Vague Henri, Cale and Kleist had talked at great length over how real they should make the practice fighting. The Redeemers took the motto ‘Train hard, fight easy’ to extremes. Mock Redeemer battles weren’t always easy to distinguish from the real thing other than that in the former they allowed the survivors to live. All three feared the result of pushing the practice battles too hard would be to create more problems than they solved and for the same reason as for the summary execution: the souls of the Swiss, peasant or gentleman, weren’t accustomed by long habit to brutality. But the Swiss soldiers had to be taught respect one way or another. ‘Right,’ said Vague Henri to his gentlemen soldiers. ‘You think you’re so much better than they are. Prove it.’ He followed this by going to the peasants in the New Model Army and telling them that there were doubts in Spanish Leeds they’d be up to the task of a real battle – they were, after all, peasants and would be bound to run when the going got tough. He’d avoided saying that this was the view of the Swiss soldiers because soon they were going to have to fight together. It was enough: they were incensed. But there was more at stake than just repeating the battle and the lesson of Silver Field: both sides had to be defeated this time.
Three days later, with Cale – a fascinated spectator – they watched the gloves-off attack by Swiss men at arms and mounted knights on the country bumpkins. It was nasty stuff, but the Swiss, for all their skill and determination, were at a huge disadvantage because they took ten times as many blows for each one they could land. After a bloody hour they withdrew and Vague Henri showed his final and very convincing hand. He pulled up four hundred fire-archers and got them pouring in three or four a minute each for ten minutes. By the end the peasants were driven out as the thirty wagons burnt like the seventh circle of hell.
It was a brutal and expensive point but it was well made – both sides realized they would live or die together.
‘I’ve been to see IdrisPukke about this, twice, but he keeps pissing in my ear,’ said Fanshawe. ‘I want them rounded up and sent back.’
‘For what reason?’ said an exhausted Cale, not much in the mood for anything except sleep.
‘As if you care about reasons.’
‘I do now – so what are they?’
‘These two hundred and fifty Helots belong to the state.’
‘That would be the state that’s signed a treaty with the Redeemers.’
‘We’re helping you in practice, aren’t we?’
‘I don’t think we should go down the road of your good intentions. We can if you like.’
‘The Helots threaten our existence as much as the Redeemers threaten yours. There are four times as many of them in Laconia as there are of us. They’re here to learn from you how they can kill the state that owns them. If you don’t want to be seen to be working against us let me deal with them.’
‘Let’s get this straight. I’m the one who deals with things here. You go anywhere near them and I’ll have you swinging off the nearest maypole upside down and with your nose in my pocket.’
There was a silence – not very pleasant.
‘Then we’ll leave.’
Another silence.
‘I’m not sending two hundred and fifty men back to be executed,’ said Cale.
‘What do you care?’
‘Never mind what I care about. I’m not doing it.’ Fanshawe, nevertheless, could see a concession was coming. ‘I’ll move them on.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I’ll have them escorted over the mountains by some unpleasant people I know and told to get lost.’
‘And if they refuse?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Can I trust you on this?’
‘I don’t give a sack of rancid badger giblets for your trust one way or the other. I want you to stay and I promise I’ll get rid of them. Take it or leave it. That’s all there is.’
It made sense to Fanshawe that his instructors were much more valuable than a couple of hundred untrained peasants so he decided to give way – though as ungraciously as possible in order to leave Cale with the impression he was deeply unhappy with the outcome. He wasn’t particularly.
The next day Cale woke up from a sixteen-hour sleep still tired, and to find IdrisPukke had arrived for a short meeting.
‘You should have told me about Fanshawe kicking off over the Helots,’ said Cale.
‘Not in my opinion,’ said IdrisPukke. ‘You made it clear that we, by which I mean me, were supposed to bring you solutions and not problems. You should have refused to see him. In fact, you should refuse to see anyone – cultivate your mystery. The more you talk to people the more human you’ll seem to them and so the more comprehensible and therefore weaker. You’re not the incarnation of the Wrath of God, you’re a very sick boy.’
‘Don’t bother polishing it, will you?’
‘If I must – you’re a very remarkable, very sick boy.’
‘I think we should give the Helots some help.’
‘Why?’
‘If we beat the Redeemers, it’ll come at a price. We’ll be the weaker. There’s every chance the Laconics will take advantage. So, if they’ve got to deal with slaves, newly trained slaves, there’s less chance the Laconics will be making a nuisance of themselves with us.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Meaning?’
‘You haven’t fallen for one of those generous impulses that affect you from time to time?’
‘Such as?’
‘You sympathize with them – you identify with them as people struggling to be free of an ugly oppressor.’
‘Would that be so bad?’
‘That’s three questions in answer to my three questions: rude but revealing.’
‘I hate to be rude.’
‘You’re walking a thin line, boy, we all are – you can’t afford to take on a cause you don’t have the power to support.’
‘I’m not. But I don’t see why we can’t send the Helots to the east to train with the Purgators there.’
‘I agree.’
A pause.
‘So you’ll send them?’
‘I already have.’
‘Great minds think alike.’
‘If it pleases you to think so.’
Cale rang a small silver bell to signal he wanted his tea. He felt absurdly self-important doing something so precious but it saved the effort of going to the door and shouting. Tea arrived immediately as the butler had merely been waiting for the bell. IdrisPukke looked on with anticipation at the assortment of sandwiches laid before him, crusts removed and cut into dainty triangles: cheese, egg, and horsemeat with cucumber. There were pastries from Patisserie Valerie in Mott Street: cream selva and wild strawberry millefeuille and almond frangipane with its intoxicating whiff of sweet cyanide.
‘Finding things to spend your money on?’ said IdrisPukke.
Cale smiled. ‘Eat thou and drink; tomorrow thou shalt die,’ he said – a line spoken to him three times a day before meals at the Sanctuary.