The Left Hand Of God (40 page)

Cale shut his eyes as if he had heard very bad news. He had. When he finished explaining why, no one said anything for some time.

“We should leave,” said Kleist. “Now. Tonight.”

“I think he’s right,” said Vague Henri.

“So do I. I just can’t.”

Kleist groaned.

“For God’s sake, Cale, how do you think you and Lady Muck are going to end up?”

“Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?”

“I think you should tell Vipond,” said IdrisPukke.

“We’re done here. Why can’t any of you see that?”

“Blab this to Vipond and all three of us’ll end up at the bottom of the Bay of Memphis feeding our kidney suet to the fishes.”

“He could be right,” said Vague Henri. “We’re about as popular as a boil at the moment.”

“And we know whose fault that is,” said Kleist, looking at Cale. “Yours, in case you were wondering.”

“I’ll tell Vipond tomorrow. You two leave tonight,” said Cale.

“I’m not leaving,” said Vague Henri.

“Yes you are,” said Cale.

“No I’m not,” insisted Vague Henri.

“Yes you are,” said Kleist, equally insistent.

“Take my share of the money and go,” said Vague Henri.

“I don’t want your share.”

“Then don’t have it. There’s nothing to stop you going on your own.”

“I know there isn’t, I just don’t want to.”

“Why?” said Vague Henri.

“Because,” said Kleist, “I’m afraid of the dark.” With that, he took out his sword and began lacerating the nearest tree. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

It was in this roundabout way that the three of them agreed both to stay and that IdrisPukke would go with Cale to tell Vipond.

This time Cale did not have to wait when he turned up at Vipond’s offices, but was shown straight in. The first ten minutes were taken up with Vipond’s account of the three Redeemer attacks and the massacre at Mount Nugent. He handed Cale the glove left on the post in the center of the village.

“There’s a name inside. Do you know this person?”

“Brzica? He was the summary executioner at the Sanctuary. He was responsible for killing anyone not meant to be an Act of Faith. ‘Public executions for the religious contemplation of believers.’ ” The tone in which he said this made it clear it was something learned by heart. “They were carried out by holier Redeemers than him. I never saw him use it, but Brzica was known for the speed at which he could kill with this thing.”

“I have made it,” said Vipond quietly, “my personal responsibility to find this man.”

He sat down and drew a deep breath. “None of these attacks seem to make much sense. Is there anything you can tell me about the strategy the Redeemers are using?”

“Yes.”

Vipond sat back and looked at Cale, picking up the odd tone in his reply.

“I know these tactics because I was the one who drew them up. If you show me a map, I can explain.”

“Given what you’ve just told me, I don’t think showing you a map would be wise. Explain first.”

“If you want my help, I’ll need the map to explain what they’re going to do and work out where to stop them.”

“Give me the sum. Then we’ll see about the map.”

Cale could see that Vipond was more skeptical than mistrustful—he didn’t believe him.

“About eight months ago Redeemer Bosco took me to the Library of the Rope of the Hanged Redeemer, something I never heard of a Redeemer doing for an acolyte, and gave me free run of all the works there on Redeemer military tactics for the last five hundred years. Then he gave me everything he had personally collected on the Materazzi empire—and there was a lot of it. He told me to come up with a plan of attack.”

“Why you?”

“For ten years he’d been teaching me about war. There’s a Redeemer school just for this. There are about two hundred of us—we’re called the Workings. I’m the best.”

“Modest of you.”

“I am the best. Modesty has nothing to say about it.”

“Go on.”

“I decided after a few weeks to rule out a surprise attack. I like surprises—as a tactic, I mean—but not this time.”

“I don’t understand. This
is
a surprise attack.”

“No, it isn’t. For a hundred years the Redeemers have been fighting the Antagonists—mostly it’s trench warfare and mostly now it’s stalemate. The trenches have stayed pretty much where they are for a dozen years. It needs something new to break the stalemate, but the Redeemers don’t like anything new. They have a law which allows a Redeemer to kill an acolyte on the spot if he does something unexpected. But Bosco is different; he was always thinking, and one of the things he thought was that I was different and he could make use of me.”

