Part 13 (1/2)

'So you're going to take Perimadeia, are you?' the man said. Bardas couldn't see him very well; it was a dark point in the corridor, halfway between two sconces, and he couldn't make out his face; but he could smell coriander. He realised he'd stopped breathing, for some reason. Instinct, maybe.

'They want me to,' he replied. 'I do what I'm told. If I do a good job, they'll make me a citizen.'

'They'll make you a citizen,' the man repeated. 'Wouldn't that be just fine? Imagine that; you, a citizen. Bardas Loredan, there isn't a civilised society anywhere in the world that'd have you as a citizen.'

Bardas frowned. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but do I know you?'

'We've met. In fact, we've been here before - here or hereabouts. Don't change the subject. You're going to take Perimadeia. Why am I not surprised? Enjoy your work, do you?'

Bardas thought for a moment. 'No,' he said. 'Well, it depends. I've done a lot of different things in my time. Some were worse than others.'

'Such as?'

'The mines,' Bardas said. 'I didn't enjoy them at all. And serving with Maxen, that was pretty grim, most of the time.'

'Fair enough,' said the man. He hadn't moved, and neither had Bardas. 'What about being in charge of the defence of Perimadeia? Was that nice or nasty?'

'I didn't enjoy it,' Bardas replied. 'I knew I was the wrong man for the job. I did the best I could, but someone else might have saved the city. And the experience itself was pretty wretched.'

'I see. And what about your career as a fencer? Was it exciting, thrilling? Did you relish the challenge? Did you feel good each time you won?'

'Relieved,' Bardas said. 'Glad I was still alive. But I did it because it was something I was good enough at to make a living. I needed the sort of money I could earn by fencing, you see, to send home to my brothers.'

'They frittered it all away, of course,' the man said, 'so it was all a waste of time. Well, that only leaves farming, teaching fencing, bowmaking and whatever it is you're doing now. How do you feel about them? Happier, I suppose.'

'Yes,' Bardas said. 'Farming was a hard life, but it's what I was born to do. Teaching fencing was better than fencing, and the money was adequate; I could have carried on with that quite happily. The same with making bows - living that sort of life, I didn't really need much money, and I like working with my hands. Same goes for this, I suppose, if only I could find something I could actually do here. Still, n.o.body's trying to kill me, so I'm that much ahead of the game.'

The man laughed. 'What an uncomplicated fellow you are, deep down,' he said. 'All you really want out of life is a hard day's work and a fair day's pay; and instead, you grind down tribes, defend and destroy cities, kill men by the hundred. Tell me; in all the fights to the death you've been in, all the him-or-me confrontations, why is it, do you think, that they all died and you're still alive? Is it just your superior skill and hand-speed? I'd be interested to hear what you make of it.'

'I prefer not to think about it,' Bardas replied. 'No offence, but what business is it of yours?'

'None,' the man replied. 'Except that I'm curious, as most people are. I just wanted to know what you were really like. It's so easy when you're reading or hearing about a great historical figure to get into the habit of a.s.suming that they were completely different from the rest of us, that they lived by entirely different rules. Talking to you like this, just the two of us, I realise it isn't like that at all. It's obvious to me now; most of the time, you simply hadn't got a clue what you were doing; nothing more to it than that. But I'd never have seen that if I'd stuck to what it says in the books, or what Grandfather told us when we were kids. Well, I think that's all. Goodbye.'

'Wait,' Bardas said; but he was talking to half a shadow.

'Oh, and one last thing,' said a voice from the darkness where the man and the smell of coriander had been. 'Thank you.'

'You're welcome,' Bardas replied; then his knees folded up and he hit the ground.

When he opened his eyes again the light was horribly bright, and there was a ring of heads peering down at him.

'The heat, possibly,' a Son of Heaven was saying. 'They take time to get used to it. He comes from a cold, wet country.'

'Or the residual effects of being buried alive,' said someone else at the bottom edge of his vision. 'In cases of severe concussion, it can be weeks before the symptoms manifest themselves. That would account for the hallucinations.'

'So would heatstroke,' replied the Son of Heaven. 'In fact, hearing imaginary voices and talking to people who aren't there is rather more indicative of heatstroke than cranial trauma, although I grant you, it's common to both conditions.'

'I think he's awake,' said another voice. 'Sergeant Loredan, can you hear us?'

Bardas opened his mouth; his tongue and throat were stiff and dry, like leather that's got wet and been allowed to dry without being oiled. 'I think so,' he said. 'Are you real?'

The Son of Heaven seemed offended by the question; but the man who'd spoken to him smiled and said, 'Yes, we're real; real enough for your purposes, anyway. Can you remember what happened to you?'

'I fell over,' Bardas replied.

'Cranial trauma,' muttered the man with the buried-alive theory. 'Notice the slight aphasia, the obvious memory loss. Typical.'

'We know that,' said the man who was talking to him, slowly and gently, as if to a dying man or an idiot. 'You fell, and you b.u.mped your head; nothing serious. But before that.'

Bardas thought for a moment. 'I was talking to someone, ' he said.

That seemed to please the man who was talking to him, because he smiled a little. 'Aha,' he said. 'And can you remember who you were talking to?'

'My superior officer,' Bardas croaked. 'He was telling me I might get a promotion.'

Wrong answer, apparently. 'I meant after that,' the man said. 'After your interview with the adjutant, but before you fell over. Were you talking to anybody? '

Bardas tried to shake his head but it didn't want to move, so he spoke instead. 'No,' he replied.

'You're sure?'

'Yes. At least,' he added, 'as far as I can remember.'

'He's hiding something,' muttered the Son of Heaven. 'Evasiveness, slight paranoia. Obviously heatstroke.'

The man who'd been talking to him tried again. 'We're doctors,' he said, 'we're here to help you. Are you sure you weren't talking to anybody else?'

'Positive,' Bardas said; then, as the man's face creased into a disappointed scowl, he added, 'Of course, I imagined I was talking to someone, but I know it wasn't real. Just a hallucination or something.'

The man looked more annoyed than ever. 'Really?' he said. 'And how can you be so certain of that?'

'Easy.' Bardas' head began to hurt a lot. 'First he tried to make me believe he was someone I killed in the mines; then he wanted to make out he was a student of history from hundreds of years into the future. Also he knew too much about me; I must have imagined it.'

'I see,' said the cranial-trauma man. 'And do you talk to imaginary people often?'

'Yes,' Bardas replied; and the doctors vanished. When he opened his eyes again, he was still in the same place, but alone; and now it was dark, and he could smell onions and rosemary and blood and sweet marjoram and urine. For a while everything was quiet as the grave; then he heard a man groaning a few yards away. Hospital, he thought.

His head was still splitting, though the pain was rather different now. He savoured it for a while, trying to place it by its texture and intensity (if cranial trauma was medical for a bash on the head, he was ready to plump for cranial trauma; he'd been bashed on the head many times, and this was pretty much what it felt like).

Bardas?

'Shhh,' he whispered. 'You'll wake people up.'

Sorry.

'That's all right. How are you, anyway?'