“You’re of my thinking then?” I asked. “About the prisoners?”
Catrin shook her head. “I would of… killed one to make… the other speak. But… it’s not me that’s… Rampart Fire right now. It’s… you. People got to… believe in you. They can’t… do that unless… you believe in your own self.”
I did not though, and that was the worst thing of all. I kept being afraid that some mistake of mine would ruin everything – and that by letting people put their faith in me I was leading them in a line-dance over the edge of a cliff.
I fell into bed each night so tired I thought I would sleep for ever. And each night woke from dreams full of blood and sundering to lie in the dark until my heart stopped trying to get out from under my ribs. I could have waked Jon, but I didn’t. He was training every day with our fighters, and keeping the tannery going besides, so he was just as exhausted as I was. I looked at his face by moonlight or by the paleness of first dawn and thought what it would be like if he died because of me. If my baby did not come to be born because of me. If Fer was right, and my forbearing wrecked us all.
Fer had not relented. She did not have it in her to relent. Ever and again she came against me in the Count and Seal. Ever and again she said, without quite saying, that if Mythen Rood could find no one better than me to lean on, Mythen Rood would fall.
Jon sat through our skirmishes with his head down and his arms folded. I had asked him not to speak up for me in the chamber, because his love and loyalty belonged to me rather than to my arguments. His agreeing with me made me look weaker, not stronger. Outside, he gave me what comfort he could, and I took it gratefully. But I was learning what most people learn when they go about to lead others. You begin by wearing a mask and pretending to be a different person – a person that’s like you with all the doubts and fears and yieldings taken out. But the more you put that mask on, the harder it is to take it off again. You draw back from them you love, not because you don’t need or want them any more but because you’re not the right shape to fit with them.
So when I went to Challenger, as Catrin had bid me, I went alone. Challenger was tech of the before-times that I had met at Calder’s ford and brought back home with me. He sat now in the middle of the gather-ground, and people went a long way around him when they passed. He looked like a wagon with a great many wheels. The bed of the wagon had a kind of a drum or tub set on top of it, and sticking out of the drum was the biggest gun you ever saw. The bullets it was meant to fire – bullets almost a stride long – were long gone out of the world, but Challenger was making more in a hidden place inside his great, wide frame.
It was very quiet inside Challenger. The noises of the village, of people working and talking and being together, fell on him like rain falls on a roof, and rolled down and trickled off again. Being in the heart of him, that was called a cockpit, was like being in a bucket at the bottom of the deepest well there was, except that nobody could draw you up again until you were ready to come.
“Did it ever fall to you,” I asked Challenger, “to fight against enemies that was much bigger in numbers than you was, and had better weapons in their hands?”
“Oh yes,” Challenger said. “Many times.”
“And did you always prevail?”
“Not always, no. I sustained terminal damage twice, and was immobilised but left partially functional twice more. My commanders saw fit, each time, to repair me and send me out to fight again. They had faith in me, and in my crew. We won great victories for the interim government – including some when we were very heavily outnumbered.”
“What’s the secret then? To winning, I mean. How do you do it when enemies is swarming on you like needles?”
“There is no secret. Or perhaps there are too many secrets to count.” Challenger went quiet, for a long enough time that I gave a cough to remind him I was still there. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was consulting my non-volatile storage. The memories of acting sergeant Elaine Sandberg are stored there. Elaine feels as I do about this. Once a battle starts, there are too many things happening all at once for any mind, whether organic or engineered, to take them all in and respond to them in real time. The relevant factors therefore are the planning that takes place before the battle, the placement and movement of forces during it and the ability of commanders to identify and track emergent events.”
“Emergent events?” I said. “What does that mean?”
“Out of the chaos, patterns will appear and coalesce. Out of a million tiny, passing things, some will not pass but will stay and become pivotal. Other things will hinge on them, and bend their courses. If you see these pivotal events clearly, and interpret them correctly, you can use them to further your goals.”
I’ll tell you truly, I understood only half of this. Less than half. And what I understood was all at odds with the way battle had seemed to me, the onliest time I was in one. I saw the chaos well enough, but I didn’t see the patterns coming out of it. Then I pondered a little harder, and a thought came to me.
“Was you one?” I asked Challenger. “In the fight at Calder’s ford, was you an emergent event?”
“Ultimately, yes. At first, I was only terrain. Your accessing my cockpit, and engaging my auto-repair, made me into an emergent event – impossible to predict before the battle began, but crucial to its outcome.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “I see that.”
So all we needed to get the better of Half-Ax was something else like Challenger – something really big, standing in plain sight, that yet wasn’t noticed by anyone in the fight until someone grabbed a hold of it and made it work for them.
Well, I thought, I’ll keep my eyes open for such a thing. And hope to the dead god I know it when I see it.
“So when you fought—?” I said, but my words were cut off by a yell from outside, and then by a boom that was almost as loud as the tocsin bell. Someone was banging on Challenger’s side. “I got to go see what that is,” I said, and scrambled up.
My heavy belly made me slow. By the time I stuck my head up out of Challenger’s turret, Ban was already crawling up over his side. I knew how scared she was of the big wagon, so that said a lot about the haste she was in.
“Spinner,” she said. “Someone’s come!”
“Who?” I said. “Come from where?”
She grabbed my arm in both her hands. Her eyes were wide. “From Half-Ax. A messenger from the Peacemaker. Fer said to bring you!”
15
Fer and Perliu were waiting for me in the Hold’s entrance hall. Both were in their best clothes, and Fer wore the bolt gun on her shoulder in a holster of grey leather. They were not happy, or calm.
“He was just standing by the gate when the sun come up,” Perliu told me. “Fran and Asha was on watch, but they didn’t see how he got there. He’s not carrying no weapons, they said, and he’s dressed all in red. We didn’t see him our own selves yet. We had them bring him to the Count and Seal.”
“After searching him first,” Fer said. “Just because they seen no weapons didn’t mean there was none. I had them bring him into the Hold by the back door, so he wouldn’t see Challenger.”