Devices and Desires (70 page)

As he shuttled between the factory and the ramparts where the scorpions were being set up, Ziani felt like a newlywed wife
getting ready to entertain her in-laws to dinner for the first time. He wanted everything to be perfect for the Mezentines
when they arrived. Every scorpion had to be aligned exactly in its cradle and zeroed at each of the set distances, the dampening
struts clamped down tight, the sliders and locks greased, every nut and wedge retightened after twenty trial shots. He had
a team of four hundred volunteers doing nothing all day but retrieving shot bolts from the targets and bringing them back
up to the wall. He wanted to be everywhere, doing everything himself; instead he had to watch half-trained, half-skilled Eremians
doing each job more or less adequately, which was torture. Finally, he decided he’d had enough. If he had to watch one more
thread being stripped or cradle-truss warped out of line, he’d go mad. With a tremendous effort he turned his back on the
lot of them and walked slowly down the stairs to the street.

Someone was waiting for him; a tall, broad, bald man with a ferocious gray mustache. “You Vaatzes?” he asked.

It was too stupid a question to risk replying to, so he nodded. “Who’re you?”

“Framea Orudino, sergeant-at-arms to the lesser Ducas,” the bald man replied, puffing his chest out like a frog. “You wanted
fencing lessons. I’ve been trying to find you all day, but nobody knew where you’d got to.”

Ziani grinned. “You found me,” he said. “Right, let’s get to it. What do I have to do?”

Orudino studied him for a moment, as though he was a consignment of defective timber. “Follow me,” he said.

Orudino led him down the inevitable tangle of narrow, messy streets, alleys and snickets until they reached a gray door in
a sand-yellow brick wall. To Ziani’s surprise, the door didn’t open into a beautiful secret garden or a cool, fountain-strewn
courtyard. Instead, they were inside a building that reminded him of all the warehouses he’d ever seen. The walls were bare
brick, washed with lime. The floor was gray stone flags, recently swept. In one corner was a stout wooden rack, in which he
saw about a dozen matching pairs of long, thin swords.

“Foils,” Orudino explained. “The point’s been blunted and wrapped in twine, so it can’t hurt you, unless you get stuck in
the eye. But I’m good enough not to hit where I don’t want to, and you’ll never be good enough to hit me unless I want you
to, so there’s no problem.”

Ziani decided he didn’t like Sergeant Orudino, but that hardly mattered. “What comes first?” he asked.

“We’ll get you standing right,” the sergeant said. “Now then. Over there, see, painted on the floor are two footprints. Put
your feet on them, and that’s your basic stance.”

Orudino was bored, making the little speeches he’d made hundreds of times before, plodding through the stages of the lesson
like a mule turning a flywheel. That was unfortunate, because Ziani found the whole business completely alien, and needed
to have each step explained and demonstrated over and over again. The footwork in particular he found almost impossible to
master; it was almost as bad as dancing, and he’d never been able to dance. Maybe he could have managed it if he’d been able
to look down and see where he was putting his feet, but the sergeant wouldn’t let him, on the grounds that in a real fight
he’d need to keep his eyes fixed on the other man’s sword-point to the exclusion of everything else. So Ziani stumbled, blundered,
tripped over his feet, fell over twice, with nothing to spur him on but his rapidly burgeoning hatred for the loud, pompous,
bullying bald man with the bored voice and the supercilious grin. If anything, he loathed his condescending praise on the
rare occasions when something went right more than his martyred patience with the bungles and mistakes. He kept himself going
by chanting in his head,
if this shithead can do it, so can I;
and slowly, gracelessly, he tightened up the tolerance, while his arms and legs and wrists and forearms and neck and back
screamed pain at him, and the tip of the sergeant’s foil stung him like a wasp.

He learned the four wards (high, side, low, middle); the steps ordinary and extraordinary; the advance, the retreat, the pass,
the lunge; the wide and the narrow measure; the counter in time and double time; the disengage, the block, the beat; the mastery
of the enemy sword and the slip-thrust, the stop-thrust, the tip-cut and the sidestep riposte in time. He learned to feint
and to read feints, to wait and to watch, to move hand and foot together, to keep his kneecap over his toe in the lunge, to
fend with his left hand and to close to disarm. Orudino killed him six dozen times, with thrusts to his throat, heart, stomach
and groin, with draw-cuts and tip-cuts and the secret cut of the Ducas (a wrap with the false edge to sever the knee-tendon).
Every death was a chore to the sergeant, and most of them were disappointments, because a child of twelve should have been
able to master the relevant defense by now.

