Interesting Times d-17 Read online

  "I could do with the lavatory. It's all this rain."

  "Let's get Hong first."

  "If he's hiding in the privy that's fine by me."

  They reached the city gates. They had been shut. Hundreds of people, citizens as well as guards, watched them from the walls.

  Cohen waved a finger at them.

  "Now I ain't gonna say this twice," he said. "I'm coming in, OK? It can be the easy way, or it can be the hard way."

  Impassive faces looked down at the skinny old man, and up at the plain, where the armies of the warlords fought one another and, in terror, the terracotta warriors. Down. Up. Down. Up.

  "Right," said Cohen. "Don't say afterwards I didn't warn youse."

  He raised his sword and prepared to charge.

  "Wait," said Mr Saveloy. "Listen…"

  There was shouting behind the walls, and some confused orders, and then more shouting. And then a couple of screams.

  The gates swung open, pulled by dozens of citizens.

  Cohen lowered his sword.

  "Ah," he said, "they've seen reason, have they?"

  Wheezing a little, the Horde limped through the gates. The crowd watched them in silence. Several guards lay dead. Rather more had removed their helmets and decided to opt for a bright new future in Civvy Street, where you were less likely to get beaten to death by an angry mob.

  Every face watched Cohen, turning to follow him as flowers follow the sun.

  He ignored them.

  "Crowdie the Strong?" he said to Caleb.

  "Dead."

  "Can't be. He was a picture of health when I saw him a coupla months ago. Going on a new quest and everything."

  "Dead."

  "What happened?"

  "You know the Terrible Man-eating Sloth of Clup?"

  "The one they say guards the giant ruby of the mad snake god?"

  "The very same. Well… it was."

  The crowd parted to let the Horde through. One or two people tried a cheer, but were shushed into silence. It was a silence that Mr Saveloy had only heard before in the most devout of temples.[24]

  There was a whispering, though, growing out of that watchful silence like bubbles in a pot of water on a hot fire.

  It went like this.

  The Red Army. The Red Army.

  "How about Organdy Sloggo? Still going strong down in Howondaland, last I heard."

  "Dead. Metal poisoning."

  "How?"

  "Three swords through the stomach."

  The Red Army!

  "Slasher Mungo?"

  "Presumed dead in Skund."

  "Presumed?"

  "Well, they only found his head."

  The Red Army!

  The Horde approached the inner gates of the Forbidden City. The crowd followed them at a distance.

  These gates were shut, too. A couple of heavy-set guards were standing in front of them. They wore the expressions of men who'd been told to guard the gates and were going to guard the gates come what may. The military depends on people who will guard gates or bridges or passes come what may and there are often heroic poems written in their honour, invariably posthumously.

  "Gosbar the Wake?"

  "Died in bed, I heard."

  "Not old Gosbar!"

  "Everyone's got to sleep some time."

  "That's not the only thing they've got to do, mister," said Boy Willie. "I really need the wossname."

  "Well, there's the Wall."

  "Not with everyone watching! That ain't… civilized."

  Cohen strode up to the guards.

  "I'm not mucking about," he said. "OK? Would you rather die than betray your Emperor?"

  The guards stared ahead.

  "Right, fair enough." Cohen drew his sword. A thought seemed to strike him.

  "Nurker?" he said. "Big Nurker? Tough as old boots, him."

  "Fishbone," said Caleb.

  "Nurker? He once killed six trolls with a—"

  "Choked on a fishbone in his gruel. I thought you knew. Sorry."

  Cohen stared at him. And then at his sword. And then at the guards. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the sound of the rain.

  "Y'know, lads," he said, in a voice so suddenly full of weariness that Mr Saveloy felt a pit opening up, here, at the moment of triumph, "I was goin' to chop your heads off. But… what's the point, eh? I mean, when you get right down to it, why bother? What sort of difference does it make?"

  The guards still stared straight ahead. But their eyes were widening.

  Mr Saveloy turned.

  "You'll end up dead anyway, sooner or later," Cohen went on. "Well, that's about it. You live your life best way you can and then it don't actually matter, 'cos you're dead—"

  "Er. Cohen?" said Mr Saveloy.

