The Belly of the Bow (20 page)

The halberdier officer gave the order to charge, but in the context of a narrow slippery path ground out of the side of a steep slope, it was meaningless. Instead, the halberdiers edged forward and a pantomime fight broke out, something like the mock combats at fairs where two men stand on a greasy plank and hit each other with sacks of feathers. There wasn’t room for more than one man on the path at a time, and outflanking either above or below the path was out of the question because of the gradient. As the two parties pushed forward, Gorgas found himself squeezed up against his opponent, so that neither of them had any room to use their weapons; instead, the contest turned into a shoving-match, with the raiders’ superior weight of numbers becoming a hindrance rather than a help because of the treacherous footing. After a very uncomfortable fifteen seconds, the halberdier slipped and fell forward, grabbing Gorgas to break his fall and pinning his arms to his sides. Gorgas did everything he could to stop himself going over, since the greatest danger was clearly getting trampled underfoot, but it was no use. At the last minute, though, he did manage to fall backwards onto the man behind him, who caught hold of him by the scruff of the neck as if he was a delinquent child in an apple-orchard, and kept him from going down, until the forward momentum of the men behind put him back on his feet again. He still couldn’t get his arms free, however, and could do nothing except stare into the round, terrified eyes of the halberdier, only a few inches from his own. It was the closest he’d ever been to someone he was trying to harm in his life.

Then, quite suddenly, the shoving-match stopped, and Gorgas found himself falling forwards as the enemy stopped trying to force their way through and started to give ground. Unable to stop himself, he toppled over on top of the halberdier, who cracked his head against a rock as he went down and let go of Gorgas’ arms. Gorgas tried to stand up, but the man behind him shoved him forward, and this time he landed with his knee in the halberdier’s face; he heard a sharp crack as the man’s nose broke. He had the presence of mind to grope for the dagger on his belt, but he couldn’t reach it.

Somehow the halberdier managed to roll them both over, then scrambled to his feet, turned and ran. Gorgas tried to grab him, but all he managed to do was fall on his face in the mud, cutting his forehead on a stone. Somewhere behind him, he heard the sound of a bow being loosed, but the arrow went wide.

Someone caught hold of his arm and yanked him up; presumably whoever it was was trying to help, but he contrived to wrench a muscle in Gorgas’ right shoulder, and he shouted with pain.

‘Get off me, you clown,’ he yelped. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’

Since he knew the answer already he didn’t wait for a reply; instead, he gave a rather superfluous order to stop the line, and looked to see what the enemy were doing.

They’d vanished out of sight past the bend in the track they’d just come round.
They’re up to something
, Gorgas realised,
I just wish to hell I knew what it was
. He waved his men forward and they edged along the track until they came round the sharp corner and were able to see what the halberdiers were doing; they were following the bed of a stream up the hill, clambering as much as walking, heading for the top of the escarpment. It seemed a curious thing to do, and Gorgas didn’t waste any time on trying to puzzle out their motivation any further. He gave the order to nock arrows and loose.

But it wasn’t a good day for archery. The rain had saturated their bowstrings and soaked through into the wood of their bows, sapping the cast. The first volley fell short and, as the archers tried to compensate, the second volley mostly overshot. Two of the Shastel men went down, but both scrambled up again. There was the added complication of shooting up a steep slope, which threw out the archers’ largely instinctive estimation of range. By the time they had drawn for the third volley, the halberdiers were among the large boulders halfway up the slope, a good hundred and twenty yards away, and the arrows from forty bows were spread fairly thin at such a range. Scowling, Gorgas led his men up the slope after them, but the Shastel men were moving so quickly that it was all he could do to keep pace with them; there was no time to form the line and loose another volley.
They aren’t going anywhere
, Gorgas told himself, and slowed down the pursuit. The last thing he wanted to do was actually to catch up with them, and face sixty-five heavy infantry with forty bowmen hand to hand; that would be inviting the enemy to charge, with the gradient in their advantage. He sent back two men to try and find the relief parties and let them know what was going on. With luck, the main force from the city could be diverted round the other face of the escarpment, to come up on the enemy from the other side and complete the encirclement. It didn’t look as if the Shastel men had any stomach for a fight. Quite probably they’d guessed that there weren’t any boats waiting for them now. A reasonable show of force ought to be enough to prompt a surrender without any further significant bloodshed. Gorgas contented himself with keeping up with them, driving them steadily up the mountainside like a party of beaters flushing out game.
Wherever they end up, they’ve got no place to go
, he reminded himself. In fact, putting himself in the enemy commander’s position, he couldn’t think of anything that could be done, except to wait until there were enough of the enemy to justify an honourable surrender.

