Pattern

Chapter Fifteen

'Wake up,' said a voice in his ear, 'for crying out laud.'

So he woke up. He was lying in the yard, next to the woodpile, and someone had just thrown a bucket of water in his face. No pile of straw, he noted, and no circle of anxious faces (so either Monach had got it wrong, or all that stuff was for next time; he repeated the thought in his mind, but this time none of it made any sense); just Boarci standing over him with an empty bucket.

'Bloody hell,' Poldarn croaked. 'What happened to you?'

'What? Oh, you mean my beard.' Boarci pulled a sad face. 'Got set on fire, didn't it? And when I looked at it just now, I figured, bloody fool I'd look with only half a beard. So I shaved the rest off. It'll grow back,' he sighed. 'Eventually.'

'How about the rest of you? You were all on fire,' Poldarn remembered.

'Just my clothes,' Boarci replied, 'though they're all ruined, of course, which is a pain. You know, I'm not having much luck here. When I arrived, I didn't have much but at least I had the clothes I stood up in. Not any more. This lot belongs to your middle-house stockman. Anyway,' he went on, 'it could've been worse. Nobody died, is the main thing, and they reckon they can patch up the house, given time. Not the most cheerful wedding I've ever been to, but livelier than some.'

Poldarn stood up. His legs were weak, but they seemed to be working. 'Where's Elja?' he said. 'Is she all right?'

Boarci nodded. 'A bit crispy round the edges, if you know what I mean, but yes, she's fine. Over there in the trap-house, cutting bandages and stuff. Only one who got anything like a nasty burn was your brother-in-law Egil, and it's only the backs of his hands, should heal up in time. I've seen worse.'

'That's a comfort,' Poldarn muttered. 'What happened to me?'

Boarci laughed. 'Bloody comical, that was. That lamp shattered, you jumped back, fell over your feet and nutted yourself on the deck. Out like a snuffed candle. Anyway, you were sleeping like a little lamb, so I got you out and here we are.'

Now that he mentioned it, Poldarn's head was hurting. 'What about the house?' he said.

'Oh, once they'd pulled themselves together it was business as usual. That's how come I've only just woken you up, there wasn't a bucket of water to spare till now. It's a bloody mess in there, but really it's just a few rafters and plates need replacing, the rest they can patch up. You know what they're like when they get started on a job.'

'That's good,' Poldarn said. 'So everything's under control, is it?'

Boarci laughed. 'As much as it ever is,' he replied. 'You ought to go and lie down-you look as sick as a pig. There's nothing for you to do, if that's what you're on about.'

'Good,' Poldarn said. 'I think I'll go and find Elja.'

'Yeah, why not? Of course, she'll probably tell you to get lost, she's got work to do. But it shows the right spirit, I suppose.'

Poldarn nodded. The movement hurt. 'So,' he said, 'did Elja and me get married or not?'

'I think so,' Boarci said with a grin. 'Anyhow, close enough for government work. And it saved having to listen to all the speeches, so really it's a blessing. Though I was looking forward to yours.'

'Mine? I was supposed to make a speech?'

'Oh yes,' Boarci said solemnly. 'High spot of the event. There, see how lucky you are? If you fell in a shitheap you'd find a truffle.'

'Well,' Poldarn said nervously, 'there it is. Our house.'

Elja nodded. 'I've seen it before. It's very nice. Have they got the furniture in yet?'

'I think so,' Poldarn replied, guessing. 'I expect they have, it's the sort of detail they're good at. Anyhow, I'm sure there'll be something to sit down on and somewhere to sleep.'

'Mphm.' Elja nodded her head, neatly forestalling the implied topic. 'I don't suppose anybody's brought any food.'

'You're hungry?'

'Yes,' she replied firmly, 'very. I didn't have any breakfast, and we didn't get anything to eat after the wedding, what with the fire and everything. It's very important for you to know that I get extremely bad-tempered when I'm hungry.'

