the first place.
There'd be a man doing his job, wearing his clothes and answering to his name, but he'd be a complete and irrelevant stranger.
'Vaatzes.' Someone calling for him. He pressed his back to the tree trunk and slid up it to his feet. 'Over here,' he called out.
He recognized the face, but couldn't put a name to it. 'You're wanted,' the face said. 'Staff meeting.'
'What, another one?' Ziani scowled. 'What's the point? There's nothing to talk about.'
Whoever-it-was shrugged. 'He wants to see you. Over there, by that big rock at the edge of the water.'
Ziani nodded, and started to walk. Valens probably just wanted someone to bully (are you sure the map's accurate? Can you be certain that's what the journal said, and was the merchant telling the truth? To which he'd reply, no, of course not; and the Duke would scowl horribly at him. Presumably it had some therapeutic value; in which case, he was happy to oblige. Like Miel Ducas, he lived only to serve).
'I know you can't vouch for the accuracy of the map' (well; nearly right), 'but maybe you can cast your mind back and remember if there was anything in the journals…' Ziani nodded, allowing his mind to disengage, while saying the right things to keep Valens reasonably happy. Would it matter terribly much if he made up a few spurious diary entries? On balance, better not to.
'The food position's fairly straightforward,' Valens was saying to somebody else. 'Tomorrow we start eating the horses. Ever since I realized how much time we'd lost getting over that fucking mountain, I've been banking on the horses to get us across this desert. In which capacity they do it, as transport or as provisions, doesn't really matter at this stage. We've got nothing left for them to pull or carry, and if we do get to the other side, we won't need them desperately. Either the Cure Hardy'll take us in and look after us, or they'll slaughter us. Besides, if we don't kill the horses, they'll starve anyway. The fodder's completely gone, and they won't get far on a bellyful of oasis grass. It's that coarse, wiry stuff mostly, they won't eat it even when they're famished. It'd be good if we could keep a few of the thoroughbreds as presents for our hosts. They were quite keen on a few to improve their bloodlines. We'll start with the scraggiest specimens and leave the best till last. Common sense. Next on the agenda, casualties. Anybody interested in the figures, or shall we skip and go on?'
They skipped. Someone started talking earnestly about watch rotations. Ziani tried to concentrate on what he was saying, to keep his mind from dwelling on what ought to be about to happen. Apparently, they were presently working to a six-shift rotation, but wouldn't it be much better to go to seven shifts, thereby allowing each duty officer an extra half-hour's sleep, even though it would mean using more officers? The benefit of this approach…
Ziani never got to find out what the benefit was likely to be. The first thing he noticed was a head turning; then another, then four or five more, and the watch rotation enthusiast shut up in the middle of a sentence and tried to peer over Valens' shoulder to see what everybody was looking at.
What's the matter? Ziani thought. Never seen a running man before? Whoever he was, he was going flat out, veering precariously to avoid people in his way, or jumping over their legs if they didn't shift quickly enough. When he reached the rock and the general staff, he only just managed to keep from toppling over into the water. He looked round for Valens, and gasped, 'Dust-cloud.'
No further explanation needed. 'Where?' Valens snapped, jumping up like a roe deer startled out of a clump of bracken. The runner was too breathless to speak; he pointed.
(Well, now, Ziani thought; and in his mind's eye the porch door opened.)
An orderly defense, according to the big brown book Valens had grown up with (Precepts of War, in which is included all manner of stratagems and directions for the management of war, at all times and in all places, distilled from the best authorities and newly illustrated with twenty-seven woodcuts), must be comprised of five elements: a strong position well prepared, proper provision of food and water, good supply of arms, a sufficient and determined garrison and a disciplined and single-minded command. Precepts of War had been three times a week, usually sandwiched in between rhetoric and the lute, and had consisted of copying out from the book into a notebook. The five elements of an orderly defense were as much a part of him as being right-handed.