  "I mean, look at me. Been chopping heads off my whole life and what've I got to show for it?"

  "Cohen… "

  The guards weren't just staring now. Their faces were dragging themselves into very creditable grimaces of fear. "Cohen?"

  "Yeah, what?"

  "I think you should look round, Cohen."

  Cohen turned.

  Half a dozen red warriors were advancing up the street. The crowd had pulled right back and were watching in silent terror.

  Then a voice shouted: "Extended Duration To The Red Army!"

  Cries rose up here and there in the crowd. A young woman raised her hand in a clenched fist.

  "Advance Necessarily With The People While Retaining Due Regard For Traditions!"

  Others joined her.

  "Deserved Correction To Enemies!"

  "I've lost Mr Bunny!"

  The red giants clonked to a halt.

  "Look at them!" said Mr Saveloy. "They're not trolls! They move like some kind of engine! Doesn't that interest you?"

  "No," said Cohen, vacantly. "Abstract thinking is not a major aspect of the barbarian mental process. Now then, where was I?" He sighed. "Oh, yes. You two… you'd rather die than betray your Emperor, would you?

  The two men were rigid with fear now.

  Cohen raised his sword.

  Mr Saveloy took a deep breath, grabbed Cohen's sword arm and shouted:

  "Then open the gates and let him through!"

  There was a moment of utter silence.

  Mr Saveloy nudged Cohen.

  "Go on," he hissed. "Act like an Emperor!"

  "What… you mean giggle, have people tortured, that sort of thing? Blow that!"

  "No! Act like an Emperor ought to act!"

  Cohen glared at Saveloy. Then he turned to the guards.

  "Well done," he said. "Your loyalty does you… wossname… credit. Keep on like this and I can see it's promotion for both of you. Now let us all go inside or I will have my flowerpot men chop off your feet so you'll have to kneel in the gutter while you're looking for your head."

  The men looked at one another, threw down their swords and tried to kowtow.

  "And you can bloody well get up, too," said Cohen, in a slightly nicer tone of voice. "Mr Saveloy?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm Emperor now, am I?"

  "The… earth soldiers seem to be on our side. The people think you've won. We're all alive. I'd say we've won, yes."

  "If I'm Emperor, I can tell everyone what to do, right?"

  "Oh, indeed."

  "Properly. You know. Scrolls and stuff. Buggers in uniform blowing trumpets and saying. 'This is what he wants you to do.'"

  "Ah. You want to make a proclamation."

  "Yeah. No more of this bloody kowtowing. It makes me squirm. No kowtowing by anyone to anyone, all right? If anyone sees me they can salute, or maybe give me some money. But none of this banging your head on the ground stuff. It gives me the willies. Now, dress that up in proper writing."

  "Right away. And—"

  "Hang on, haven't finished yet," Cohen bit his lip in unaccustomed cogitation, as the red warriors lurched to a stop. "Yeah. You can add that I'm letting all prisoners go free, unless
they've done something really bad. Like attempted poisoning, for a start. You can work out the details. All torturers to have their heads cut off. And every peasant can have a free pig, something like that. I'll leave you to put in all the proper curly bits about 'by order' and stuff."

  Cohen looked down at the guards.

  "Get up, I said. I swear, the next bastard that kisses the ground in front of me is gonna get kicked in the antique chicken coops. OK? Now open the gates."

  The crowd cheered. As the Horde stepped inside the Forbidden City they followed, in a sort of cross between a revolutionary charge and a respectful walk.

  The red warriors stood outside. One of them raised a terracotta foot, which groaned a little, and walked towards the Wall until it bumped into it.

  The warrior staggered drunkenly for a while and then managed to get within a yard or two of the Wall without colliding with it.

  It raised a finger and wrote, shakily, in red dust that turned to a kind of paint on the wet plaster:

  HELP HELP ITS ME IM OUT HERE ON THEE PLAIN HELP I CAN'T GET THIS BLODY ARMER OFF.

  The crowd surged along behind Cohen, shouting and singing. If he'd had a surfboard, he could have ridden on it. The rain drummed heavily on the roof and poured into the courtyards.

