“Don’t be like that, Hastings,” scolded the Marshal like a disapproving but still jovial uncle. He turned to Henri. “Don’t pay him any mind, young man. I think this is fascinating. Well done.”
That said, it was over and the Marshal and his generals were gone.
“You’re lucky,” said Cale to Henri, “that he didn’t chuck you under the chin and give you a Spanish gobstopper.”
“That crossbow,” said Kleist, nodding at the steel giant bolted to the post. “How many hours did it take to get it to do that?”
“Not long,” lied Henri. There was a brief silence.
“I learned a new word in Memphis market the other day,” said Kleist: “Balls.”
“There’s no reason,” said Vipond to the three boys in his office the following day, “why you should understand the way things work amongst the Materazzi, but it’s time you started to learn. The military are a law unto themselves subject only to the Marshal. While I advise him on matters of policy, I have much less influence when it comes to the business of war. Nevertheless, I must take an interest in war in general and a further interest in your considerable talents for violence in particular. I am ashamed to say,” he continued unashamedly, “I may have a need for your talents from time to time, and this is why there are certain things you need to understand. Captain Albin is an excellent policeman, but he is not one of the Materazzi, and in allowing the generals to witness your demonstration he failed to show an understanding of something he now grasps and which it would be wise for the three of you to grasp as well. The Materazzi have a deep repugnance for killing without risk. They regard it as something utterly beneath them, the province of common murderers and assassins. Materazzi armor is the finest in the world, and it is for precisely this reason that it’s so appallingly expensive. Many of the Materazzi take twenty years to pay off the debt incurred for just one suit of armor. It is beneath them to fight those without their armor and training. They pay these huge sums in order to fight men of equal rank whom they can kill or be killed by and maintain their status even in death. What status is to be won slaughtering a pig-boy or a butcher?”
“Or to be slaughtered by them,” said Cale.
“Precisely so,” said Vipond. “See things from their point of view.”
“We’re not pig-boys or butchers but trained soldiers,” said Kleist.
“I don’t mean to be offensive, but you’re of no social significance. You use weapons and methods that defy everything they believe in. To them you are a kind of heresy. You understand heresy, don’t you?”
“And what difference will that make?” said Cale. “A bolt or a dog arrow doesn’t know or care who your grandfather was on your mother’s side. Killing is just killing-just like a rat with a gold tooth is still just a rat.”
“Fair enough,” said Vipond, “but you don’t have to like it to understand this has been the Materazzi way for three hundred years, and they’re not going to change just because you think they should.” He looked at Kleist. “Can one of your arrows pierce Materazzi armor?”
Kleist shrugged. “Don’t know-never shot any Materazzi all dressed up. But it would have to be damned good to stop a four-ounce arrow at a hundred yards.”
“Then we must see what we can do so that you can test it out. This steel bow of yours, Henri. Do the Redeemers have many?”
“I only heard of them before, I never saw one. My master had only seen two, so I don’t think so.”
“I saw how long it took to load. The Materazzi were right to discount it for the battlefield.”
“I said that when I showed it you,” protested Vague Henri. “A bolt from one of the other crossbows could go through armor. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it.”
“But Materazzi armor?”
“Let me try it out.”
“In due course. I’m going to send one of my secretaries to you tomorrow and one of my military advisors. I want everything you know about Redeemer tactics put on paper, understand?”
The three of them looked shifty at this but did not dissent.
“Excellent. Now go away.”
28
In the history of duels there must often have been pressing reasons that led to the slaughtering of one man by another. What they were, however, is rarely recorded. Those reasons that are known to us consist of minor insults, real or imagined, differences of opinion over the beauty of a woman’s eyes, remarks held to have slighted the honesty of another’s dealing at cards and so on. The notorious duel between Solomon Solomon and Thomas Cale began over the question of precedence in choosing cuts of beef.
Cale had become involved with this matter because the cook hired to feed the thirty men needed to guard Arbell Swan-Neck night and day had complained about the terrible quality of the meat being delivered. Raised on dead men’s feet, the three boys had not really noticed that the meals they’d been eating were not very good. The soldiers had complained to the cook, and the cook then complained to Cale.
The next day Cale went to see the supplier, and for want of anything better to do, Vague Henri went with him. If Kleist hadn’t been on duty, even he would have gone. The thing is that guarding a woman twenty-four hours a day, however beautiful the woman, was extremely boring, especially if you knew that the danger she was in was almost entirely invented. It was different for Cale because he was in love and spent the hours with Arbell Swan-Neck either just looking at her or putting into action his plan to make her feel the same.
His plan was working-even as Cale and Vague Henri wandered into the market to sort out the meat supplier. Back in her quarters Arbell Swan-Neck was trying to prize stories about Cale from a reluctant Kleist. This reluctance flowed from the fact that he was perfectly aware that she wanted desperately to hear anecdotes of Cale’s past that showed him in a pitiable or generous light, and he, almost as desperately, didn’t want to give Cale the satisfaction of providing them for her. She was, however, an extremely capable and charming interrogator and very determined. Over several weeks she had winkled out of Kleist, and the much more cooperative Vague Henri, a great deal about Cale and his history. In fact Kleist’s reticence served only to convince her more of the truly terrible past of the young man with whom she was falling in love-his tense and reluctant confirmations of Vague Henri’s stories acting only to make them more plausible.
“Was it true about the brutality of that man Bosco?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he pick on Cale?”
“I suppose he had his number.”
“Please tell me the truth. Why was he so cruel to him?”
“He’s a lunatic, specially where Cale was concerned. I don’t mean he was like your usual lunatic, raving and ranting-in all the years at the Sanctuary I never heard him raise his voice once. But he’s as mad as a sack of cats for all that.”
“Is it true that he made him fight to the death with four men?”
“Yes-but the reason he won is just because of how that hole in his head means he can tell what you’re going to do.”
“You don’t like Cale, do you?”
“What’s there to like?”
“Riba told me he saved your life.”
“Seeing he was the one who put it in danger in the first place, I’d say we were even.”
“What can I do you for, young man?” asked the cheery butcher, shouting above the racket of the marketplace.
Cale shouted back equally cheerfully: “You can stop sending the meat from dead dogs and cats up to the guardroom in the West Palazzo.”
The butcher, now very much less cheery, picked up a vicious-looking club from under the counter and started to walk round it toward Cale. “Who do you think you are, you little shite, talking to me like that?”
He moved toward Cale surprisingly quickly, given his size, swinging the club as he came. Cale ducked as the club lashed past the top of his head, unbalancing the butcher, who was helped on his way into the mud as Cale clipped his heels. Then he stood on the butcher’s wrist and twisted the club out of his hands.