Purple and Black (6 page)

I remember my father telling me something his father told him when he took over the family business. If a man treads on your foot, break his arm. If he spits on your shoe, kill him. Let them hate you, so long as they fear you. That was how he thought, and I have real problems with knowing that I'm descended from someone like that. The horrible thing is, though, that Grandad's approach, in certain circumstances, does seem to work really well. It's how Grandad made his fortune in shipbuilding; and if there's anywhere on earth harder and nastier than the Gallirhoe shipyard, its the Tremissis frontier.

Please, please, please think of a third alternative.

*

His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun, father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, to Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, greetings.

By these presents, know that His Majesty has appointed the bearer of this letter, General Lamachus, as deputy commander of the Tremissis sector. Lamachus will assist Phormio with co-ordinating the defences and overall security of the province.

You have a new number-one priority. Immediately find and secure the person of the leader of the insurgency, buy him lots of drinks and offer him a job. We need someone like that at Command.

It won't have escaped your notice, my brilliant and perceptive friend, that enclosed herewith, instead of oysters or a warm scarf or a nice book, there's a steelneck. Sorry about that. Not—definitely not—my idea, can't be helped, do the best you can. Your spot of bother has become my spot of bother, and thing aren't looking good here at the moment. Lumbering you with an unwanted four-star arsehole was the best deal (for all of us) that I could cut in very uncongenial circumstances. Play nicely together.

(If the seals on this letter were broken or showed signs of having been played about with, you'd better arrange an accident for him. But I don't think that's likely. I have no reason whatsoever to suppose that General Lamachus can read.)

Fairly soon, you should also be taking delivery of;

Item; two (2) divisions regular infantry

Item; one (1) division auxiliary cavalry

Item; one (1) division, the Imperial Corps of Engineers, with an architect, his pencil-sharpeners, cartographers, specialists and other assorted entourage, useful and/or ornamental, literate and semi-literate.

I think we'll build a wall. You can't have too many walls. In years to come, the happy and contented subjects of the Empire can take their families for picnics among the picturesque ruins. It'll be marked on all the maps as Nicephorus' Wall, which means my name will live for a thousand years, which will be nice. Also, there is a desperate need here for me to do something, and building as wall is as definite and concrete (pun intended) a something as even the most intractable steelneck could ask for.

Talking of the most intractable steelneck; General Lamachus served my father (not in itself a recommendation), and was never conclusively proved to have taken part in any serious conspiracy against him. In military circles, this means we're practically engaged to be married. Be nice to him, keep him well away from the garlic and the wives of people you daren't offend, and he's not actually all that bad. He also knows a surprising amount about building walls (the wide bit goes in the ground, the crenellated bit sticks up in the air; all the latest cutting-edge technical stuff) and he's worshipped as some sort of minor god by the Lusir Soleth, a whole division of whom you will soon have the pleasure of entertaining. Of the Lusir Soleth, the best thing that can be said is, they take some of the pain out of reading casualty reports. I've stuck you with them purely and simply because, if things turn smelly here, I want them as far away from the City as possible. Sorry about that.

Menestheus' financial wizards have drawn a blank on the money trail, and so have the chronic under-achievers who've been looking into the personnel records.

Look on the bright side. We may be facing the final collapse of the Empire, the overthrow of all our hopes and our own violent and painful deaths, but at least neither of us will ever have to take an end-of-term philosophy exam again, or listen to Phylarchus lecturing on precepts of Nominalist theory, or eat another breakfast in Great Hall. You see? Once you put this stuff in perspective, it ain't so bad.

*

Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, to His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun, father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, greetings.

Phormio begs to inform His Majesty that the reinforcements have arrived, general Lamachus has taken up his command, and work has begun on the Nicephorine Wall.

(Happy now? Your place in history.)

