The Two of Swords: Part 10 (3 page)

“He could do it,” the driver said, “he could bash his way right through to Rasch, if the Fifth don’t stop him. But the city’s safe. He hasn’t got anything that’d put a dent in the walls.”

Oida had taken a good look at the catapult stones at Malestan and wasn’t so sure about that, but decided not to say anything. “He must be moving fast,” he said instead. “Mind you, that’s the Belot boys’ trademark. Not sure you can carry much of a siege train, though, if you’re travelling light.”

The driver shook his head hopefully. “I’ve seen the limbers for those things,” he said. “Bloody great big things, ox-drawn, horses aren’t strong enough. Make ten miles a day if you’re really lucky.”

Oida didn’t point out that whatever had pounded the palisade at Malestan into kindling must still be with the army, since they hadn’t overtaken it on the way. “I think this calls for a change of plan,” he said. “Suddenly, Rasch doesn’t seem the most sensible place to be. What do you reckon?”

The driver looked at him, but said nothing.

“And besides,” Oida went on, “my business isn’t actually in Rasch itself, I’m headed west; I was planning on taking the military mail into town and then hiring a chaise, because that’d be quicker than the public stage. But if I branch off on to the Western Supply at Foliapar, I can get on to the Great West at Autet Cross and not have to go into Rasch at all.”

“You could,” agreed the driver.

“I was thinking.” Oida’s hand was in his pocket again. “Looks like there’s an unhealthy amount of war going on at the moment. At times like these, all sorts of military equipment and personnel go missing, presumed lost or destroyed, and nobody gives it any thought.” He paused again. “I wonder what that coach of yours would cost, to buy, I mean.”

“Don’t know,” the driver said. “Never given it any thought.”

“Must be two angels. A man could set himself up in business with a coach like that. Quite a good living to be made, I should imagine. And even if you decide you do want to go work for Ocnisant, it won’t do you any harm if you’ve got your own rig.”

The driver looked at him. “What, just go off with it, you mean?”

Oida shrugged. “Why not? Like I said, when there’s lunatics fighting huge battles all over the place, and there’s supply columns being cut up by the cavalry every day, and whole stations burned to the ground, who’s going to miss one little cart? Also, if anyone stops you, all you say is you found it abandoned and it’s lawful salvage.” He grinned. “Bear in mind it’s highly unlikely you’re going to get paid any time soon. Me, I’d consider it’s payment in kind in lieu of wages.”

“I don’t know,” the driver said. “I could get in all sorts of trouble.”

“And so could I,” Oida said, “if I don’t get to my appointment on time. A ride as far as the Great West is worth an angel forty to me.” The driver looked up sharply. “If you’re interested.”

“I don’t know,” the driver repeated. “Doesn’t seem right to me, somehow. We ought to be doing something, for the empire.” Oida put his closed hand on the table and opened his fingers. There was a little gleam as the candlelight caught on something. “Still, you’re right,” he said, “what can we do? A carter and a fiddler.”

“Quite,” Oida said. “And the answer is, the best we can, in the circumstances. This could be your big chance. In five years, who knows, you could have a fleet of coaches.”

The driver thought about that for a moment. “It’s an ill wind,” he said brightly. “Where did you say you wanted to go?”

They still had thirty miles to cover before they could turn off the Military Trunk on to the Western Supply. The whole of the next morning they drove through wheatfields.

“This lot should’ve been cut weeks ago,” the driver commented. “It’ll all be spoilt by now.”

Oida didn’t reply. The country they were passing through was one of the principal growing areas for Rasch. It would be interesting to know what they were doing for bread in the big city.

They stopped at noon for a bowl of disgusting porridge, then picked up the pace on the long straight down into the Necua Valley. Then the road turned sharply. As they rounded the corner, a huge flock of rooks got up out of the standing corn and flew away shrieking.

“Bloody things,” the driver commented. “Once you get a few patches where the wind’s laid the corn flat, they go in and strip it bare. And what they don’t eat, they trample and shit on.”

Except that they weren’t rooks; too big and black, and they didn’t fly right for rooks. “You know what,” Oida said. “I think we should stop here a minute.”

