The siege. It went without saying that the City had to be destroyed. If he let them off the hook, his Cure Hardy allies would probably push him out of the way and do the job themselves. Even if they simply gave up and went back home (which they couldn't do, of course), that'd only make things worse. If the savages withdrew, the Mezentines would have no trouble recruiting mercenaries, and then he'd be back where he started, postponing the inevitable annihilation of the Vadani. No, the City had to fall, just to secure some sort of future for his people, as tolerated satellites of the Cure Hardy in self-imposed exile. A pity, but there it was. It was unfortunate that his one act of impulsive folly should have led to all this, but at the time he'd had no choice. And besides, as a result of it, hadn't he gained the one thing he'd always wanted, and never thought he'd ever have? She was waiting for him back at Civitas Vadanis. As soon as the war was over and the City was rubble and ashes, they could at last be together, as they should have been from the very beginning.
Well, then; that settled it. If a city with a population of over a million had to be razed to the ground just so he could go home to his wife… sledgehammers and nuts, to be sure, but it wasn't his fault. There didn't seem to be any other way of achieving the objective, and it was something he had to do, just as a dropped stone has to fall.
5
The messenger sent to fetch Ziani Vaatzes had left before the farcical night attack, but he heard the news from a dispatch rider on a rather more urgent errand than his own, at the Faith and Trust just outside Paterclo. The rider hadn't actually witnessed the raid himself, but he'd heard all about it from his friend in the Sixth Lancers. He passed on the word that the assault party had been wiped out without the loss of a single Vadani. The enemy were a joke.
When he reached Civitas Vadanis, the messenger repeated what the rider had told him four times; once to the city prefect when he reported in; once to Vaatzes when he delivered his message; once to the duke's new wife, at her personal request; and once in the taproom of the Unity and Victory (formerly the Quiet Forbearance) in Well Street. By noon the next day, half the city knew that Duke Valens had wiped out the enemy's new ally, and set out at once to tell the other half before they heard it from anyone else.
After the messenger left on his return journey, with a two-squadron cavalry escort to guard some old book the duke had sent for, the head of the Aram Chantat's informal but ferociously efficient intelligence service set out to report the news to his master, at the great camp on what had once been the Vadani-Eremian border. The old man (you could think of him as that as long as you were at least twenty miles away; definitely not when you were face to face with him) thanked him politely and told his secretary to make a note of it in the official record of the war. He also asked who the Cure Doce were, though he didn't seem particularly interested in the reply. Although he'd been ordered to report to the forward camp as quickly as possible, Ziani Vaatzes hung on at Civitas Vadanis for one more day. There was a problem with the assembly line that called for his personal attention, he told the messenger; he knew the duke would understand, and of course he'd be on his way as soon as it was put straight.
"Do you want me to come with you?" Daurenja asked him later.
Ziani shook his head. "I need you to stay and look after things here. It's bad enough I've got to go. We can't both be away from here, or the whole job'll grind to a halt."
"Of course." Daurenja nodded briskly. "You leave everything to me. I'll manage."
Of course he would. Ziani knew exactly what the workforce thought of Gace Daurenja, but he understood how to keep them working. So far they'd got four hundred of the heavy engines finished, dismantled and crated up for carriage. Six hundred more to go. A miracle; Daurenja's miracle. Without him, Ziani knew, he'd probably still be fiddling about trying to fine-tune the prototype.
Daurenja licked his lips and said, "When you get back, maybe we could make a start on that other business. You know, the thing we talked about."
Ziani made a point of looking past him. "All right," he said. "You'll have to fiddle the work rosters if you don't want Valens knowing. And you may want to keep an eye on the rope shop foreman. I have an idea he talks to the savages."
"I know about him, thanks," Daurenja replied with a grin. "He meets them in the Charity once a week, but they don't pay him enough. I'll think of something else he can tell them, and then everybody'll stay happy." He scratched his chin; he was growing a beard. "I've got almost enough clean grey iron for the slats," he continued. "But I need time on the Mezentine lathe to finish up the mandrel. It's all right, we're ahead of target in the machine shop so we can miss a shift without holding anything up. But I thought I'd better just mention it."
Ziani nodded gravely. "Get it done while I'm away," he said. "And I don't know about it, all right?"
"Understood." Daurenja nodded again. "All being well, I should have the mandrel ready by the time you get back, and then it's just a case of getting the slats drawn down. I've already spoken to the men I want striking for us."
Ziani frowned. "That's a bit quick off the mark," he said. "The fewer people who know about this, the happier I'll be."
"They'll be all right," Daurenja reassured him. "Five Eremians and two Vadani. They know which side their bread's buttered."
"Just make sure their shifts are covered," Ziani said irritably. "We can't afford to lose production at this stage. I can handle Valens if I have to, but I really don't want to try explaining to the savages. They're not easy people to talk to."
"Leave it to me," Daurenja said. "After all, when have I ever let you down?"
I should poison him, Ziani thought, after Daurenja had gone. It'd work. I've watched him eat, he just shovels the food in his mouth and swallows, he doesn't give it time to taste of anything. Five drops of archers' root on a slice of salt bacon, and all my troubles would be over.
But of course he wouldn't do that. Too risky, for one thing. What if the monster's digestion was as prodigious as every other part of him? Even with ten drops it wasn't worth the risk, for fear of the look in his eyes if he survived and figured out what had happened. What if he couldn't be killed at all? People must have tried. Also, without Daurenja the horrendous balance of chaos and energy that kept the factory going would immediately collapse. He needed the freak, at least until the thousandth engine was packed and shipped; and by that time, Daurenja would be so deeply embedded, there'd be no chance at all of getting rid of him without wrecking everything. He knows that, Ziani reflected bitterly, that's why he dares to eat.
To chase the thought of Daurenja out of his mind, he grabbed the spanner and stripped the whole saddle assembly off the lathe he was working on. As he'd thought, the problem lay with the lead screw bushes; useless soft salvaged bronze scrap, doomed to failure the moment he'd fitted them. At home, he'd just take a replacement pair from the spares box under the bench. Here, he'd have to make them himself, out of salvaged bronze scrap, in the sure and certain knowledge they wouldn't last out the month.
Try explaining that to the Aram Chantat.
He fished about in the scrap pile for the nearest shape he could find, then took it over to the Eremian who worked the number seventeen trip-hammer. "I need it swaged down to two-inch round bar," he said, choosing to ignore the look on the man's face. "I know it won't be perfect but get it as close to round as you can. It'll be hard enough turning it on one of those bloody useless home-made treadle machines. Of course, I can't use the good lathe until I've made the bearings to fix it."