Really, Nico, you should try talking to people. Just because someone served your father faithfully throughout a long and distinguished military career, it doesn't necessarily follow he's a total bastard—a safe bet, yes, but not an absolute certainty. If only you'd taken the trouble to share a glass or two of wine with my new best friend Lamachus, you'd have found out that underneath that bluff, grim, savage, raw-flesh-eating, human-sacrificing exterior beats the heart of a rather unpleasant person—but (and this is where I may have a slight edge over you, even if you are the second cousin of the invincible Sun) a rather unpleasant person who in his spare time collects old manuscripts. True, the sort of old manuscript he particularly likes tend to be mostly pictures of athletic young men and women with no clothes on, but at least it's a start; a tiny bridge of shared humanity linking the human and the steelneck. Fact is, I happened to leave lying around in my study that copy of the Bedchamber Dialogues that Strato sent. When Lamachus came to report in, he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye and swooped on it like a vulture. Offered me HS 2,000 for it, cash. Apparently, it's the rare sixth edition, with the extra woodcut in chapter nine. Take it, I said, as a gift. General Lamachus is now my friend.

(Accordingly, please have your literary advisers scour the City for every last scrap of antique porn they can lay their hands on, expense no object; must be at least two hundred years old, and the rarer the better. Lamachus isn't just a sad bastard, he's a genuine collector. Last night I had to listen to him banging on for two hours about watermarks. But for as long as I can feed him a steady trickle of goodies, he's mine.)

Work on the wall progresses. What can I say; it's a wall. Everybody in these parts thinks I'm out of my tiny mind, but they're happy enough to sell us stuff or take our wages, now that there's soldiers everywhere you look to keep them safe. The idea that the government can be a net provider of money, rather than a bottomless pit into which their taxes vanish without trace, is new and intriguing around here, and in consequence we're rather more popular than we used to be. In fact, I have a suspicion that the Nicephorine Wall will do us more good, hearts-and-minds-wise, as a source of easy money for the local spivs and unemployables than as a piece of military architecture. Nothing wrong with that, needless to say.

Tell Strato his unerring instinct for quality smut may just have saved the Empire. He'll be ever so pleased.

*

His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun, father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, to Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, greetings.

His Majesty is pleased to enclose the top-priority military materiel requested by Phormio in his last communication.

You bastard. You owe me. I've now acquired a reputation for depravity and unspeakable vice comparable only with that of my father, my brothers and my uncle. Talking of which, there's a copy of Corydon's Fragrant Bedchamber from Dad's own personal travelling-chest. Went with him everywhere, the lascivious old git, from the halls of Hyperpyron to the sands of Miliarense. Tell your pal Lamachus you had your agents steal it for you. He'll love that.

You've also confirmed my long-held suspicion that I'm as thick as a brick. I used to wonder exactly why Lamachus always stuck by my dad, when he could've stabbed him in the back a score of times. Human nature. A man will betray his honour, his country and his friend, but the bond between two people who share a common devotion to hardcore porn is unbreakable.

*

Phormio, governor of Upper Tremissis, to His Divine Majesty Nicephorus V, brother of the invincible Sun, father of his people, defender of the faith, emperor of the Vesani, greetings.

Phormio begs to inform His Majesty that General Lamachus has engaged and defeated the enemy at Choris Andron.

And there you have it. Proof positive of the enormous social value of dirty books. Primed to bursting point with the finest vintage filth money can buy, our friend Lamachus has sought out and destroyed a respectable chunk of the enemy; and I for one applaud him for it. A fine soldier and a wonderful human being.

And he made it look so simple, too. When I had my crack at the bastards, you may remember, I went to all kinds of elaborate lengths— cartloads of wire, careful drip-feeding of information through their spy network. Lamachus' approach is more straightforward, and quite brilliant.

You want to pay close attention to this, because it's a master-class in practical tactics. All Lamachus did was pick a fight with one of the guild bosses, something about withholding agreed bonuses, productivity targets not met, which provoked him into calling a two-day strike. The men lay down tools and stomp off in a huff. Lamachus sends in troops to do their work, so as not to hold up progress. The troops he assigns are a unit who've been guarding the section of the perimeter closest to the mountain pass we believe they've been using to get across the border. Result; a gaping hole in the perimeter, with easy access to the site, and anywhere else they may care to go.

