It took a full day to retrieve the wounded. Bardas sent a herald to sort out the usual truce, and the officers in charge on both sides reached a sensible understanding whereby each side cleared up its end of the field and handed back the other side’s wounded in a reasonable state of repair. It was harder to reach agreement on disposing of the daunting number of dead bodies that needed to be dealt with before they became a health hazard to both parties. Temrai’s men had to be cremated, whereas the Imperials needed to be buried, so a reciprocal arrangement was out of the question; Bardas’ negotiators suggested taking it in turns – they’d go first, collect their dead and then withdraw while the plainsmen collected theirs – but Temrai’s people objected on the grounds that that would mean waiting for at least a day, which wouldn’t be advisable if the sun decided to come out; instead they proposed having retrieval details working side by side, but the Imperials weren’t having that – too much risk of an incident, they said, tempers flaring, fights breaking out; instead, why not divide the field as before and each side make two piles, ours and theirs? Time was getting on, and Temrai’s people reluctantly agreed, but the deal nearly foundered on where the line across the field was to be drawn – more people had died on both sides up at Bardas’ end of the field, and his negotiators felt they were ending up with the rough end of the bargain, so they suggested splitting the field lengthways instead of down the middle. The plainsmen refused, but agreed to bring up the dividing line by a hundred and fifty yards, so that they took responsibility for most of the bodies from the cavalry actions, while the Imperials cleared up after the fighting around the pike formation. When the deal had been done and the work details were lining up, one of Bardas’ men remarked to his opposite number on Temrai’s negotiating team that whereas during the battle they’d been fighting to get as much of the field as possible, now they were struggling to give as much of it as they could away. The plainsman thought this remark in poor taste and lodged a formal complaint, which was ignored.
After the field had been cleared, the bodies removed, as much in the way of armour, arrows, horses and weapons as possible scavenged for salvage, it was finally possible to work out the score and announce the winner. It turned out to be a remarkably close thing. Purely on head-count of men killed, Temrai had lost; on percentages of total forces engaged killed, he had a marginal advantage. Broken down between cavalry and infantry, assuming cavalry to be worth more, Bardas had a slight lead, but the basis of accounting was dubious there, since heavy infantry were more useful to him than cavalry, and he’d lost rather more of them than Temrai had; besides which, properly speaking, at least three quarters of Temrai’s army were theoretically cavalry, which made a nonsense of the whole calculation. Since the battle hadn’t been about territory, and neither side had gained or lost an inch, that wasn’t much use as a criterion of success. The last accepted category, objectives achieved, was equally unhelpful, since (when they came to think of it) nobody could clearly define what either side’s objectives had been, or whether they’d had any at all; if there were any, nobody had achieved them, which meant that both sides had lost, which was plainly ridiculous.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘For pity’s sake,’ Venart shouted, ‘will you stop that godawful noise?’
The hammering stopped. ‘What did you say?’
Venart took a step forward. It was dark and gloomy inside the workshop, the only light coming from the shrouded furnace. ‘I said, will you stop-Can’t you keep the noise down? I’m trying to work.’
Posc Dousor, the Auzeils’ next-door neighbour, stepped out from behind the furnace door. He was wearing a leather apron and holding a big hammer. ‘So am I,’ he said.
‘What?’
Dousor nodded towards the furnace and the anvil that stood near it. ‘You don’t think I’m doing this for fun, do you?’ he said.
Venart took a step inside and peered round. ‘Excuse me asking,’ he said, ‘but just what are you doing? Last time I was in here, this was a cheese store.’
‘Well, now it’s an armour factory.’ Dousor wiped his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. ‘On account of I can’t get any cheese to sell, but I do have this stock of steel billets I got landed with twelve years ago for a bad debt, and suddenly everybody wants to buy armour. So,’ he added, ‘I’m going to make some. All right?’
‘I see,’ Venart replied. ‘I didn’t know you knew how to make armour.’
Dousor frowned. ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘But soon I will. After all, it can’t be difficult, can it? You get the metal red hot, you bash it with a hammer till it’s thin, then you bash it some more till it’s the shape you want. And anyway,’ he added, ‘I bought a book. If you’ve got a book, you can learn anything.’
‘Well-’ Venart wasn’t quite sure what to say. It was a very big hammer, and Dousor was rather short-tempered. ‘That’s very enterprising of you, Posc, but do you think you could possibly do it somewhere else? Only I was up all night doing Council minutes, and-’
‘Where?’
‘Sorry?’
Dousor waggled the hammer impatiently. ‘Where do you suggest?’ he said. ‘Out in the street, maybe? Or perhaps I should sling out all my furniture, lug this bloody anvil indoors and turn my front room into a smithy. Well?’
Venart’s head wasn’t getting any better. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I really don’t mind what you do so long as you keep the noise down a bit. I do have a lot of rather important-’
‘Keep the noise down a bit,’ Dousor repeated. ‘You mean, bash a bit more gently? Just sort of pat the bloody great iron bars into flat sheets? Don’t be a prawn, Ven. Besides, you ought to be grateful.’
‘Sorry?’
‘War effort,’ Dousor said. ‘Munitions. Doing my bit for freedom and our unique cultural heritage. Doesn’t look particularly brilliant, does it, the First Citizen obstructing the war effort because of some trifling personal inconvenience?’
Venart thought for a moment. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘What if I were to find you a nice workshop you could use – down on the Drutz, say, in one of the old bonded warehouses? You could bash away to your heart’s content down there and I don’t suppose anybody’d even notice.’
Dousor frowned. ‘What, and pay you buggers rent when I’ve got a perfectly good shop of my own? Do I look like I’m stupid?’
‘All right then, rent-free. Come on, Posc, it’s driving Triz up the wall.’
Dousor shook his head. ‘I can’t help that,’ he said. ‘It’s taken me days to lick this place into shape, put in all these fixtures and stuff. And now you want me to rip them all out again, hump all this heavy gear halfway across the Island-’
‘’I’ll send someone to help you,’ Venart sighed. ‘At my expense, naturally,’ he added.
‘But there’s still inconvenience,’ Dousor persisted. ‘Time lost travelling to and fro, haulage charges-’
‘How much?’
‘What was that?’
‘How much do you want me to pay you,’ Venart said slowly, ‘to move all your gear over to the Drutz and leave us in peace? That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?’
Dousor’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s actually a rather offensive thing to say, Ven,’ he replied. ‘We’ve been neighbours for years, since your father was alive. Actually, I always thought we were friends. But now you’re First Citizen, of course, you think you can come barging in here giving orders-’