Chapter One

“The quickest way to a man’s heart,” the instructor said, “is proverbially through his stomach, but if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye socket.”

He reached out with the tip of the rapier and tapped it against the signet ring he’d hung by a strand of cotton from the arm of the ornate gilt lamp bracket. The ring began to sway slowly backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. He took a step back, then raised the sword again, and slid his front foot smoothly across the tiles as he lunged. The point of therapier tinkled against the ring as it passed through its centre.

“That’s very good,” Psellus said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.”

The instructor nodded. “Not to begin with,” he said. “You’ve got to work up to it. But try it anyway.”

Psellus frowned, then nodded. “You never know,” he said. He closed his hand around the grip of his rapier. (“That’s it. Imagine you’re holding a mouse; tight enough to stop it escaping, but don’t crush its ribs.”) He felt a stabbing pain in the overworked tendons of his elbow as he raised his hand into the third guard, and knew he’d regret all this later. Twenty years holding nothing heavier than a pen, and now he would insist on learning to fence.

“Just look at the ring,” the instructor said. “Forget about the sword, just the ring.”

Psellus felt his muscles tense, which was quite wrong, of course. He’d been told about that, and it had made sense and he’d understood, but for some reason he couldn’t stop himself doing it. That was what came of fifty years of imagining what it’d be like to fence with a real sword.

“When you’re ready,” the instructor sighed.

That meant, get on with it, freely translated from the diplomatic; so he snatched a half-mouthful of breath, fixed all his attention on the tip of the sword and prodded desperately at the ring. The rapier point missed it by a handspan, glanced off the base of the bracket and gouged a small chip of plaster out of the wall.

“Not quite there yet,” the instructor said, in a very calm voice. “You’d have taken a chunk out of his ear, but that’d probably just make him hate you. Now then.”

Psellus lowered the sword until the tip rested on the tiles. It was hopeless, he reckoned. For one thing, they’d given him a sword that was far too heavy. You couldn’t expect to be able to do fine work with a great big heavy thing, it’d be like trying to write with a scaffolding pole. He’d mentioned this several times but the instructor had politely ignored him.

“It’s basically the same idea as everything else we’ve covered so far,” the instructor was saying. “You start off slow and easy, just leaning gently forward and putting the point in the ring; and when you’ve done that a thousand times or so, you can gradually pick up speed and force until it’s right. So, as slow as you like, lift the sword and just point at the ring, like you’re pointing with your finger.”

Ten times (which meant only nine hundred and ninety to go), and then Psellus said, “I’m sorry, I think I’ll have to stop now, my elbow’s hurting rather a lot. Perhaps we can try again tomorrow, if that would be convenient for you.”

“Of course.” The instructor reached out and tugged the ring off the cotton, which dangled like a strand of dusty cobweb. “If you can possibly make time to practise before then, I think you’ll find it very useful.”

He put his rapier back in its case, buckled up the strap, bowed ever so politely and left. When he’d gone, Psellus walked slowly back to his desk and sat in his chair for a while, unable to think about anything much apart from the pain in his elbow. So much for fencing. It would have been nice to be able to do it; and now that he was the chairman of Necessary Evil, in effect the supreme ruler of the City, he’d assumed that the ability would somehow have come to him, as part of the package. Rulers, princes could do that sort of thing; they could fence and ride and shoot and dance minuets and fly hawks and sing serenades while accompanying themselves on the rebec or psaltery, because those sorts of thing were what princes did; you never heard or read about a prince who couldn’t hunt or swordfight, so obviously there was some kind of basic connection between the job and the ability. But maybe it didn’t apply to chairmen, or maybe there was rather more to it than that. Still, at least he was trying; and perhaps nine hundred and ninety more tentative jabs with the very heavy sword would turn him into what everybody seemed to think he was these days. Or maybe not.

The truth is, he thought as he reached across his desk and uncapped his inkwell, I seek to make myself ridiculous, because I know I shouldn’t be here. A pretender (the perfect word; ever since it had occurred to him, he’d been hugging it to himself like a child’s toy) ought to have ridiculous pretensions, such as fencing, riding, archery, dance, falconry, all of which he’s hopeless at, and that’s how the people come to realise he’s not the true prince. Tomorrow, if there’s time, I must find someone to teach me how to dance. It’s practically my duty.

