344 - A thousand men may dream

From: Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e
Demarch and First General First
Currently Residing ad hoc in Osijitz, Arko

To: Veresinga Shae-Rusha
Advocacy Workfast Kyora-e, Shae-Rusha and Sarakisan
5 Third-Diagonal-From-the-Second-Wall St., Hirina

verekina 39 1551

Dear Veresinga:

I have need of your services again. The Servant of Aratai and others were not at all cowed by their last such proposal going so overwhelmingly charcoal, alas. They’re right back at me, this time proposing that Assembly censure me for having Chirel in the chamber in which Assembly was meeting in Thara-e. Apparently I am not allowed symbolic acts. I enclose the relevant bits of the transcript, including what I said when I was asked to explain at the time.

Now I’ve received the requisite letter from Artira asking me to explain again. I’ll quote just the question:

“For what reason exactly did you don the sword during a session of Assembly, i.e. what was the intention behind it?”

Will you please throw together the draft of a letter back to them about it? If you need more information from me, grill me in writing and I’ll answer all, by the quick way.

Warm regards,
Chevenga

The land grew flatter, making distant houses and villages and trees visible so far away that they were blue in the haze. The empty road before us threw up wavering heat-ghosts. Behind me, my army stretched back too far to see its end, and was in fine voice. I’d put out orders that the different peoples should teach each other their marching songs, translating where necessary, to keep things interesting. An army that doesn’t march singing, the saying goes, marches to defeat.

“Chevenga!” The yell was too full of exuberation to make me tense and reach for Chirel. “Chevengaaaaah!!” It was Diyadesai’s voice. “I’ve invented something!” She came running and scrambled up the ladder, astonishingly fast for her age, reminding me of Sukala scampering around the walls of her cave. Her hair stuck in flying tendrils all around her face.

“Chevenga, I’ve got a new idea! We could sail! We could get the foot warriors! Well, one needs to steer, but... The troops could rest! Oh, and their gear! I built a model! But I couldn’t bring it up this heaving beast... it’s a great idea, you’ve just got to see it, come with me!” False modesty was never a weakness of hers. At least she had not come in while I’d been in the carriage accepting the fealty of some kowtowing Arkan mayor, who looked as if he wanted to serve me as Abatzas had, and then having Reknarja whisper in my ear, like the director of a play, “More arrogant. You act as if they’re equals, Gods of my Ancients… you’ve got to be more arrogant.”

“Coming, Diyadesai.” I climbed down and went with her to her inventors’ carriage. As ever, it was dark inside and full of things bubbling and steaming, a range of foul smells as wide-ranging as an Aitzas restaurant’s appetizer platter, heaped agglomerations of things that were obviously parts, and devices that defied all attempts at comprehension.

“Oh, watch out for the fish glue....” There was a noxious-looking puddle on her work-table. “It’s a little stinky.” How she could tell, I had no idea. “But this... if it works full size...”

The model, sized like a child’s toy but beautiful and precisely-made as any artist’s work, could either be seen as a cart with a mast and sail, or a squarish sailboat with wheels. But she gave it the brush-off. “Feh. Nothing. That was my first idea, but it’s not the one I wanted to show you.” Brilliant people, I’ve noticed, love to show off not only the results of their work, but the process. The second one had a wheel of sails, like the cloth windmills that we were seeing in this flat country, where wind sweeps through as smooth and steady as it does five hundred man-lengths up.

“It was the roads that gave me the idea. Oh yes, and those Arkan mill-things. Look!” She picked it up and gently spun the pinwheel with her finger, showing me the underside. By cogwheels, that reminded me of the Great Press, the motion drove the two front cartwheels.

“See, the wind turns it—and the wind here is directional—and the roads so smooth... If I build one full-size it should carry ten warriors and their gear. This little one is very fast even with weights but my calculations show that with ten warriors and their gear it would still only be a marching pace, given an average wind on this plain. So the warriors are moving at march pace… but idle. One of them has to steer, but we’d still get rested troops to the battlefield!”

Now I understood the meaning. Generals dream of such things. I’d be able to eliminate that one day of having my army pinned in one place before and after battles, yet still rest them, at least on ground where it was steadily windy. Such as much of eastern Arko. I wouldn’t have to slow-march to time my meetings with the Arkans, as I was now, which was making me itch… “Build a full-sized one. How long will it take? Whatever you need...” I wrote and signed her an open requisition note, whatever she wanted from anywhere.