'Oh.' Poldarn froze, unable to think of anything intelligent to suggest. 'I suppose we'd better go back to the house-the old house, I mean-and see if we can dig up some bread and cheese.'

'Bread and cheese,' Elja repeated. 'Yes, all right. You go back, I'd better go inside and see what sort of a state the place is in.'

'Fine,' Poldarn snapped. 'I'll be as quick as I can.'

He didn't run, because his head was still hurting and every step he took sent a shooting pain through his temples, but he walked briskly. It was just starting to get dark, and he missed his footing, stumbled and twisted his ankle. Bloody wonderful wedding day, he muttered to himself.

They were surprised to see him, back at the middle house. 'What are you doing here?' Rannwey asked, in a way that suggested that she wasn't at all happy at this latest display of eccentricity. 'Where's Elja?'

'Back at the house.'

'What, you left her there on her own, on your wedding night?'

'She wanted something to eat.'

Rannwey frowned at him. 'But there's plenty of food up there, I took it up myself this morning. Rye bread and cold smoked lamb and honeycakes and goat's cheese and some hard-boiled eggs in butter, and a quart of the new beer.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'Oh, well, that's all right, then.'

So he trudged back, limping rather self-consciously on his pinked ankle, even though there was nobody to see him. When he reached the house, he could see a blade of yellow light showing under the door. He knocked before pushing it open.

'There you are,' Elja said with her mouth full, as she opened the door to him. 'You needn't have bothered, there's plenty of food.'

'I know,' Poldarn replied. 'They told me. Smoked lamb and eggs in butter.'

She nodded. 'Well, smoked lamb, anyway,' she said, 'I've eaten the eggs. Very good they were, too. And all the furniture's in, all nice and tidy, though I think I'll get you to move the linen chest out of the bedroom, you could bang your shin on it coming through the door. I've lit a fire, so it's nice and warm.'

Poldarn was already nice and warm, or at least warm, from toiling backwards and forwards up the river bank. 'Great,' he said. 'Thanks. I'll come in, then, shall I?'

'You do what you like.'

The house seemed very big with nobody in it but the two of them. It smelled rather disgusting-he hadn't been there when they laid the floor-two parts of potters' clay to one part of cowshit, the same mix as they used for lining furnaces; kept the heat in and the wet out-and the air was still full of sawdust and the clammy damp of newly cut green timber, drawn out by the large fire blazing in the hearth. Poldarn looked at it with disapproval; he'd seen enough fire for one day, and the sweat inside his shirt made him squirm. Mostly, he realised, he felt very tired, probably because of the headache and the day's melodrama.

'You sit down,' Elja said. 'I'll get you some food.'

Well, he thought, as he lowered his aching back into the big carved oak chair that Halder had always sat in, this is a bit more like it. Food on the table, his own fireside, his wife, domesticity. A man could get to feel his age in surroundings like this. That thought made him frown involuntarily, because ever since he'd woken up in the bloody mud beside the Bohec he hadn't felt any particular age; seventeen going on ninety, with an option on eternal youth and imminent certain death. According to Halder, he'd been born forty-two years ago, when the timbers that made up this fine house of his were little twiggy saplings, but he'd accepted that information as he'd accepted everything else Halder had told him about himself: a fact whose truth he had no reason to doubt, but clearly relating to somebody else. Now at least he had something to measure himself against; the timbers of the house, the house itself. By those criteria he was exactly the right age for the purpose in hand, and everything was working out the way it had been intended to.

'Elja,' he called out-she was at the other end of the hall-'how old are you?'

'What?'

'I asked, how old are you?'

She didn't actually count on her fingers, but she paused before answering. 'Twenty-four,' she said. 'Why?'

'Just wondering, that's all. I didn't know'

'Well, now you do. How about you?'

He didn't understand the question. 'Sorry, what do you mean?'

'How old are you, since it's so important.'

'Forty-two, according to my grandfather.'

'Well, he should know. You don't look it.'

He smiled inside. 'In a good way or a bad way?'

