Dust, drifting down from the air, settled on the surface of Daurenja's eye, but the lid didn't twitch. Drawing a deep breath, Ziani crawled a little closer, sucked and spat on the shattered face. No movement. He breathed out slowly. I'll miss him, he thought.
There wasn't much left of the weapon: one large fragment of the tube, concave, like an empty walnut shell, and a few splinters of the wooden frame. The rest of the tube and the powder pot had gone. Well, Ziani thought, so much for love. The trouble is, there's always a cold spot, and when it gives way, something like this is bound to happen.
He brushed blood out of his eye with the side of his hand. Blood would have to do instead of tears; he couldn't find any of those for Daurenja, the scholar, the inventor, the arch-abominator, the best engineer he'd ever known. Better than me, he added, surprised at the conclusion, but love was his undoing.
"Is he…?" Someone behind him, talking in a very small, quiet voice.
"Yes," Ziani replied without looking round. "His gadget didn't work after all. Give me a hand up," he added, and he felt himself lifted to his feet. "Let's get away from here, before the Mezentines start shooting at us."
The other survivors of the carrying party joined them as they scrambled down the bank to the ditch. As they crossed it, a scorpion bolt missed them by no great margin. After that, they made good time to the cover of the trench. The man who'd helped him to his feet confirmed his account of the death of the general and the failure of his device. The war council listened in dead silence, and Ziani nodded to him to leave.
"Which means," he said, his voice clear and steady (because the worst was over now, and the hardest part successfully concluded), "we're in a pretty bad way. In fact," he added, looking round the ring of blank, unhappy faces, "it's hard to see how it could be worse. Sure, we got past the ditch and took the embankment, and we killed a lot of men. But the walls and the gates are still there, our secret weapon didn't work, we can't build another one even if we wanted to, and the general's dead. Talking of which," he added forcefully (and nobody looked interested in interrupting him), "someone's got to take his place. I don't see Duke Valens here. Didn't anybody tell him about the meeting?"
One of the Aram Chantat cleared his throat; a small, dry man. "The duke was told about what happened," he said, "but he was not disposed to attend. We take this to mean that he is no longer concerned with the conduct of the war, which is fortuitous. We have no confidence in him."
Ziani nodded. "In that case," he said, "who do you want to…?"
The dry man looked at him; and even though he'd prevailed and nothing could stop him now, the intensity of the stare made him uncomfortable. "We feel there is only one possible choice," he said. "You are the senior engineer, and you alone have the expertise. We are in your hands."
Yes, Ziani thought; but he said, "That's true as far as the technical side goes, but surely one of you…"
The dry man shook his head. "We have already decided," he said. "Short of an outright refusal, you have no choice."
He'd never lost the feeling of wonder that came from the soft, firm click of a component fitting perfectly into place: the snick of a ratchet, of a locking bolt feeling its way exactly into its appointed place. A machine works because each part of the mechanism goes where it's designed to go, entirely constrained in its movement by the other pieces. The precise fit is because there's nowhere else it can go; because it has no choice. "I suppose you're right," Ziani mumbled. "And I suppose I'd better accept." He paused for a moment, trying to look as though the whole weight of the world had come to settle on his shoulders, though of course the reverse was true. "But if you want me to do this, you're going to have to trust me. Really trust me, I mean. Otherwise, you'll all have to go and be extremely polite to Duke Valens, because I won't be able to help you."
The dry man was still looking at him, but the stare no longer bothered him. There were no more choices for anyone. "Of course," the dry man said. "You have our unequivocal support in everything, General Vaatzes."
He allowed himself a grin. "Not that word, please," he said. "Just engineer, if you've got to call me something, and on the whole I'd rather you didn't." He settled himself in his chair, like a man who had just come home. "Now, the first thing I need to do is arrange a parley with Chairman Psellus." He came back from the meeting two hours later, and reconvened the war council. "They won't surrender," he said. "I didn't really imagine that they would, but it was worth trying."
An Aram Chantat said: "But we don't want their surrender. We want to sack the City and burn it to the ground."
Ziani grinned. "That's what I told them," he said. "I guess that's why they weren't keen. I told them that if they opened the gates, we'd march them to the edge of the desert. They could go to where you've just come from, and take their chances with your cousins whose names I can never remember. No skin off your noses, since you're going to be settling here permanently. But Psellus didn't like the idea. He said that if they were all going to die, they might as well save themselves the long walk. That's my people for you. We never did like walking much."
A silence, rather awkward. "And now we continue with the assault," someone said.
"Yes." Ziani closed his eyes for a moment. "Yes, we continue with the assault. Which means," he went on, sitting up a little straighter, and opening the file of papers he'd brought with him, "an artillery barrage to neutralise the batteries on the wall, and a new advance trench. This is what I'd been hoping to avoid, gentlemen, but we don't seem to have an alternative, and of course we're dangerously short of time. We have to undermine the main gate, which means digging a sap under it. That involves cutting a chamber at least three hundred yards long through the bedrock, which means our Vadani miners are going to be working very hard indeed for the cause. You can more or less guarantee that the Mezentines will try and countermine us, so we can expect to have to fight underground. If we had plenty of time, I'd say leave the work to the specialists, the Vadani, but my best guess would be three or four months before we got under the gate. With strict rationing, we can supply ourselves for three weeks; after that, we need to get at the Mezentine food reserves, or we starve. So that means we have to approach the job the other way: everybody in the army, apart from the artillery crews and the Vadani specialists-I want to save them for the final breakthrough-is going to have to get a spade or a pick and start digging." He looked up at the ring of faces around him. "I need to know right now if that's acceptable. If not, I can't help you."
"We will do what you tell us to do," an Aram Chantat said. Presumably he had the authority. "Tell us your requirements and we'll see to it."
Ziani nodded, and picked up a sheet of paper. "These are just rough estimates," he said. "I propose five shifts-that's one fifth of the available manpower, working a four-hour shift, with fifteen-minute changeovers. Here"-he stabbed at a map with his finger-" is where we start digging. You'll see it's out in the open, well within range of the walls, but we haven't got time to start further back, we'll have to rely on the artillery to cover us. That means I want all the Eremians and Vadani back at the artillery park; no disrespect, but the Aram Chantat don't make good bombardiers; as well as working the machines, they'll be gathering and shifting rock and rubble for ammunition, fixing broken machines, building new ones to replace the ones we can't salvage. It's essential that we keep the bombardment going, day and night; it's not just a question of keeping their heads down, we need to make them believe we're trying to bash a hole in the wall, so they'll expect an assault with ladders and towers and divide their resources." He paused for breath, and for effect. "Is all that acceptable?" he asked briskly. "If it's not, you should say so now. We simply don't have time to change our minds once we've started; we decide what we're going to do here and now, and then we stick to it. Is that agreed?"