They climbed down and walked into the wheat crop. A few yards in, Oida nearly tripped over a dead man. He wore Western-issue armour, minus the helmet, and the back of his head had been smashed in.

“What’ve you found?” the driver called out to him.

“I think it could be the Fifth Army,” Oida said. “No, don’t come any closer.” He knelt down and took another look at the dead man. He was cold and stiff, but the crows hadn’t been at him much. Therefore not more than a day and a half. The armour was the standard lamellar, as favoured by both empires; these days, usually supplied by Ocnisant or one of his competitors. But the neck scarf was the green and blue of the Western Fifth. He’d sung for them, not six months ago. They’d made him do three encores of “Eyes of the Eagles”. He stood up, and walked back the way he’d just come. “I’m guessing they were stragglers,” he said, “or running from the main action and got run down by cavalry. The battle proper would be somewhere over there.” He pointed north-east. “Of course, there’s no way of telling. Could be this was just one wing of the army that got caved in or routed. There’s lots of battles where a bit of one army got wiped out, even though their side won.” He looked round. There was nothing as far as the eye could see but standing corn. But the last time he’d seen that many crows was the day after Lucis Operna. “I think we’ll be all right back on the road,” he said. “If we lost, they’ll be headed for Rasch, and if we won there’s nothing to worry about.”

The driver had a terrified look on his face; he nodded, and walked quickly back to the coach. When they were both aboard, he said, “Shouldn’t we do something for them?”

Oida shook his head. “Ocnisant’ll be along directly,” he said. “My guess is, his carts were all full, so he’s gone to his big depot just this side of Rasch to unload, and then he’ll come back and clear up this lot. No hurry, after all. Those poor buggers aren’t going anywhere.”

The driver looked at him. “You could be all wrong about this,” he said. “I mean, you didn’t actually go and look.”

“Quite so,” Oida replied. “But it’s none of our business, is it? We’re going the other way.”

The driver looked unhappy. “That’s a bit hard, isn’t it?”

Oida shrugged. “I’m just a musician,” he said. “I don’t do politics.”

The road started to climb again. They were passing through the celebrated vineyards of Amportat, reckoned to be the most valuable real estate outside of the cities in the whole Western empire. There should have been men everywhere, harvesting the grapes. Instead, all they saw were vast flocks of starlings.

“I don’t like this,” the driver said. “It’s like there’s nobody left.”

“Well, what would you do if the war moved into your neighbourhood?” Oida said. “You’d clear out till it was gone. Common sense.”

“You don’t think they’re all dead, do you?”

Oida turned his head and looked at him. “No,” he said. “And I’ll tell you for why. I don’t think this is one of those campaigns where the invaders go through the countryside killing everything that moves. I’ve seen what that looks like. So far we haven’t come across burned-out farmhouses or deliberately spoiled crops, or stray livestock on the road, or dead bodies thrown in the hedges. It’s not that sort of campaign. I think Senza’s moving very fast, he hasn’t got time for scorched-earth stuff. My guess is, his whole army is on horseback, cavalry, mounted infantry, horse artillery. It’s the only way he could move so damned fast, and it’s just the sort of crazy, brilliant idea he’d come up with. I think he’s making a hell-for-leather charge straight at Rasch, hoping to get there before they can gather enough supplies to stand a siege, with a view to taking the city before the Western armies can get back home. I think the countryside is deserted because we’re following exactly the same route as he did, and if we turned off and went inland a few miles, we’d find people and cattle and life going on more or less as usual. I think that this time next week, the people who ran away when they saw Senza coming will start drifting back – stands to reason, surely. Either he wins, in which case he’ll stay in Rasch and fortify it, or he loses, and the crows will get a treat. In any event, he won’t be coming back this way any time soon. This is probably the safest place in the empire right now.”

The driver looked petrified. “You think he could win?”

Oida considered his answer. “It’s possible, yes. If anybody could do it, Senza could. People are so scared of him, as soon as he’s visible from the city walls, the army commanders could figure they’ve got no chance, change sides, kill the emperor’s guards and hand over the emperor and the keys of the city. Things like that have happened, it’s not impossible. A lot would depend on how much food they’ve got in store. A city like Rasch is too big to stand a siege for very long, unless they drive out the civilians to fend for themselves. If they did that, assuming the garrison is anything like up to strength, they could probably hold out indefinitely, certainly long enough for the Second and the Fourth and the Eighth to get here and relieve the siege. Of course, that could be what Senza wants, to bring them to battle. If he can wipe all three of them out at a stroke, basically he’s won the war.”