“I don’t need to build a new cart... I just need to build the wind machines... and the gears... rig the ropes... seven days and I’ll have a full size—”

“That’s too slow.” To build one, and then, if it worked well, enough to do what we envisioned, would take half a moon or more, a big bite out of fighting season. “If one person could build it in seven days, could seven people build it in one?”

“Hmmm... sure… Yes. One day? The glue won’t be set but it could be pegged instead... Yes. Get me enough people to build the wind engines...but if the wind fails... it could still be pushed like a baggage cart... easily...two men... perhaps...”

“Can you make it so that a bunch of them can be folded up somehow and carried on a horse-drawn cart?” It wouldn’t always be windy.

“I can’t build a folding cart, Chevenga, that’s silly...” She looked at me, cocking her head one way and her brow the other way, both at once, something I’ve only ever seen one person do. “Oh do you mean just the wind machine? Surely... it’s the gearing that’s the hardest part and I figured that out. Any wheelwright should be able to make lots of the gears...” It’s the way of brilliant people also, I’ve noticed, to have their minds fly off in any direction, sometimes several at once, apparently forgetting there is someone less brilliant lamely trying to follow.

“Can you make them quick to disassemble? Like good siege engines? We will not be in places where there’s good wind all the time, so we have to think about how to transport them.” Sometimes brilliant people still need things spelled out.

“Oh, hmmm. Well... look… they could be stepped like a mast I suppose so you could take it all down... make each vane pegged into place... not that hard a problem... if I took the—”

I cut in. If I stood listening while she thought aloud as much as she was inclined, I’d be here all day. “Think about that... you have my note. Do what you must. Oh wait…” I looked at the model. It should be built light. “Get the cloth and the wires and the material for the spars from the A-niah. Go to Niku, show her this and say it has to be built light, and she’ll know what you need.”

“The A-niah? The oh... ha ha, right, of course. I’ll have a full size for you to test tomorrow... did you want to see what I was thinking about last night, too?”

“Another idea?” Brilliant people are limitless in what comes out of them, like springs.

“Well... these things are slow... but the gears... what if you put something like spinning swords out front instead of vanes standing upright? Might that be useful? I mean, you’d have to get something to push it... but...”

“Like a galloping horse? Or team of them?” Part of me leapt at the idea; another part was cautious. “Tell you what, Diya: do up a little model of that, too. I want to see how it moves before I think of taking it into battle. But the wind-driven one, for transport, is priority.”

“A-e kras.” I got off her carriage and breathed deep.

Sure enough, she had it together the next evening, too late for the wind, alas, so we tried it the next morning when it picked up, hissing over the wheat. Sure enough, it took nine full-geared warriors, an inventor and an extra set of war-gear (for accuracy) at a good clip, a little faster than marching, in truth. Krero and Sach and Kunarda and the rest all laughed and slapped hands, then lurched sideways, grabbing the rail, as I threw over the steering-stick just to do it to them. “We’re building ten thousand of these,” I said, then added, to the dropped jaws, “No point in having the horse warriors rested if the horses aren’t… let them ride on the wind, too.”

We did the half-day march and encamped, and the Arkans came in late afternoon. They were somewhat fewer than fifty thousand, as I’d had some of their converging columns of foot cut down by cavalry before they could arrive. I had enough that I could let that many off for the battle.

The sky had turned overcast with low clouds, so I had no A-niah scouts, but there was a rise to the north from which we could see how they deployed. The general, my spies had let me know, was one Kormenas Ibraken, who I’d hardly heard of. It was a fairly traditional Arkan pattern, with horse (and probably most of the elite horse) in the centre and at the ends of the wings and four more two-hundred units behind in reserve, heavy foot joining them up with a full line of archers and javelineers behind, to aim over. I saw nothing in particular to counter the mamokal, but they might bring that out in the morning.

We did the plan up after dinner. This land was flat as a table-top, with not even a river or a village breaking it; on such ground, the general has to create his own complexities, to trip up the enemy. Without going into such detail as will bore all but other generals, we made our judgment as to whether we had good enough signaling and precision to mount multiple diversions. Things would happen to alter it, too, requiring fast and flexible thinking on our side; that would fall to me, of course. They avowed their trust in me.

