The Folding Knife (45 page)

("You can call it that if you like," Basso said to Bassano. "I call it business. All good stuff, all on time, under budget. I can't help it if we make money at the same time."

"Yes, Uncle," Bassano said, grinning.

"Besides." Basso frowned. "The Bank needs the money. There's a good chance we'll be lending a whole lot to the Treasury before all this is over. If we haven't got it, we can't lend it."

"True," Bassano replied. "And do you think it makes any difference that, to all intents and purposes, you'll be lending the Treasury its own money?"

Basso considered that for a moment, then said, "No.")

As well as the twelve thousand infantry, Basso had hired three thousand Hus light cavalry. They, however, would be shipped direct to Mavortis when the time came. They had everything they needed already, and they came with a reputation for not being able to tell the difference between friendly civilians and the enemy.

Aelius lent Bassano a book. It was, Bassano said later, the most incongruous moment of his life. "In a way, it was like someone pouring an eggcupful of water into the sea," he said. "After all, I've spent my entire life reading books, it's really the only thing I'm any good at. And there's Aelius: only ever owned one book in his life, and he's lending it to me."

Basso raised an eyebrow. "What's it called?"

"
The Art of War
," Bassano said. "By Jotapianus Tacticus."

"Never heard of it."

"Nor me," Bassano confessed. "And I've been through the Academy library, and the House library, and all the booksellers; I thought I'd got the complete set of military manuals."

"Read any of them?"

"Every one," Bassano said. "No, really. I've always been a quick reader. Right now I'm gorged with strategic and tactical information, like a flea full of blood. How much of it I'll remember in two weeks' time is anybody's guess, but right now, I'm probably the world's leading expert on military theory. Stress on the word theory," he added with a grin. "As far as I'm concerned, it's four-dimensional chess, plus an enormous amount of administration and bureaucracy. I can tell you exactly how to compile a composite materiel status database, as recommended by Chrysostomatus."

Basso winced. "Please don't."

"You don't know what you're missing," Bassano said. "But anyway, I went through all the summaries and epitomes and concordances, and there's no references anywhere to Jotapianus Tacticus; he's not part of the orthodox canon, which would tend to suggest he's no good."

"Have you read it?"

Bassano nodded. "It's pretty basic stuff," he said. "Large chunks are just copied out of earlier books, and the original material is either banal or bizarre. I think it's probably a potboiler slung together in five minutes by some hack, a hundred and twenty years ago."

Basso shrugged. "Ah well."

"Quite. Only," Bassano went on, "Aelius obviously worships it like it's the true revelation of the Invincible Sun. It's practically falling to bits, and it's been lovingly stitched and pasted back together again I don't know how many times. I get the impression he carries it with him everywhere he goes, and reads a chapter every night before going to sleep. Which is crazy," Bassano added, "since Aelius has forgotten more about soldiering than this Jotapianus character ever knew."

"Make a point of thanking him," Basso said.

"Oh, I will." He grinned. "I believe he'll be vastly relieved to get it back. He's asked me twice already if I've had a chance to look at it yet, and what did I think of it?"

Bassano went further. On a whim, he hired the best firm of professional researchers in the City, and when they discovered a copy of
Further Observations on the Art of War
by Jotapianus Tacticus in an obscure sub-faculty library's reserve stacks, he had it copied out (with the illustrations) and gave it to Aelius when he returned his book. Aelius was stunned and couldn't think of anything to say. It was quite embarrassing, Bassano said, and he was glad to get away without being cried over. Basso, however, thought that the kindest thing Bassano did was not tell Aelius about the brief article on Jotapianus the researchers found in the
General Summary
, a three-hundred-year-old Auxentine encyclopedia. Jotapianus, it turned out, was a schoolteacher from a small town in the Eastern Empire, author of over a hundred books, ninety-eight of which had not survived, on a range of subjects from astronomy to fish recipes; his entire output was summed up by the encyclopedia with the single word "worthless".

"We need a proper map," Basso said.

The two officers from Intelligence looked at each other. "Unfortunately..."

"There isn't one," Basso said. "I know. Get one drawn."

The senior intelligence officer opened his mouth to explain why that wouldn't be possible, then thought better of it. He went back to his office at the war department, sent for his adjutant and said, "We need a brand new map of Mavortis. The whole of it, not just the bits near the coast that we know about."

"Can't be done," the adjutant replied. "Even the Mavortines don't--"

The senior intelligence officer raised his hand for silence. "That's a direct order from the First Citizen," he said.

"Big deal," the adjutant said. "He can order me to steal the stars and string them into a necklace for his wife; doesn't mean it can be done. You'd need to carry out a complete survey. Men with rods and tapes and compasses, triangulation points, the whole business. We can't send two hundred surveyors into Mavortis. The locals'd eat them."

The senior intelligence officer looked at him. "It's now your responsibility," he said. "Think of something."

The adjutant, second-generation military, City-born with a Cazar father and a Jazygite mother, newly enfranchised under Basso's law, obtained a labour requisition which gave him the power to conscript civilians into military service. He then rounded up a hundred and seventy-five Mavortines, most of them unskilled labour from the docks and the building trade. They were going home, he told them. That didn't go down well, until he explained that once they'd done a job for him, they could come back; they'd also be paid more money than they'd ever seen in their lives. Even so, eleven refused to cooperate, and were discharged.