It looked so convincingly like a genuine balls-up that our friends in the mountains simply couldn't resist. Very sensibly, Lamachus didn't try and catch them out in the open. He let them get right up onto the parapet, like they did the last time, and there he was in the ditch, waiting for them. He thinks we got them all; over five hundred dead; better still, fifty-odd very much alive. He's talking to them now, and I suspect that he's not confining himself to showing them round clock-towers. But let's not dwell on that.

I may be tempting providence a lot; but maybe this is the ideal solution. A proper fighting general doing his stuff as only a true professional can, but kept on a leash by a human being.

Stesichorus wouldn't like it, of course. Men like Lamachus are quite definitely an evil means to a good end. I'm writing this in the chief clerk's office, because my study's just across the yard from where Lamachus is conducting his interviews; the theory being, if I can't hear it, it's not happening. Nice theory, but I fancy there's a fallacy in there somewhere. Men like Lamachus save lives by taking lives. They prevent cruelty and inhumanity by inflicting it. Men like us let them, because it's for the greater good, and because we're afraid that, if it wasn't done for us, we might find it in our hearts to do it ourselves.

On which cheerful note, I'll let you get back to your feasting and your nameless debaucheries. Lamachus loved the copy of The Blacksmiths Daughter, by the way. Not because of the content, but because it's the much scarcer third edition by the Smicrines brothers of Ianassa, with the page numbers on the left instead of the right.

*

Nicephorus to Phormio

Gorgias is alive.

It's true. No, I haven't seen him, but I know he's alive. It's like this. One of the first things I did when I got the throne was send for the chief clerk of the Military Roll; that's the department that records stuff like enlistment dates, expiry of tours of duty, and deaths in service. I figured that if it was true that Gorgias got press-ganged at Smicra and died at Thanatta, there'd be a record; the Roll seems to be the one department of the civil service that actually works. Sure enough, they found me his draft notice and enlistment details, which tie in pretty well with what we'd heard from his sister. So, needless to say, I told them to find me the record of his death. They couldn't.

Which meant precisely nothing, since a hell of a lot of the dead on both sides at lhanatta were simply shovelled into a mass grave. So I ordered the Engineers to find the mass grave and dig it up.

I expect you're way ahead of me, but just in case you aren't; Gorgias, as you know, was missing his upper front tooth. He was six feet two inches tall, and when he was twelve he broke his left leg. So; I had the Engineers pull out every single body in that pit and prise the jaws open, looking for that missing tooth. In the event that they found more than one (they did, of course), they were to measure the overall length of the skeleton, and check the left femur for signs of a childhood fracture.

He wasn't there. Sixty-two corpses were missing the front tooth, but forty-nine of them were missing other teeth that I knew Gorgias still had; ten of the remaining eleven were under six feet tall, and the last two showed no sign of having had a broken leg.

Which still meant precisely nothing. So I had them go over the battlefield inch by inch, digging out every last body that'd been overlooked at the time; then they worked outwards for a radius of two miles, plus they interviewed all the local farmers, anybody who might've found an unrecorded dead body. It took them three months, but they found plenty. None of the skulls was missing the upper front tooth.

Now, Gorgias' unit was the 725th Infantry, and we know for a fact exactly where they were all through the battle. Dad kept them in reserve until the last hour of the action, when he managed to smash through the left wing of my brother Philo's infantry line; at which point, he sent in the 725th to wedge the gap open. But he got it horribly wrong, and (as you know) Philo's horse-archers cut them off and shot them to pieces where they stood; the handful of survivors surrendered, and were marched off the battlefield by the Aram no Vei auxiliaries while Philo was staging his counter-attack.

Right; let's do a logical assessment. The 725th were intact when they advanced towards the gap in the line. We know precisely where the horse-archers bottled them up, and where the vast majority of them died. We know, from unit insignia found on the bodies, that all the dead from that engagement went in pit number 6, and Gorgias isn't in there with them. Eye-witnesses confirm that there was no way anybody could've broken out of the encirclement and made a run for it. Therefore, the only logical possibility is that Gorgias wasn't killed in the shoot-up; he was one of the survivors who surrendered and got taken away by the savages. We can confirm that beyond reasonable doubt from the fact that he wasn't one of the stray bodies that never got collected and buried. At the close of the battle, he must still have been alive.