As they watched the dust-cloud swelling, he ran through them one more time in his mind. Position: open on all sides. Provisions: none. Arms: all those barrels of carefully reclaimed arrows they'd left behind with the carts. Garrison: a mess. Command…
So much for his education. The cloud was rolling in, a strange and beautiful thing, sparkling, swirling, indistinct. Faintly he could hear the jingling of metal, like bells or wind-chimes. He had seen and heard approaching armies before, but this time everything felt different, strangely new and unknown.
'We've done everything we can,' someone was reassuring him. 'The men are in position.'
He wanted to laugh. There was a thin curtain of cavalry, little more than a skirmish line; behind that, the infantry and dismounted dragoons were drawn up in front of the stand of spindly trees that fringed the oasis. Behind them, the civilians. He knew what the Mezentines would do. Light cavalry to engage and draw off the horsemen. Heavy cavalry to punch through the foot soldiers and send them scrambling back as far as they could go, themselves forming the clamp that would crush the civilians back to the edge of the water. From there it would be a simple matter of surrounding the oasis and pressing in, slowly and efficiently killing until there was nobody left. There were other ways in which it could be played out; he could abandon the oasis and run, in which case the Mezentines with their superior mobility would surround them in the open, or he could attack and be shredded on their lance-points, with a brief flurry of slaughter afterward.
They were trying to tell him things, details of the defense, who was commanding which sector, how many cavalry they'd managed to scrape together for him. He pretended to listen.
Visible now; he could make out individual horses and riders, although there was precious little to distinguish one from another. He was impressed; the Mezentines had managed to cross the mountain and the desert in remarkably good shape, and they held their formations as precisely as a passing-out parade. Clearly they'd found a way of coping with the difficulties that had defeated him, and he could think of no terribly good reason why he should add to their problems by trying to kill or injure a handful of them before the inevitable took its course. It was obvious that they were superior creatures, therefore deserving victory; even so, it did occur to him to wonder how they'd contrived to get this far in such astonishingly good order-as if they'd known, rather better than he had, where they were going and what they were likely to have to face. But that was impossible…
'They'll offer a parley,' someone was telling him. 'They won't just attack without trying to arrange a surrender first. You never know, they might offer terms…'
Valens grinned. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'Unless my eyesight's so poor I can't see the wagons full of food they'd need to get us back across the desert alive. No, they've come to finish us off, simple as that.'
'We'll let them know they've been in a fight,' someone else asserted. Valens couldn't be bothered to reply.
He'd chosen a point in the sand, a dune with its edge ground away by the wind. When they reached that point, he'd give the order for his cavalry screen to advance. It'd be automatic, like a sear tripping a tumbler, and then the rest of the process would follow without the need of any further direction. He'd considered the possibility of telling the cavalry to clear out-get away, head off for the next oasis, in the hope that the Mezentines would be too busy with the massacre to follow them. There was a lot to be said for it: several hundred of his men would have a chance of escaping, instead of being slaughtered with the rest. He wasn't sure why he'd rejected it, but he had. Maybe it was just that it'd be too much trouble to arrange-giving the new orders, dealing with the indignant protests of the cavalry, imposing his will on them. If they had any sense, they'd break and run of their own accord. If they didn't, they had only themselves to blame.
He hadn't been paying attention. The Mezentine front line had already passed his ground-down dune, and he hadn't noticed. He shouted the order, and someone relayed it with a flag. The skirmish line separated itself and moved diffidently forward; a slow amble, like a farmer riding to market. In reply the front eight lines of Mezentines broke into movement, swiftly gathering speed. He wasn't able to see the collision from where he was standing, but he didn't need to.
A lot of silly noise behind him. From what he could hear of it, people were panicking. He assumed they had a better view than he did. The first Mezentine heavy cavalry appeared in front of him; they'd broken through the skirmish line, no surprise there, and they were charging the infantry screen. He sighed and stood up. It was time to go and fight, but he really didn't want to shift from where he was. His knees ached. He felt stiff and old. Even so…