“How will attacking us break the stalemate with the Antagonists?”

“I couldn’t really work it out either. So I asked him.”

“And?”

“Nothing. He just gave me a good beating. So I got on with what he told me to do. The thing is, why I didn’t think surprise would work against the Materazzi is because they don’t fight like anyone else—not like the Redeemers, not like the Antagonists. The Redeemers don’t have cavalry to speak of, and no armor. Bowmen are central to the Redeemers. You barely use them. Our siege engines were huge and clumsy, each one built on the site of every siege. You must have four hundred towns and cities with walls five times thicker than anything the Redeemers were used to.”

“Two of the siege trebuchets used at York failed, but they burned all four. Why?”

“They broke through the walls on the first day, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes.”

“They tested a new weapon in a real battle against a new kind of enemy a long way from home. So even if two broke down, the other two worked.”

“But two didn’t.”

“Then make them better—that’s what all this is for.”

“Meaning what?”

“There’s no point in surprising your enemy on their terms and in their territory if you can’t be sure of destroying them quickly. Bosco was always beating me because he said I took too many unnecessary risks. Not here. I knew the Redeemers weren’t ready, that we . . .” He corrected himself, “that
they
needed to wage a short campaign, learn as much about how the Materazzi fought, how good their weapons and armor were, and then withdraw. Show me a map.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“I’m here and I’m telling you what happened, aren’t I? We could have just legged it.”

“Suppose this, what you’re telling me, is just fake honesty, and Bosco is pulling your strings and has been all along.”

Cale laughed.

“That’s a good idea. I’ll use it one day. Show me the map.”

“Nothing,” said Vipond after a moment, “is to leave this office.”

“Who’d listen to me but you anyway?”

“A good point—but for the avoidance of doubt, if anyone else finds out that you were a part of this, you’ll get a rope for a reward.” Vipond went over to a shelf on the far side of the room and removed a roll of thick paper. He looked at Cale very directly as he came back to his desk, as if this would make any difference to someone who had spent his entire life hiding his thoughts. Then he made up his mind for good or ill and unrolled it on the desktop, weighing down the edges with Venetian glass paperweights and a copy of
The Melancholy Prince,
of all books his favorite. Cale looked over the map with an intense concentration quite different from anything Vipond had seen from him before. For the next half an hour he answered Cale’s detailed questions about the sites of the four attacks and the strengths and dispositions of soldiers. Then he stopped and for ten minutes studied the map in silence.

“I want a drink of water,” said Cale. The water was duly brought and he drank it in one go.

“Well?”

“The Materazzi have walled towns and cities. I knew that without much lighter siege engines that could easily be moved from city to city we might just as well blow trumpets and expect the walls to come tumbling down. I told Bosco that the Pontifical Engineers would need to build something much lighter than we had and make them easy to put up and take down.”

“And you designed this yourself ?”

“Me? No. I don’t know anything about that stuff. I just knew what was needed.”

“But he didn’t tell you he agreed, that he was actually going to put your plan into action.”

“No. When I heard about the attacks at first, I thought I was going . . . you know . . .” He made several circling motions around his head. “A bit loony.”

“But you’re not.”

“Me? Sound as a bell. Anyway, they learned what they needed to learn at York and that’s why they left and took the three Materazzi with them—they wanted the armor, not the men. It’ll be halfway to the Sanctuary by now, with the engineers waiting to give it a good going over.”

“You took a beating at Fort Invincible.”

“Not me, the Redeemers.”

“You refer to them as
we
sometimes.”

“Force of habit, Boss.”

“All right, then, your plan took a hammering at Fort Invincible.”

“Not really—just bad luck. The Materazzi didn’t intend to attack them from the rear, they just happened to be returning at the wrong time—for the Redeemers, anyway. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans—isn’t that what the Memphis moneylenders say?”

“You’re supposed to have a parole to get into the Ghetto.”

“Nobody told me.”

“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself.”

“I’m still alive, if that’s what you mean.”

“I still say it all went wrong at Fort Invincible.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“How so?”

