally,” Proiapsen said. “What about you? On your way home from market?”

  Kudei ignored him. “Haven’t seen you for a while, Muri. I heard you’re working at the tannery.”

  “I just quit,” Muri said.

  “How about Fly?” Proiapsen said. “I don’t think he’s going to show.”

  “Haven’t seen him for a year,” Kudei replied. “What makes you think he won’t be there?”

  “Aidi thinks his wife won’t let him,” Muri said. “I don’t know her well enough to judge.”

  “She’s all right,” Kudei said slowly. “Mind, I’m not saying Fly didn’t marry beneath him.”

  “That was inevitable,” Proiapsen put in, “if he was ever going to get married at all. Any woman on his level would run a mile.”

  Kudei frowned. “They seemed happy enough, last time I saw them.”

  “I’m not saying they aren’t,” Proiapsen said. “Just like I was happy running a shop, and presumably you’re happy farming. I always reckon getting well away from who you really are is one of the key elements of happiness in this world. I just think she’ll stop him going, that’s all.”

  Kudei shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “Well, no use standing around here. If we’re going, let’s go.”

  For a moment or two, nobody moved. Then Muri lowered his head, like a calf driven into a stall, and stepped out in front of the rest, who followed in silence.

  “What’s a linebreaker?” she said.

  Thouridos Alces frowned at her. “You said you didn’t want to know.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Alces sat down, his feet together, looking just past her. “A battle,” he said, “is basically a shoving match. You’ve got two thick blocks of men, armed with pikes; that’s a twenty-foot-long spear. When they’re about to engage the enemy, the first six ranks level their pikes, so you’ve got six rows of needle-sharp points coming at you, with the combined body weight of a thousand men pushing them on. The idea is, nothing on earth should be able to stand up against something like that.” He paused for a moment, as if thinking something through. Then he said, “You can imagine the mess you get if two armies of pikemen just crash into each other. Sure, they’re all wearing breastplates and helmets, but that much weight pressing on a nine-inch spike, it’s like driving a nail into a sheet of tin. Your only chance is if you can break up the enemy’s line before it engages your pikemen. Punch a hole through the line, and the whole thing falls apart; and then your pikes come crashing in, and either the enemy breaks and runs away, or you slaughter them.”

  He paused again. For once, he had her full attention.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “that’s what we did. Teuche, Muri, Aidi, Kudei, Nuctos and me. We ran out ahead of the pike wall, and we punched the hole. We were trained for it specially; they singled us out when we were at the Military College, told us we were going to be the flower of the infantry, and it was a great honour. They neglected to mention that most linebreakers don’t survive more than two battles; a handful last for three, a very few make four. We fought thirty-seven times; thirty-seven major field engagements in ten years. It’s a world record, actually.”

  There was a long silence. Then she said: “You must have been good at it, then.”

  “Oh, we were.” He was staring at the wall, as if daring it, seeing who’d blink first. “There were different techniques. You could run up to the pike wall, then at the last moment you’d drop down, hit the deck, roll under the pikes and come up stabbing; we had short, wide swords, they used to call them cat-splitters, God knows why. Or you could try grabbing hold of an armful of spearheads and sort of jostle your way through - sounds impossible, but there was a knack to it, it could be done. That was how Aidi did it; he was so quick, he just dropped his shoulder and slid through, like a man in a crowd, and then he’d be at their faces, and there’d be nothing they could do. Muri and Kudei were droppers and rollers. I was the zweyhanderman; I had a great big two-handed sword, and I chopped the heads off the pikes. Teuche was the best of us, though. He’d push the pike heads down until he could jump up and walk on top of them, like someone crossing a stream on a fallen branch; he used a poleaxe, which is a pretty subtle tool, or you can simply use it like a hammer.” He stopped; his nose had started to bleed. He wiped the blood off with his sleeve, and continued. “The worst of it was, you had to keep going, because if you stopped, you knew you had your own pikes coming straight up your arse, so if you slipped and fell over, or one of the enemy slowed you down, you’d be spitted on your own side’s spearheads, and that was something you really didn’t want to have happen to you. So you kept on cutting your way though, until they broke and ran or you came out the other side. It’s quite extraordinary, actually, what human beings can do to each other, if they really have to. You get so tired, just from bashing metal and cutting meat; the last thing in your mind is that it’s human beings you’re driving a mineshaft through.” He paused again, looking down at the blood on the palm of his hand. “Anyhow,” he said, “that’s what we used to do for a living. We did get paid a hell of a lot of money for it. Nothing was too good for the linebreakers. We used to buy the very best clothes to wear under our armour. Of course, after a battle it was all completely ruined, torn up, soaked in blood; all you could do was chuck it away and buy new, the next town you came to. Same with everything else, really. We could have the very best just for the asking, but either we spoiled it straight away or we didn’t even bother with it. I mean, when that’s what you do for a living, nothing else could possibly ever compare . . .”