As we parted ways, Sinimas asked to speak with me. “This will be your first pitched battle on Arkan soil proper,” he said, when we were private in my tent office. “What is your plan?”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” I said. “Surely Filias mentioned how my answering that question got him in so much trouble? I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I’ve gotten in so much trouble already, I can’t see how it would matter,” he said. “May I ask at least this: when do you plan to attack? Or will you sit back and let General Ibraken initiate?”

“Oh, you know me,” I said. “Sitting back is not my style. More I cannot tell you… though you might note that we have never once attacked by night except to break sieges. I can lie to you all I wish, though I have to tell you it goes against the grain, but I cannot hide my habits from the careful observer.”

“You Hayel-spawn,” he said. “You’re telling me that because you plan a night attack… no! You plan a day attack, but want to get me thinking it’s at night so that Kormenas orders them to stay up and get no sleep after a long day’s march… no! You… forzak you, you leave me no way to tell which!”

“I’m sorry I cannot tell you more, but I have other business now anyway, Sinimas,” I said smiling. “Have a good night.”

Next I met with Megan, and mapped out the Arkan camp for her. “Expect your spies to bring back rumours of Shchevenga sightings,” she said, with a dark grin. (That’s the Zak way of mispronouncing my name.) “More than one of them.” I fell asleep easily.

I am in a building that is obviously Arkan, but somehow softer and more nurturing than most Arkan places. I hear the gentle plucking of a sweet string instrument; the air is full of a flowery incense; I hear voices but they are quiet and tender, like those of healers. A mule of pure white walks through the corridor, its hooves faintly echoing.

A lanky man sits before me, in the eye-sheltering brass-rimmed spectacles and ink-stained apron of a Great Press man, his sleeves caught up tight at the elbows so not as to catch in the gears. His fessas-length hair is red-blond, an odd thing for an Arkan; there is something impish about his face. I cannot tell how tall he is until I sit beside him; I guess he is at least a head taller than me. He has the hands of someone who has worked with them all his life.

“Something you should know,” he says. “As there is a Fenjitzas, there is a Fenjitza.”

“A woman?” I say. “Allowed to claim a bond to the Divine, in Arko?”

“Remember,” he says. He seizes my hands, but there is such constructiveness to it, and such absence of threat, that I have no inclination to wrench them loose. “Do you sing, Shefen-kas?” I don’t know what he means, but I think of the army, roaring out “Under the Lamplight,” and Riji’s quiet elegant song in the Ring at midnight, and the uniformly-blond boys of the Mezem choir. I think of Kallijas’s clear deep voice, singing Minakis to the Fields of Honour, which I have now seen. I wonder if this fessas means the euphemism for sex; there is that in his blue-grey eyes, too.

“Arko sings of illness… of disease,” he says. I remember that Arkan doctors are fessas. “You hear it.” They cause much worse pain to themselves, I repeat in my thoughts.

“I hear the singing of pain,” I say.

He tightens his grip on my hands and pulls me closer to him. “Shefen-kas, even if we are but a paper’s width distant from you, you do not see us, unless you are open to us… unless your soul is ripped open. These…” He holds my hands up before my face. “When they hold your children, when they take weapons on the battlefield, you know what they are. It is not just sex, it is power that Arkans are hiding.” His hands, naked, grow gloves in a shimmer, which I feel on mine as a momentary itch of cloth; they then are gone. “They hide their own power, from each other, but mostly from themselves. There is a reason only the Imperator goes naked-handed. A thousand men may dream, and only one will be open enough for me to touch. I may inspire many to start on the road, but how many follow the road long enough to answer another person’s prayers?”

Though I am afraid, I say, “Rip me open.”

“You’re not making it easy, being such a forzak fool of an athye.” He points out a window, and I see the village, from which all residents have fled and which my army’s encampment has engulfed, so that we can use their wells, once we’ve made some captive Arkan drink from each to test for poison. He points to a building with a sun-disc; a temple.

I spin awake, trembling. It is pitch dark. We fight at dawn… At least I did not start enough to wake Niku or Vriah. I got up and threw on my robe. I had to go there, whatever the sentries said. They came with me. I borrowed a torch-hook to go into the little temple, to see its frescoed walls. I searched for something, without knowing what it was, knowing I’d know only when I found it.

There was one of a woman, naked but for white-blond hair that covered her decorously, but also wreathed around her as if it had no weight, and was prehensile, gripping talismans—a bird, a sun-medallion, a glass sand-timer, a chain circlet, and others I did not know, in its tendrils. Her eyes were cobalt blue. I froze. I could not breathe.