'Both,' she replied, slicing bread. 'From the chin down, you could pass for thirty.'

The inner smile faded. 'Fine,' he said. 'And from the chin up?'

'No idea,' she replied. 'Actually, you remind me of those stories where a young man visits the secret kingdom of the fairies; and next day he leaves, and he finds that it's a hundred years later and everybody he used to know's been dead for ages.'

'Thank you so much.'

'Oh, I didn't mean it in a nasty way,' she replied, hacking at the smoked lamb. 'Actually, it's rather-' She paused, wiping the knife. 'Interesting,' she said. 'Which is no bad thing, because when I'm all fat and wrinkly and old, you'll probably still look exactly the same.'

Poldarn nodded. 'Well, that'll be something to look forward to. Can I give you a hand with that?'

'No, you stay there, I don't want you under my feet. I saved you the last honeycake.'

She brought the plate and a mug of beer over to him, then went back to the other end of the hall and started clearing away. 'Start as you mean to go on,' she said, by way of explanation. 'If things aren't put away as soon as you've finished with them, next thing you know there's a big tangle of clutter, and it's much harder to get everything straight again.'

'That's very sensible,' Poldarn sighed. 'I don't know about you,' he added, 'but I'm tired out.'

'Really? You go on to bed, then. I'll be through as soon as I've finished in here.'

That sounded like a good idea; so he got up-his back was aching and his ankle hurt like hell-and tottered down the hall and through the partition door, which had learned to stick a little since he and Raffen had hung it, only a few days ago. He carried on into the bedroom.

There was a bed in it, presumably; it was hard to tell, because where the bed should have been there was a bed-shape, but completely buried under sheaves of green leaves, flowers and lengths of glossy creeper. All symbolic, he guessed, but a bloody nuisance; was he allowed to shovel the mess onto the floor, or was he supposed to lie on top of it, with the twigs and stems digging into the small of his back? Knowing his luck, there'd be beetles and earwigs as well; not really conducive to the occasion. He wanted to ask what he should do, but he didn't feel that he could, somehow. He compromised by shuffling enough of the foliage across onto the other side of the bed to allow him enough space to lie down on. There was a pillow; beautifully crisp linen, and stuffed with clover if the scent was anything to go by. It felt wonderful, soft enough to soothe his aching head with its support, and for the first time that day he felt his muscles unclench. I'll close my eyes, he thought, just for a second or two.

When he opened them again, there was sunlight in his eyes. He was lying uncomfortably on his right arm, which was numb from the elbow, on a mat of crushed fern and creeper; the rest of the bed was defoliated, and had been slept in. Bloody hell, he thought.

A head appeared round the door. 'If I were you, I'd get up now,' Elja said. 'Sun's up, they'll all be here any minute, and there's a lot of work to get through.'

Poldarn groaned. His head was still hurting, and when he tried to move his right arm, the pins and needles started with a vengeance. 'Yes, all right,' he said sadly. 'Is there any of that bread left?'

'No, sorry. It was getting stale, anyhow. With any luck there'll be time to do some baking later on; we'll have a whole household to feed this time tomorrow, remember.'

He swung his feet off the bed and rested them on the floor; he still had his boots on, and he felt uncomfortable all over, but there wasn't time to wash if the whole Haldersness outfit was due to show up at any moment.

'I was thinking,' Elja's voice drifted in through the open door, 'how about Ciartanstead?'

'What about it?'

'As a name for our farm, silly. Got to have a name, after all-we can't keep on calling it Haldersness.'

'Ah, right.' He stood up; his ankle now felt very bad indeed. 'Who's supposed to choose the name, then?'

'Well, you are, of course. After all, it's your farm. I like the sound of Ciartanstead, let's call it that.'

'All right,' Poldarn mumbled apathetically. 'Like you said, we've got to call it something.' Try as he might, he couldn't help feeling that this wasn't what they ought to be discussing, but he decided against pointing this out; if she didn't want to talk about it, then talking about it would most likely be counter-productive. Of course, if they could read each others' minds, there wouldn't be a problem 'It's settled, then,' Elja announced cheerfully. 'Ciartanstead. I could get to like it.'

