The Two of Swords, Part 4 by K. J. Parker

Author:K. J. Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2015-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

The way station was a perfect white cube that shone like silver. It grew bigger and bigger as they got nearer; when they were close enough for Daxen to get a sense of perspective, he realised it was larger than the Blue temple back home. It was built of what they called army stone – you mixed sand and water and some sort of powdered rock from a special mountain in Thyrnessus, and you could pour it in huge moulds like molten brass and it set hard like fired clay. It wasn’t used any more, since Thyrnessus was in the East, but the refineries where it was ground into powder were just over the border in the West; presumably the method was written down somewhere, but nobody seemed to know it. Close up, it wasn’t actually white but a sort of light grey.

Deserted, of course; but the enormous tank was three-quarters full of clean water under its heavy wooden shutters, and five long sheds built into the eastern wall were packed tight with hay, old but still good. The only thing that appeared to be missing were the station’s four doors – according to specification, five inches of six-ply oak, cross-grained to resist battering, fitted with four hinges each weighing a quarter of a ton. No sign of any doors, which made the building useless as a defensive position. Prexil decided that they’d been stolen by the savages and broken up for firewood and scrap; he advanced no explanation for the fact that the hay was still there. There was no sign that anyone had been there recently, but the charcoal cellars had been filled to capacity, which wasn’t scheduled for another three months.

“We might as well stop over for a day,” Prexil said, “maybe even two, get ourselves back into shape, that sort of thing. It’s going to be bad enough when we get home telling everyone that we’ve achieved absolutely nothing. I don’t want us marching into Erithry in this state.”

True enough, the army didn’t shine and gleam like it did when it set out, and the military put so much stock in things being shiny. Now they were on the road again, it would be no more than five days to Erithry, and Prexil would have to march his army through the Lion Gates, with crowds watching. A parade-ground soldier, he’d called himself. No wonder he’d been so irritable lately.

There was an empty cellar next to the charcoal stores. It was wonderfully, gorgeously cool, and if you left the trapdoor open there was plenty of light to read by. Daxen announced that he had despatches to write, and left them to it.

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