27 - An example of perfection in the strategic art

A reputation has its hazards, I thought. But I’ll live up to it.

That inward vow sounded hollow, though, even to myself. I had less time even than I expected, for one thing: wood must be cut and water drawn, and Kesariga drilled us long. There were more details I needed, and since I could not summon the people I must ask as a real general can, I must track them down and then meet them formally, introducing myself. This assignment must not be typical, I thought, as yet another harried-looking officer said to me, “Well I suppose you look a little like Tennunga… The General First sent you? I heard nothing about it, why aren’t you with him?”

The only place to plan was our tent, where my ten, our tasks all finished, played knife games. I entreated everyone to shut up so I could think, so naturally they asked what call I had, as a mere common-ranker, to think, so I told them; then of course they peered over my shoulders at my wax-board, and generously donated an avalanche of suggestions.

“You could roll rocks down on their horses.”

“You could link all our horses with chains, then charge through their footmen, like that eastern tribe does.”

“You could start a forest fire.”

“You could give every warrior a sling-shot, and have us all shoot our hardtack into the Lakan camp instead of eating it; that’d defeat them for sure.”

“Cheng…” Krero looked worried. “Hurai’s not actually going to use this plan, is he?” This had not crossed my mind; by his order, I must imagine it was the true plan. If it were good enough, it occurred to me, bringing vague notions of both grandeur and terror, he might; why not? I told them so, which turned them green and, to my relief, shut them up.

Then it was the thousand dead that distracted me. History, and the news of this war, was full of such numbers; but here, among the people who had shared fires and eaten and joked with the dead, their deaths hummed about my head, too many to consider at once, crying to be counted, understood, mourned. Hurai had spoken to me as easily as any of my tutors would, his voice unchanging when it shaped the word “thousand”; and he had led them to their deaths. That was what it is to be a general, I thought: to conceive the stratagem that saves the people while seeing them cut down all around. The thought froze my mind.

Every idea seemed to have a mindlessly-simple counter-measure that anyone clever as Inkrajen would easily see, or to be too dangerous in its complexity or its simplicity, or to have some other fatal flaw I couldn’t anticipate. I met a wall at every path; my thoughts tripped over each other and fought themselves; I got the shakes, mosquitoes bit me, I had to pace, and the stylus in my hand stood idle. You’re matching me against one of the Laka’s best generals though I’m a stripling of fifteen, I thought whinily in Hurai’s direction.

Despair tempted me: it was late afternoon, in no time it would be dinner, then night, then morning and the sun a fist above the crag. Maybe if I sleep on it something will come to me, I thought; but then there’d be too little time to refine it in the morning. When Krero joked, I wanted to rail at him, “What do they expect? I’m a kid!” To live up to my name, that was all.

A line from a strategy book came to me: High on the mountain the general takes his vantage point, away from the noise and warmth of camp life which will fill his heart and stop his mind. Yes, though my mind was running all over like a rabbit, it was indeed stopped, I realize. Now I’m on a good course, I thought, put the waxboard and stylus in my pack, geared up and set off, finding a sentry who would not recognize me or Chirel and so would let me pass.

I climbed higher than Hurai had brought me, to where the plants were low, gnarly and miniature like those near my window in the Hearthstone, at home. Here in these low southern peaks that was a fair climb; they don’t even keep snow all year, wearing only a dusting of it now. On a ridge I found a place where the air was a mixture of rising breezes from the sun-heated talus below and the icy breath of the sky, hot and cold by turns. I sat still and took a deep breath, knowing that the peace that brings inspiration would come much easier here.

Just then, from a rock some three arm-lengths away from me, I heard a “Hsst!” I sprang up, drawing Chirel, all ready for my part in the war to begin. Out stepped a tiny ragged girl, not more than ten years old, with grazed knees, straw-colored snarls of hair and a fierce begrimed smile.

“Sib warrior,” she said, in an accent like the Nikyanani squire’s, but even broader. “You want to see them Lakans up close? For a piece of tack, I’ll show you my secret way.”