“You’re thrashing about like a landed fish,” the sergeant said, as Ziani lunged at him and missed. “It’s no good if you can’t
land a thrust where it’ll do some good. Come over here, I’ll show you.” He led Ziani to the middle of the floor, where a piece
of string hung from a rafter. From his finger he pulled a heavy ring, brass with a little silver plate still clinging to it,
and tied it to the string. Then, with a mild sigh, he lunged. The tip of his foil passed through the middle of the ring without
touching it.

“Right,” he said sadly. “You try.”

Hopeless, of course. A couple of times he managed to swat the string, like a kitten batting at wool. Otherwise he missed outright.
The sergeant laughed, took down the ring and replaced it with a small steel hoop about the size of an outstretched hand. “Come
on,” he said, “you ought to be able to hit that”; but Ziani tried and couldn’t. The best he could do was slap into the string,
setting the hoop swaying.

“Don’t they practice fencing where you come from, then?” Orudino asked. Ziani shook his head.

“We aren’t allowed to have weapons,” he replied. “It’s against the law.”

The sergeant looked at him with contempt. “Doesn’t stop you picking on the likes of us, though,” he said. “Well, you aren’t
at home now. Concentrate. Fix your eyes on where you want to hit, and it should just come naturally.”

Did it hell. After a long time and a great many attempts, the sergeant stopped him, took down the hoop and said, “Let’s stick
to the basic defenses for now. Right, high guard, sword-hand in First, watch what I’m doing and step in to block and push
away.”

The defenses were slightly better than the attacks, but they still weren’t easy. At last, however, he grasped the idea of
taking a step back or to the side to keep his distance. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t organize himself well enough
to counter each attack with a simultaneous attack of his own.
One thing at a time,
his brain insisted,
defend and then attack;
but by the time he’d blocked, deflected or avoided, there wasn’t time to hit back. There was always another attack on the
way, and pretty soon he found himself backed into a corner with nowhere to go.

“We’re just not getting anywhere,” the sergeant said. “I’ve been teaching fencing for twenty years, I’ve taught kids of ten
and old men of sixty, and I’ve never had a complete failure, not till now. Sorry, but I don’t think I can help you. Best thing
you can do is buy yourself a thick padded coat or a breastplate, and try and stay out of trouble.”

Ziani leaned against the wall. His legs were weak and shaky from the effort, his elbows and forearms hurt and he had a blinding
headache. He hated the sergeant more than anybody he’d ever met. “Let’s give it one more go,” he said. “Don’t try and teach
me the whole lot. Let’s just concentrate on one or two things.”

The sergeant shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do,” he said. “But I think you’re wasting your time. All right, then, let’s
have a middle guard in Third. No, bring your back foot round more, and don’t stick your right hand so far out, not unless
you’re trying to draw me in on purpose.”

Slowly, bitterly, with extraordinary effort, Ziani learned to defend from the middle guard. “It’s better than nothing,” the
sergeant told him. “Forget about countering for now, just concentrate on distance. If you aren’t there, you can’t be hit.
Simple as that.”

The sergeant wanted to leave it at that, but Ziani refused. “I want just one thing I can use,” he said. “Like the hedgehog
in the proverb.”

“I don’t know any proverbs about hedgehogs.” The sergeant shrugged. “All right,” he said, “we’ll try the back-twist. Actually
it’s a pretty advanced move, but for anybody sparring with you, it’d come as a complete surprise. Now; middle guard in Third,
like normal; and when I thrust at you on the straight line, you bring your back foot a long step behind your front foot, till
you’ve almost turned away from me. That takes you right out of the way of my attack, and you can stab me where you like as
I go past.”

To the complete surprise of both of them, Ziani got it almost right on the third attempt. “It’s like I always say,” the sergeant
told him, “if someone can’t learn the easy stuff, teach him something difficult instead. You’d be surprised how often it works.”

