‘No. We must delay his death until ... for several months at any rate – until we have some idea whether Cale can turn the Purgators.’
‘It’s risky to delay.’
‘It’s risky not to. We are midstream in a spate. It’s dangerous to go forwards, it’s dangerous to go back. Meanwhile I mean to spread Cale’s name and reputation. I want you to take him to Duffer’s Drift.’
‘Because?’
‘Because he will solve the problem.’
‘You seem very sure.’
‘Take him and see. Clearly you have less faith in the power of God’s exasperation than you ought.’
‘Mea culpa, Redeemer.’
Bosco sniffed, now out of sorts at Gil’s lack of zeal.
‘What about Hooke?’
‘Reluctant as I am to have my hand forced by Gant we must avoid provocation until Cale succeeds or fails. If Hooke is to die we must make a show of it, and we must swallow the humiliation like it or not by broadcasting it wide. Invite persons of note.’
There was a knock on the door and Cale was shown in. He was told he was to be sent south with Gil to deal with the Folk. He didn’t argue or even ask any questions.
‘I want him. Hooke, I mean,’ said Cale.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve read his tally and seen his drawings. Some may be what you say but his machine for storming walls looks right – maybe even the giant crossbow. There are good ideas everywhere. You said his water gate was a fine piece of work.’
‘He has offended the Pope.’
‘You intend to kill the Pope.’
‘Not so. But if I did I wouldn’t offend him first.’
‘Hooke’s engines could help you not to worry about offending him.’
Bosco sighed and walked over to the window. ‘There are many irons in the fire and unlimited kettles boiling over them. I have to balance conflicting needs.’
‘My needs come first.’
‘You are the resentment of God – not God Almighty himself. There’s a considerable difference, as you’ll learn if you push your luck too far.’ He laughed at Cale’s expression. ‘My dear, this is not a threat. If you fail, I fail with you.’
‘I used to think you were so powerful no one could stand against you.’
‘Well, you were wrong. We stand on the edge of a gnat’s wing, you and I. Let me say this. If you succeed at Duffer’s Drift then I can use the power this will give both of us to delay Hooke’s execution. I don’t have the power to stop it and that’s that. Set him to work while you’re away. Succeed at Duffer’s Drift with your Purgators and who knows? It’s in your hands.’
*
It took Cale, along with Redeemer Gil and two others, six days to reach the Drift. They had made more than seventy miles each day, changing ponies at horse stations placed at twenty-mile intervals until the last eighty miles, where Antagonist outriders were causing too much trouble for anything permanent. When they arrived, Cale was exhausted, his shoulder was killing him and his finger hurt like hell itself, as bad almost as the day Solomon Solomon had cut it away in the Red Opera.
‘Get some sleep, sir,’ said Gil as Cale was shown to a tent made from blue sacking. Cale never slept easily but two minutes served when he hit the hideously uncomfortable cot laid for him. Gil woke him with a cup of foul-tasting liquid eight hours later. It occurred to Cale as he drank that he must now be as soft as lard compared to only a few months earlier. Then he would have thought this muck was bearable.
‘This,’ he said to Gil, who was watching him thoughtfully, ‘is bloody horrible.’
Gil looked genuinely disconcerted. ‘I’m sorry.’ He took the mug and tasted it to see what was wrong. ‘It tastes all right to me.’ They looked at each other – a pointless exchange. ‘Go and have a look around the camp. Get the measure. There’ll be something here to eat when we come back.’
‘Can’t wait.’
The veldt of the Transvaal is a wide-open prairie four hundred miles to the south-west of the Sanctuary. The people there, who call themselves the Folk, farm and hunt across its great spaces and are recent converts to Antagonism. For that reason and because they are an odd bunch by any standards, their beliefs are rigid and intense. They have two ranks: the ordinary Folkhusbands and a leader, the Folk Maister, now nearly always a Predikant, or pastor, who never has authority over more than a thousand souls. Not having been of the Redeemer faith before their conversion and having had little to do with it, their loathing and hatred of their monkish assailants were intense to the point of insanity. It was said, an exaggeration of course, that the Folk were born onto a saddle and with a bow in their hands. The trench warfare of the Eastern Front was useless as a model for fighting such people in such terrain. The Folk did not fight in armies but in commandos of between a hundred and four hundred men – but often less and sometimes more. If they were attacked they just retreated into the endless veldt. A trench system against such methods was like trying to kill a fly with an axe.
It had become the Redeemers’ forgotten war. Most of their troops were bogged down in the great attrition of the Eastern Front. But even if there had been more in the way of Redeemer soldiers there was no obvious way of using superiority of numbers against such a fluid and skilled group fighting on ground they knew and loved. In addition, the Redeemers used cavalry rarely and were not very good when they did. In a straight fight it was true a force of Redeemers would annihilate even a vastly superior number of the Folk. But they never gave them a straight fight.
Because the war on the veldt was regarded by the Pope and his close advisors as of minor importance, Bosco and Princeps had been allowed greater freedom to decide on new tactics, something always considered with suspicion on the Eastern front. Even before Bosco and Princeps had been drawn to attack the Materazzi by Bosco’s desperate need to recapture Cale, they had changed the conduct of the war against the Folk in dramatic fashion. A string of thirty forward forts had been established. They were not forts in any normal sense with solid walls and defined defensive barriers, but, so it was intended, fluid defensive positions to guard all the most important strategic points in the veldt. Behind them would be eight much larger conventional forts from which each of the forward positions could be reinforced when they inevitably came under attack. It was the most original plan in Redeemer military history. Unfortunately the problem with all great plans is that they must be put into practice. Lacking the presence of Princeps, now moved to the more pressing assault on the Materazzi, the execution of the new tactics by his clueless replacement created a terrible crisis. Instead of large numbers of Redeemers standing in trenches defending territory the Folk had no intention of attacking, they had now ventured out into territory where none of their hideous military virtues were of any help and all of their weaknesses could be punishingly exploited. The result was a change from a war that was going nowhere to one that was coming close to collapsing into defeat. The advance forts were relentlessy attacked and taken over by the Folk with heavy casualties for the Redeemers and few for their assailants. When they attempted to retake the forts the Redeemers again took heavy losses. But the Folk always knew when to make their retreat quickly so that their casualties were light. A few weeks later, having attacked the forts furthest away towards the Drakensberg they would be back and the whole bloody process would start again. Bloody, that is, almost solely for the Redeemers. Duffer’s Drift had won its lamentable name because it was the most important of the advanced forts and had been lost to the Folk so often.