There were more defeats in the early part of the campaign than victories but the vicious nature of the fighting had the advantage of killing off those who were unable or unwilling to grasp the new tactics. To his surprise most of the Purgators survived and even flourished. It was, supposed Cale, because they had broken with a life of complete obedience already – that was why they were Purgators in the first place. Something in him refused to accept that something else was just as important – their adoration of Cale. Gil saw it and regarded their faith in him as yet further evidence of his peculiar divinity. Cale was not holy, of course, not to be revered as a saint or prophet. He was not, so far as Gil understood Bosco, a person in the sense that even the most apostate Antagonist was a person. He was, in a sense, not really alive. He was the incarnation of a divine emotion. He was, perhaps, becoming an angel, pure in the way that emotions given absolute expression are pure. Everything else about him was in the process of being burnt away. He had to be human in order to be born and grow up. But that was not required any more and Gil could see Cale the boy disappearing in front of him. There were occasional flashes of what you might call a person: he would laugh at something ridiculous that happened in the camp or you could see his tongue sticking out the way you saw in a small boy when he was lost in concentration on some task – but less and less. No wonder then that the Purgators were drawn to him and tried to please him even at the cost of their own lives. IdrisPukke would have had a more mundane explanation. Cale hoarded the Purgators as he might pearls or diamonds. Sometimes, war being the unjust and drastic creature it is, those in whom he invested hopes took an arrow in the chest, the useless, by chance, thrived to irritate him another day. But they realized, even if they misunderstood his motives, that each one of them was important to him, more than important even. As week followed week followed week he slowly turned relentless defeat into stalemate, then occasional victory. Along the front he established twenty-three new semi-permanent forts to be supported by five major forts within fifty miles of each of them. Slowly he fought the Folk to a standstill, locking them in the veldt so that no supplies could reach them from the Antagonist ships (he could not prevent their landing on the endless inlets of the coast). On horseback the Folk could easily slip in and out of Cale’s front but no wagon larger than a small buggy could pass without using the roads that the semi-permanent forts controlled and which the Folk could now only rarely take and then not for long enough to let more than the occasional convoy through. Even this suited Cale. Hope, he had realized a long time since, was the real killer for most people. Hope made you weak; only expecting nothing from life could save you. But not even that would work for the Folk.
‘So,’ said Hooke. ‘You have a stalemate. No victories for them and none for us beyond holding these forts.’
‘Not at all,’ said Cale. ‘I mean to go on the offensive very soon.’
‘How? You don’t have the troops.’
‘No, but I’ll soon have the services of two great generals.’
‘Greater than you?’ mocked Hooke. ‘How could that be? Who are these paragons?’
‘General December and General January,’ said Cale.
While Cale was working to cut off the lifeblood of the Folk, Bosco was engaged in slowing the attempt by his enemies at the Pontificate to do the same to him. Instead of violence they used theology, and their means of putting a foot on his windpipe involved the commissioning of a conference instead of a blockade.
The theological question involved concerned oil and water. Only an omnipotent God could save a creature like man, so vicious, low and debased was his nature. Yet it was a tenet of central faith that the Hanged Redeemer was both man and God. How could this be possible? Until recently the problem had been dealt with by ignoring it but Redeemer Restorious, Bishop of Arden, had stirred things up by preaching the theory of Holy Emulsion. The Hanged Redeemer’s two natures were like, he claimed, oil mixed with water and stirred together. For a time during his life on earth, the mixture looked to the observer like a single fluid of one kind, but over time that liquid would separate into clearly definable oil and water again. It could be mixed but was always separate. ‘Nonsense!’ replied Bishop Redeemer Cyril of Salem. ‘The nature of the Hanged Redeemer was like water and wine – they are separate until they are mixed and become inseparable in a form that no power could reverse.’
Despite the bitterness of this disagreement neither Parsi nor Gant had the slightest interest in indulging the rancour of a pair of squabbling clerics until, during a brief period of lucidity, Pope Bento expressed a desire to resolve the issue. The reason why was lost in the fog that descended on his brain the following day, but Gant and Parsi had been given the authority to establish a conference to decide the matter wherever they saw fit. They saw fit to hold it in the Sanctuary because wherever such a commission was being held temporarily became subject to the presiding authorities – which in this case were Gant and Parsi. They would have the right to go anywhere in the Sanctuary and talk to anyone. You will understand now how very important in so many ways the issue of emulsification had become. Unfortunately for Bosco the deadly blow of the death of the three hundred had meant that even so great a tactician became subject to Swinedoll’s Law of Momentum: if you are not moving forwards you are moving backwards. He could now only retreat as slowly as possible. He had influence in Chartres but it was fragile, built over the years from many favours and with unreliable allies not easy to keep an eye on from the Sanctuary. Those favours were now being used up, and while the unreliable allies did not desert him they would not risk exerting themselves on his behalf until it was clearer how the struggle for power between Bosco and the two cardinals would work itself out. Gant and Parsi’s plan to hold the conference in the Sanctuary and do so within the month suddenly became unblocked in the Apostolic Camera and moved ahead without any serious opposition. This was all bad news for Bosco. His counter was to use up most of his remaining store of favours. A committee was set up in Chartres duly packed with those who for whatever reason either owed Bosco or were committed secretly to his belief in a reformed Redeemership. A mission to the veldt was dispatched and duly confirmed Cale’s great success. Gant and Parsi made an attempt to prevent it but failed. One reason was that the Redeemers required a victory to repair the morale of the faithful much tested during the long stalemate on the Eastern Front, morale that had been further damaged by rumours that the Antagonists had discovered a silver mine in Argentum so large that they could hire an entire army of Laconic mercenaries. The second reason was that while theology and politics were all very well, there was nothing like the defeat of an enemy to raise the spirits. And if the enemy was really more of a pest than a threat then the faithful could do with a reminder that the word ‘pest’ came from pestilence and that the lack of importance that had formerly been ascribed to the Folk had been a serious underestimate of the danger they truly represented. A new star in the firmament was just what was required and the name of that star was Cale. The implausibility of someone so very young being possessed of such great powers only added to the sense among the faithful that God himself had finally shown his hand.
With the veldt sealed off to all intents and purposes, Bosco was able to bring Cale back to the Sanctuary to prepare him for show at the conference. Bosco knew it was a gamble. Cale could still barely be relied on, his motives being so crepuscular. Gil had, of course, been writing to Bosco every few days with news of failures and ultimate success and always, always, his thoughts about Thomas Cale’s state of mind and soul. Cale’s actions had been exemplary but what was going on inside his heart? The most pressing theological concern for Bosco was not the nature of the mixture of human and divine in the Hanged Redeemer but its nature in Thomas Cale – water and wine or unholy emulsion?