The Two of Swords: Part 8 Read Free Page B

lean-to of sooty planks, and there they sat, nothing to do but wait, observing the new arrivals off the boats, like sheep at market watching the butchers.
    “Looks like we’re going to have to walk,” Pleda said. “I hate bloody walking.”
    But Musen had other ideas. “I’ve got a letter,” he said.
    “What sort of a letter?”
    Musen reached inside his shirt and produced a thin tube. It looked like brass, but there are other yellow metals. “Put it away, for God’s sake,” Pleda hissed. “You want to get our throats cut?”
    Musen hadn’t thought of that. “It’s signed by the emperor,” he said, pulling his shirt down so the tube wouldn’t show. “It says we can have anything we want. I don’t know if that actually means anything.”
    Dear God, a plenipotentiary warrant. A real one, not a fake. “It means something,” Pleda muttered. “Means we don’t have to walk, for one thing. Right, we need the prefect’s office.”
    The Beloisa prefecture was a genuine stone, brick and tile building, one of the five still standing. The prefect, a pale, thin man Pleda had never heard of, took the tube as though he’d just been handed a sleeping cobra. “What’s this?” he said.
    “You might like to read it,” Pleda suggested.
    The prefect had difficulty getting the parchment out of the tube. First he tried to pinch hold of the end with his fingernails, but they were too short. Then he tried prodding with his forefinger, but somehow he managed to get the base of the parchment crumpled so that it jammed. Then he got up, crossed the room to a big rosewood chest on a stand, opened the chest, rummaged around for a while until he found a foot-long piece of ebony dowel, the sort of thing people who need to draw lines on maps use as a ruler. He tried that, but it was too wide to fit in the tube.
    “Let me,” Pleda said. He poked the uncrumpled end of the tube with his little finger, and the roll of parchment slid out on to the prefect’s desk. The prefect gave him a baffled look, unrolled the parchment and started to read. Then he lifted his head and stared. “Sorry,” he said. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
    Not nearly as much, it turned out, as they’d hoped. Horses, yes, not a problem. They could go to the stables and help themselves from a wide selection of military-spec thoroughbreds. Only trouble was, they were cavalry horses – first class for charging the enemy, no good at all for pulling carts. All the draught horses in the place had been requisitioned, day before yesterday, and loaded on transports and whisked away over the sea. Not best pleased, as you gentlemen can imagine, since there was now no way of moving supply carts, hauling firewood or emptying the latrines. Sorry about that.
    Pleda replied that that wasn’t good enough. He had a warrant in the emperor’s own handwriting promising him whatever he needed. It would not go well with the prefect, he suggested, if he was responsible for making the emperor break his promise. The prefect gave him a smile of pure hate and fear and said he’d see what he could do.
    An hour later, by some miracle, two carthorses were suddenly available. Sheer coincidence, the prefect told them, some farmer just wandered in off the moor and offered to sell them. They weren’t bad animals, as it happened: shaggy, short-legged, nearly as broad as they were tall. Pleda gave the prefect a list of the emperor’s other promises, and the prefect assured him everything would be loaded on the cart in an hour. Until then, perhaps they would care for a bite to eat in the officers’ mess.
    “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d got a warrant?” Pleda said, with his mouth full. Roast pork with chestnut stuffing.
    “We didn’t need anything.”
    Farm boy, he thought. No matter. “Well, it’s nice to know it’s there if we need it. Don’t suppose it’ll be much help once we’re out of here, not unless we run into soldiers. Still, you’d better let me