He got up and went to the doorway. Just one clerk in the outer office at this time of day.
"Get me Falier," he said. "Straight away." The clerk stood up-they always looked so scared of him; they'd never been that scared of Boioannes. Why was that?-and headed for the door. He called him back.
"And when you've done that," he said, "arrest Falier's wife and have her put in the cells. Send a whole platoon of guards. I want her frightened out of her wits."
He sat down again, feeling sick. It was high time, he decided, that he got to the bottom of all this. Quite apart from everything else, it was the only way to save the City. What was preying on his mind, however, was nothing to do with the fate of the Perpetual Republic (a matter far too grand and romantic for a little clerk like Lucao Psellus). It was simply that lately, whenever he'd thought about the girl whose name had slipped his mind, the face he saw was that of Ariessa Falier, and the face reflected in her eyes was Ziani Vaatzes.
12
The announcement that Major Gace Daurenja had been appointed supreme allied commander was greeted with stunned amazement, rapidly followed by the special blend of loathing and respect unique to the military. As one career officer on the Vadani staff remarked, the bugger was everywhere. He never slept; according to his staff, he sat up all night, sweeping through paperwork like a scythe through corn. When reveille sounded (an innovation of his own; hitherto, the military day had begun with a slouch and a crawl rather than the blare of trumpets), he held court in his tent, parcelling out the day's meticulously detailed assignments, all written in his own spiky, legible hand; in the morning he went through the camp like a ferret in a warren, suddenly appearing and asking the most difficult questions imaginable, ferociously well-informed, his disapproval oppressive but never voiced, his suggestions and recommendations admirably, infuriatingly sensible. At noon precisely he ate a basic infantry ration-bread, bacon, beans-while the heads of department reported to him. In the afternoon, five in-depth meetings of exactly one hour. The evening ration. Two hours kept free for matters arising. Three hours of briefings, policy debates, disciplinary and commissariat business. Then everyone else went to bed, leaving him alone to do the real work of the day, as he liked to call it. His final chore, meticulously observed, was the composition of a detailed report for Duke Valens, sent off at dawn each day by duke's messenger, with a dozen cavalry troopers as escort: and another, similar but even longer and more detailed, for the Aram Chantat liaison.
"We must admit," the liaison told him one evening, after an exhaustive discussion of the problems and practicalities of large-scale military laundry, "that had Engineer Vaatzes not recommended you for this post, we would not have considered you for it. True, we were greatly impressed with your skill and enterprise in the matter of the fortress on the Lonazep road. But we believed that you lacked military experience. Clearly that was not the case."
Daurenja smiled. "I'm fortunate," he said. "I've done a bit of nearly everything in my time. My rule is, always learn a new skill if you can, it'll come in useful sooner or later."
The liaison nodded gently. "You would appear to have had ample opportunity," he said. "We have been making enquiries about you." He paused, face expressionless. "An interesting life, so far."
"Yes," Daurenja said.
A slight movement of the head. "It's not for us to pass judgement," the liaison went on, "particularly as regards crimes-alleged crimes-committed by foreigners against foreigners outside our jurisdiction, long before this alliance was formed. They do not concern us, except insofar as they provide insights into the nature and character of the man accused of them. Any future misconduct, however…" (He paused: one, two seconds.) "…will be regarded as very much our business. In such matters, we are not tolerant people. There is almost no crime in our society. Murder, rape, theft are things we know about only by report; we find them impossible to understand, because we have no experience of them. You will ensure that from now on, your behaviour conforms to our standards and expectations."
Daurenja lowered his head; like a dog, the liaison thought, recog-. nising the authority of the pack leader. "Of course," he said. "You have my word."
"Excellent. In that case, the subject is closed." He shivered a little, pleased to have got that out of the way. "Now," he went on, "we shall discuss your progress towards the next stage of the siege." Twenty-five thousand men, with shovels.
The watchmen on the embankment saw them a long way off, and sent frantic messages to Secretary Psellus at the Guildhall. A vast army, they said, a cloud of dust that blotted out the sun. Anticipating the order, the colonel of the hastily formed first Mezentine cavalry commanded his terrified men to muster and saddle up. No order came.
Secretary Psellus came instead, puffing hoarsely as he climbed the steps up on to the top of the embankment (or glacis, as he called it; he used a lot of weird-sounding words, which people said he got out of old books). He didn't seem particularly concerned. "It's all right," he told them, after ten minutes of silent peering into the dust. "They aren't going to attack. There's not enough of them, and they haven't brought heavy equipment. Could somebody tell Colonel Sporades to let his men get off their horses, please? They'll only become restive if they're kept standing about like that."
Psellus was right. The column halted about fifty yards outside the extreme range of the heaviest trebuchets. They appeared to be doing something, but nobody could make out what. After an hour of agonising suspense, the watch officer sent out three observers, mounted on the fastest horses in the City. They walked out and galloped back.
"They look like they're digging a trench," was all they had to say for themselves. "Thousands of them, with picks and shovels, and there's a bunch of them unloading timbers off wagons."
The watchers on the embankment relaxed a little. The enemy had come, but they weren't going to attack; instead, they were digging a trench-a latrine, perhaps, or graves for their own dead, victims of a highly contageous outbreak of plague (wouldn't that be nice), or maybe they were planning on planting some climbing beans. Like it mattered. They weren't going to attack. Nothing to worry about.
But Psellus was worried, though he tried, hard and successfully, not to show it. He knew exactly what they were doing. The trench they were digging would run parallel with the embankment frontage for something like a hundred yards; it would be six feet deep by three feet wide. By the time they'd finished it, the watchers on the embankment would have lost interest, and so wouldn't notice when the line of the trench began to change, creeping gradually slantwise, approaching the embankment, one yard forward for every twenty leading away. Then it would stop and angle sharply back-thirty degrees would be best practice, though it depended on how stiff and rocky the ground was-and begin its slow zigzag approach to the City: forty yards, an angled turn, another forty yards, and so on. Being mostly side-on, the trench would be sheltered from artillery fire (if it came on straight, at right angles, an expert artilleryman could shoot down into it), and the spoil would always be heaped on the side facing the City, to give additional cover. He'd seen it all, reduced to neatly ruled lines in diagrams, in the old book. Once the trench came within easy shot of the engines on the embankment, he'd start to see pavises (tall, broad wicker shields, mounted on wheeled carriages) put out to guard the sappers from arrows and catapult shot lobbed up high. Once the pavises appeared, of course, they'd begin their own artillery bombardment; its purpose not to kill men or damage machines or structures, but simply to keep heads down and rule out any risk of a sortie from the gates to force the trenches and kill the sappers. In all likelihood, if his enemy was proposing to do the job properly, when this trench was halfway another one would start off, aimed at a different point on the embankment; one of them would be a blind, to leave him no choice but to divide his forces. The other would be the real thing, and when it eventually sidled up to the base of the mound…