Two valid points against risking a pitched battle; and Scona, as far as his sister was concerned, meant the Town, or to be exact, the Bank. The rest of the island was just the view from an office window. No doubt at all about what Niessa would want him to do. She’d been resigned to a siege since this escalation of the war began; he’d virtually had to plead with her for permission to engage the enemy in the field. And that, in Gorgas’ opinion, was wrong. The islanders were their people, they owed them a defence; he’d seen the mess the halberdiers had made at Briora. The thought of that sort of thing happening in every village on Scona was more than he could live with. If he retreated back into the Town now, he’d feel like a father shutting his door on his own children. No; the Loredan name stood for something in these parts, it had led these people to stand up against the Foundation and try for something better than the life of serfs and slaves. It was a matter of obligation.
The scouts confirmed his guess: Sten Mogre was making camp just inside the wood. There was a substantial clearing where a generation of straight-growing pines had been felled recently, and the army was there. Mogre wasn’t taking any chances. He’d placed pickets on the edges of the wood and a ring of sentries fifty yards or so out from the perimeter of the clearing, so there was precious little chance of sneaking up in the night to attack the camp. A battle inside the wood would suit Mogre well, since the archers would have no substantial advantage of distance in the thick undergrowth; at best, it would be another confused mess. His original idea of looping round the wood and barring Mogre’s way on the downs was still his best option, in spite of the disastrous odds. He gave the necessary orders, which were accepted with resignation, as if sleep and rest were politicians’ promises, often mentioned and never realised.
Sten Mogre was usually the sort of man who could sleep anywhere, but for once he found he couldn’t quite let go. After a couple of hours of lying in the dark in his tent with his eyes wide open, he gave up the struggle, lit the lamp and called a council of war. There wasn’t really anything left to discuss, but if he was going to be awake all night, he might as well have company.
‘We haven’t seen anything of Hain Eir’s relief party,’ someone reported. ‘Looks like we’re going to have to do without them.’
Mogre shrugged. If Eir had lost all four hundred of his men, it was worth it to keep the rebel home army occupied while he made his assault; besides, Eir was a Separatist, not to mention Avid Soef’s brother-in-law, which was why he’d been chosen for the job in the first place. Sixteen hundred men were more than enough for the task in hand. His only real worry was that Gorgas might not get there in time. It would be galling to have to kick his heels outside Scona Town waiting for him to catch up.
‘That’s enough shop for one night,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about something else, for pity’s sake. I know – has anyone hear read that thing Elard Doce wrote last month?’
Someone laughed; two or three others murmured. ‘Actually, ’ someone said, ‘I liked it. Especially that bit about the forked roots of consequence. The man should have been a poet, not a philosopher.’
Mogre smiled. ‘I remember that bit,’ he said. ‘And to give him credit, there’s just a trace of a valid point in there somewhere, tucked away in a dark corner.’
Various people made sceptical noises. ‘You reckon?’ someone said. ‘I thought it was just the old Obscurist line in a new hat.’
‘Oh, it was, no question,’ Mogre replied. ‘But the Obscurists had a point – no, don’t laugh, they were all as mad as a barrel of rats, but that doesn’t alter the fact they’d come up with the Law of Conservation of Alternatives when Dormand was still learning two-and-two-is-four.’
‘From entirely false premises,’ someone else pointed out. ‘And arse-about-face and back-to-front. If Dormand hadn’t taken it and turned it on its head, nobody would ever have given it a second thought.’
‘Actually,’ a thin man sitting near the tent-flap interrupted. ‘I heard that City man, Gannadius, say something interesting about that no so long ago. He was basically agreeing with Dormand-’
‘Big of him,’ someone broke in.
‘But he made the point that Dormand didn’t take it to its logical conclusion. Think about it,’ the thin man went on. ‘Let’s say you’ve got a number of alternatives contingent on one moment of choice; all right, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re Gorgas, right now, sitting in your tent trying to figure out what to do. You can scuttle into Town and lock the gates, you can take your chances in the field, you can slink off into the hills. Three alternatives. Now, Dormand says that the consequences resultant on those choices are not truly infinite. For a start, he says, all three options could result in Scona falling.’
‘The word could,’ someone interrupted, ‘in this context…’
‘Quiet, Marin,’ Mogre said. ‘This is interesting.’
‘Likewise,’ the thin man went on, ‘the pitched battle and siege options share a large number of possible outcomes; in other words, the lines of possibility diverge at the point of choice, but then try and join up again as if the choice had never existed. The Obscurists – all right, we know about them, but let’s give them their say – the Obscurists would have us believe in the Obscure Design that overrides the choice; Destiny, all that crap. Dormand says there’s no destiny, just a natural law that keeps the number of real alternatives to a minimum. What Gannadius was saying, and coming from him it’s worth considering, is that there’s also a human element – human interference with the natural development of alternatives through the medium of interference with the Principle.’
‘In other words,’ someone said, ‘magic. Sure thing. And then Doctor Gannadius pulls a toad out of his ear and vanishes up his own pointy hat. Somehow I’m not convinced.’
‘It’s a leap of faith, I agree,’ Mogre intervened, ‘but not an insurmountable one.’
‘A hop of faith, you mean.’
‘Yes, I like that, a hop of faith. Let’s just suppose for argument’s sake that there is this thing called magic, and the likes of Gannadius and his toad-abusing cronies can sometimes bend the Principle at will. Dormand would say it’s still random, it’s just individuals making choices, only carrying them out through a different medium – doesn’t matter whether I exercise the choice by walking through the door myself or influencing you to walk through it, the door still gets walked through, the choice happens.’
‘Ah,’ said the thin man, ‘but Gannadius would say that the sort of event that attracts magical interference follows a pattern. Battles, the fate of cities, blood curses and family feuds, that’s when magic gets used; and that in itself creates a trend, which in turn corrupts the purely random development of choice. In other words, there is an obscure design. It may not be Destiny, Obscurist-style; it’s purely artificial. But it’s a trend nonetheless, and unlike Dormand’s law, it’s not natural. Then consider the knock-on effect, and you can see where it’s leading.’