CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hoping to force Temrai into giving him an opportunity, Bardas kept up the bombardment for three days without changing the settings; he described it to his staff officers as ‘planishing the enemy’. They didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but they could see the reasoning behind it. The major obstacle was still the disparity in numbers; if they could force Temrai into an ill-advised sortie, they had a chance of killing enough men to bring the odds to within acceptable parameters. It was sound Imperial thinking, and they approved.
Nevertheless, the Imperial army was feeling the strain. A third of the halberdiers and pikemen had to be kept standing to at all times, in case Temrai launched a night attack; another third were fully occupied quarrying and hauling stone shot from the nearby outcrops (and the supply of useful rock was dwindling rather quicker than Bardas had allowed for); he’d had to detail two troops of cavalry to help the artillerymen. The troopers were disgusted at this reduction in status, while the bombardiers complained bitterly about cack-handed horse-soldiers doing more harm than good; the trebuchets themselves were starting to shake apart after so much continuous use, and Bardas found he was alarmingly low on both timber and rope, neither of which were available locally. He’d already given the order to break up the newly built siege towers for timbers and materials (but it didn’t look like they’d be needed now, and the hide coverings could be scavenged to make up more pavises, when he could spare a few carpenters from trebuchet maintenance).
It was just as well he had Theudas to help him; he had plenty of soldiers, but only a few competent clerks, and most of his work seemed to be drawing up rosters and schedules, allocating materials, updating stores manifests, the sort of thing he could do if he had to but which Theudas actually seemed to enjoy.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ the boy told him. ‘If I can help kill Temrai with a notebook and a counting-board, he’s as good as dead already.’ Then he launched into a highspeed resume of the latest daggers-drawn dispute between the chief carpenters of number-six and number-eight batteries over who had a better claim to the one remaining full keg of number-six square-head nails-
‘Deal with it,’ Bardas interrupted with a shudder.
‘No problem,’ Theudas replied cheerfully.
Bardas smiled. ‘It’s good to see you’ve found something you can actually do,’ he said. ‘You were a pretty rotten apprentice bowyer.’
‘I was, wasn’t I?’ Theudas shrugged. ‘Still, everybody’s good at something.’
Two men met in a shed on the outskirts of the sprawling Imperial supply depot at Ap’ Escatoy. It was dark. They didn’t know each other.
After a short interval during which they studied each other like cats, one of them reached under his coat and pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth. ‘Special delivery?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, that’s me.’ The other man reached for the bundle. ‘I hope you know where it’s supposed to be going, because I don’t.’
‘It says on the ticket.’ The first man pointed at a scrap of paper attached to the thin, coarse string that held the bundle together.
‘All right,’ the other man replied, frowning. ‘So what does it say?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t read.’
The other man sighed. ‘Give it here,’ he said. He felt the package curiously. ‘Feels like a stick. You got any idea what’s in here?’
‘No.’›
‘Your work fascinates you, doesn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
The next morning, someone stole a horse from the couriers’ stable, using a forged requisition. He was believed to have left in the direction of the war. Nobody could be spared to go after him, but a memorandum was added to the incident log, so that the matter could be dealt with later.
Temrai had got out of the habit of keeping his eyes open. There hadn’t been much point the last few days (how many days? No idea). There was nothing to see except dust, which clogged your eyes and blinded you anyway, to the point where it was easier to keep them shut and rely on your other senses for finding your way about. His hearing, on the other hand, had become an instrument of high precision, to the point where he could tell from the noise it made coming down almost exactly where the next shot was going to pitch. This method proved to be ninety-nine per cent reliable, the only serious exception being the shot that landed a few feet above him on the path, dislodging a great mass of rock and rubble and burying him.
That’s strange; I thought you had to die first. He opened his eyes, but there was nothing to see. Hands, legs, head, nothing he could move; breathing was just about possible, but so difficult and time-consuming that it constituted a full-time occupation. It’d be all right, though; they’d come and dig him out in a minute or so.
Assuming, of course, that they knew where he was, or that he’d been buried at all. Now he came to think of it, there was no reason to believe that anybody had been watching when the hill fell on him; seeing your hand in front of your face was something of an achievement, thanks to the dust. How long would it take them, he wondered, to notice that he wasn’t there any more? Even if they missed him almost immediately, it wasn’t exactly an instinctive response to say, Hey, we can’t find Temrai, he must be buried alive somewhere. He thought of the number of times he’d gone looking for someone, failed to find them and given up in a temper, assuming they didn’t want to be found.
‘It’s all right,’ said a voice beside him. ‘They’ll find us. We’ve just got to be patient and try to stay calm.’
Temrai was surprised, but pleased. He couldn’t remember seeing anybody near him when the hill came down (but thanks to the dust, that was hardly conclusive). ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
The voice laughed. ‘Never better,’ it replied. ‘Nothing I enjoy more than being stuck in a hole in the ground under a few tons of dirt. I find it helps me unwind.’
The voice was familiar – very familiar, in fact – but he couldn’t quite place it. So familiar that asking, Excuse me, but who are you? would be embarrassing. ‘Can you move at all?’ he asked.
‘No. How about you?’
‘Not so as you’d notice.’ It was odd, Temrai reflected, that he could hear the other man so clearly, as if they were sitting opposite each other in a tent. Maybe the human voice carried well through dirt; he didn’t know enough about such things to be able to form an opinion. ‘Maybe we should shout or something,’ he said, ‘let them know we’re here.’
‘Save your breath,’ the voice said. ‘You’ll just use up the air. I keep telling you, don’t worry about it. They’ll come and dig us out. They always do.’
That last remark was strange, but Temrai was too preoccupied to dwell on it. ‘Where do you think the air is coming from?’ he asked.
‘Search me. Just be grateful it’s coming from somewhere. And that you don’t have one of those irrational fears of confined spaces – though what’s irrational about being afraid of confined spaces I really don’t know. I remember once I was trapped down a tunnel with a man who was that way; gods know how, but he’d managed to keep it under control for years and years, and then when we had the roof cave in on us, it all seemed to burst out of him. He died, actually; he got so frightened his heart stopped beating. Sorry, that’s not a very cheerful anecdote; but it makes the point – the main thing is to stay calm. Can you smell anything?’
‘What? No. I mean, nothing unusual. What sort of thing?’
‘Garlic,’ the voice replied. ‘Probably just my imagination. Oh hell, my legs are going to sleep. Nothing like a few tons of spoil to cut off the flow of blood.’
Temrai could feel the muscles of his chest tiring from the effort of lifting the weight of the earth every time he breathed in. ‘Look, shall we just try shouting?’ he said. ‘I’d rather have a go and risk running out of air than just lie here.’