‘There’s nothing grand about it,’ said Gorgas cheerfully, ‘but it’s home. Come on in, you’ll soon dry off.’
Gorgas was right; there was nothing grand about it at all. The glow from the tallow-lamp was too dim to let Poliorcis see what he was walking on; it felt like old, sodden rushes, and it didn’t smell terribly nice. In the large room he’d been led into there was a large plain board table covered with wooden and pewter dishes, each containing a few scraps of crust or rind. Two men were sitting beside it, each with a big horn cup in front of him. They didn’t seem to have noticed he was there.
‘My brothers,’ Gorgas announced, ‘that’s Clefas on the left and Zonaras on the right.’ The two men didn’t stir, except to move their heads a little to stare at him, and then back at each other. ‘You’ll have to excuse them,’ Gorgas went on, ‘I expect they’re tired out after a hard day. It’s a busy time of year; we’re cutting reed down by the river and making up the cheese for the cider.’
Still no reaction from Clefas and Zonaras. Poliorcis sat down on a three-legged stool and perched his elbows on a clear corner of the table. Gorgas was standing on a chair, getting something down from the rafters. ‘How’s the reed shaping up?’ he asked.
‘Bad,’ Zonaras replied. ‘Too wet. We’ll leave it a week, see if the river goes down, though with all this rain I wouldn’t count on it.’
The thing from the rafters turned out to be a net bag containing a big round cheese coated in plaster. ‘Clefas, is there any fresh bread?’
‘No,’ Clefas replied.
‘Oh. Well, never mind, we’ll have to make do. Any cider in the jug?’
‘No.’›
Gorgas sighed. ‘I’ll get some more from the cellar,’ he said, picking up the jug. ‘Won’t be a moment.’
He seemed to be gone for a very long time, during which neither of his brothers moved perceptibly. When he returned, he had a solid-looking loaf under one arm and the cider-jug in his hand. ‘Fire could do with another log,’ he said, but nobody seemed concerned. It was cold, as well as damp. Gorgas was sawing at the loaf with his knife.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you wanted to see the Mesoge; this is about as typical as you’re likely to get. Here.’ He was holding out a plate with some bread and cheese on it. ‘I’ll get you a mug and you can have some cider.’
‘No, really,’ Poliorcis protested, but he was too late. There wasn’t enough light to see the cider by, but he could make out a little wisp of straw floating on the top. ‘You can sleep in my room,’ Gorgas went on. ‘I’ll muck in with Zonaras.’
Zonaras grunted.
‘Well.’ Gorgas sat down and broke off a piece of bread, which he dipped in his mug. ‘This is home,’ he said. ‘Take it or leave it. Personally, I don’t think you can beat plain, old-fashioned Mesoge hospitality.’
Poliorcis reminded himself that he was a diplomat and said nothing; because he was decidedly hungry, he even nibbled at a corner of the cheese, which was very strong and rather disgusting. Gorgas was asking if there was any bacon left. There wasn’t.
‘Thatch on the trap-house needs looking at,’ Clefas said. ‘Won’t have time now till after we’ve got the hay in. If the reed doesn’t come to anything, we’ll have to buy in. That’s if anybody’s got any.’
‘Oh, well,’ Gorgas said.
‘Got to move the apples out,’ Clefas went on. ‘Damp’s getting in; we’ll lose the whole lot otherwise. I haven’t got time,’ he added.
‘Don’t look at me,’ replied Zonaras. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing all week, sitting on my hands?’
Gorgas sighed. ‘I’ll send some men down,’ he said. ‘You just tell them what needs doing, they’ll see to it.’
‘What we need is someone to push the rooks off the laid barley,’ Clefas said. ‘I counted a hundred and four in there the other day. If it gets any worse it won’t be worth cutting.’
‘Hasn’t come to anything special anyhow,’ Zonaras pointed out. ‘Too damn wet. We need ten days’ clear sun before it’ll be anything like ready. We should have put the beans in there like I said.’
‘We had beans there last year,’ Clefas replied. ‘And we needed them in the top five-acre to put some strength back in the ground. Might as well plough them back in, the way they’re shaping up.’
It was as much as Poliorcis could do to stop himself laughing; but Gorgas Loredan, self-anointed Prince of the Mesoge, was nodding his head sagely and looking grave; he’s playing the part of a farmer, Poliorcis realised, but he hasn’t quite got it right; he tries to think himself into all these various parts – farmer, prince, diplomat, hard-bitten professional soldier – but he never quite manages to get below the surface. I wonder who he really is. I expect he does, too.
Gorgas’ room (the master bedroom, so he’d been informed, where Father used to sleep after Mother died) turned out to be a small loft, up a set of steps that were more like a ladder than a staircase. There was a bed, a mattress stuffed with very old reed, no pillow, one vintage blanket that had been carefully turned sides-to-middle round about the time Poliorcis had just started shaving (that would be back before Gorgas’ mother died, unless it was the handiwork of Niessa Loredan, before she got involved in international finance). Poliorcis peeled off his wet boots, swung himself on to the bed and pinched out the wick of the lamp. He could hear something pattering about on the roof – not rain, because nothing was dropping into the half-filled pans strategically placed around the room to catch the drips. Cats? Squirrels, if they come out at night? It could be rabbits – the eaves of the house backed into the low hill. Whatever it was, it made enough noise to keep Poliorcis awake, even though he was painfully weary.
An alliance between the Empire and these clowns – it was ludicrous to think that he’d even considered it. At best, Gorgas had – what, a thousand men? Probably not that many, and how many of those would he be able to spare, being realistic, from the job of bullying and bashing his fellow peasants into line? It was a sad reflection on his own gullibility; he’d wasted time here, and most of what he’d found out was worthless. At best, he had an insight of sorts into this curious tribe, the Loredans, who’d somehow managed to involve themselves so deeply in matters that were significant enough to affect Imperial policy. As he shifted about, trying to find a level patch of mattress big enough to accommodate his back, he reflected on this strange phenomenon, trying to make sense of it.
Niessa Loredan, for example; no longer relevant, but for a while she’d been dangerous enough to destabilise the Shastel Bank, and the piddling little army that she’d paid for and Gorgas had trained had killed a few thousand of the Order’s halberdiers (and every little helped, potentially). She was out of the picture now; and so, he was certain, was Gorgas; this peculiar little nest of bandits he’d scraped together for himself would keep the Mesoge depressed and unimportant for years to come – keeping it warm, so to speak, just in case it should ever suit the convenience of the provincial office to look this way. That in itself was unlikely – Tornoys might be a useful base for a squadron of galleys, if the Empire ever built up a proper fleet, as opposed to the disorganised clutter of hired and captured ships that was referred to in the supply ledgers as the Imperial Navy, but Gorgas palpably didn’t control Tornoys; if he tried to muscle in there, it would probably be the undoing of him.
Which left Bardas Loredan, once colonel, now sergeant; the hero of Ap’ Escatoy, the last defender of Perimadeia, the angel of death as far as the plainspeople were concerned. Poliorcis frowned in the dark, trying to remember what little he’d understood of basic causality theory. In the end, he gave it up; he was a diplomat, and the Empire had plenty of professional metaphysicians without needing any input from him on the subject. But even he, relying on the scrapings of his memories of a two-week foundation course at the Ap’ Sammas military academy, could tell that there was work to be done in this area before any long-term plans could properly be made; and the data he was gathering here would probably be important at that stage. The thought comforted him; it had been a maxim of his division tutor that the first and most essential stage in doing useful work is finding out what work it is that one is supposed to be doing. Well, now he knew. He was here to study the pathology of Bardas Loredan. So that was all right.