I recovered the tile and found the panther clambering up the half-timbers. He had taken off his mask, and I saw the face of a complete stranger glaring at me, a large man with a jutting underjaw and the scarred face and broken nose of a prizefighter. I had no desire to find myself within arm’s reach of this hard-fisted professional, and so I marked my target and let fly. He warded the tile but slightly, and it struck him a glancing blow on the head and tore free a piece of his scalp. He paid no more attention to this than to a splinter in his thumb, and kept climbing toward me. Over my shoulder I saw the eagle mount to the roof of his own chosen building, and decided that I preferred not to be outnumbered.
Accordingly, I fled across the rooftops. The streets were narrow below Chancellery Road, and the buildings dropped steeply down the castle’s hill, so it was easy to jump down from one to the next, coming ever closer to the river. I was looking for the Worshipfull Societie of Butchers, where I would be safe, but I missed my reckoning and was unable to find it. But hard on the horizon I saw the fortress-like battlements and emplaced artillery of the Companie of Cannoneers, and so I ran in that direction.
I used a cornice, a frieze, and a bolection to drop to the street. The journeymen cannoneers on the door knew me by sight as a frequent guest of Master Lipton, and so they welcomed me, and I entered. I helped myself to a brimming cup of a lively, rather lemony white wine and kept an eye to the window shutters, to see if my pursuers were still in chase. Indeed, I saw them go past, the eagle in the lead, followed by the hunched Fork-Beard and the prizefighter, who held a napkin to his bleeding head.
The hall of the cannoneers, like that of the Butchers, was ornamented with tools of their trade. With the Butchers, the tools included knives, cleavers, and pollaxes, but the cannoneers had ladles, rammers, sponges, worms, and the smaller species of artillery. I took a likely item down from the wall, and asked one of the gunners what it was.
“A linstock, sir,” he said.
“Very good,” said I. The linstock consisted of a wooden handle about a yard long, with a forked metal tip that would hold a slow-match, and it was intended to be used in lighting cannon from a distance safe enough that the gunner would not stand in the way of the recoil.
I left the hall and walked rapidly up behind the prizefighter, held the linstock in both hands, cocked it over one shoulder, and hit him behind the ear as hard as I could. He went down as if I’d pollaxed him, and I sprang over his body to crack Fork-Beard on his crown. That worthy gave a cry and fled as fast as he could stagger, and left me face-to-face with the eagle, who had spun about to face me. I recognized Slope-Shoulder behind the mask, and I raised the linstock as if to swing at him. He raised his hands to guard himself, and instead I dropped the point of the linstock and thrust him hard in the belly. He bent over groaning, and I hit him on the skull, a glancing blow which sent him to one knee.
“Come near me again,” I told him, “and I’ll serve you as I served Sir Basil.”
Then—feeling alive with a perfect righteousness, and tingling with the essential fact of my survival—I returned to the cannoneers’ hall and replaced the linstock on the wall.
My assaulting three people on the street attracted a certain amount of attention—there had been shouting from the crowd, and a few screams—and some cannoneers had come out to watch the fight, and so when I returned, there was a respectful half circle about me.
“Those three attacked me on Chancellery Road,” I said. “I fled here, where I knew I would find friends.”
And friends they proved to be, once I had explained the difficulty, and I was plied with more wine, soft cheese, and cheat bread while I told my story, and while the unconscious prizefighter was carried past the door to a surgeon.
Cannoneer Lipton approached, his white-bearded face rosy with wine, and when he had heard the story congratulated me.
“You armed yourself with a superior weapon and attacked with stealth,” said he. “A useful strategy, sure, though you must beware of your foes arming themselves with weapons superior to yours, and attacking likewise from cover. Which,” he continued philosophically, “will result in your getting superior arms yourself, and so on, till you come here. For there is no superior weapon than a cannon, sure.”
“Difficult to use in a street brawl,” said I.
“It is the simplest thing in the world,” said Lipton. “A charge of hailshot will sweep any street clean of brawlers.”
I laughed. “Let me take one of your guns with me, then, when I go home.”
“Unfortunately, the Queen now commands them all,” he said. “And the Queen commandeth even me, sure, for I am to con a battery of demiculverins in the forthcoming campaign.”
“Congratulations, master.” I raised my glass. “May the rebels’ walls tumble before your gunshot.”
“Thank you, youngster. And now, an I may not charge a gun for you, allow me to charge your glass.”
We talked about the coming campaign, and I mentioned that I had seen and spoken to the Knight Marshal, who seemed rather infirm to hold such a responsible position—and furthermore prone to superstition, given all the luck tokens he’d bestowed about his person.
“He has always been lucky in war, sure,” said Lipton. “And in my experience, you wish not to stand between a soldier and his luck. Yet being a great general is no great matter, for battles are but games of rock-paper-scissors, and that is a game any man can play.”
“Indeed, I have played it. Shall I take command of the Queen’s Army?”
“You may, once you understand the game as we soldiers play it. For look you, there are three arms—the cavalry, the pikemen, and the handgunners with their firelocks.” He took a substantial loaf of raveled bread and placed it between us. “Here are the pikemen.” Forks stood for the handgunners, and knives for the cavalry.
“Firelocks will defeat pikes,” he said, “for they can shoot the pike formations from a distance, without the pikes being able to engage them. Cavalry will defeat firelocks, as the firelocks have no means of keeping the cavalry from riding them down. And pikes defeat cavalry, for the cavalry cannot get close enough to harm them. So you see: rock-paper-scissors.”
I viewed the battle laid out before me. “And how does your artillery play in this game?”
He laughed at me with yellow teeth. “The peculiar genius of the artillery is shown best in sieges, sure. But in actions such as this we may assist in breaking up the hedges of pikes.”
I deployed a pair of knives. “So the pikes being broken, the cavalry may ride the pikes down.”
“Indeed.”
I laughed. “Now I may be Captain General?”
He lifted a hand in a sign of blessing. “You have learned the great lesson. Be a general, youngster, and drive the rebels from the field.”
I remained at the Cannoneers till near sunset, when I headed toward my supper at the Butchers’ hall. The streets were still full of entertainments, including a zoo with the cages on carts, where I viewed a bear that performed a sailor’s dance, seals that juggled footballs on their noses, a lion that lay asleep on straw and ignored us all, and a minikin that was said to be one of the Albiz, a native prince taken from his underground realm beneath the Minnith Peaks. I was inclined, however, to think he was a dwarf painted brown and dressed in worn velvets.