Nation shall send ducks unto nation, Gannadius thought. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Well, I’d better be getting on board; I don’t want to miss the boat.’
‘What was all that about?’ Theudas asked as his uncle joined him on deck. Theudas had reserved a place for them both among the coils of anchor-rope at the stern. ‘And what are you carrying a dead duck around for?’
‘Don’t ask,’ Gannadius replied. ‘I’m delivering it. Apparently it marks the dawn of a new era.’
‘Really? By the time we get there it’s going to smell awful.’
Gannadius dropped the duck into the hollow middle of a pile of rope and dumped his satchel down on top of it. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Four days old is the prime of life for a dead duck. Well, prime of death. Whatever. Stop looking at me like that, will you? It’s just a perfectly ordinary commercial sample. If it was a bit of carpet or a bag of nails, you wouldn’t think twice about it.’
Theudas sighed and squatted down on top of the rope. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Only this strikes me as a funny time to be sending trade samples from here to the Island, what with this war and striking camp and everything. You’d think they’d have other things on their minds.’
‘Apparently not.’ Gannadius leaned his back against the rail. He knew he was going to be seasick sooner or later, so being as close to the side as possible was a necessary precaution. ‘Nothing wrong with optimism,’ he continued, provided nobody expects me to invest money in it. It’s almost uplifting in a way, this faith in the future of his people.’
Theudas shook his head. ‘Either your man’s as mad as a hare,’ he said, ‘or they’re playing a funny joke on you. Either way, if I were you I’d chuck the thing over the side now, before it stinks the whole ship out and we’re the ones who get put over the side.’
‘Don’t be such a misery,’ Gannadius told him. ‘We’re finally getting out of here, aren’t we? I’d gladly festoon myself from head to foot with putrescent ducks if it meant getting away from here and back to civilisation. Not,’ he added, ‘that it was anything like I expected – well, for one thing we’re still alive, which is considerably more than I expected when we were squelching about in that foul muddy swamp, being chased by the provincial office. Actually, they’ve been extremely decent to us, according to their lights. Lugging about the odd dead waterfowl is probably the least we can do in return.’
‘Decent?’ Theudas looked at him with disgust. ‘You really don’t care any more, do you?’
Gannadius was silent for a long time. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that I do. Probably it’s because I wasn’t actually there – for the Fall, I mean; I didn’t see the same things you did. Oh, I know what I’ve been told; I believe it too, in a way. But all that happened to me, personally, was that I moved from the City to the Island, then from the Island to Shastel – where I’ve got a good job, people treat me with respect, and damn it, yes, I’m happy. I thought seeing all this again -’ He waved his arm in the direction of the ruined City, without turning his head ‘- would make it all different, make me start hating them again. But it didn’t, somehow. When I look at them now, all I can see is a bunch of people who are so worried by the threat of being invaded that they’re packing up their lives in barrels and sacks and moving on. Exactly what I did. Somehow, I can’t hate people who’re so like me.’
Theudas smiled grimly. ‘I can,’ he said.
‘Yes, but you’re young and full of energy.’ Gannadius shifted slightly; his back was getting uncomfortable, pressed against the rail. ‘When you get to my age, you’ll find it’s fatally easy to forget to hate all your enemies all the time; and once you’ve slipped up and not hated one of them, it makes it almost impossibly hard to hate the rest of them. You allow yourself to start thinking things like, The ordinary people are all right, it’s their leaders who’re responsible for all the evil stuff they do; and then one day you meet one of their leaders and he turns out to be almost human, and that’s a cruel blow, like a broken finger would be to someone who plays the harp for a living.’ He shifted his back again. ‘It was odd seeing Temrai,’ he said. ‘Reminded me of once when I was young and I saw a shark that had got itself caught up in some mackerel-fishers’ nets; they had it strung up by its tail, all stiff and dead, and they were cutting it up. It looked a whole lot smaller than I expected it to be.’
Theudas closed his eyes. ‘Odd you should say that,’ he said. ‘I thought the same thing, seeing him again. Of course, when you see someone when you’re a kid and again when you’ve grown up, that’s often the way. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing Temrai strung up. I think I could get to like him hanging by his feet.’
‘Your privilege,’ Gannadius replied, muffling a yawn. ‘I never said you should stop hating him; after all, you’ve got cause. All I’m saying is, I’m not so sure as I was that I have.’
‘You could hate him for my sake. Isn’t that what we’re taught, love your friends’ friends and hate their enemies?’
‘Oh, all right,’ Gannadius said. ‘For your sake I hate him and I hope his pet lizard dies.’
(A curse, Gannadius realised; I’m laying a curse on someone I don’t hate for the sake of someone young and soaked through with the lust for revenge. That’s what Alexius did once, and look what happened. Gods, I hope this headache I’m getting is just a headache -
– And he saw behind his eyes the shark, the fat and flesh flayed away from the framework of its bones, like the frames of a ship before they start planking up the sides. A fine feast they were preparing, these cooks he could see; shark and bear steaks, and eagles cooked whole on spits like chickens, slowly turning in front of the heat of the fire, wolves roasted and stuffed with apple and chestnut, great snakes gutted and made into the skins of blood sausages, a flitch of smoked lion hanging from a hook in the ceiling, a whole dinner of predators – he could see them laying strips of tender-loin of leopard in the bottom of the pie-dish, and bottling giant Colleon spiders like fat plums -)
‘What do you mean?’ Theudas said. ‘Temrai hasn’t got a pet lizard.’
‘You see?’ Gannadius replied. ‘It’s starting to work already.’
Bardas Loredan was sure he’d watched the arrow all the way, from the moment it appeared as a tiny speck in the sky until it actually hit him; an unbearably long time, but not long enough for him to move a foot to his right and get out of its way, although he did his best. Curious, he thought, at the moment of impact, how time can work like that. It’s enough to make a man believe in the Principle.
When the shock of the arrow on the cheekpiece of his helmet pushed his head round – it was like being slapped hard across the face – he was sure he must have died (it’s customary to die first) but apparently he’d made a mistake (in your case we’ll make an exception). Instead, he could feel a sharp pain in his temples; and if he understood the rules correctly, the dead are excused pain, as a sort of consolation prize. As he turned his head back again, he was aware of the jagged edges of the small hole the arrow had punched in the steel slicing painlessly along the line of his jaw to the edge of his lip, and the hot trickle of blood inside the padded helmet, quite remarkably like the warm, wet feel of piss running down his leg when he was a little boy. Delayed shock; he staggered briefly, found his feet and stood up straight again.
They’d attacked without warning; a distant hiss, like oil in a hot frying pan, and a quite lovely pattern of arrows rising against the noon sun, like a large flock of doves put up off a stubble field. It had taken him a few moments to work out where the arrows were coming from – a fold of dead ground between the column and the opposite ridge of the valley. This was advanced archery, shooting extreme-range volleys at a target they couldn’t even see, something the provincial office’s auxiliary bowmen didn’t have the skill or the confidence to do. For the rest of the column it had been terrifying, heartstopping, this business of being killed by an enemy you hadn’t even seen. In Bardas’ case, it only made him slightly nostalgic for the mines.