He lay silent, as if trying to convert the whole prospect in his mind into figures.
‘How do we make up the shortfall? We have to make it up on the move. We can requisition it from villages on our route — only there aren’t any villages in Chalce. We have to live off the land. The bread problem alone… You need twenty-four ounces of flour to bake a two-pound loaf. That means six and a half tons of flour to be found every day.
‘But that’s nothing to what the animals eat. You need an acre of green fodder to feed fifty yelk and hoxneys—’
Toress Lahl began to weep. Shokerandit propped himself on an elbow and gazed across the encampment as he spoke. Little sparks glowed in the dark here and there over a wide area, constantly obscured as bodies moved unseen between him and them. Some men sang; others abased themselves and communicated with the dead.
‘Suppose we take twenty days to reach Koriantura at the frontier, then our mounts will need to consume two thousand eight hundred acres of fodder. Your dead husband must have had to do similar sums, didn’t he?
‘Every day an army marches, it spends more time in quest of food than it does in moving forward. We have to mill our own grain — and there’s precious little of anything but wild grasses and shoatapraxi in these regions. We have to make expeditions to fell trees and gather wood for the bakeries. We have to set up field bakeries. We have to graze and water the yelk… Perhaps you begin to see why Isturiacha had to be left? History is against it.’
‘Well, I just don’t care,’ she said. ‘Am I an animal that you tell me how much these animals eat? You can all starve, the lot of you, for all I care. You got drunk on killing and now you’re drunk on yadahl.’
In a low voice, he said, ‘They didn’t think I would be any good in battle, so at Koriantura I was put in charge of animal fodder. There’s an insult for a man whose father is Keeper of the Wheel! I had to learn those figures, woman, but I saw the sense in them. I grasped their meaning. Year by year, the growing season is getting shorter — just a day at either end. This summer is a disappointment to farmers. The Isthmus of Chalce is famine-stricken. You’ll see. All this Asperamanka knows. Whatever you think of him, he’s no fool. An expedition such as this, which set out with over eleven thousand men, cannot be launched ever again.’
‘So my unfortunate continent is safe at last from your hateful Sibish interference.’
He laughed. ‘Peace at a price. An army marching through the land is like a plague of locusts — and the locusts die when there’s no food in their path. That settlement will soon be entirely cut off. It’s doomed.
‘The world is becoming more hostile, woman. And we waste what resources we have…’
Luterin lay against her rigid body, burying his face in his arms. But before sleep and drink overpowered him, he heaved himself up again to ask how old she was. She refused to say. He struck her hard across the face. She sobbed and admitted to thirteen plus one tenner. She was his junior by two tenners.
‘Young to be a widow,’ he said with relish. ‘And — don’t think you’ll get off lightly tomorrow night. I’m not the animal fodder officer anymore. No talk tomorrow night, woman.’
Toress Lahl made no reply. She remained awake, unstirring, gazing miserably up at the stars overhead. Clouds veiled the sky as Batalix-dawn drew near. Groans of the dying reached her ears. There were twelve more deaths from the plague during the night.
But in the morning those who survived rose as usual, stretched their limbs, and were blithe, joking with friends of this and that as they queued for their rations at the bread wagons. A two-pound loaf each, she remembered bitterly.
There was no soldier on that long trail homeward who would admit to enjoying himself. Yet it was probable that everyone took some pleasure in the routine of making and breaking camp, in the camaraderie, in the feeling that progress was being made, and in the chance of being in a different place each day. There was simple pleasure in leaving behind the ashes of an old fire and pleasure in building a new one, in watching the young flames take hold of twigs and grass.
Such activities, with the enjoyments they generated, were as old as mankind itself. Indeed, some activities were older, for human consciousness had flickered upward — like young flames taking hold — amid the challenges of mankind’s first long peregrination eastwards from Hespagorat, when forsaking the protection of the ancipital race and the status of domesticated animal.
The wind might blow chill from the north, from the Circumpolar Regions of Sibornal, yet to the soldiers returning home the air tasted good in their lungs, the ground felt good beneath their feet.
The officers were less lighthearted than their men. For the general soldiery, it was enough to have survived the battle and to be returning home to whatever welcome awaited them. For those who thought more deeply, the matter was more complex. There was the question of the increasingly severe regime within the frontiers of Sibornal. There was also the question of their success.
Although the officers, from Asperamanka downwards, talked repeatedly of victory, nevertheless, under that terrible enantiodromia which gripped the world, under that inevitable and incessant turning of all things into their opposites, the victory came to feel more and more like a defeat — a defeat from which they were retreating with little to show but scars, a list of the dead, and extra mouths to feed.
And always, to heighten this oppressive sense of failure, the Fat Death was among them, keeping pace easily with the fastest troops.
In the spring of the Great Year was the bone fever, cutting down human populations, pruning the survivors to mere skeletons. In the autumn of the Year was the Fat Death, again cutting down human populations, this time melding them into new, more compact shape. So much and more was well enough understood, and accepted with fatalism. But fear still sprang up at the very word ‘plague’. And at such times, everyone mistrusted his neighbour.
On the fourth day, the forward units came across one of the two messengers whom Shokerandit had sent ahead. His body lay face down in a gully. The torso had been gnawed as if by a wild animal.
The soldiers preserved a wide circle about the corpse, but seemed unable to stop looking at it. When Asperamanka was summoned, he too looked long at the dreadful sight. Then he said to Shokerandit, ‘That silent presence travels with us. There is no doubt that the terrible scourge is carried by the phagors, and is the Azoiaxic’s punishment upon us for associating with them. The only way to make restitution is to slay all ancipitals who are on the march with us.’
‘Haven’t we had slaughter enough, Archpriest? Could we not just drive the ancipitals away into the wilds?’
‘And let them breed and grow strong against us? My young hero, leave me to deal with what is my business.’ His narrow face wrinkled into severe lines, and he said, ‘It is more necessary than ever to get word swiftly to the Oligarch. We must be met and given assistance as soon as possible. I charge you now, personally, to go with a trusted companion and bear my message to Koriantura for onward transmission to the Oligarch. You will do this?’
Luterin cast his gaze on the ground, as he had often done in his father’s presence. He was accustomed to obeying orders.
‘I can be in the saddle within an hour, sir.’
The wrath that seemed always to lurk under Asperamanka’s brow, lending heat to his eyes, came into play as he regarded his subordinate.
‘Reflect that I may be saving your life by charging you with this commission, Lieutenant Ensign Shokerandit. On the other hand, you may ride and ride, only to discover that the silent presence awaits in Koriantura.’