I felt my brows harden, thinking of traitors and Lakans waiting behind nearby rocks. Not that I would not know they waited; the range of my weapon-sense, which grew as I did, was about fifteen marching paces then.

Still, better safe than sorry; I asked her for a certain tongue-twister only those born and raised in Yeola-e can speak. She rattled it off perfectly, if childishly, with a hint of reproach that I should distrust her. I knew no one had shared with me our spies’ newest intelligence; so why not do some spying of my own? Nothing need stop me from thinking as we went. She held out her little hand for the tack first, her face all business like a merchant’s; I was obviously not her first customer. But as we went, she devoured it like a dog fed for the first time in days. And there we were, complaining about its hardness.

The girl led me along a winding goat track on the side of the mountain, then down through forest. It was longer than I had expected; I glanced at the lowering sun, but decided I had come too far to turn back. Near where the trees dropped we crawled on knees and elbows to the edge of a cliff.

Some three longbow shots away, by the black ruins of a village, close enough that I could see spear-shafts, lay the Lakan camp.

The books speak of how Lakans look on the field, not encamped, so this was a surprise to me. The tents were not placed in rows, as in a Yeoli camp, nor even in circles, but higgledy-piggledy. Unlike our plain brown ones, they were in as many colors as in the rainbow, bright as jewels, of all shapes and sizes; here and there were ones as big as houses, decorated with bright trim, stripes, flags and giant tassels.

My guide explained in her piping voice. “Those big tents are the big rich Lakans’. They keep all their horses near them, see? Sometimes you can catch the sentries asleep, if you know when; me and my little brother Sech, one night they almost caught us. My parents are dead. I want to be a spy when I grow up. You’re a nice man, can I have some more tack?”

I gave her my last piece—I’d get more—and asked her what pattern they placed their sentries in. She shrugged with utter authority, as only a child can. “They call around though; that’s how you know where they are. I know all the lords’ tents. See, that there is Bancheka’s…” She listed off eight, less than all but still impressive; then with a flourish she pointed out a huge golden tent in the shape of a cross with a turret at its center, like a miniature castle of cloth. “And that,” she said grandly, “is The White Fox’s.” His use-name here was that, for his long mane of white hair. “In-kra-chen’s. “

I stared. “He makes where he sleeps so plain?”

“It’s ‘cause he’s their General First,” she said. “You know Lakans, it’s all who’s richest and famousest, so he has to have the biggest, fanciest tent. The roof is real gold.”

I suppose she thought I believed that, seeing my face, for my soul was flaring with the fire of inspiration. I tore my waxboard out of my pack, erased all my futile scribblings and drew as fast as I could a map of the camp and the nature of the land around it. There was the great victory at negligible cost, the perfect stratagem.

I wished the girl farewell and ran back to our camp, the plan forming itself in my mind as I went. Dark clothes, wristlets, knives, blacken my face and the hilts and buckles with soot…

In Terera, there is a nondescript building with no sign, which, though no one admits it, houses the School of No Name, the best unknown academy of darkwork in Yeola-e. You seek entrance there if you want to become a spy or assassin or secret investigator for Yeola-e, and if you graduate you’re a shoo-in for a share in the Workfast Clandestine, better known as Ikal.

Not much can raise Azaila’s brows, but my saying I wanted to train there, at least for a while, raised them fairly high. Those of the dean, whom I will call Perai, rose even higher. “We get students whose names are known in their towns sometimes,” he said, “but I’ve never had one whose name was known to the entire country. There’s not much work you’ll ever be able to do clandestinely, Fourth Chevenga.”

“I know I’ll never be an apparent envoy’s scribe or a mole in a foreign town or army,” I said. “It’s more things a warrior might use that I want to learn.”

“Well, mostly when we use blades it’s to stab backs. If your warrior’s honour doesn’t forbid that, surely your semanakraseye’s does? Or your concern for your good name?”

“If I have to stab a back to save Yeola-e,” I said, “then semanakraseye’s honour not only permits but requires it. I want to have all the choices I can.”

