He nudged the boy again, who scowled at Valens and crawled under the table. 'I'm really sorry about this,' the cutler said, 'it's my son, he moves things when my back's turned, and I never know-ah, here we are.' He pulled a sad-looking scabbard out of a wooden box by his feet; softwood with thin black leather pasted on, by the look of it. 'I'll just find some silk to wrap it in, please bear with me a moment.'
'That's fine, really,' Valens said, 'please don't bother.' He smiled as best he could. 'I only live just up the hill there, so I haven't got far to go.'
The cutler stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing, as though that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard in his life. 'Of course, that's right,' he said, and slid the hanger into the scabbard. It stuck, about halfway down, and had to be taken out and put back in again. Valens managed not to notice. 'There you are, then, your majesty, and I hope it brings you all the good luck in the world. Thank you,' he added, just in case there was still any doubt about the matter.
'Thank you,' Valens replied, and fled.
All the good luck in the world, he thought, as he walked back up the hill. A fine example of the lesser irony there; because of who he was, he couldn't buy what he wanted but he was obliged to accept a free gift he had no real use for. (That made him think about Veatriz and the other girl, the one whose name escaped him.) He carried the hanger low at his left side, hoping nobody would see him with it.
'Where did you get to?' Carausius demanded, pouncing on him as he crossed the courtyard in front of the Great Hall. 'You were supposed to be meeting the uncles to talk about the marriage settlement.'
Valens frowned. Not in the mood. 'You covered for me.'
'Yes, of course, but that's not the point. I could tell they weren't happy.'
Valens stopped. 'It's obvious, surely. I'm a young man of great sensibility, very much in love. The last thing I want to talk about is crass financial settlements. Right?'
Carausius sighed audibly. 'So you went shopping instead.'
'What? Oh, this.' He glanced down at the object in his left hand, as though wondering how it had got there. 'That reminds me. What happened at Cynosoura?'
'Where?'
'Cynosoura. Look it up. I want a detailed account on my desk in half an hour.'
Carausius gave him his business nod, meaning that it would, of course, be done. 'Where are you going now?' he said. 'Only there's a reception…'
'I know, in the knot garden,' he replied, remembering. 'Forty minutes.'
'It starts in a quarter of an hour.'
'Then I'll be late. Cynosoura,' he repeated, and walked away.
To the stables. Nobody about at this time of day. He walked in, shut the door firmly and looked around for something substantial to bash on. Just the thing: there was a solid oak mounting-block. He remembered it from childhood; he'd got in trouble when he was eight for hacking chunks out of it with a billhook he'd liberated from the groom's shed. Offhand he couldn't remember why he'd done that, but no doubt he'd had his reasons.
In the corner was a good, sturdy manger. He lifted the block onto it and tested it with his hand to make sure it wouldn't wobble about or fall down. Then he drew the hanger, took a step forward and slashed at the block as hard as he could. The blade bit in a good inch and vibrated like a hooked fish thrashing on the end of a line. The point where the knuckle-bow met the pommel pinched his little finger. He had to lift the block down again and put his foot on it before he could get the blade out, but when he held it up to the light it was still perfectly straight, and the cutting edge wasn't chipped or curled. Not bad, at that.
He put the block back on the manger, breathed in, and smacked the flat of the blade viciously against the thick oak six times, three smacks on each side. That was the proper way to proof a sword-blade, preferably someone else's. There was now a red blood-blister on the side of his little finger, but the hanger had survived more or less intact; blade still straight, hilt still in one piece, no cracks in the brazed joints, no rattle of loosened parts when he shook it. That was really quite impressive, for cheap local work. Once more for luck; he stepped back and took another almighty heave at the block-no fencing, just the desire to damage something, the block or the sword, not bothered which. The cut went in properly on the slant, gouging out a fat chip of wood from the edge. As the shock ran up his arm and tweaked his tendons, it occurred to him to imagine that the cut had been against bone rather than wood, and he winced. Of course it was a hunting sword, not a weapon of war; even so.
Got myself a bargain there, then, he told himself; also, all the good luck in the world. Genuine Mezentine. Doesn't anybody but me remember we're at war with the fucking Mezentines?
The report was there on his desk when he got back to the tower room, needless to say. Nothing much had happened at Cynosoura, which turned out to be a very small village in the northern mountains. A routine cavalry patrol consisting of a platoon of the Seventeenth Regiment had stumbled across a Cure Hardy raiding party. Recognizing that they were outnumbered and in no fit state to engage, they'd withdrawn and raised the alarm, whereupon Duke Valens and two squadrons of the Nineteenth had ridden out (I remember now), engaged and defeated the enemy and captured their leader, one Skeddanlothi, who provided the Duke with valuable intelligence about the Cure Hardy before dying under interrogation. As for the encounter at Cynosoura, there was only one casualty, a cavalry trooper shot in the back at extreme range as the patrol was withdrawing; he died later, of gangrene.
Valens read the report, nodded, and left it on the side of his desk for filing. He took the hanger out of its scabbard and wiped it on his sleeve-oak sap leaves a blue stain on steel, unless it's cleaned promptly-before sheathing it and propping it up in the corner of the room. Then he went to the reception to be polite to the Cure Hardy.
11
Ziani Vaatzes, returning to Civitas Vadanis at the head of his wagon train after the successful decommissioning of the silver mines, encountered a heavily laden cart going the other way on the northeast road. Because the road was narrow and deeply rutted, with dry-stone walls on either side, the driver of the cart tried to pull into a gateway to let Ziani's convoy pass. In doing so, unfortunately, he ran his offside front into the stone gatepost, knocking off the wheel and swinging his cart through ninety degrees, so that it completely blocked the road.
Ziani sighed. He was tired of sleeping in the bed of a wagon on top of a sharp-cornered packing case, and he wanted to get back to the place that he was starting to think of, in stray unguarded moments, as home. He told his driver to stop, and slid off the box onto the ground, nearly turning his ankle over as he stepped on the ridge of a rut.
'All right,' he called out, 'hold it there. Leave it to us, we'll have you out of there.'
The driver of the wrecked cart looked down at him with a sad expression on his face.
'Fuck it,' he said. 'I'm on a bonus if I get this lot delivered on time.'
'You might still make it if you shut up and leave it to us,' Ziani said. 'This is your lucky day. I've got sappers, engineers and blacksmiths, with all the kit.'
The carter noticed him for the first time, stared, then grinned. 'You're the Duke's Mezentine, right?'
'Yes.'
'The engineer, right?'
'Yes.'
The grin spread. 'In that case, you crack on.'
It turned out, of course, to be considerably worse than it looked. The cart wasn't just missing a wheel, it was also comprehensively wedged into the gateway. Daurenja, who'd sprung down off his wagon like a panther as soon as the swearing started and crawled right under the damaged cart, re-emerged with the cheerful news that the axle had splintered and two leaves of the spring had snapped. He suggested unshipping the long-handled sledgehammers and smashing the cart up into small pieces; that would get the road clear, and the carter would be able to claim the cost of a new cart from the war department.
'That's no bloody good,' the carter snapped. Something about Daurenja seemed to bother him quite a lot. Perhaps it was the ponytail, which Daurenja had adopted while he was working in the mines; probably not. 'It's not
