Evil for Evil (63 page)

“Not much maple in these parts,” Valens heard himself say. “Presumably birch’d be too brittle.”

“Yes.”

Really, she was like a bear-trap or a pitfall; words just dropped into her to curl up and starve to death. Tremendously well-informed,
of course; she’d be a real asset, if only he could get past her unfortunate manner. Regrettably, he found himself passionately
not wanting to know anything she could teach him. Not like him at all — he thought of the hundreds of books, presumably still
on the shelves of his library, waiting patiently for the Mezentines to steal or burn them. Irresponsible to reject a potentially
useful resource simply because of a clash of personality.

“How about where you come from? Much maple there?”

“No. We have to trade for it with the Luzir Soleth, who know how much we value it and demand an extortionate price. For that
reason, we use it very sparingly.”

Another thing he’d heard about these people; they respected truth above all things. The perfect education, they said with
pride, consisted of horsemanship, archery and telling the truth. He could believe that. She answered all his questions as
though she was on oath.

“I’m hoping we’ll reach the Sow’s Back by nightfall,” he said. “It’s the last range of hills before the long plain.”

“The Sow’s … ?”

“It looks like a pig’s back,” he said. “A bit. The trouble is, it’s pretty close to the Eremian border, and the Mezentines
have been sending patrols across; just to be annoying, I think, but we don’t want to be seen, obviously. After that —”

“Where are we going?” she asked him.

“I just said, the Sow’s Back. If we can get clear of that, it ought to be a straight run.”

“In the end,” she said. “Where are you taking them?”

The truth above all things. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “It’s more a case of traveling hopefully; just keeping on the
move. The nomadic life, you might say.”

“That’s …” She frowned. “That’s a drastic change, for a sedentary people.”

He laughed, which annoyed her. “I don’t think we’ve got a choice,” he said. “If we go somewhere and stop, unload the carts,
build houses, sooner or later the Mezentines will find us and attack. That’d be the end of us. They took Civitas Eremiae,
which was the strongest fortified city in the world, apart from Mezentia itself. Nothing we could build would be likely to
hold them up for long.”

“Eremia fell through treachery, not direct assault.”

“Yes.” He sighed. He didn’t like discussing things he already knew about. “But it was just a matter of time. They’d have modified
their siege engines, trebled the size of their army. The problem with them is, beating them just makes them more determined
to win.”

She raised a thin, high-arched eyebrow. “In that case …”

“In that case,” he said, “the only way we’ll get out of this is not to fight. If we fight, either we’ll lose, which’d be bad,
or we’ll win — unlikely, and just as bad. But if we can avoid fighting for long enough, there’s a chance they’ll give up and
go home. Their internal politics —”

“I’ve made a study of the subject,” she said. “CouncillorMezentius has been most helpful. You’re hoping they’ll lose the political
will to continue, once the cost of the war begins to affect their economy.”

“Exactly.” If she’d known all along, why had she made him explain? But she hadn’t, of course. “So my idea is, we keep going.
I haven’t worked out a detailed itinerary because it’s essential we keep our movements random; if there’s a set plan, they
might find out about it. It’s pretty clear from what happened in Eremia that they’ve got good spies. No; I’ve got a list in
my head of places where we can get supplies, and the distances between them. That’s as organized as it gets, for the time
being.”

She was still frowning. “And the iron plates?” she said.

“We’re going to be attacked, at some point,” Valens replied. “So I’m hoping to turn that to our advantage. The only way they’ll
be able to engage us is by sending out cavalry detachments, to look for us when we have to come down from the mountains for
supplies. I’m hoping that they will attack us, and that all this ironmongery will give us the advantage, against cavalry.”

“You want to fight them and win. But you said —”

Irritating bloody woman. “Yes, but beating off cavalry attacks isn’t the same thing as beating them in a pitched battle. It’s
…” He searched for an analogy. “Losing a few dozen cavalrymen would come out of income rather than capital. It’d be annoying
rather than a dishonor that could only be purged in blood. It’s more likely to persuade them we aren’t worth the effort and
expense.”

She nodded, and he felt as though he’d just passed a test.

