‘How else are we going to replace them? Do we have ten years?’
Bosco was not so green that he was unaware this was the first time Cale had spoken of them both in this way, and that he was being charmed. Still, that he was making an effort to be deceptive was encouraging.
‘No, we don’t.’
‘Are there any records?’
‘Oh, each Redeemer has a tally codex. Everything about him is recorded there.’
‘Do you have one?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’d like to read it.’
‘This idea won’t work.’
‘It might not work. They’re standing on the edge of death followed by eternal hell where devils every day will disembowel them with a spade or swallow them alive and shit them out for all eternity. Save them from a fate like that – those are the hoops of steel that’ll bind them to me.’
‘These are deviants. The very boilings of moth and rust.’
‘If they don’t come up to snuff, I’ll return them for execution. These are trained men abandoned by everyone. At least give me their tallies.’ Cale smiled, the first time in a long time. ‘I don’t even believe you disagree.’
‘Very well. We’ll both read the tallies. Then we’ll see.’
‘Tell me about Guido Hooke.’
There was a knock at the door which opened immediately followed by a Redeemer who nodded obsequiously to Bosco and dumped a large file in a box, marked ‘INTRO’. He nodded again and left.
‘Hooke,’ said Bosco, ‘is a nuisance to me and of no real concern to you.’
‘I want to know about him.’
‘Why?’
‘A hunch. Besides, I thought I was to know everything.’
‘Everything? You see that file Notil just bought in. That’s just a day’s paperwork – a slack day. Stick to what you’re good at.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Very well. Hooke is a know-all who thinks he can understand the world by the book of arithmetic. He is a great inventor of engines. He is brilliant in the way of the best of such people but he has struck his gonk once too often into things that he had much better not have done. I’ve left him alone because I admire his mind, and for ten years. But his declarations about the moon contradicted the Pope, I warned him to leave and suggested the Hanse might be willing to employ him. While I was in Memphis he went to Fray Bentos to take ship but was caught by Gant’s men in a hoteli waiting to embark.’
‘Why didn’t they take him to Stuttgart?’
‘Because in Stuttgart he wouldn’t be my responsibility. Now I must either make an Act of Faith of him or be seen to defy the ruling of the Pope.’
‘But you said the Pope was wrong.’
‘You are being deliberately slow.’
‘What kind of engines?’
‘Blasphemous engines.’
‘Why?’
‘A machine for flying – if God had meant us to fly he would have given us wings. A wagon cased in iron – if God had meant us to have armour we would have been born with scales. And for all I know, or care, a machine for extracting sunlight from cucumbers. Most of the drawings he’s made are fantasies. His idea for a hopiocopter that flies is twaddle. It doesn’t look as if it could move along the ground, let alone fly through the air. But I have made use of his water gate in the east canal.’
‘If God had intended there to be water gates wouldn’t he have made water flow upwards?’ Bosco would not rise to the bait.
‘If you want to know about him read his tally. He’s a dead man, whether you do or don’t.’
Kleist had been forced to hang around until the next day before Lord Dunbar and his men left and he could collect the knife he’d dropped in the bramble bush. He thought carefully about what to do next. He was not interested in revenge, not being the indulgent type – it was dangerous and Kleist did not believe in risk. On the other hand he was in the middle of some bumhole wilderness with no horse, no chattels, no money and few clothes. All in all he decided he had to follow them but he wondered repeatedly over the next three days if he hadn’t made a mistake. He was cold and hungry. He was used to that, but though the surroundings were green enough he came across no standing water. Weakness from lack of water could take you quickly and once he lost touch with Dunbar he was finished. He had one break: he found some bamboo – spindly but good enough. Probably. He cut himself a section five feet long and a dozen thin poles and hurried to catch up. Following for the rest of the day he found a small puddle of green and brown water and decided to risk it. He’d tasted worse but not often. Dunbar and his men stopped an hour before darkness and Kleist had to work quickly in the fading light. The bamboo was still green, which made it easy to cut it into thin lashings to twist and use for a bow string. Then he split the bamboo down the middle into three staves, each one shorter than the last. By the time it was dark he’d bound one stave on the other with the lashings like the leaf spring of a cart. He slept little and badly when he did. The next day he began work as soon as it was light, following as they moved off, and finished the bow as they stopped for a couple of hours at midday. He would have liked to recurve the ends for more power but there wasn’t time – it was a complicated process. The sun came out and tormented him with thirst but while it desiccated him it did the same to the bow, drying it fully and binding everything archer-tight. There was flint enough lying around and it took only ten minutes to make an arrowhead.
A maggoty crow provided the feathers for the fletch, but crow feathers were hard to work and he’d wasted most of the best getting the technique right. Binding them accurately with the bamboo and twine was a bastard. Still, while Redeemer Master Arrowsmith Hart would have given him a good hiding for the results, they weren’t too bad all considered. Good enough as long as he could get in close to cause some serious evil. He was exhausted, thirsty, hungry and in a foul temper. A few quick practice shots out of sight eased his weariness with a mixture of satisfaction at his skill and a douse of malice. But he’d let them get too far away and thinking he’d lost them almost walked into the camp they’d hidden in a thickish cloud of trees. In the light that remained he only had the time to crawl around half of the campsite and see what was what. By then he had placed four of them but not the fifth. Sunset meant that the hoped-for attack would have to be delayed. He would have preferred to wait out the night where he was so as not to risk a re-approaching in the morning. But the failure to spot the fifth man meant he thought it better to withdraw a few hundred yards. Tricky either way and a bloody nuisance.
Nine hours later and with a splitting headache he was back and watching. Still only four men but the one missing yesterday was back and Lord Dunbar was gone. Frustration and excitement and fear made the hammering in Kleist’s brain seem like it would break his skull but he daren’t do a thing until all five were together. And then, around eight, Dunbar crawled out of what looked like a large bush at the edge of the camp. In a few seconds he was urinating at the edge of the camp and shouting orders for them to strike it. Arrow into bow, string pulled, the huge power of his right arm and shoulder and back tensed and a deep breath and then loose. A scream from Dunbar as the arrow took him in the left hip. Three-second pause – the other four stared. ‘What?’ called one.
Another arrow hit Handsome Johnny in the mouth and he fell back waving his arms. A third raced off, slipping and sliding in terror to the cover of the trees. An arrow, pulled badly, hit him in the foot and he hopped the last few yards, shouting in pain, and vanished into the trees. Another unscathed raced out of the camp in the other direction. The fifth man in the almost centre of the camp did not move. Kleist took aim, the bow creaking with the bend and let loose into the middle of his chest. A dreadful gasp of anguish. He bowed another arrow and drew it back, carefully and quickly making his way into the camp, moving the point back and forth over the points of threat. Handsome Johnny wasn’t going to be any trouble. The man kneeling with his head bowed was still groaning but there was now a strange whistling sound alternating with each indrawn breath. No one could fake that noise. He wasn’t going to be any trouble either. He just wished the sound would stop. Dunbar, lying on his side, was a dreadful white colour, lips bloodless.