So they practiced the back-twist many, many times, until Ziani was doing it without thinking. “It’s actually a good one to
learn,” the sergeant said, “because if you get it right, that’s the fight over before it starts. It’s half a circle instead
of a straight line. All right, a couple more times and then I’m calling it a day.”

It was a glorious relief to get away from him, out of his bare brick box into the open air. Ziani only had a very vague idea
of where in the city he was, but he didn’t care. He was content to wander, choosing turnings almost at random to see where
they led. Almost perversely, he had no trouble finding a way home.

Cantacusene was in the main gallery, shouting at someone for ruining a whole batch of springs. He waited till he’d finished,
then called him over.

“You know about swords and things,” he said. “Where’s the best place to buy one?”

Cantacusene frowned. “Depends,” he said, predictably. “What do you want?”

“A side-sword,” Ziani replied, “or a short rapier, preferably with a bit of an edge. Imported,” he added quickly. “Nothing
flashy, just something simple and sturdy.”

Cantacusene told him a name, and where to find a particular stall in the market. “You can say I sent you if you like,” he
added. “She’s my second cousin, actually.”

“Thanks. What was that about a batch of springs, then?”

The next day, early, he went to the market and found Cantacusene’s cousin; a tall, fat woman with a pleated shawl over her
red bodice and gown. For some reason, she seemed to think he wanted something very expensive with a swept hilt, fluted pommel
and ivory grip; it took him quite some time to convince her otherwise, but he managed it in the end and came away with a short
rapier, slightly browned with age, in a battered scabbard. He left it propped against the wall of his tower room and went
back to work.

Not long after midday, a messenger arrived, from Miel Ducas: could Vaatzes come immediately, please. He followed the messenger
(he was getting tired of having to be led everywhere, like a blind man) to the Ducas house. Miel Ducas was waiting for him
in a small room off the main cloister. He was sitting behind a table covered with maps, letters, lists and schedules, and
he looked exhausted.

“Bad news,” the Ducas said straight away. “They’ve bypassed the Barbuda gate — that’s here,” he added, jabbing his forefinger
at some squiggle on a map, “and at the rate they’re going, they’ll be down there in the valley this time day after tomorrow.
I’m taking three squadrons of cavalry to give them a bit of a hard time at a place I know, but really that’s just to show
willing. Fact is, the war’s about to start. How ready can you be by then?”

Ziani shrugged. “I’m ready now,” he said. “We’ve run out of hardening steel and we’re nearly out of ordinary iron. I’m still
making machines by bodging bits together, but I don’t suppose I’ve got enough material for another full day’s production.
Really, we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. I’ve already got four hundred and fifty scorpions installed and ready; actually,
it’d be a bit of a struggle to fit any more in on the wall.”

“I see,” the Ducas said. “Is that going to be enough?”

Ziani smiled. “No idea,” he said. “When you’re dealing with the Republic, there’s no such thing as enough. It’s like saying,
how many buckets will I need to empty the sea? But,” he went on, as the Ducas scowled at him, “they’re going to need a bloody
big army if they don’t want to run out of men before we run out of scorpion bolts.”

That seemed to cheer the Ducas up a little. He sighed, and nodded his head. “You’ve done very well,” he said. “I’m grateful,
believe me. If we get out of this ghastly mess in one piece, I’ll see to it that you’re not forgotten.” He shrugged. “You
know,” he said, “there’s a part of me that still doesn’t really believe that all this can be happening. Try as I might, I
can’t understand why they’re doing it. Doesn’t make sense, somehow.”

Ziani smiled wryly. “That’s because you think it’s about you,” he said. “It isn’t. It’s really an internal matter; Guild politics,
that sort of thing. I don’t suppose that’s any consolation.”

The Ducas shook his head. “I don’t imagine it’ll be much comfort to the poor bastards on the wrong end of your scorpion bolts,”
he said. “Tell me, what on earth possesses them to sign up, anyway? Isn’t there any work for them back wherever they come
from?”

“No idea,” Ziani said. “All I know about the old country is that we came here to get away from them, a long time ago, and
now we do a lot of business with them, mostly textiles, farm tools and domestic hardware. The general impression I’ve got
over the years is that they’re a practically inexhaustible supply of manpower, but I can’t remember them ever getting slaughtered
like sheep before. It’s possible they may not want to keep coming if that happens.”