“Anyway,” he went on, “that’s the general idea. It’s not brilliant, but it’s the best we could come up with. Let’s just hope
it works.”

She looked at him. “There is an alternative,” she said.

“Really?” He tried not to sound impatient, but he was fairly sure he failed.

“If your people are resigned to a nomadic life, as you put it, you could join with my people.”

For a moment, Valens wondered who the hell was sitting next to him. She was all sorts of things, he’d assumed up till now,
but definitely not stupid.

“That’s a really kind thought,” he heard himself say, “but I don’t think it’d be practical.”

“On the contrary.” She was lecturing him; he felt an urge to take notes. “My people are used to life on the move. It’s not
nearly as simple as you seem to think. There are many hazards and complications which you have probably not considered; understandably,
since you have no experience. I can advise you, but it takes more than knowledge. You will need resources which you most likely
have made no provision for. If you join with us, we will take care of you.” She paused, studied him for a moment. “If you’re
concerned that I don’t have the authority to make this offer, I can reassure you that I do. My family —”

“It’s not that,” Valens said, a bit too quickly. “Well, for one thing, there’s the desert. It can’t be crossed, simple as
that.”

Now she was thinking he was stupid. “We crossed it,” she said, “on our way here.”

“Yes, but most of your party died,” he snapped.

“Some of our party,” she said, as though correcting his arithmetic. “And, naturally, some of your people wouldn’t survive
the crossing. At a guess, I would say between a third and a half. But in the course of three or four generations, you would
make up the loss.”

“That’s —”

“Unacceptable.” She sighed. “Whereas you’re prepared to risk the decimation or annihilation of your people in the plan you’ve
just outlined to me.”

Valens didn’t reply. Better not to.

“I should point out,” she went on, “based on my experience of migratory life, that even if there were no enemies searching
for you, it’s quite likely that you will lose at least a third of your people in the first year, given your lack of experience
and preparation. Spoiled or stolen food reserves; rivers in flood; mountain roads blocked by landslides or washed away by
heavy rain; have you considered these contingencies and made allowances?”

Much better, Valens decided, when she’d just sat there and not said anything. “Of course I have,” he exaggerated. “And we’ve
got people who know the country. It’s not like we’re in hostile territory …”

“The presence of the enemy,” she went on, as though he hadn’t spoken, “greatly increases the risks. You say you’re relying
on reserves of supplies at specific locations. It’s inevitable that the enemy will find out about at least some of these.
If just one supply dump turns out not to be there when you reach it, you face disaster. Will you have enough left to get you
to the next one? And what if that one’s gone too?”

“We can live off the land to a certain extent,” he replied, trying to stay reasonable. “There’s plenty of game we can hunt.”

She smiled. “There speaks an enthusiast,” she said, insufferably. “You imagine that your hobby can become a means of survival.
Hunting is an essential part of my people’s lives, but we know from experience that it’s not enough. You’ll have to do better
than that, I’m afraid. Compared with the risks you face by staying in your own country, the losses from crossing the desert
seem moderate, if anything. And fighting the Mezentines …” She shook her head. “You should come to us,” she said. “It’s the
only sensible course open to you.”

But I’m not going to, because I’m not going to let you turn my people into savages.
It took rather more effort not to say that than he’d have thought. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said

“If you must. It shouldn’t take you long to decide.”

Back to silent sitting. When Valens realized he couldn’t take the silence any longer, he leaned forward and told the driver
to stop the coach. An escort trooper rode up to see what the matter was.

“Get my horse,” Valens told him. “I’m going to go and inspect something.”

“May I ask … ?”

“No.”

Something at the other end of the column, as far away from her as I can get.
As soon as his horse was brought up, he mounted and waved the coach on, then sat still for a while, watching the carts go
by. The mountain in the distance, the crown of the Sow’s Back, was only vaguely familiar to him. When was the last time he’d
been out here? He wasn’t sure; quite possibly, when his father was still alive. They’d come up here one summer after mountain
goats and chamois — a complete waste of time, they’d misjudged the onset of the breeding season, the she-goats had all been
in kid and were therefore out of bounds, and there was no point hunting he-goats in the rut. His father had sulked and picked
fights with everybody who got in his way. Not a place with happy memories. So; if that was Maornina, and that spur to the
west was the Shepherd’s Crook, then the range he could just see on the horizon was Sharra, over in Eremia. Too close, he decided.
Not a good idea to hang about here any longer than they could help.