If there’s time. He looked down at his desk. If he was really a prince, someone else would be reading all these reports for him, and he’d have all the time in the world. He’d have a chancellor or a grand vizier, either bald and enormously fat or long, dark and saturnine, discreetly running the empire while His Imperial Highness rode to hounds or recited poetry to beautiful, empty-headed young women. He lifted his head to look out of the window, and thought about his enemy. Duke Valens was reckoned to be the finest huntsman in the world, so clearly he was a proper prince. It should have followed, therefore, that Valens was a pinhead, the natural quarry of clever, austere predators like himself. But maybe Valens wasn’t a proper prince either; too intelligent, or else how had it come about that he was bearing down on the City at the head of an army of a million savages, while the ruler of the Perpetual Republic flounced and panted up and down a chalk line, trying to master the rudiments of the low guard?

Perhaps, he thought, that’s why I want to be able to fence and dance and hunt and compose pastoral eclogues in trochaic pentameters; because I secretly believe that these accomplishments will turn me into someone who can also command armies and fight battles, and save my city from the million savages. Quite possibly there’s a grain of sense in that, except that I’ve left it far too late to start learning all that stuff now. Somewhere he’d read that in order to fight your enemy, you had to understand him; more than that, you had to become him. It had struck him as extremely profound at the time, although something a little less inspirational and a little more practical would’ve been even better; how to run an efficient commissariat, for example, or the basics of fortifying against artillery.

That was, of course, the problem. The Perpetual Republic had a complete monopoly of all skills, trades, sciences and crafts, except one; it had no idea how to fight a war. There hadn’t been any need; not until now, when mercenaries refused to sign up for fear of the Cure Hardy and the murderous field artillery designed and built by the defector Ziani Vaatzes. So, quite unexpectedly, and far too late in life, the citizens of the Republic were straining themselves trying to learn to be soldiers, as improbable and ill-fated an enterprise as Lucao Psellus learning the smallsword, the stock and the case of rapiers. Hopeless, of course; the sheer helplessness of the situation was apparent from the fact that Guild politics had practically ground to a halt. Suddenly, nobody wanted to run or be in charge of anything, there was no opposition, no factions; just a blind, desperate consensus of goodwill, support and pitiful enthusiasm, led by the unwilling ignorant under the supreme authority of a jumped-up clerk.

A million savages under arms; well, that was what everybody was saying. The intelligence reports put the figure at a mere eight hundred thousand, including the Vadani cavalry and the Eremians. Psellus closed his eyes and tried to imagine eight hundred thousand of anything, but he couldn’t. How many bees were there in a hive, or leaves in a forest? He believed in big numbers, that there could exist a million silver thalers, in the context of a budget deficit, or eight hundred thousand rivets, packed in barrels COD at Lonazep. But men, human beings, with weapons, on their way here to burn down the City . . .What strategic advantage did eight hundred thousand have to offer over, say, six hundred thousand? Or were numbers of that order of magnitude as much a liability as an asset? He didn’t know, of course, but he knew that there were answers to that kind of question, and without that knowledge he’d soon be presiding over the fall of the Republic and the annihilation of its people.

He opened the door and said, “Hello?”

Immediately (he couldn’t get used to it; like an echo, only faster) a clerk materialised, like a genie out of a bottle. Psellus took a moment to look at him, because it was like looking in a mirror. The clerk was in his fifties, bald, with wispy grey clouds over his ears, soft-chinned and stout, like a pig being fattened for bacon. It was always my ambition, Psellus reflected, to be a senior clerk in the administration office. Instead . . .

“Go to the library,” he said, “and get out all the books you can find about military logistics.”

Silent pause, long enough to count up to two. “Military . . .”

“Logistics.” Psellus scrambled for words, gave up. “Anything called The Art of War or The Soldier’s Mirror or anything with war or soldiers in the title.”

The clerk looked at him as though he was mad. But Psellus was getting used to that. “And then,” he went on, “I want you to read them.”

The clerk said nothing. It was the sort of silence you could have built houses on.