  "Why're they all so excited?" he said.

  "They think you're going to sack the palace," said Mr Saveloy. "They've heard about barbarians, you see. They want some of it. Anyway, they like the idea about the pig."

  "Hey, you!" shouted Cohen to a boy struggling past under the weight of a huge vase. "Get your thieving paws off my stuff! That's valuable, that is! It's a……"

  "It's S'ang Dynasty," said Mr Saveloy.

  "That's right," said the vase.

  "That's a S'ang Dynasty, that is! Put it back! And you lot back there—" He turned and waved his sword. "Get those shoes off! You're scratching the floor! Look at the state of it already!"

  "You never bothered about the floor yesterday," Truckle grumbled.

  "'Tweren't my floor then."

  "Yes, it was," said Mr Saveloy.

  "Not properly," said Cohen. "Rite of conquest, that's the thing. Blood. People understand blood. You just walk in and take over and no-one takes it seriously. But seas of blood… Everyone understands that."

  "Mountains of skulls," said Truckle approvingly.

  "Look at history," said Cohen. "Whenever you — Hey, you, the man with the hat, that's my…"

  "Inlaid mahogany Shibo Yangcong-san table," murmured Mr Saveloy.

  "—so put it back, d'you hear? Yes, whenever you comes across a king where everyone says, "Oo, he was a good king all right," you can bet your sandals he was a great big bearded bastard who broke heads a lot and laughed about it. Hey? But some king who just passed decent little laws and read books and tried to look intelligent… "Oh," they say, "oh, he was all right, a bit wet, not what I'd call a proper king." That's people for you."

  Mr Saveloy sighed.

  Cohen grinned at him and slapped him on the back so hard he stumbled into two women trying to carry off a bronze statue of Ly Tin Wheedle.

  "Can't quite face it, Teach, can you? Can't get your mind round it? Don't worry about it. Basically, you ain't a barbarian. Put the damn statue back, missus, or you'll feel the flat of my sword, so you will!"

  "But I thought we could do it without anyone getting hurt. By using our brains."

  "Can't. History don't work like that. Blood first, then brains."

  "Mountains of skulls," said Truckle.

  "There's got to be a better way than fighting," said Mr Saveloy.

  "Yep. Lots of 'em. Only none of 'em work. Caleb, take those… those…"

  "—fine Bhong jade miniatures—" muttered Mr Saveloy.

  "—take them off that feller. He's got one under his hat."

  Another set of carved doors was swung open. This room was already crowded, but the people shuffled backwards as the doors parted and tried to look keen while avoiding catching Cohen's eye.

  As they pulled away they left Six Beneficent Winds standing all alone. The court had become very good at this manoeuvre.

  "Mountains of skulls," said Truckle, not a man to let go in a hurry.

  "Er. We saw the Red Army rise out of the ground, er, just as the legend foretold. Er. Truly you are the preincarnation of One Sun Mirror."

  The little taxman had the decency to look embarrassed. As speeches went it was on a dramatic level with the one that traditionally began, "As you know, your father — the king—" Besides, he'd never believed in legends up to now — not even the one about the peasant who every year filed a scrupulously honest tax return.

  "Yeah, right," said Cohen.

  He strode to the throne and stuck his sword in the floor, where it vibrated.

  "Some of you are going to get your heads cut off for your own good," he said. "But I haven't decided who yet. And someone show Boy Willie where the privy is."

  "No need," said Boy Willie. "Not after them big red statues turned up behind me so sudden."

  "Mountains of—" Truckle began.

  "Dunno about mountains," said Cohen.

  "And where," said Six Beneficent Winds tremulously, "is the Great Wizard?"

  "Great Wizard," said Cohen.

  "Yes, the Great Wizard who summoned the Red Army from the earth," said the taxman.

  "Don't know anything about him," said Cohen.

  The crowd staggered forward as more people piled into the room.

  "They're coming!"

  A terracotta warrior clomped its way into the room, its face still wearing a very faint smile.

  It stopped, rocking a little, while water dripped off it.