There was a knock at the door; two very hard thumps, suggesting to Poldarn that the art of knocking on doors wasn't widely practised here. (You wouldn't need to, when you could announce your imminent arrival just by thinking about it.) 'That'll be Dad and the rest of them,' Elja said, as if she hadn't already known.

The news, Colsceg announced, was good. They'd been up on the roof (what, already? It was only just daylight, for pity's sake) and they'd been right, the damage was far less severe than it looked; two days' work, three at the outside, and the place would be habitable. Egil would be out of action for a while, but everyone else was back on their feet; a few bandages here and there and some pretty odd-looking beards and eyebrows, but nothing to worry about. Certainly not enough to justify cancelling the games 'Games?' Poldarn echoed.

Colsceg pulled one of those oh-for-crying-out-loud faces Poldarn had come to know so well. 'Games,' Colsceg repeated. 'Sports. Trials of strength and skill, to celebrate the wedding. It's a poor heart that never rejoices,' he added, as if reciting a particularly solemn passage from scripture.

'Oh, good,' Poldarn said, grateful that his thoughts on the subject were strictly private. 'When's that, then?'

After having known Poldarn for several weeks, it was surprising that Colsceg could still be so shocked at the man's ignorance. 'Well, now, of course. That's what we're here for. We've brought all the gear, and they're putting up the ring.' He paused, asking Providence under his breath to give him strength. 'So you're not ready, then.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I don't know if I'm any good at sports. Maybe I should sit out and just watch and give the prizes or something.'

'No, that's completely wrong,' Colsceg snapped, then reined in his temper with an effort. 'It's you against all comers, that's the whole point. It's traditional,' he added, as if capping off an argument with a direct quote from the statute-book. 'When you say you're no good at sports-'

'Actually,' Poldarn interrupted, mostly out of devilment, 'I didn't say that. I said I don't know. Could be I'm brilliant at them. I guess we'll have to wait and see.'

One thing Colsceg was gaining from his alliance with the Haldersness mob was a vastly increased ability to stay patient. 'Fine,' he said. 'Well, when you're ready.'

'No time like the present,' Poldarn said. 'Lead on.'

They'd already marked out the ring with ground chalk mixed with water; now they were sharpening stakes and hammering them in with a post-rammer. They'd cut the rails already and laid them by, handy to be nailed on to the stakes to complete the circle. 'We thought we'd start with javelin-throwing,' Colsceg said, 'it's fairly gentle, good one to warm up on. Then the weightlifting, axe-throwing, heavy running-'

'Heavy running? What's that?'

'You run five times round the ring carrying a half-hundredweight sack of coal. Light running's the same, but without the sack. We thought we'd do the light running after the log-chopping.'

I've got to do all this, Poldarn thought, me against all comers. Bloody hell. 'Good idea,' he said. 'Is that it, or is there more?'

'Well, yes,' Colsceg said. 'After the light running, we'll have the wrestling, quarterstaff, shying at marks and singlestick, and finally the home game to round off with. If that's all right with you,' Colsceg added.

'Oh, fine,' Poldarn replied; and as he said it he was thinking, If I say I've done my ankle after the third event, which probably won't be too far from the truth, they'll have to let me off the rest and I'll have shown willing, which is the main thing, surely. 'Actually, now you mention it, I guess I'm quite looking forward to this.'

Nothing to indicate which of his questions and statements had been the most offensive, but Colsceg sighed and walked away. Somehow, Boarci contrived to materialise out of thin air just behind his shoulder. 'How's you, then?' he muttered.

'What?' Poldarn turned round. 'Oh, I'm fine.'

Boarci was grinning like an elderly sheepdog. 'Sleep well?'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied accurately. 'I wish someone had told me about all this, I could've made up an excuse to get out of it.'