“You may want to get someone to help you with that,” Psellus continued. “Anyway, read them, and I want you to make an epitome with references, anything to do with supplying an army – food and hay and boots and so on – how much of everything you need per day, and how much it costs, and how you get it to the soldiers in the field; carts and roads and changes of draught horses – I’m sure you’ve got the idea. On my desk by tomorrow evening, please.”

The clerk gave him a horrified stare, as though he’d just been ordered to eat his grandfather. Psellus knew that look, too. He’d worn it often enough himself. “Get as many people on it as you need,” he added, because he knew the clerk would like that. Being allowed to order his fellow clerks around would go some way towards making up for the bizarre and unnatural nature of the assignment. Which reminded him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I know your name.”

The clerk hesitated, then said, “Catorzes. Simuo Catorzes.”

Psellus nodded, as if to signify that that was indeed the answer he’d been looking for. “I’m appointing you as my research assistant. My chief research assistant. Do you think you’ll be up to the job?”

Catorzes hesitated again, then nodded grimly. “Of course,” he said; then, almost reluctantly, “Thank you. I’ll, um, do my best.”

“I’m sure you will.”

There, he thought, as he sat down again at his desk, I’ve done something. Quite possibly something useful, although that remains to be seen. Have we actually got any books about fighting wars? Yes, we must have, because the Copyists’ Guild copies and binds all the books in the known world for export, though we never actually read them ourselves, and I’m sure we must keep copies, if only out of habit. Of course, there’s no guarantee that any of the books is any good; probably they’re just collections of bits copied out of other books copied out of other books by men who’ve never been in a battle in their lives. But real princes buy them from us, so they must have something in them, if only . . .

He looked down at his hands; ten soft brown worms attached to two flat cakes of putty. I must cope, he told himself. I must find a way of coping, because there’s nobody else but me. I know I’m not fit to be in charge of a war, I know I’m hopelessly ignorant and not particularlyclever. But unless I find a way of coping, a million savages will come and break open the city like a crabshell and pick us all out like shreds of meat; and war can’t be all that difficult if a lot of bone-headed princes can do it, surely.

He glanced up at the opposite wall, where the clock stood. It was a Pattern Fifty-Seven, the best specification of all, guaranteed accurate to within an hour a year if properly sited and maintained. If the City fell, of course, there would be no more clocks, because nobody else in the whole wide world knew how to make them. How long, he wondered, would it take for the clock to be reinvented, and how long after that before anybody was skilled enough to build a clock up to the standards of a Pattern Fifty-Seven? A thousand years, possibly; or never. If we die, everything dies with us . . .

No, he reflected, not quite. If Valens and the savages come and the walls are breached and we’re slaughtered like ants in a crack between flagstones, there’ll still be one of us left. Ziani Vaatzes could build a clock, if he wanted to and he set his mind to it. Ziani Vaatzes, the abominator, our greatest enemy and civilisation’s only hope.

He thought about Vaatzes; studying him so intensely for so long, finally meeting him in the empty streets of Civitas Vadanis. To the best of his knowledge, Psellus had never been in love; but if he had to imagine what love must be like, his nearest reference would be how he felt about Ziani Vaatzes, the supreme enemy. Which was strange, and more than a little disturbing, since Vaatzes was to blame for everything. He’d brought the war here, like a man carrying the plague – infected, a victim and also a predator, a weapon, an enemy. Under other circumstances, Psellus liked to believe, they’d have been friends, good friends (which was, of course, absurd, since a ranking Guild official would never condescend to mix with manual workers, outside of circumstances that in themselves precluded any possibility of friendship). Perhaps it’s because I’m so isolated from ordinary people that the only one I ever bothered to try and understand fascinates me so. In which case, I’m even more pathetic than I ever imagined.

Be that as it may; the clock told him it was a few minutes to noon, at which time he was due to meet with the Strategy and Tactics Committee to discuss the progress of the war . . .

“I can’t help thinking,” he told them, and they just looked at him, as they always did, “that we might as well be logs meeting in the grate to discuss the fire.” He paused. They were waiting for him to say something – anything – they could possibly construe as coherent. “Siano, you’re in charge of intelligence. Where are they now?”