  People had crouched back in terror. Except the Horde, Mr Saveloy noticed. Faced with unknown yet terrible dangers, the Horde were either angry or puzzled.

  Then he cheered up. They weren't better, just different. They're all right facing huge terrible creatures, he told himself, but ask them to go down the street and buy a bag of rice and they go all to pieces…

  "What's my move now, Teach?" Cohen whispered.

  "Well, you're Emperor," said Mr Saveloy. "I think you talk to it."

  "OK."

  Cohen stood up and nodded cheerfully at the terracotta giant.

  "'Morning," he said. "Nice bit of work out there. You and the rest of your lads can have the day off to plant geraniums in yourselves or whatever you do. Er. You got a Number One giant I ought to speak to?"

  The terracotta warrior creaked as it raised one finger.

  Then it pressed two fingers against one forearm, then raised a finger again.

  Everyone in the crowd started talking at once.

  The giant tugged one vestigial ear with two fingers.

  "What can this mean?" said Six Beneficent Winds.

  "I find this a little hard to credit," said Mr Saveloy, "but it is an ancient method of communication used in the land of blood-sucking vampire ghosts."

  "You can understand it?"

  "Oh, yes. I think so. You have to try to guess the word or phrase. It's trying to tell us… er… one word, two syllables. First syllable sounds like…"

  The giant cupped one hand and made circular, handle-turning motions with the other alongside it.

  "Turning," said Mr Saveloy. "Winding? Reeling? Revolve? Grind? Grind? Chop? Mince—"

  The giant tapped its nose hurriedly and did a very heavy, noisy dance, bits of terracotta armour clanking.

  "Sounds like mince," said Mr Saveloy. "First syllable sounds like mince."

  "Er…"

  A ragged figure pushed its way through the crowd. It wore glasses, one lens of which was cracked.

  "Er," it said, "I've got an idea about that…"

  Lord Fang and some of his more trusted warriors had clustered on the side of the hills. A good general always knows when to leave the battlefield, and as far as Lord Fang was concerned, it was when he saw the enemy coming towards him.

  The men were shaken. They hadn't
tried to face the Red Army. Those who had were dead.

  "We… regroup," panted Lord Fang. "And then we'll wait until nightfall and — What's that?"

  There was a rhythmic noise coming from the bushes further up the slope, where sliding earth had left another bush-filled ravine.

  "Sounds like a carpenter, m'lord," said one of the soldiers.

  "Up here? In the middle of a war? Go and see what it is!"

  The man scrambled away. After a while there was a pause in the sawing noise. Then it started again.

  Lord Fang had been trying to work out a fresh battle plan according to the Nine Useful Principles. He threw down his map.

  "Why is that still going on? Where is Captain Nong?"

  "Hasn't come back, m'lord."

  "Then go and see what has happened to him!"

  Lord Fang tried to remember if the great military sage had ever had anything to say about fighting giant invulnerable statues. He—

  The sawing paused. Then it was replaced by the sound of hammering.

  Lord Fang looked around.

  "Can I have an order obeyed around here?" he bellowed.

  He picked up his sword and scrambled up the muddy slope. The bushes parted ahead of him. There was a clearing. There was a rushing shape, on hundreds of little le—

  There was a snap.

  The rain was coming down so fast that the drops were having to queue.

  The red earth was hundreds of feet deep in places. It produced two or three crops a year. It was rich. It was fecund. It was, when wet, extremely sticky.

  The surviving armies had squelched from the field of battle, as red from head to toe as the terracotta men. Not counting those merely trodden on, the Red Army had not in fact killed very many people. Terror had done most of their work. Rather more soldiers had been killed in the brief inter-army battles and, in the scramble to escape, by their own sides.[25]

  The terracotta army had the field to itself. It was celebrating victory in various ways. Many guards were walking around in circles, wading through the clinging mud as if it was so much dirty air. A number were digging a trench, the sides of which were washing in on them in the thundering rain. A few were trying to climb walls that weren't there. Several, possibly as a result of the exertion following centuries of zero maintenance, had spontaneously exploded in a shower of blue sparks, the red-hot clay shrapnel being a major factor in the opposition's death count.