The remaining hundred and sixty-one needed a lot of intensive training. They were taught how to walk in measured strides, each stride exactly one yard, and trained to count silently up to one hundred thousand. They were taught how to take precise bearings using only the sun and a known reference point; how to draw a map; how to hide a map from a thorough intrusive search. They were then given five nomismata each, which they were not allowed to spend. They were sent to Mavortis, where they explained that they'd just been paid off by the Vesani government after completing their contract, and had been given an unexpected bonus of five nomismata, which they proposed to invest in land. On the pretext of looking for somewhere to buy, they proceeded to walk the length and breadth of Mavortis, counting their strides, carefully noting their bearings, establishing clandestine triangulation points, recording their data secretly at night, often in the dark. They'd been given a month to do the job, at the end of which a ship would anchor off the White Rocks. If they missed the ship, they were told, they needn't bother coming back to the City ever again.

Two of the surveyors didn't make the rendezvous. One of them was known to be dead, from mountain fever; the other one was presumed to have met some similar fate. On the two-day journey back to the City they presented their maps to a team of military cartographers, who began the horrendous job of correlating them and producing the component parts that would make up the finished map. By the time the ship docked (there were carriages waiting, to take the cartographers and the surveyors straight to Intelligence) there was already a first draft: a huge, unruly thing, covered with scrawled numbers and scraped-out lines, but mostly--amazingly--coherent. It was a miracle, the cartographers said, the way the surveyors' findings dovetailed together. The results actually matched; which simply wouldn't have been possible if the data wasn't fundamentally accurate. A hundred and fifty-nine illiterates, walking carefully and counting under their breath, had produced a map the Vesani could go to war by.

"Told you it was possible," Basso said to the intelligence officers, when they handed him the first fair copy. He spent two hours alone with it, then sent it to Aelius.

"Did you know," someone asked him, "that at the University of Gopessus in Scleria, they've got a Faculty of War? One full professor, six or seven lecturers, and I do believe there's a Reader in Artillery Studies."

Basso hadn't known that. He thought about it for a while, then wrote a letter to the Vesani charge d'affaires, to be sent by the fast post.

Fast post meant the first available ship, followed by a non-stop relay of riders, changing horses every fifteen miles. The letter reached Gopessus two days and six hours after Basso had blotted it with fine white sand. It was addressed to the Professor of War.

As requested, the professor wrote back by return. His reply took two days and fourteen hours, because of the prevailing winds. It was written on the back of Basso's letter, to save time, and read:

Delighted to accept. Will bring lecs in tactics & supply and reader in art stud

"I offered him two thousand nomismata," Basso explained, "plus seven hundred each for any of his colleagues he chose to bring with him. Nothing like getting advice from the best in the business."

The professor and his associates arrived by the fast relay service: non-stop coaches, three days and two hours. They crawled out of the carriage like men released from intensive interrogation, and were helped up the steps of the Severus house, where they'd be staying. As soon as he'd been told they'd arrived, Basso had sent for Aelius, Bassano and the entire general staff, together with six members of the House war oversight committee. They crowded into the long dining room, where Basso's father used to stage his political dinner parties. Grudgingly, he allowed them time to change their clothes, wash and shave; but food, he insisted, could wait until after the lecture.

When the last speaker had finished talking, there was a long silence. Then the professor asked nervously if there were any questions. There were. Most of them started "Did you know" or "Are you aware", and Basso couldn't help but admire the way they managed to avoid answering them. Not bad, he felt, for four exhausted men who'd been shaken to death in a succession of fast mail coaches. When the questions had petered out, he thanked them for coming and got rid of them. Their money was waiting for them on their beds.

"Well," Aelius said. "We've learned one thing. We now know we're a damn sight better informed than the Sclerians."

"Worth every penny, in that case," Basso said. He leaned to his right. "Colonel Doricho," he said. "What was all that about effective ranges of heavy torsion artillery?"

"Bullshit," the colonel said. "That clown wanted us to believe the maximum range for a ten-ton-counterweight trebuchet throwing a two-hundredweight stone is two hundred and forty yards. I've got one in the yard right now that can chuck two hundredweight three hundred and ten, and that's an old model. The one we're building for the war should be able to do three hundred and fifty, no trouble."

Basso smiled. "And the glass bombs," he said. "That sounded interesting."

"Load of rubbish," put in a Jazygite brigadier. "He got that out of a book. You try and lob a glass ball full of Vesani fire mixture from a standard trebuchet, it'll shatter before it leaves the sling. It's been copied from book to book for hundreds of years, but nobody's ever been stupid enough to try it."

"He believed it, though," Bassano said.

"Dare say he did. The Hus believe the sky is the belly of a huge pregnant woman touching her toes. Doesn't mean it's true."

Bassano didn't elaborate his point. He could see Basso understood. The others didn't matter.

"Sorry, First Citizen," said one of the oversight committee men, "but it looks like we've wasted our money. They didn't tell us anything we didn't already know."

Basso's face was straight, but his eyes were sparkling. "Don't worry about the money," he said. "I issued the invitation, I'll pay them their fee, and the expenses."

The committee men looked rather sad; they'd been hoping to make a little recreational trouble. "Extremely generous gesture," one of them said, and the other guests made polite rumbling noises to express their agreement. "And I suppose it was worth trying. You weren't to know the men were charlatans."

"Oh, they weren't that," Basso said. "No shame in ignorance, provided you rectify it as and when you can."

The Sclerians didn't go home straight away. Basso asked them to stay over for a day or so, and found time for several long discussions. When Aelius asked him why he was bothering, he shrugged the question away. When Bassano asked him--

"Actually," Basso said, "they're a mine of useful information. It's like when they dig for silver. For every ton of silver you find, you get five tons of lead. Some seams, the poorer ones, the ratio's more like one to eight. Now, just suppose it was the lead you were actually after."

Bassano frowned, then laughed. "You were finding out if they're really as dumb as they look, or whether it was an act they were putting on, to mislead us into thinking..."