The engineer thought for a minute or so. ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘If we can get in tight to the river, the engines on the plateau’ll all be overshooting. Yes, I can see it now.’ He grinned. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t think of that.’
‘I’m not.’ Bardas stood up. ‘He was rebuilding Perimadeia, but he’s made it too small, too cramped-up; and the angles are wrong. He’s forgotten about the bastions I built out from the old wall, specifically to allow us to enfilade them and stop them doing what we’re going to do now. You see,’ he went on, climbing into his saddle, ‘that’s what comes of living too much in the past – you make unnecessary difficulties for yourself.’
The engineer hauled himself clumsily on to his horse and sat for a moment, catching his breath. ‘I hope you’re right,’ he said. ‘So what happens as and when you do make it to the top? There’s still more of them than us.’
‘So what?’ Bardas stood up in his stirrups for a last look at the fortress. ‘I was winning battles against superior numbers of these people when you were still playing with clay soldiers. You worry too much, that’s your problem. How soon can you have my siege towers and-’
‘Mantlets?’
‘That’s the word. Mantlets. How long?’
The engineer stroked his beard. ‘Three days,’ he said. ‘And I mean three days, so don’t go telling me they’ve got to be ready in two.’
‘Three days will be fine,’ Bardas replied. ‘Just make sure you do a good job.’ He sat down again and turned his head away, but in his mind’s eye he could still see the shape; the encircling moat, the three levels – he knew it was an illusion, but he felt as if he was home again after a long and exhausting campaign, that first thrilling glimpse of the City. Which was strange, because in all the time he spent there, he’d never once thought of it as home, just as somewhere he happened to live.
‘I had a friend,’ he said – he knew the engineer wasn’t really interested, but he wasn’t bothered by that – ‘who was a philosopher, or a scientist, or a wizard; I’m not sure he knew himself what he was. But he used to reckon that there are these crucial moments in history, when things can go one way or another, leading to entirely different outcomes; identify one of these moments, he believed, and you can control it.’ He lifted his feet out of the stirrups and let them swing. ‘I’ll be honest with you, I thought the whole business was a mixture of rather idiotic mysticism and the glaringly obvious. Come to that, I still do. But just suppose there’s something in it; what are you supposed to make of it when you seem to be getting the same crucial moment, over and over again? If he was still alive, I’d be interested to hear him talk his way out of that one.’
The engineer shrugged. ‘If you’re asking my opinion on a point of mechanics,’ he said, ‘I’d say that you’re talking about a camshaft.’
Bardas opened his eyes a little wider. ‘Explain,’ he said.
‘Simple, really.’ The engineer tied his reins in a knot and tucked them under the pommel of his saddle, to leave both his hands free for making explanatory gestures. ‘The cam,’ he said, ‘is an absolutely basic, fundamental piece of design; it turns your standard rotary movement -’ (he drew a circle in the air) ‘- into a linear movement -’ (he drew a straight line) ‘- which is obviously very important, right? Because all your sources of power, your prime movers – waterwheels, say, or treadles – they’re repetitive, so they describe a rotary movement, a circle going round and round for ever. Your cam, which is nothing more than a link attached to one point of the circle, turns that into a straight-line push. Add a simple ratchet and you don’t have to be a genius to have your wheel, endlessly going round and round the same axis, slaved to give you a progressive linear movement, such as pushing something along. It follows that the bit that does all the work, makes the connection, is the link between the wheel and the workpiece. If I was your mate, the philosopher, I’d be looking for a camshaft.’
Bardas frowned. ‘The camshaft of fortune,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s a thought. Of course, to complete the analogy, you’d have to have some way for it to change direction while still going round and round in circles. Is that possible? Mechanically speaking, I mean?’
The engineer grinned. ‘Of course it is,’ he replied. ‘All you do is, you whack it bloody hard with the big hammer.’
‘What do you mean, junk?’ Temrai demanded, wincing as Tilden tightened a strap. ‘I’ve been told by experts that this is probably the finest armour money can buy.’
‘Experts,’ Tilden sighed. ‘You mean that lying thief who sold it to you. Hold still, will you? Either this strap’s shrunk or you’ve put on weight.’
Temrai scowled. ‘There you go again,’ he said. ‘Anything I say or do, you’ve got to belittle it. If this stuff isn’t any good, then why would he give it an unconditional lifetime guarantee?’
‘Oh, come on,’ Tilden replied, smiling. ‘A guarantee that lasts as long as you live. So when, five minutes after the start of the first battle, it falls to bits on you and you die…’
‘Ouch.’
‘Sorry. It’s your own fault. I did say hold still.’
First, the greaves, covering the leg from ankle to knee. They reminded Temrai of two pieces of guttering joined with a hinge. ‘There’s got to be some way,’ he said, ‘of stopping these things from sliding down and trapping your foot. See that bruise? After an hour it’s so bad I can hardly walk.’
‘But you don’t walk when you’re fighting, you sit on your horse. So it doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, but I’ve got to walk from the tent to the horse, then from the horse back to the tent…’
After the greaves, the poleyns and cuisses, to cover his legs from knee to groin; they hung by straps from his belt, and were held in place by more straps around the knee-joint and thigh. Next the mailshirt -
‘I can’t lift this,’ Tilden said.
‘Of course you can. Don’t be so feeble.’
Tilden grunted, trying to hoist the shirt over his head so that he could wriggle his hands through the armholes. He found them just in time, before she let go. As he pushed his head through the neck-hole, his hair snagged in the rings, making him curse. ‘Don’t call me feeble,’ Tilden said, ‘or you can put on your own silly armour.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Temrai said unconvincingly. ‘Right, what comes next? Breastplate, I think.’
Breastplate and backplate, connected at the top by two straps, one on either side of the neck, like the shoulder-straps of a soldier’s pack, and two more at waist level. ‘Lift your arm a bit more,’ Tilden muttered, straining at the left-hand side buckle, ‘You aren’t giving me enough room – there we are. Is that tight enough?’
‘Too tight. Let it out a hole before I choke.’
‘You might have said, instead of letting me hurt my wrist tightening the horrid thing.’
Next the arm-harness; vambraces from wrist to elbow, cops to protect the elbow itself, rerebraces from the elbow to just below the shoulder – more straps, more buckles. ‘What happens when you need a pee?’ Tilden asked sweetly. ‘Do you stop the column and summon a couple of armourers?’
Temrai looked at her, frowning. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Oh. Then what’s to stop it getting all rusty, right down the inside of your leg? You could seize up at the knees, and then where’d you be?’
‘Thank you,’ Temrai said.
‘And it must be really sordid when you need a-’
‘All right,’ Temrai said. ‘And yes, it is. Now undo the shoulder buckles-’
‘But I’ve just done them up.’
‘Well, undo them again, and you see those loops at the top of the pauldrons? You thread them through so they hang over the rerebraces-’
‘The whats?’
‘These bits -’ Temrai tried to move his arm to point at them, but he didn’t quite have the freedom of movement. Tilden giggled. ‘So they hang over my upper arm,’ he said severely. ‘That’s it, you’ve got it.’