Matter by Iain M. Banks
“With your leave, sir,” Fanthile said to the ambassador, then he and Oramen bowed, turned and went clattering down the last flight of stairs towards ground level.
The fuss in the mounting yard mostly involved a whole blaring coven of dukes, earls and knights disputing loudly over who ought to ride with the Prince Regent on the short journey he was about to make to meet the body of the returning king.
Oramen hung back in the shadows, arms folded, waiting for his mount to be brought before him. He stepped backwards into a pile of dung near the yard’s tall rear wall and tutted, shaking some of the shit from his boot and attempting to scrape off the rest on the wall. The dung pile was still steaming. He wondered if you could tell what sort of animal had left the turd from its appearance and consistency. Probably, he imagined.
He looked straight up at the sky. There, still visible over the lanterns illuminating the mounting yard from the ensquaring walls, a dull red line marked the cooling course incised by the Rollstar Pentrl, many hours set and many days away from returning. He looked to the nearpole, where Domity would rise next, but this was a relatively long night, and even the Rollstar’s forelight was still some hours away. He thought he could see just a suggestion of the Keande-yiine Tower, stretching into the darkness above – the lower extent of the Xiliskine, though nearer, was hidden by a tall tower of the palace – but he was not sure. Xiliskine. Or 213tower52. That was the name their mentors, the Oct, would give it. He supposed he ought to prefer Xiliskine.
He returned his attention to the yard. So many nobles. He’d assumed they’d all be out fighting the Deldeyn. But then, his father had long since drawn a firm distinction between those nobles who brought grace and emollience to a court and those who were capable of successfully fighting a modern war. The levied troops, magnificently motley, led by their lords, still had their place, but the New Army was part full-time professional and part well-trained people’s militias, all of it commanded by captains, majors, colonels and generals, not knights, lords, earls and dukes. He spotted some senior priests and a few parliamentarians in the mixture too, pressing their suit for inclusion. He had fondly imagined riding out alone, or with one or two attendants. Instead it looked like he would be leading out a small army of his own.
Oramen had been advised not to have anything to do with the battle taking place out over the plains that day, and anyway had no real interest in it, given that they had all been most severely assured it was quite certain to go their way by Werreber, one of his father’s most forbidding generals, just the night before. It was a pity, in a way. Only a couple of years ago he’d have been fascinated with the machinery of war and all the careful dispositioning of forces involved. The intense numericality of its planning and the extreme functionality of its cruel workings would have consumed him.
Somehow, though, since then he’d lost interest in things martial. They seemed, even as they were in the process of securing it, profoundly inimical to the modern age they’d help usher in. War itself was becoming old-fashioned and outmoded. Inefficient, wasteful, fundamentally destructive, it would have no part in the glitteringly pragmatic future the greatest minds of the kingdom foresaw.
Only people like his father would mourn such a passing. He would celebrate it.
“My prince,” murmured a voice beside him.
Oramen turned. “Tove!” he said, clapping the other young man on the back. Tove Lomma had been his best friend almost since nursery. He was an army officer nowadays and wore the uniform of the old Flying Corps. “You’re here! I thought you’d be fighting! How good to see you!”
“They’ve had me in one of the lyge towers the last few days, with a squadron of the beasts. Light guns. In case there was an aerial attack. Listen.” He put one hand on Oramen’s arm. “This is so bad about your father and Ferbin. The stars would weep, Oramen. I can’t tell you. All the men of the flight . . . Well, we want you to know we’re at your command.”
“Rather, at Loesp’s.”
“He is your champion in this, Oramen. He’ll serve you well, I’m sure.”
“As am I.”
“Your father, though; our dear king, our every—” Tove’s voice broke. He shook his head and looked away, biting his lip and sniffing hard.
Oramen felt he had to comfort his old friend. “Well, he died happy, I imagine,” he said. “In battle, and victorious, as he’d have wished. As we’d all have wished. Anyway.” He took a quick look round the mêlée in the yard. The contesting nobles seemed to be gathering themselves into some sort of order but there was still no sign of his charger. He’d have been quicker in the steam car after all. “It is a shock,” he continued. Tove was still looking away. “I shall miss him. Miss him . . . well, terribly. Obviously.” Tove looked back at him. Oramen smiled broadly and blinked quickly. “Truth be told, I think I’m like a half-stunned beast, still walking around, but eyes crossed as wits. I fully expect to wake up at any moment. I’d do so now, if it was in my power.”
When Tove looked back, his eyes were bright. “I’ve heard that when the troops learned their beloved king was dead, they fell upon their captives and killed every one.”
“I hope not,” Oramen said. “That was not my father’s policy.”
“They killed him, Oramen! Those beasts! I wish I’d been there too, to take my own revenge.”
“Well, neither of us were. We must hope what’s been done in our name brings only honour.”
Tove nodded slowly, clutching Oramen’s arm once more. “You must be strong, Oramen,” he said.
Oramen gazed at his old friend. Strong, indeed. This was quite the most vapid thing Tove had ever said to him. Death obviously had an odd effect on people.
“So,” Tove said, with a sly, tentative smile, “do we call you sire or majesty or something yet?”
