He put the block back on the manger, breathed in, and smacked the flat of the blade viciously against the thick oak six times, three smacks on each side. That was the proper way to proof a sword-blade, preferably someone else's. There was now a red blood-blister on the side of his little finger, but the hanger had survived more or less intact; blade still straight, hilt still in one piece, no cracks in the brazed joints, no rattle of loosened parts when he shook it. That was really quite impressive, for cheap local work. Once more for luck; he stepped back and took another almighty heave at the block-no fencing, just the desire to damage something, the block or the sword, not bothered which. The cut went in properly on the slant, gouging out a fat chip of wood from the edge. As the shock ran up his arm and tweaked his tendons, it occurred to him to imagine that the cut had been against bone rather than wood, and he winced. Of course it was a hunting sword, not a weapon of war; even so.
Got myself a bargain there, then, he told himself; also, all the good luck in the world. Genuine Mezentine. Doesn't anybody but me remember we're at war with the fucking Mezentines?
The report was there on his desk when he got back to the tower room, needless to say. Nothing much had happened at Cynosoura, which turned out to be a very small village in the northern mountains. A routine cavalry patrol consisting of a platoon of the Seventeenth Regiment had stumbled across a Cure Hardy raiding party. Recognizing that they were outnumbered and in no fit state to engage, they'd withdrawn and raised the alarm, whereupon Duke Valens and two squadrons of the Nineteenth had ridden out (I remember now), engaged and defeated the enemy and captured their leader, one Skeddanlothi, who provided the Duke with valuable intelligence about the Cure Hardy before dying under interrogation. As for the encounter at Cynosoura, there was only one casualty, a cavalry trooper shot in the back at extreme range as the patrol was withdrawing; he died later, of gangrene.
Valens read the report, nodded, and left it on the side of his desk for filing. He took the hanger out of its scabbard and wiped it on his sleeve-oak sap leaves a blue stain on steel, unless it's cleaned promptly-before sheathing it and propping it up in the corner of the room. Then he went to the reception to be polite to the Cure Hardy.
11
Ziani Vaatzes, returning to Civitas Vadanis at the head of his wagon train after the successful decommissioning of the silver mines, encountered a heavily laden cart going the other way on the northeast road. Because the road was narrow and deeply rutted, with dry-stone walls on either side, the driver of the cart tried to pull into a gateway to let Ziani's convoy pass. In doing so, unfortunately, he ran his offside front into the stone gatepost, knocking off the wheel and swinging his cart through ninety degrees, so that it completely blocked the road.
Ziani sighed. He was tired of sleeping in the bed of a wagon on top of a sharp-cornered packing case, and he wanted to get back to the place that he was starting to think of, in stray unguarded moments, as home. He told his driver to stop, and slid off the box onto the ground, nearly turning his ankle over as he stepped on the ridge of a rut.
"All right," he called out, "hold it there. Leave it to us, we'll have you out of there."
The driver of the wrecked cart looked down at him with a sad expression on his face.
"Fuck it," he said. "I'm on a bonus if I get this lot delivered on time."
"You might still make it if you shut up and leave it to us," Ziani said. "This is your lucky day. I've got sappers, engineers and blacksmiths, with all the kit."
The carter noticed him for the first time, stared, then grinned. "You're the Duke's Mezentine, right?"
"Yes."
"The engineer, right?"
"Yes."
The grin spread. "In that case, you crack on."
It turned out, of course, to be considerably worse than it looked. The cart wasn't just missing a wheel, it was also comprehensively wedged into the gateway. Daurenja, who'd sprung down off his wagon like a panther as soon as the swearing started and crawled right under the damaged cart, re-emerged with the cheerful news that the axle had splintered and two leaves of the spring had snapped. He suggested unshipping the long-handled sledgehammers and smashing the cart up into small pieces; that would get the road clear, and the carter would be able to claim the cost of a new cart from the war department.
"That's no bloody good," the carter snapped. Something about Daurenja seemed to bother him quite a lot. Perhaps it was the ponytail, which Daurenja had adopted while he was working in the mines; probably not. "It's not my cart, it's the Duke's, I can't take responsibility. Besides, this lot is urgent supplies. I got a special through-pass. You can see it if you don't believe me."
"It's all right," Ziani interrupted, "nobody's going to smash up your cart." He glanced round at the mess, looking for inspiration to help him reach a quick decision. "We'll have to take the gatepost down, and the wall," he said. "Meanwhile, Daurenja, I want you to take some of the men, get the busted axle off; see if you can fix it with rawhide or letting in a splice or something; if not, use your imagination and think of something. You," he went on, turning his head, "I can't remember your name offhand. Unload the portable forge, the one with the double-action bellows, get it set up and lay in a fire. Also, I'll want the two-hundredweight anvil and whoever's best at forge-welds."
"Can't weld the busted spring, you'll wreck the temper," someone muttered. Ziani looked to see who it was, but someone else's head was in the way. "You'd have to anneal the whole unit and re-temper it."
"I know," he said. "And that's what we're going to do, so I'll need a water barrel or something like that for a slack tub. I'm assuming there's no oil left, so you'll have to quench in water and go nice and steady. And if anybody wants to show his ignorance by saying you can't butt-weld hardening steel, now's his chance. No? Fine, carry on." He nodded to the carter. "Let's leave them to it," he said. "Let me buy you a drink. So happens we've got a couple of bottles of the good stuff left."
The carter had no objection to that. Ziani retrieved the bottle and led him well away from the noise of the work. "Sorry about all this," he said, sitting on the wall and cutting the bottle's pitch seal with his knife.
"That's all right," the carter said. "Just look where you're going next time."
Ziani passed him the bottle. "So," he said, "what've you got there that's so important?"
The carter glugged five mouthfuls, then passed the bottle back. "Sulfur," he said.
"Sulfur," Ziani repeated. "Seems an odd thing for the government to want shifted in a hurry. Where are you taking it?"
"Me," the carter replied, "as far as the Eremian border. Someone else is taking it on from there, and bloody good luck."
"Quite." Ziani handed the bottle back untasted. "Not my idea of a quiet life, smuggling supplies into occupied territory. Specially if it's something useless, like sulfur. I mean, you'd feel such a fool if the Mezentines got you, wasting your life for something that's no good to anybody."
The carter pulled a face. "I just drive the wagon," he said. "No business of mine what the stuff's for."