'Selfish bugger, aren't you?' Boarci replied. 'It's the best part of a wedding, this: making the bridegroom look really useless in front of his new bride. They're all looking forward to it.'

'You included, by the sound of it.'

'Too right. I'm really looking forward to the quarterstaff. They told you about that?'

Poldarn shook his head, which was hurting even more than before.

'It's a good laugh, the quarterstaff. They put up these two trestles with a thin plank between them, and you stand at one end, the other guy's at the other end, and you've both got big ash poles to hit each other with. Actually, there's a lot of skill involved, takes years to learn. Anyway, the object is to knock the other man off the plank, and there's a big pile of rocks underneath for him to land on. Hurts like shit. I'm bloody good with the staff, say so myself as shouldn't.'

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'So what happens if I lose? Presumably whoever wins stays up.'

Boarci laughed. 'Don't you wish. No, it's like he said, you against all comers. You get knocked down, you just pick yourself up and get back on, ready for the next challenger. If there's time, we get to go round again. Didn't it ever occur to you why I'm still a bachelor?'

There were seven entries besides Poldarn for the javelin-throwing. Six of them out-threw him by a rather offensive margin; he rather hoped that the seventh, Eyvind, had deliberately thrown short as a gesture of solidarity, but being realistic he reckoned it probably had more to do with the thick wads of bandages on both Eyvind's hands. Whatever the reason, he contrived to ace Eyvind's throw by a whole two inches. All nine other competitors beat him at weight-lifting, which turned out to be a very short event, concluding as soon as he gave up (on the third weight). The best that could be said for his performance in the axe-throwing was that he didn't kill anybody. Asburn won the heavy running; Poldarn did manage to complete the course, though only by turning round and dragging the sack backwards for the last fifty yards. By any standards it was a pretty hopeless showing; but the worse he did, the more good-natured, even affectionate grew the laughter and shouted commentary from the two households; for some reason (no doubt entirely logical, if you were in on the basic premises) the more hopeless and pathetic he made himself look, the more they seemed to like him. Actually, he could explain that: you tended to distrust, fear and dislike the stranger, the man you didn't know, couldn't properly assess. Once he demonstrated a complete lack of physical prowess, there was much less reason for fear and animosity. Accordingly, Poldarn postponed his feigned injury for a while and carried on.

The next event was wood-chopping; each of the ten competitors was presented with a log and given an axe, and the first to cut all the way through was the winner. Most likely Poldarn wouldn't even have tried to win, if the log put in front of him hadn't been quite obviously thicker than anybody else's. But that struck him as unnecessarily unfair; and when the referee (Colsceg) yelled 'Go!', he found that he was taking out his negative feelings on the log. Furthermore, after the first few cuts he realised that he was good at this; instead of trying to hit, he was putting all his effort into the swing, bringing the axe up as high as he could get it and then letting it drop, guiding it into the slot with a light but firm hand, making sure he cut at the most effective angle in the most effective place, never taking his eye off the mark-it felt right, the way forge-welding the axe head for Boarci had, and the upshot of it was that he won by a clear margin, much to the surprise and disgust of the other eight competitors. Everyone else cheered, in a slightly stunned way, and Poldarn found himself revelling in the pleasures of victory to an extent he wouldn't have thought possible. In fact, he realised, he couldn't have done better if he'd planned it out carefully beforehand. Losing the first five events had got rid of the mystery and the menace; winning the sixth against all the apparent odds was exactly the right thing to do. They still liked him, but now he wasn't quite the abject failure any more, there was at least one thing he was pretty good at. All in all, he decided that he approved of this wedding-games tradition. It definitely had its uses.