“Not yet . . .” Oramen began, then was led away by an earl and assisted to his mount by dukes.
On the Xilisk road, near the small town of Evingreath, the cortège bearing the body of King Nerieth Hausk back to his capital met with the barely smaller procession led by the prince Oramen. Immediately he saw the Prince Regent, lit by hissing travel lanterns and the slow-increasing forelight of the Rollstar Domity, still some hours from its dawn, Mertis tyl Loesp, who all the world knew had been like a third hand to the King for almost all his life, dismounted and, pulling himself with heavy steps to the prince’s charger, went down on one knee on the muddied road, head bowed, so that his silvery hair – spiked and wild from the tearings of grief – and his distraught face – still dark with powder smoke and streaked by hot, unceasing tears – were level with the stirruped foot of the prince. Then he raised his head and said these words:
“Sir, our beloved master, the King, who was your father and my friend, and was friend and father to all his people, comes back to his throne in triumph, but also in death. Our victory has been great, and complete, and our gain and new advantage immeasurable. Only our loss exceeds such vast accomplishment, but it does so by a ratio beyond calculation. Beside that hateful cost, for all its furious glory, our triumph these last hours now looks like nothing. Your father was full occasion for both; one would not have been but for his matchless leadership and steady purpose, the other was invoked by his untimely, unwanted, undeserved death.
“And so, it is fallen to me, and is my great, if ever-unlooked-for privilege, to rule for the short interval between this most loathsome day and the glorious one of your accession. I beseech you, sir; believe me that whatever I do in your name, my lord, will be for you and the people of Sarl, and always in the name of the WorldGod. Your father would expect no less, and in this cause, so great to us, I might begin to start some small repayment of the honour he did me. I honour you as I honoured him, sir – utterly, with all my being, with my every thought and every action, now and for as long as it is my duty so to do.
“I have today lost the best friend a man ever had, sir; a true light, a constant star whose fixity outshone, outstared any mere celestial lamp.
“Sir, if I seem to express myself inelegantly, or without the due respect I would give your station and your self, forgive me. My eyes are blinded, my ears stopped and my mouth made numb by all that’s taken place today. To gain more than we thought possible, then lose an infinity more than even that, would have shattered any man, save only the one unmatched soul it is our sad, abhorrent duty to bring before you here.”
Tyl Loesp fell silent. Oramen knew he was expected to say something in return. He’d been doing his best to ignore the prattling dukes around him for the last half-hour, after Fanthile had briefly made it through the press of bodies, animal and human, surrounding him, to warn him he might need to give a speech. The palace secretary had barely had time to impart even this morsel of advice before he and his mount were nudged and jostled out of the way, back to what the more splendid nobles obviously regarded as his proper place amongst the minor nobility, the dutifully wailing priests and dour-looking parliamentarians. Since then Oramen had been trying to come up with something suitable. But what was he supposed to say, or do?
He glanced at the various resplendent nobles around him, all of whom, from their grave, almost exaggerated nods and mutterings, seemed to approve quite mightily of Mertis tyl Loesp’s speech. Oramen twisted briefly in his saddle to glimpse Fanthile – now still further back in the crush of junior nobles, priests and representatives – signalling, with jerks of his head and jagged flaps of his hand that he ought to dismount.
He did so. Already a small crowd of dismounted men and people presumably from the nearby town and countryside had gathered around them, filling the broad way and jostling for position on the roadside banks. The growing forelight, pre-dawn under a sky of scattered clouds, silhouetted some folk climbing nearby trees for a better view. He still had no idea what to say in return, though he suddenly thought what a fine subject for a painting such a scene might make. Oramen took tyl Loesp by one hand and got him to stand before him.
“Thank you for all you’ve said and done, dear tyl Loesp,” he told the older man. He was very aware of the contrast between the two of them; he the slight prince, barely out of childish clothes and dressed beneath his thrown-back cloak as though preparing for bed, the other the all-powerful conquering warrior, still in his battle armour – flecked here and there with all the marks of war – three times his age and barely any younger or less impressive than the lately killed king.
Harsh-breathing, stern-faced, still stinking of blood and smoke, bearing all the signs of mortal combat and unbearable grief, tyl Loesp towered over him. The drama of the scene was not lost on Oramen. This would make a good painting, he thought, especially by one of the old masters – say Dilucherre, or Sordic. Perhaps even Omoulldeo. And almost at the same moment, he knew what to do; he’d steal.
Not from a painting, of course, but from a play. There were enough old tragedies with like scenes and suitable speeches for him to welcome back a dozen dead dads and doughty combateers; the choice was more daunting than the task it might relieve. He’d recall, pick, edit, join and extemporise his way through the moment.
“This is indeed our saddest day,” Oramen said, raising his voice, and his head. “If any energies of yours could bring our father back, I know you’d devote them to that cause without stint. That vigour instead will be turned to the good interest of all our people. You bring us sorrow and joy at once, my good tyl Loesp, but for all the misery we feel now, and for all the time we must rightly hence devote to the mourning of our incomparable fallen, the satisfaction of this great victory will still shine brightly when that rite has been most fully observed, and my father would surely want it so.