“How many Redeemers dead?”

“Two and a half thousand—thereabouts.”

“They fought your cavalry twice and the rest of them got away. They were there to see what you were made of, not to win a battle.”

“And Port Collard.”

“You call it Little Memphis. Why is that?”

“It was built in a natural harbor very like the bay here. The city was built along the same lines. The layout worked once—provincials like to copy things . . .” He stopped in midsentence. “I see. Yes.” He sighed heavily and sneezed. “Excuse me. So what happens next?”

Cale shrugged.

“I know what was in the plan next—it doesn’t mean that’s what they’re going to do.”

“Why shouldn’t they? It’s been reasonably successful so far.”

“Better than that—just successful. They’ve got everything I planned for.”

There was an unpleasant silence. Surprisingly it was Cale who broke it. “I’m sorry; the sin of pride is very great in me, according to Bosco.”

“Is he wrong?”

“Probably not.”

“Do you know this Princeps?”

“I met him once. He was the military governor along the northern seaboard then. There’s no trench warfare there, it’s all mountains and stuff. That’s why he’s running this campaign, because he’s the best they’ve got at fighting with an army on the move—and he’s thick with Bosco, though from what I can gather he’s not too popular elsewhere.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. But I’ve read all his campaign reports. He fights as if he thinks for himself. That kind of thing makes the Office of Intolerance nervous. Bosco protects him, that’s what I hear.”

“So why does Princeps need you to tell him what to do?”

“You’ll have to ask Bosco.” Cale gestured at the map. “Where are they now?”

Vipond pointed to a spot about a hundred miles from the Scablands at their northernmost tip.

“The view is that they’re going to cross the Scablands to the Sanctuary.”

“It looks like it. But it’s too risky taking an army, even a small one like this, across the Scablands in summer.”

“That’s not part of your great plan, then?”

“It’s exactly part of my great plan that they should
look
as if they’re heading for the Scablands through the Forest of Hessel and so you’ll try to get there first and wait for them to come on to you. But once they’re in the forest, they’ll turn west and cross the river here at Stamford Bridge and head for Port Erroll on the west coast here. The fleet that burned Little Memphis will take them from the harbor. Failing that, from what I read in the library, the beaches are shallow to this side. They can bring in the rowing boats if need be.” He pointed to a pass on the map. “Even if the weather’s bad and the fleet is delayed, once they’re through the Baring Gap a few hundred Redeemers could hold off even a large army for days.”

Vipond looked at him for so long without saying anything that it began to make Cale uneasy and then annoyed. He was about to speak when Vipond asked him a question.

“Do you expect me to believe you, that someone of your age, whatever that is, would be asked to prepare a plan of attack of this kind and then that plan would be carried out in exact detail? I’d have credited you with something more plausible.”

At first Cale simply went blank, a kind of dead expression that made Vipond begin to regret the tone of his frankness and remember the cold delight with which Cale had dispatched Solomon Solomon.
This boy is barely sane,
he thought. But then Cale laughed, a short and sudden bark of amusement. “Have you seen the moneymen playing chess in the Ghetto?”

“Yes.”

“There are lots of old men playing but also kids, I mean much younger than me. One of these kids always wins—not even the old rabbite with all the ringlets and the beard and stuff and the funny hat can beat him. So the rabbite says—”

“It’s rabbi, I understand.”

“Oh. I wondered about that. Anyway, so this rabbi, he says that chess is a gift from God to help us see his divine plan and this kid who can barely read is a sign to us to believe in the order that lies under everything. Me, I’ve got two gifts: I can kill people as easy as you could break a plate—and the other thing I can do is look at a map or stand in a place and I can see how to attack or defend it. It just comes at me like the game comes to the boy in the Ghetto. Though I don’t suppose it’s a gift from God. If you don’t believe me, tough. Your loss.”

“And how would you stop them?” He paused. “If you were going to.”

“For one thing, don’t let them reach the Baring Gap or they’ll be away. But I need a more detailed map from here to here,” he said, pointing at a section of some twenty square miles, “and two or three hours to think about it.”