“BOO! Caught you,” said Kleist, emerging from behind a tree with Vague Henri and IdrisPukke.
“I heard you all coming five minutes ago. The fat women in the ice cream parlor would have made less noise.”
“Vipond wants to see you.” For the first time Cale looked at them.
“Did he say why?”
“A Redeemer fleet under that shit-bag Coates attacked somewhere called Port Collard, set fire to half of it, then left. One of the soldiers told me that the locals call it Little Memphis.”
Cale shut his eyes as if he had heard very bad news. He had. When he finished explaining why, no one said anything for some time.
“We should leave,” said Kleist. “Now. Tonight.”
“I think he’s right,” said Vague Henri.
“So do I. I just can’t.”
Kleist groaned.
“For God’s sake, Cale, how do you think you and Lady Muck are going to end up?”
“Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?”
“I think you should tell Vipond,” said IdrisPukke.
“We’re done here. Why can’t any of you see that?”
“Blab this to Vipond and all three of us’ll end up at the bottom of the Bay of Memphis feeding our kidney suet to the fishes.”
“He could be right,” said Vague Henri. “We’re about as popular as a boil at the moment.”
“And we know whose fault that is,” said Kleist, looking at Cale. “Yours, in case you were wondering.”
“I’ll tell Vipond tomorrow. You two leave tonight,” said Cale.
“I’m not leaving,” said Vague Henri.
“Yes you are,” said Cale.
“No I’m not,” insisted Vague Henri.
“Yes you are,” said Kleist, equally insistent.
“Take my share of the money and go,” said Vague Henri.
“I don’t want your share.”
“Then don’t have it. There’s nothing to stop you going on your own.”
“I know there isn’t, I just don’t want to.”
“Why?” said Vague Henri.
“Because,” said Kleist, “I’m afraid of the dark.” With that, he took out his sword and began lacerating the nearest tree. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
It was in this roundabout way that the three of them agreed both to stay and that IdrisPukke would go with Cale to tell Vipond.
This time Cale did not have to wait when he turned up at Vipond’s offices, but was shown straight in. The first ten minutes were taken up with Vipond’s account of the three Redeemer attacks and the massacre at Mount Nugent. He handed Cale the glove left on the post in the center of the village.
“There’s a name inside. Do you know this person?”
“Brzica? He was the summary executioner at the Sanctuary. He was responsible for killing anyone not meant to be an Act of Faith. ‘Public executions for the religious contemplation of believers.’ ” The tone in which he said this made it clear it was something learned by heart. “They were carried out by holier Redeemers than him. I never saw him use it, but Brzica was known for the speed at which he could kill with this thing.”
“I have made it,” said Vipond quietly, “my personal responsibility to find this man.”
He sat down and drew a deep breath. “None of these attacks seem to make much sense. Is there anything you can tell me about the strategy the Redeemers are using?”
“Yes.”
Vipond sat back and looked at Cale, picking up the odd tone in his reply.
“I know these tactics because I was the one who drew them up. If you show me a map, I can explain.”
“Given what you’ve just told me, I don’t think showing you a map would be wise. Explain first.”
“If you want my help, I’ll need the map to explain what they’re going to do and work out where to stop them.”
“Give me the sum. Then we’ll see about the map.”
Cale could see that Vipond was more skeptical than mistrustful-he didn’t believe him.
“About eight months ago Redeemer Bosco took me to the Library of the Rope of the Hanged Redeemer, something I never heard of a Redeemer doing for an acolyte, and gave me free run of all the works there on Redeemer military tactics for the last five hundred years. Then he gave me everything he had personally collected on the Materazzi empire-and there was a lot of it. He told me to come up with a plan of attack.”
“Why you?”
“For ten years he’d been teaching me about war. There’s a Redeemer school just for this. There are about two hundred of us-we’re called the Workings. I’m the best.”
“Modest of you.”
“I am the best. Modesty has nothing to say about it.”
“Go on.”
“I decided after a few weeks to rule out a surprise attack. I like surprises-as a tactic, I mean-but not this time.”
“I don’t understand. This is a surprise attack.”
“No, it isn’t. For a hundred years the Redeemers have been fighting the Antagonists-mostly it’s trench warfare and mostly now it’s stalemate. The trenches have stayed pretty much where they are for a dozen years. It needs something new to break the stalemate, but the Redeemers don’t like anything new. They have a law which allows a Redeemer to kill an acolyte on the spot if he does something unexpected. But Bosco is different; he was always thinking, and one of the things he thought was that I was different and he could make use of me.”
“How will attacking us break the stalemate with the Antagonists?”
“I couldn’t really work it out either. So I asked him.”
“And?”
“Nothing. He just gave me a good beating. So I got on with what he told me to do. The thing is, why I didn’t think surprise would work against the Materazzi is because they don’t fight like anyone else-not like the Redeemers, not like the Antagonists. The Redeemers don’t have cavalry to speak of, and no armor. Bowmen are central to the Redeemers. You barely use them. Our siege engines were huge and clumsy, each one built on the site of every siege. You must have four hundred towns and cities with walls five times thicker than anything the Redeemers were used to.”
“Two of the siege trebuchets used at York failed, but they burned all four. Why?”
“They broke through the walls on the first day, isn’t that what you said?”
“Yes.”
“They tested a new weapon in a real battle against a new kind of enemy a long way from home. So even if two broke down, the other two worked.”
“But two didn’t.”
“Then make them better-that’s what all this is for.”
“Meaning what?”
“There’s no point in surprising your enemy on their terms and in their territory if you can’t be sure of destroying them quickly. Bosco was always beating me because he said I took too many unnecessary risks. Not here. I knew the Redeemers weren’t ready, that we…” He corrected himself, “that they needed to wage a short campaign, learn as much about how the Materazzi fought, how good their weapons and armor were, and then withdraw. Show me a map.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“I’m here and I’m telling you what happened, aren’t I? We could have just legged it.”
“Suppose this, what you’re telling me, is just fake honesty, and Bosco is pulling your strings and has been all along.”
Cale laughed.
“That’s a good idea. I’ll use it one day. Show me the map.”
“Nothing,” said Vipond after a moment, “is to leave this office.”
“Who’d listen to me but you anyway?”
“A good point-but for the avoidance of doubt, if anyone else finds out that you were a part of this, you’ll get a rope for a reward.” Vipond went over to a shelf on the far side of the room and removed a roll of thick paper. He looked at Cale very directly as he came back to his desk, as if this would make any difference to someone who had spent his entire life hiding his thoughts. Then he made up his mind for good or ill and unrolled it on the desktop, weighing down the edges with Venetian glass paperweights and a copy of The Melancholy Prince, of all books his favorite. Cale looked over the map with an intense concentration quite different from anything Vipond had seen from him before. For the next half an hour he answered Cale’s detailed questions about the sites of the four attacks and the strengths and dispositions of soldiers. Then he stopped and for ten minutes studied the map in silence.