Siano Bossas, Drapers’ Guild; a closed box of a man, with the biggest feet Psellus had ever seen in his life. “According to our contacts in Jasca, they crossed the Redwater two days ago, which puts them somewhere between Lopa and Boc Polizan.” He paused, well aware that Psellus didn’t have a clue where the Redwater, Lopa or Boc Polizan were. Neither, Psellus suspected, did Siano Bossas.

Psellus nodded gravely. “Could somebody please go out to the front office and fetch in the map? I had one drawn,” he explained. “There didn’t seem to be one that showed all the places you’ve been telling me about, I suppose they hadn’t been built yet when the specifications for the maps were drawn up, so they couldn’t officially exist. Strictly speaking, I suppose that means I’ve committed an abomination, but never mind. We really ought to know where all these places are, don’t you think?”

It wasn’t a very good map, by Guild standards. The calligraphy was poor, and it wasn’t even coloured in. But it did show Lopa, Boc Polizan and the Redwater, and if it was drawn to anything like scale . . .

“Nine days,” Psellus said, after he’d put down his dividers. “In theory,” he added. “But I don’t suppose they’ll actually be here in nine days, because of lines of supply and things like that. It’d help,” he added mildly, “if we knew where they were getting their food and forage from.” He bent his head and looked at the map. “Does anybody know anything about this countryside here? I mean, is it farmland or moor or heath or what?” He waited for a moment or so, then added, “Someone must know, surely.”

Apparently, nobody did. Psellus straightened his back and looked round at the empty faces surrounding him. “Fine,” he said. “Now, I’ve ordered a study of military logistics, which I hope will tell us what we need to know about how armies are fed and supplied. What I’d like you to do for me is find out everything you can about the country between there” – he prodded at the map – “and the City. I want to know whether they can feed themselves with what they can find and steal as they go along, or whether they need to carry their supplies in carts from somewhere else.

Also, it’d be helpful to know something about the roads, that sort of thing. Also, it’s really no good at all relying on little bits and pieces of news we get from carters and carriers. We need proper scouts to observe their movements and report back. Can someone see to that, please?” No volunteers; he looked round and chose someone at random. “Feria, that can be your job. Now then, what else?”

Slowly and painfully, like a snail climbing a wall, he led and dragged them through food reserves, materiel procurement, finance, the condition of the City walls, recruitment and basic training; things he’d heard about, mostly, without really knowing what they meant, so that he had to reconstruct them from first principles as he went along. It was like trying to read and understand a book whose pages had all been lost, so that all he had to go on was the list of contents.

“Arms and munitions production,” he said at last, and he could sense the relief, since finally they’d reached a subject they all understood. “I’d like one of you to be my permanent liaison with the ordnance factory; Galeazo, you know the setup there as well as anybody. Do you think you could get me copies of the production schedules, so we can be sure they’re making the right quantities of the right things. Wall-mounted artillery’s an obvious priority, but we’re also going to have to kit out a large number of infantry in a hurry, as soon as Lanuo here has recruited them for us. You’ll need to talk to the Tailors and Clothiers as well, boots and helmet linings and padded jackets – what’s the word, gambesons; those things you wear under your armour to cushion the blows. I know we used to make them for export, it’s just a matter of getting everything up together so every helmet we issue’s got a lining to go with it. Just common sense, really.”

As he spoke, he thought: this is hopeless. We don’t know what we’re doing, and they’re all desperate to leave it up to me; only because they’re afraid, but that doesn’t really make it any better. The fact is, we can’t, I can’t fight a war against eight hundred thousand men, any more than I can build a Fifty-Seven clock or a water-mill. We don’t have a specification for a war, and there isn’t enough time to write one.

The meeting ended and they left, as quickly as possible without being ostentatiously anxious to escape. When they’d gone, Psellus sat for a long time, staring out of the window. He had the best view in the Guildhall: the grounds, with the formal gardens in the middle, surrounded by the cloister gardens, each with its own fountain and arbor. It wasn’t beautiful, in any meaningful sense, but there again, it wasn’t supposed to be.

Very well, then, he decided. I don’t know about war and I can’t fight eight hundred thousand men. But I know Ziani Vaatzes and I can fight one man, and maybe that’s all I need to do.