 

They’ll have trashed the boats. That’s the first thing they’ll have done. And we’re on an island
.

At the head of his men (
when running away, always lead by example
), Renvaut dragged himself over the brow of the ridge only to find that it was no such thing; in front of him was a patch of dead ground, a dip leading up to a slightly more gradual slope that extended to the true brow, about a quarter of a mile further on. He signalled a halt; there was something in this dip that might solve his problems, at least in the short term.

Yet another poxy little village
. This one, however, had much to recommend it. First, there was a seven-foot-high stone wall all round it, with two substantial-looking gates controlled by gatehouses. Second, there was no river or stream running through, which meant the water supply must come from a well-spring inside the village, something that couldn’t easily be cut off or diverted. Third, it had the look of having been abandoned, thoroughly and in a hurry.

‘Penna?’ asked the sergeant.

‘What?’

‘On the map,’ the sergeant said, ‘there was a village called Penna.’

‘Yes, but that was miles away. Over there somewhere.’ Renvaut waved vaguely in the direction they’d come from. ‘It could be Penna, I suppose. Or was that one of the ones we trashed? Anyway, doesn’t matter. Take an advance party and look around.’

But the name Penna tugged at his memory, and he remembered; the priory of Penna, founded early in the Foundation’s history, abandoned about seventy years ago and turned into a village; the hermit crab in the limpet shell. That would account for stone walls and gatehouses, and the handful of rather fine stone-built houses he could just see beyond the wall. Better and better. Defence had always been the first priority of the Foundation’s architects. Quite by chance, they’d stumbled on a purpose-built fortress just when they needed one.
Luck
, he mused,
is having us and eating us
.

‘Nobody home,’ the sergeant reported a little later. ‘And there’s water, flour, bacon, geese and chickens running about everywhere, even a couple of carp-ponds and a dovecote. So, what are we going to do?’

Good question. They could load up with supplies and try struggling on to the coast, or they could dig in and be besieged. The courageous, military thing to do would be to press on, make the most of their small lead and trust that the barges would still be there waiting for them. Holing up in a village on a hostile island might make them feel safer for a day or so, but in the long term it was suicide. Once inside, they’d never find a way of getting out again; their only hope would be a relief party from Shastel, and as a patriot and a staunch believer in the Foundation, Renvaut devoutly hoped they wouldn’t try anything so stupid.

‘So, what do we do?’ the sergeant repeated. ‘Whatever, we’d better hurry.’

Renvaut took a deep breath. One day, the whole of Shastel could end up looking like this, and the Foundation would be dead and gone.

‘We’re staying here and digging in,’ Renvaut said.

‘I seem to have this knack,’ the young merchant muttered, ‘of stumbling into other people’s wars. It’s a bad habit and I think I’ll try and break it.’

His sister sat down on a coil of rope and opened her writing tablet. ‘I wouldn’t,’ she said without looking up. ‘Wars have always been good for business. Think of yourself as a pig with a talent for sniffing out truffles.’

‘That’s not really—Look out, he’s coming back.’ The merchant, whose name was Venart, straightened his back and tried to look bored as the soldier came stomping down the deck towards him. ‘Finished?’ he asked. ‘Because we do have work to do, you know. This lot isn’t going to unload itself, and—’

The soldier looked at him, and he subsided. ‘All seems to be in order,’ the soldier said grudgingly. He opened the small wooden box he was holding and produced a strip of clay, stamped with three columns of small writing and kept wet between two layers of damp cloth. From his satchel he took a signet ring on a length of flax string and pressed it into the clay; then he closed the box and handed it over. ‘Here’s your docking clearance and licence to trade,’ he said. ‘You should be prepared to offer it for examination whenever required to do so by an officer of the Bank, and you’ll need to produce it when changing money or sealing any bill or document with a Scona resident. It must also be endorsed with an excise stamp indicating that all duty has been paid before you’ll be permitted to leave Scona. Is that clear?’