  She was looking at him. “You enjoyed it, then.”

  That made him laugh. “Of course we did,” he said. “How else do you think we lasted? Oh, it was your worst possible nightmare while it was happening. We were so bloody scared, it hurt: real pain, right here in the chest. You got so cramped up with fear it was agony just breathing. And the exhaustion: it was sheer misery; such hard work you’d be nothing but a wreck of pulled muscles for a week afterwards. But of course we enjoyed it. We were heroes. We were practically gods.” But then he shook his head. “That wasn’t it, though. After a while, we didn’t care a damn what anybody thought about us. Nobody else mattered, you see. The six of us, we were the whole world as far as we were concerned, as though we were the only six humans left in the universe, and everybody else was some other species that didn’t matter; they were just there to feed and clothe us and be killed by us. We enjoyed it because it was us. It was love.”

  He closed his eyes. He knew she was looking straight at him, but he wasn’t interested in her; she might as well have been a stranger, one of those useless, horrible creatures who’d sooner or later always ask: what was it really like? A question, of course, that he could never answer.

  But instead she said, “You said six.”

  “What? Oh, right.” He opened his eyes again. “There were six of us, to begin with. But one got killed. Right at the end of the war, would you believe? That was the really stupid thing.”

  For a long time, she didn’t say anything. Then she stood up and left him alone. After she’d gone, he sat still and quiet, until the room was quite dark.

  Chapter Three

  When Teuche Kunessin was thirteen years old, the war came to Faralia. General Oionoisin led the Seventh Regiment down the Blue River valley, trying to catch the enemy’s last remaining field army before it cou
ld get to the coast, where the fleet was waiting to take it home. With hindsight, he admitted that he sent his cavalry too far ahead; the enemy dragoons cut them off and routed them at Sherden, whereupon their commander lost his nerve and withdrew them behind the defences of the coast fort at Greenmuir. The enemy immediately turned on General Oionoisin and, making full use of their cavalry superiority, forced him to fight a pitched battle six miles east of Faralia, on a high ridge of open moorland pasture. The Seventh fought well, holding off the dragoons for over an hour before their square finally broke. Once the pike wall was disrupted, however, the enemy infantry moved against them and their annihilation was inevitable. After the battle, in the absence of any effective opposition in the west, the enemy retraced their steps as far as Meshway, defeated General Houneka’s Fifth Regiment and laid siege to the city. Most authorities now agree that Oionoisin’s error of judgement at Faralia prolonged the war by ten years.

  Teuche’s father knew the soldiers were somewhere in the parish. He’d met Tolly Epersen as he was driving the herd back to the sheds for evening milking, and Tolly reckoned he’d seen them, a dark grey blur on the slopes of Farmoor. Teuche’s father was worried, naturally enough. His sheep were on Big Moor, a hopelessly tempting prize for a large body of hungry men. He considered the risks and options: if Tolly had seen them on Farmoor an hour ago, even if they were coming straight down the combe, it’d still take them four hours to reach the pasture where the sheep were. There should be plenty of time, therefore, to get up to Big Moor and drive the flock into Redwater combe, where with any luck they wouldn’t be noticed. Normally he’d have gone himself and left the milking to Teuche, but as luck would have it, he’d put his foot in a rabbit hole and turned over his ankle two days earlier, and was still limping badly. He didn’t like the thought of sending the boy out where there might be stray soldiers, but he couldn’t risk anything happening to the sheep. He called Teuche out of the barn, where he’d been mending hurdles, and told him what to do.