The driver looked at him oddly. “You know a lot about this stuff,” he said, “for a fiddle player.”

Oida grinned. “I play a lot in grand houses,” he said, “you can pick up all sorts of things, eavesdropping.” He put his hands behind his head and yawned. “The point I’m making is this. It may look a whole lot like the end of the world, but I don’t think it is, not this time. I mean, take a really extreme case; let’s suppose Senza wins, the West surrenders, the emperor’s strung up and the streets of the capital run with blood. So what? Big deal. In a year’s time there’ll be a new government, pretty much the same as the old one, except the capital will now be in Choris, six hundred miles away, instead of here on the doorstep. Won’t change anything that matters. The only real difference will be, the war will be over and things can start getting better again. And you’ll be taking on men to drive your fleet of carts, and building yourself a big house somewhere.”

They pressed on until it was quite dark, hoping to reach the turning before nightfall. But eventually it was too dark to see, and the driver refused to go on, in case they missed the crossroads. In the morning, they woke up to find that they’d spent the night in the middle of a battlefield.

The dead were all Western light cavalry; they’d been shot, and the arrows were still in the bodies, which strongly suggested haste, since no sensible archer leaves a good arrow behind if he can possibly retrieve it. Once again, they’d beaten the crows to it, though none of the bodies they examined was warm.

“I wish I could make out tracks,” Oida said with feeling. “But they built these bloody roads so well you can’t see a damn thing. I want to know if they came down the road or up, and which direction they left in.”

The driver was badly shaken, and Oida guessed he hadn’t had much experience with battlefields; he neglected to point out the implications for a possible career with Ocnisant. “What about if they come back?” he kept saying, and Oida grew tired of pointing out that one coach, carrying one civilian, was unlikely to be seen as a threat or a military prize worth stopping for, and that in any event they’d hear them coming even if they didn’t see them, in plenty of time to ditch the coach and hide among the vine rows. It bothered him a little that he hadn’t been able to calm the driver down and soothe his nerves; the man was getting as jumpy as a cat and was clearly worrying himself to death – with good reason, sure enough, but it was Oida’s job as a communicator to mislead him into thinking there was nothing to be scared of.

“Don’t worry,” he said, as they scrambled back aboard the coach. “Once we find that turning and get on the Western Supply, we won’t be seeing any more of that sort of thing. There’s absolutely no reason why Senza should go a single yard further west than he has to. He’s headed for Rasch, remember.”

A burned-out way station didn’t help matters, and it was just as well they reached the turning without stumbling on anything else. They stopped at the crossroads and looked down the Western Supply, a straight grey line running downhill for as far as they could see. “We made it,” the driver said. “Thank God for that. All that death and gore was starting to do my head in.”

“I suggest we try and make up speed on the downhill section,” Oida said. “I expect we’ll both feel better if we can get a few miles behind us.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. The driver went fast; too fast, as it turned out. They’d been on the road about an hour when they heard a loud thump and the coach began to judder and weave and then to track wildly to the left. The driver swore and hauled on the reins. When the coach stopped, it was listing over.

“You know what,” Oida said. “This trip is starting to get on my nerves.”

It wasn’t the axle, as Oida had thought; it was the wheel itself. A spoke must’ve broken, and taken all the others with it. All that remained was the hub, with smashed stubs sticking out of it, like a badly laid hedge. The driver walked back down the road, found the rim and brought it back, rolling it like a hoop.

“Can you fix it?” Oida asked. The driver looked at him. “Sorry,” Oida said, “stupid question. Right, so what do we do?”

The driver shook his head. “God knows,” he said. “We aren’t going very far on that. It needs new spokes fitting, and that’s a wheelwright’s job. I reckon we’re going to have to footslog it as far as the way station.” He stopped. No need to say what had just passed through his mind. He sat down on the ground and stared at the coach, as if he’d never seen one before.