Venart nodded wearily. ‘Perfectly,’ he said. ‘Now can we please start unloading?’

‘Go ahead,’ the soldier replied. He called out an order to his three subordinates and led them down the gangplank and off the ship.

‘You realise,’ said the merchant’s sister, whose name was Vetriz, ‘that if you’d been even half polite to that man, we’d have been spared all that poking about in sacks and opening of barrels. Honestly, why do you always insist on carrying on as if you were an Imperial envoy?’

‘I wasn’t,’ Venart replied, stung. ‘I just resent it when some lout in a uniform—’

‘Of course you do,’ Vetriz said soothingly. ‘You don’t see why some horrid little man should push you around when all you’re doing is carrying on an honest trade. And that’s why we spend so much time sitting at the dock having our cargo ransacked. You’re a merchant, you’re suppose to cringe and fawn and kiss their smelly boots. It’s called business, or hadn’t you heard?’

Venart sighed. ‘I don’t like this place,’ he said. ‘Never have. It’s sort of—’ He paused while he carefully sorted through the resources of his vocabulary. ‘Sort of creepy,’ he went on. ‘There’s a bad feeling about this island, I don’t know what it is.’

‘You don’t? How extremely unperceptive you are. Come on, let’s make a start, or it’ll be dark before we’re finished.’

Vetriz got up and walked away briskly, leaving her brother to trot after her. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if you’re so clever, what
is
it about this place?’

‘What do you expect in a country run by an ex-slave trader?’ Vetriz said casually. ‘Oh, don’t say you didn’t know. Everybody knows that.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Well, now you do. That’s how the Director of the Bank made her money, back in Perimadeia. She ran a chain of brothels.’ She stopped and smiled sweetly. ‘You
do
know what a brothel is, don’t you?’

‘Don’t be aggravating,’ Venart said irritably. ‘But isn’t she supposed to be related to that man we met, the one who killed people for a living?’

‘That’s right,’ Vetriz replied. ‘Her name’s Niessa Loredan. Anyway, she made her fortune buying women and children from the South Coast pirates and selling and hiring them in the City. At least, that’s how she started. And now she runs Scona. Which probably has something to do with why it’s not a particularly nice place.’

Venart thought for a moment. ‘Well, she’s done all right for herself, at any rate,’ he said. ‘You get the bill of lading sorted out while I go and see the warehouse people.’

Most of the cargo was made up of barrels of raisins and sacks of pepper and cloves, none of which were likely to be improved by being left standing out in the rain for any length of time. The warehouseman wasn’t in his office, but Venart eventually ran him to ground in the harbourmaster’s office, where he was playing knucklebones with three of the clerks. He didn’t seem to be in any great hurry to leave the game, but eventually Venart was able to persuade him to open up the warehouse and take his money.

‘And the porters’ fees,’ the warehouseman added.

‘That’s all right,’ Venart replied. ‘We do our own unloading.’

‘Not on Scona you don’t,’ the warehouseman said with a grin. ‘Not unless you want all your stuff pulled out of store and dumped in the sea.’

‘But that’s outrageous,’ Venart protested. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘Custom and practice,’ the warehouseman said with a shrug. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘It isn’t custom and practice,’ Venart insisted. ‘Or at least it wasn’t three years ago, when I was here last.’

‘It’s a new custom,’ the warehouseman said. ‘I mean, customs have got to start somewhere. Sixty quarters, and you won’t have any trouble.’

Venart looked him in the eye. ‘How about if I take this up with the harbourmaster?’ he said sternly.

‘Can if you like,’ the warehouseman replied in a bored voice. ‘But he’s a busy man, and by the time you get to see him, all your gear’ll be being washed up on Shastel. The choice is yours.’