Seeing he would not dissuade me—Azaila hadn’t said no, never being one to limit my choices—Perai had me undergo the entrance trial. It’s harder for fourteen-year-olds than for the younger children who enter, and I suspect (though of course I have no way of finding out, since all entrance trials are done secretly) that he might even have subjected me to the adult test in the hope of keeping me out. I remember him saying, “You’ve told how many friends and family you want to do this? That’s not usually how it’s done.”

I can’t say exactly what it entailed for obvious reasons; suffice to say it required both some very subtle sneaking, and the detection, if you could, of a number of other people’s very subtle sneaking. Like most children, I’d played hide and seek, and capture-the-flag, and war-games in the woods at night, and I’d tried creeping up on people unseen as a prank. What I had learned was that I was good at being silent and going unseen, and, of course, weapon-sense made it more than easy to know who was anywhere around me if they were armed.

The day after the night I underwent it, a letter for me came to the Hearthstone. “Dear anaraseye Chevenga: We are most sorry to disappoint you, and to force you to inform all those who know of your planned attempt and so disappoint them, but your performance in the entrance trial to the School of No Name was of insufficient merit to gain admission. We offer our very best wishes in warlike endeavours more suited to your well-known honest and upright character. Sincerely, One Who Is Called Perai.”

I slapped the paper down on the desk in anger. I’d been certain I’d done well enough, because it was not possible to do much better than I had; as I say, weapon-sense makes certain things more than easy. I was stormily marshalling my arguments in my mind in the dining hall that night when my grandmother cadged out of me why I had dark clouds on my brow. “Poor lad,” she laughed. “You are so used to passing every test so impressively, you can’t stand to fail even one. Take it as a chiravesa, teaching you how it is for lesser mortals.”

After dinner, though, I happened to run into one of the Assembly Palace messengers, alone in a corridor. “My teacher wishes me to pass on you that the letter you received today was a front, necessary to alleviate your own openness about your intentions,” she said quietly. “He recognizes that semanakraseye’s honour does indeed sometimes require whatever will save Yeola-e.” She smiled and winked. “You’re in.” Take that, grandma, I thought. At the same time, I knew I should let the lesson on how it felt to fail stick.

Another Yeoli military secret slain; I hope Perai will forgive me. I trained in the School of No Name every day for a year, on the pretext that I was doing an administrative apprenticeship in one or another of the many government buildings, and many nights also, part of my standing assignment being to creep down from the Hearthstone unnoticed.

Of course I cannot say exactly what I learned, except things unique to me. One of them was that darkness need be no hindrance, if I trust myself, but is actually freedom greater than in daylight, for at the same time I am hidden, I can see where anyone else is who is armed, and even tell which way they are facing or looking.

I write this in part in my own defense, for those who think that I was seized with madness even to consider assassinating Inkrajen. I knew my capabilities.

But, I realized, Hurai couldn’t. In my report to him I’d mentioned my abortive try to get into the Circle School—I’d qualified for the Annual Games this fall but wouldn’t be able to attend them as I was here—and everything else I’d done, except the School of No Name. Those who don’t have a gift have no feel for how it can be used until they see it, and sometimes not even then. He also could not know that the risk to Yeola-e—fourteen years of my life at the most and being spared another demarchic funeral—was less than he thought.

There was no chance in the Earthsphere entire I’d get his authorization. With the fire turning to vitriol in my heart, I imagined his likely answer. “What? Are you out of your mind, child? You’re anaraseye! You’re not even sixteen!” What it always comes down to, I thought: age. He’d reprimand me, and it would go to my parents and Assembly, and onto my record, even just for asking.

But not if I succeed, I thought. And it has to be done; if one person has been our curse in the war, that’s actually a weakness of theirs, because he is but one person and so it needs just one death to end the curse. The thousand dead were still haunting me; it seemed as if I was hearing the wings of Shininao a thousand times over, and I wanted to make it end. I had also known for most of my almost-sixteen years that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.