‘Marvellous,’ he said, when they asked him what the matter was. ‘They order Loredan to leave us alone, and we have to go and intercept the letter. Any more intelligence coups like that, and we’re finished.’
He explained what had happened, and read out the relevant part of the letter. Nobody said anything for a long time.
‘What if we forwarded it on?’ someone suggested. ‘Close up the seal with a hot knife; maybe nobody would notice it’s already been opened.’
Temrai laughed. ‘Give the provincial office some credit,’ he said. ‘Imperial couriers have to know five different levels of security code, a different one for each class of message. If they can’t give the right code when they hand over the message, they’re strangled on the spot and the message is assumed to be a fake. Imperial seals are painted with lacquer after the wax has cooled; if you try to doctor them with a hot knife, the lacquer burns and makes a mess of the seal. I’ve even heard it said that for important messages they use a special kind of ink that changes colour once it’s been exposed to light, so even if you get hold of a duplicate seal they’ll know at a glance if the letter’s been opened. No, we’ve done enough damage for one day, let’s not make it any worse by giving him reason to think we’re up to something.’ He rolled up the letter, put it back in its brass tube and let it fall to the ground. ‘If I were a superstitious man, I’d probably give up now. Opinions, anybody?’
‘We could forget all about making a stand,’ said Sildocai, the hero of the recent victory. ‘If building this fortress makes them think we’re staying put, then it’ll have done its job. Meanwhile we pack up and slip away in the middle of the night, head north, try to get across the mountains before they catch up with us. They’d have to be crazy to follow us after that. Don’t dismiss it out of hand, Temrai. I know, it’s horrible country the other side of the mountains, cold and wet and bleak – that’s why nobody lives there, it’s not worth invading. But if we go, we’ll still have some sort of a life. If we stay here, we’ll probably die. As decisions go, I’d say that’s an easy one.’
‘It’s what we were planning to do,’ someone else pointed out, ‘when we left the City plain. We all agreed on it then. Nothing’s really changed since.’
Temrai shook his head. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘The difference is, Loredan and his army are just the other side of the Swan River; if we try to run away, he’ll catch us. We’ll be fighting out in the open; we won’t be able to use the trebuchets.’
‘But we outnumber them,’ Sildocai pointed out. ‘And let’s face it, we’ve just proved that our horsemen can make monkeys out of their heavy infantry. That’s assuming they catch us, which isn’t certain by any means.’
‘They’ll catch us,’ Temrai said. ‘Count on it.’
‘What you’re saying doesn’t make sense,’ someone else objected. ‘We’ve just won a great victory, right? And – no disrespect to Sildocai here – we’re all agreed that if anything it’s made our position a damn sight worse. Suppose we hold still here and somehow we manage to beat off Loredan’s attack; marvellous, they’ll send another army – that’s as well as this enormous bloody army that Loredan’s supposed to be waiting for. It’s pointless; for every one of them we kill, we get three in his place. Are you suggesting we kill every adult male in the Empire? Even if we could, there’s so many of them our children would be old men before they were through with it. We can’t win; and if you can’t win, you either give up or try to run away. Let’s at least try to run away, Temrai, while we still can. We’ve got nothing to lose.’
Temrai shook his head, without stopping to think. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We stay here. If we run away across the mountains, he’ll follow us. He’ll always be there. We’ll fight him here, and we’ll win; then we’ll decide what to do next.’ He frowned, as if trying to hear something. ‘They know that if he fights us here, he may lose – that’s why they tried to stop him. So we’ll do what they don’t want us to do; first rule of war, that is.’
Sildocai looked up in surprise. ‘You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? A moment ago, the letter not getting through was a disaster.’
Temrai smiled. ‘I’ve had a few minutes to think about it,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s an opportunity; it just looked like a disaster until I had a chance to get the skin off it. No, they specifically said in the letter don’t engage the enemy, we can’t risk any more defeats. You said yourself a moment ago, we outnumber them. Loredan will be attacking a defended position with inferior numbers. We can win this.’
‘Have we actually established that he’s going to attack?’ somebody asked. ‘I wouldn’t, for the reasons you’ve just stated.’
‘Of course he’ll attack,’ Temrai replied. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t have written and told him not to. No, he’s coming, and that’s good. We’ll beat him, and then we’ll go.’
‘You’re wrong-’ Sildocai started to say.
Temrai held up his hand. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘That’s all you’ve got to do. I know I can beat him; I’ve done it before, when the odds were against me. I can do it again. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.’
After that, there didn’t seem to be much point continuing the discussion.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘It’s an awkward one, and no mistake,’ said the engineer, scratching his head. ‘You can see where they’ve dug a canal to bring the river round the other side; they’ve made it into an island, effectively. Suppose we bridge the river; there’s a stockade tight up against the water – well, we can breach that with our artillery – assuming they let us, they’ve got more engines than we have and better ones, too – and then we’ve got the cliffs to get up. There’s only the one path and that’s going to be no fun at all with all those gates and traps. But say we get up the path to the plateau; there’s two more stockades, out of range of our artillery so we can’t lay down a barrage first, and then – assuming we get that far – a straightforward pitched battle on the top where they’ll outnumber us at least three to two, depending on how many we’ve lost getting that far. If you want my considered opinion, forget it.’
The wind was fierce and fresh on the hilltop they were standing on. At this distance, the fortress looked beautiful, with the sun glinting on the water.
‘It can be done,’ Bardas replied. ‘I know it can be done, because he’s done it.’
The engineer frowned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t follow.’
Bardas pointed. ‘You see that?’ he said. ‘That’s as close as he could get to a replica of the City; he’s effectively rebuilt Perimadeia, right here on the plains. And whatever else that might be, it’s as clear an admission of defeat as you’ll ever want to see.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ the engineer said doubtfully. ‘I never saw Perimadeia. All I can tell you is, it’s as near as dammit the perfect use of position and resources. Besides,’ he added, ‘wasn’t the only reason the City fell because some bastard opened the gates?’
Bardas shook his head. ‘It should have fallen before that, only I cheated.’ He sat down on a rock, picked a stem of grass and chewed it. ‘We’ll start with a bombardment, all around where they’ve got the swing-bridge; we’ll bring up siege towers and – what do you call them, those roofed-over sections, like the tops of wagons, made out of hides stretched over hoops?’
‘I know what you mean,’ the engineer said.
‘Anyway,’ Bardas went on, ‘them; there’s a blind spot, see? If we concentrate our artillery and knock out the trebuchets covering the point, and then bring them forward to take out the defences on the path-’
‘But he’ll just bring up more engines,’ the engineer objected. ‘Take ’em to bits, carry ’em round, put ’em back together again; they’ll have it down to a fine art by now, being a nomadic people and all.’
‘You’ll just have to make sure they don’t get the chance,’ Bardas replied. ‘And it oughtn’t to be a problem. There simply isn’t enough room to put in enough engines where they need to go. His mistake is, he’s gone for a circular ground-plan. He can have as many engines as he likes around the other two hundred and forty degrees of the circle, but they won’t be any danger to us because the angles are wrong.’