“The sum of his most glorious life was cause for fervent celebration well before the great triumph of this day, and the weight of that result has grown only more majestic with the exploits of all who fought for him before the Xiliskine Tower.” Oramen looked round the gathered people for a moment at this point, and attempted to raise his voice still further. “My father took one son to war today, and left one, myself, at home. I have lost both a father and a brother, as well as my king and his loved and rightful heir. They outshine me in death as they did in life, and Mertis tyl Loesp, though having no lack of other responsibilities, must stand in place of both for me. I tell you, I can think of no one more fitted to the task.” Oramen nodded towards the grim-faced warrior in front of him, then he took a breath, and, still addressing the assembled mass, said, “I know I have no share of this day’s glory – I think my boyish shoulders would fail beneath the smallest part of such a load – but I am proud to stand with all the Sarl people, to celebrate and to honour the great deeds done and pay the fullest respect to one who taught us celebration, encouraged us to honour and exemplified respect.”
This fetched a cheer, which rose raggedly then with increasing strength from the congregation of people gathered around them. Oramen heard shields being struck by swords, mailed fists beating on armoured chests and, like a modern comment on such flowery antiquity, the loud crack of small arms fire, rounds spent into the air like some inverted hail.
Mertis tyl Loesp, who had kept a stony face during Oramen’s reply, looked very briefly surprised – even alarmed – at its end, but that briefest of impressions – which might so easily have been the result of the uncertain light cast by the carried travel lanterns and the wan glow of a still unrisen minor star – was close to uncapturably short-lived, and easily dismissible.
“May I see my father, sir?” Oramen asked. He found that his heart was beating hard and his breath was quick; still he did his best to maintain a calm and dignified demeanour, as he gathered was expected. Nevertheless, if he was expected to wail and scream and tear out his hair when he saw the body, this impromptu audience was going to be disappointed.
“He is here, sir,” tyl Loesp said, indicating the long carriage pulled by hefters behind him.
They walked to the carriage, the crowd of men, mostly armed, many with all the appearance of great distress, parting for them. Oramen saw the tall, spare frame of General Werreber, who’d briefed them at the palace about the battle just the night before, and the Exaltine Chasque, the chief of priests. Both nodded to him. Werreber looked old and tired and somehow – despite his height – shrunken inside his crumpled uniform. He nodded, then cast his gaze downwards. Chasque, resplendent in rich vestments over gleaming armour, formed the sort of clenched, encouraging half-smile people sometimes did when they wanted to tell you to be brave or strong.
They climbed on to the platform where Oramen’s father lay. The body was attended by a couple of priests in appropriately torn vestments and lit from above by a single hissing, sputtering travel lamp casting a white, caustic light over the bier. His father’s face looked grey and still and drawn-down somehow, as though he was pondering – eyes shut, jaws set – some overwhelmingly demanding problem. A silvery sheet embroidered with gold covered his body from the neck down.
Oramen stood looking at him for a while. In time he said, “In life, by choice, his deeds spoke for him. In death, I must be as mute as all his undone undertakings.” He clapped tyl Loesp on the arm. “I’ll sit with him while we return to the city.” He looked behind the gun carriage. A mersicor, a great charger, dis-armoured though in full regalia, was tied to its rear, saddle empty. “Is that . . . ?” he began, then made a show of clearing his throat. “That’s my father’s mount,” he said.
“It is,” tyl Loesp confirmed.
“Unfound, sir.”
“Let my mount be tied to the end of the carriage too, behind my father’s.”
He went to sit at his father’s head, then, imagining Fanthile’s face, thought that might be held inappropriate, and repositioned himself at the foot of the bier.
He sat there at the trailing edge of the carriage, cross-legged, looking down, while the two mersicors loped along just behind, breath steaming in the increasingly misty air. The whole aggregated column of men, animals and wagons made the rest of the journey to the city in a silence broken only by the creak of wheel and axle, the snap of whip and the snort and clop of beast. The morning mists obscured the rising star of the new day almost until the walls of Pourl itself, then lifted slowly to become a layer of overcast that hid the higher city and the palace.
On the approaches to the Nearpole Gate, where a conglomeration of small factories and what was effectively a new town had sprung up within Oramen’s lifetime, the temporary sun shone only for a little while, then was gone again behind the clouds.
3. Folly
Choubris Holse found his master in the eighth of the distinct places where he thought he might actually be, which was, of course, a significant and most propitious location to discover somebody or something a person was looking for. It was also the last place he knew of to look with any purpose beyond simply wandering randomly; indeed, with this in mind, he had left it to the afternoon of his second day of searching specifically with the hope that this might finally be where Ferbin had fetched up.
The folly looked like a small castle poised on a low cliff overlooking a turn in the river Feyrla. It was just a hollow round of walls, really, with crenellations, and had been built, preruined, as it were, to improve the view from a hunting lodge a little further down the valley. It had been a place, Choubris Holse knew, where the King’s children had played while their father – on one of his infrequent spells at home from his various Wars of Unity – went hunting.