Poldarn lost the light running, of course; but he did come fourth out of a field of ten, which was also just right, from a tactical point of view. Next came the wrestling, and after the first two competitors had kicked his knees out from under him and dumped him unceremoniously on his back with gratuitous force, he might have lost his temper just a little; his next opponent, Seyward the middle-house hand, found himself flying through the air (Where did I learn to do that? Who gives a damn?), Barn got an elbow in his solar plexus and sat down with a pretty hilarious grunt of astonishment, and Eyvind didn't stand a chance. In the event, Poldarn came third out of seven, as well as getting a welcome chance to sublimate his growing frustrations with his life in general into quite natural and healthy acts of extreme violence.

While he was recovering from his exertions and flexing a painful left shoulder (though his ankle was hardly bothering him at all now, for some reason) the Colscegford party were setting up the trestles, planks and bed of rocks Boarci had threatened him with. That spoiled his otherwise fairly positive mood. Boarci had said, entirely plausibly, that staff-fighting was an art, and a difficult one at that. He'd seen a few staff-fights in the Bohec valley, and what he could remember of the moves seemed to bear that judgement out. Furthermore, the trestles were unnecessarily high, in his opinion, and the rocks looked positively dangerous. To make matters worse, Boarci was parading up and down on the other side of the ring performing a very impressive repertoire of twirls and juggles with a seven-foot ash pole, and his grin was plainly visible from twenty yards away.

Poldarn slumped against a ring-stake and made a cursory inventory of his aches and pains. As well as the shoulder injury and the dodgy ankle, he had a sinister twinge in his left forearm, a pulled muscle in his chest, another in the small of his back and a distinct ache in his left hamstring. On the other hand, his headache had cleared up altogether, which was nice. So, he told himself, cheer up. Be positive. Look on the bright side. Count your blessings.

As it turned out, he didn't have to face Boarci straight away-some other poor fool got up at the opposite end of the plank. Poldarn was so preoccupied with trying to figure out how to beat the shit out of the man who'd repeatedly saved his life that he didn't really take much notice of this first bout until it was over, and his opponent was crawling out from under the plank on his hands and knees.

Oh, Poldarn thought, I seem to have won. How did I do that? He thought about it, and remembered his moves, reviewing them as if he'd been watching someone else: the enemy's feint sparred up to the left, a pre-emptive parry with the butt of the pole joined with an aggressive step forward to force the opponent onto his back foot, followed by a jump back to make room and a deft flick of the wrist to jab the pole into the other man's teeth, swiftly doubled into a meaty jab to the right ankle and a finishing smack to the left ear. Did I do all that? he wondered. Apparently I did. He tried to remember who he'd been fighting, but he couldn't. He'd seen a target, not a face, and all targets look the same, after a while.

The next man to clamber up onto the plank wasn't Boarci, either; he lasted about five heartbeats before toppling off with a suspected broken collarbone. Next up was brother-in-law Barn, who presented a whole new set of problems. Barn was slow and physically inept, but so massive that hitting him didn't seem to achieve anything; and when he did swing his staff, parrying it was out of the question, given the necessity of staying on the plank. But either luck or repressed memory gave him the answer. A deft little prod to the back of the knee turned Barn's greatest asset into a liability, and he landed with a thump that shook the earth almost as much as the erupting volcano had. After him came Asburn, looking distinctly nervous. He seemed far more interested in defending himself than in attacking, whereas Poldarn had no wish whatsoever to hurt someone who was almost a friend. The upshot was a bout in which both parties pranced and feinted a lot, retreating to the far ends of the plank whenever their staffs happened to clack together. Whether Asburn really did fall over his feet, or whether he disguised a deliberate jump off the plank with a little cursory dumbshow, Poldarn wasn't sure; but he reckoned it was significant that Asburn landed cleanly on his feet well away from the carpet of rocks, and he made a resolution to thank him later, when nobody was looking.

Finally, Boarci stepped up, still fiendishly twirling his staff and pulling horrific faces. No doubt about it, he meant business, as his first onslaught amply proved-a lightning-fast lunge pulled at the last moment, followed up with a remarkably elegant quick-step shuffle up the plank, and converted into a hand-over-hand diagonal slash with the butt of the pole. By this stage, Poldarn had run out of plank to retreat onto; all he could do was duck, knowing as he did it that he was leaving his legs open to an extremely painful strike, which duly followed. Somehow, though, he kept his footing-not only that, but he improvised a side-swung riposte, fairly weak but sufficiently wristy to glance off the ball of Boarci's shoulder and clip his ear hard enough to draw blood.