A harassed-looking junior officer cantered up to him, to tell him there was a problem. Six carts in the middle detail were
breaking up; the weight of the armor had cracked the front-side frames, and they’d had to pull off the road before the cracks
sheared right through. The problem seemed to be a result of the way the armor had been mounted — a three-quarter-inch bolt
hole drilled through a load-bearing timber, weakening it and allowing too much weight to rest on an unsupported member. With
all the potholes …

Valens made an effort not to groan aloud. “It sounds serious,” he said. “Are many other carts likely to have the same problem?”

The officer nodded. “It’s the half-lock carts and the bow wagons,” he said. “The high-sided carts are all right, there’s enough
strength in the frames to take the stress. But when they were drilling the holes for mounting the armor, they only had the
one set of jigs. If we carry on much further without fixing it, there’s a danger we’ll lose about a fifth of the carts.”

“All right.” Valens stole another look at the mountains; Sharra peering over their shoulders, like a nosy old woman spying
on her neighbors. “Get up to the front and call a general halt; find someone to organize a survey, find all the carts likely
to have the problem, have them fallen out so they can be worked on. Get three squadrons of cavalry back here to guard them
when the rest of the column moves on. And find Vaatzes, and that sidekick of his, Daurenja; I want a fix for the buggered-up
wagons, top priority. I’ll be back at my coach.”

But Vaatzes, it seemed, was nowhere to be found, and neither was Daurenja. That evening, another equally harassed-looking
junior officer reported that he’d made inquiries, and nobody could remember having seen either of them since the column left
the city. Meanwhile, an ad hoc committee of carpenters and wainwrights had been considering the problem. Their advice — far
from unanimous — was to nail on big slabs of batten across the cracks on the already damaged carts and see what happened.
If that worked, they could fix any further casualties the same way. If it didn’t work, it was their unanimous considered professional
opinion that the whole column was screwed.

Valens had sent Mezentius off to supervise the cavalry screen, and the rest of the general staff had more than enough to do;
that just left him. He’d always prided himself on his ability to delegate, but it had one serious disadvantage. It meant he
was stuck in the coach, alone with his wife; nobody to talk to.

“Why have we stopped?” she asked.

He explained.

“I warned you,” she said. “Your vehicles aren’t designed for this kind of work; and the armor just makes things worse. You’d
be better off removing it, before it wrecks all your wagons.”

The thought had crossed his mind. “We can’t do that,” he said. “I thought I’d explained all that, about how —”

“Yes. But if the armor is breaking up the wagons, you have to remove it. You have no choice.”

Vaatzes, he thought bitterly; I hate the fact that I need him. Of course, if he was the engineering genius he’s cracked up
to be, he wouldn’t have drilled all those holes in the wrong places, and we wouldn’t be having this problem. (At the back
of his mind he had a vague recollection of a memo from Vaatzes complaining that the short-frame jigs were behind schedule
because the jig-makers had buggered them up somehow, and quite possibly they wouldn’t be ready on time. He ignored it.) If
and when he turned up … But perhaps he wasn’t going to turn up. Desertion, assassination, or maybe just forgotten about in
the rush to leave and left behind; and his odious associate as well, which wasn’t promising. The thought that Vaatzes might
change sides, betray them all to the Mezentines, hadn’t really seemed worth considering before. The Mezentines would never
forgive him; his only chance of survival lay in sticking close to the Vadani, making himself indispensable. He’d done that.
He should be here, when he was needed.

Odd, then, that he wasn’t.

Too big and unsettling a problem to tackle now; better to hide from it behind all the lesser, more immediate problems, and
hope it’d go away. He climbed out of the coach, stopped the first officer he saw, and ordered him to round up the carpenters
and joiners. Shouting at them would take his mind off the ghastliness of the mess he was in, and might goad them into doing
something useful.