‘Sure. Now go to sleep.’
‘But surely…’ The boy looked round, as if expecting to see the glint of eyes at the edge of the firelight. ‘Shouldn’t we climb a tree or something?’
Loredan yawned. ‘ You’re welcome to climb a tree if you really want to,’ he said. ‘Assuming you can find one, of course. I think we just cut down the last one. On the whole, though, I think you’d be better off getting some sleep. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning.’
The boy was clearly not convinced. ‘Well, at least one of us should keep watch,’ he said. ‘Just in case, you know.’
‘Please yourself.’ Loredan sat up, reached out for his toolbag, pulled it under his head and lay back again, closing his eyes. ‘Good night.’
Almost at once, he was asleep. He knew he was asleep, because he was standing on the ramparts of the great gatehouse of Perimadeia (which wasn’t there any more) and he was looking past the tents of the plainsmen towards the east, where the river seemed to flow upwards into the sky. Beside him on the walkway was his brother Gorgas; and in this dream they were on speaking terms, almost friendly, because Gorgas was telling him about the war in Scona, and he wasn’t really listening. Other people’s war stories are usually very boring.
‘You should come out to Scona,’ Gorgas was saying. ‘This city’s had its time. They’re going to win, and you don’t want to be here when that happens. I could use you back in Scona, a man with your experience.’
Loredan saw himself shaking his head. ‘No thanks,’ the dream-Loredan said. ‘What’s the point in sailing halfway round the world to fight a war when I’ve got one right here? Besides, I’m not a mercenary.’
Gorgas frowned at him, as if offended. ‘It wouldn’t be like that,’ he said. ‘You’re family. We should stick together.’
‘I’d steer clear of that subject if I were you,’ this other Loredan replied. ‘If I ever do leave the City, I’ll go somewhere I can earn an honest living without people trying to kill me all the time.’ He shrugged. ‘I might even go back to farming. Hey,’ he added, ‘did I just say something funny?’
Gorgas grinned at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just the thought of you back on the farm, that’s all. It’s enough to make a cat laugh.’
‘All right,’ Loredan said, ‘then I’ll set up in a trade. There’s all sorts of things I could do.’
‘Name three.’
Loredan thought before answering. ‘I could set up as a wheelwright,’ he said. ‘Or coopering. I used to mend all our barrels, remember.’
‘They leaked,’ Gorgas said. ‘You could never quite get the new staves to fit flush. Remember that year the damp got into the seedcorn, and when we took the lids off, it’d all sprouted?’
‘All right, not coopering. There’s still plenty of other things. I could be a coppersmith. I’d be good at that.’
Gorgas bit his lip and smiled. ‘I can see you now,’ he said, ‘with your pack on your back, trudging round the villages mending pots. Admit it, brother, for anything that doesn’t involve spilling blood, you’re useless. You should stick to what you’re good at, like I’ve done. That’s what I’m for; it’s all a question of the right tool for the job. I was designed for making money. You were designed for killing people. There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘The hell with you,’ the other Loredan said in disgust; and the Loredan who was watching all this was heartily grateful that no such conversation had ever taken place, or ever would now that the City was in ruins. ‘That’s a nasty thing to say, and I don’t think it’s true, either. You make me sound like the knacker’s cart, with a swarm of crows always hovering around it just out of stone’s throw. And I don’t know where you get this idea of yourself as a straight-up businessman from,’ he added irritably. ‘If there’s anyone in this family who’s made his way in the world by cutting throats, it’s you.’
Gorgas leant his elbows on the parapet and studied the distant tents for a while. ‘I won’t deny that,’ he said. ‘I’ve done a lot of things I’d have preferred not to, over the years. But it was always as a means to an end; I never made a career of it. And if we’re going to be brutally honest here,’ he added, turning slowly and looking this other Loredan in the eyes, ‘then I’ll just make the point that at least I have made my way in the world, as you put it. You’ve spent your life simply floundering along, and every day some new fight to the death; you always win, of course, and the other poor bastard always dies, but where the hell has it ever got you? At least when I’ve shed blood, it’s always been for a purpose, and nearly always unavoidable.’ He sighed and looked away. ‘I’ll be straight with you,’ he said. ‘If I were in your shoes, I’d have trouble sleeping at night.’
– Which was apparently some sort of cue, because Bardas woke up and saw that it was first light, and a cold, weak sun was swimming in thin grey clouds. The boy was fast asleep a few feet away; Bardas smiled and prodded his shoulder with his toe.
‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘The good news is, the wolves didn’t get you after all.’
The boy grunted and turned over, tugging at the blanket. Loredan pulled it away. The boy grunted and sat up, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.
‘Get the wedges,’ Loredan said. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do. You’d better pay attention, because this is important.’
The boy mumbled something as he dragged himself up off the ground, but it was too indistinct to make out and Loredan was pretty sure he didn’t need to hear the words in order to get the general idea. He sat down opposite the log-end and examined the growth rings.
‘What do you want me to do?’ the boy asked.
‘Fetch the saw,’ Loredan replied. ‘We’ve got to trim off the branches before we do anything else.’
The sun was high by the time they’d finished dressing up the log. There was no wind, and even a slight suggestion of warmth. ‘We’ll get four good staves out of this one,’ he said. ‘Maybe even five if we go steady. A lot depends on how cleanly it splits. Right, you sit on the log, I’ll drive in the first wedge.’
He placed the blade of the wedge on the line he’d chosen and tapped it gently but firmly with the back of the axe-head, one-handed, until he was sure it had bitten into the wood. Then he stepped back with the axe in both hands, left hand in the curve at the end of the handle, right hand just below the head. He fixed his eye on the head of the wedge, concentrated and swung. The back of the axe-head hit the wedge pretty square, and the first signs of a split began to show along the line he’d hoped he’d seen.
‘Got that?’ he said, straightening up.
‘No,’ the boy replied. ‘I can’t see anything from here, remember.’
Loredan sighed. ‘Come round here and take a look,’ he replied. ‘See how it’s just beginning to go?’
Ten or twelve hard blows opened the split up to just on five inches; long enough to admit the next wedge, which Loredan drove in from above with another dozen carefully weighed blows, each of them being nothing more or less than the weight of the axe-head falling from the top of his swing. ‘That’s really important,’ he said, stopping to catch his breath – was he really short of breath after a few swings with an axe? Getting lazy, or old. ‘Remember what I told you. Just let the weight of the axe do the work.’
‘You said.’
Two more blows were sufficient to widen the crack far enough for the first wedge to fall out. Loredan picked it up and pressed the blade a quarter of an inch into the top of the crack. ‘And so on,’ he said. ‘Are you paying attention?’
‘Sure,’ the boy replied guiltily. ‘I was watching, honest.’
Loredan grunted. ‘You ought to be watching this carefully,’ he said reproachfully. ‘There’s a lot more to it than you’d think. It’s not just a case of splitting it any old how, it’s got to be clean and straight or we’ll have wasted our time and a perfectly good tree. Did you find that axe-head you broke off, by the way?’
‘I’ll look for it later, I promise. Go on with what you were doing. I’m watching.’
‘You better had be. You’re going to be doing the next one.’