Gratifyingly, Boarci jumped backwards out of the way, snapping into a perfect guard that was complete as soon as he landed. This gave Poldarn just enough time to catch his breath; then the next attack came in, and he realised that the first sally had been just a warm-up. He didn't have time to study or analyse the moves, it was all he could do to get his staff in the way of most of them, while the ones he didn't block landed on his knees and elbows, cramping him with pain. It was obvious that Boarci was taking his time, looking to wear Poldarn down with a series of carefully planned debilitating strikes that would inhibit his movements and lay him open for an artfully devised finishing strategy; the only way to counter it that he could see was one big, unexpected move to finish the fight in a heartbeat-and that was all very well, but he had no idea how to go about it. So he hung on, defending and trying to sneak back as much as he could of the ground he was continually forced to give, several times walking into punishing strikes simply in order to stay up the plank.

Then he saw his chance. Boarci swung a feint at Poldarn's face, intending to draw up his guard so as to open him for a crack across the left knee. Instead of parrying, however, Poldarn deliberately held still and took the blow-it was torture fighting down his instincts, waiting for what seemed like an eternity for the pole to smack into his cheekbone. Then, as the blow landed, he stepped forward into it and pushed rather than lunged, catching Boarci just below the navel. It was a weak contact, inflicting no pain, scoring no points; but Boarci was already on the move, stepping into a parry that hadn't happened but too late to adjust his strategy-he was thinking four moves ahead, and didn't have time to revise his plans on the fly. Just at that moment, his balance was a smidgeon too far forward, and Poldarn eased him off the plank with a gentle prod. Boarci disappeared, and a furious yell of pain suggested that he'd made an awkward landing on something hard, sharp or both. Poldarn smiled.

Nobody else seemed inclined to play, so Poldarn walked slowly to the end of the plank and jumped, like a little bird hopping off a twig. As he touched ground, his ankle gave way and he staggered, lost his feet and dropped down hard on his knees, just on the edge of the carpet of rocks. Something jagged bit into his left kneecap and he howled. For some reason the spectators seemed to find that unbearably amusing, as if he'd deliberately done something witty and clever.

He managed to get up again by planting the pole firmly in the ground and pulling himself up hand over hand, but that was about as far as he felt competent to go; so he clung to the top of the pole and remained there, swaying slightly, until Asburn and Eyvind trotted up and helped him over to a tree stump, where he could sit down and concentrate on feeling really sorry for himself without the distraction of having to maintain his balance.

'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' Eyvind whispered noisily in his ear. Are you out of your mind, or do you just enjoy hurting people?'

Poldarn looked up sharply. 'What?'

Eyvind stared at him; incomprehension staring at incomprehension, an optical effect like the well-known juxtaposition of two facing mirrors. Then he sighed. 'Right,' he said, 'I guess it's probably my fault, somebody's fault, anyhow. You weren't to know-you can't see things unless people tell you out loud. The point is, it's not meant to be serious. It's a game. The idea is, you let everybody beat you at sports, to show what a good sort you are, and in return they go easy on you in the fighting events; nobody gets beaten up, and we all have a nice drink afterwards. You're treating it like it's a battle to the death.'

'But that's not fair,' Poldarn objected, trying to keep his cool but failing. 'They weren't going easy on me, far from it. And I've got the bruises to prove it.'

'Yes, they were.'

And, now that Poldarn thought about it, yes, they had been, until he'd lost his rag and made a fight of it in the wrestling. His first few opponents in that event had bruised his pride but not his bones; they'd taken extreme care to throw him gently, which he'd taken for a patronising display of superior skill rather than a logical reluctance to incapacitate a member of the workforce. It was only when he'd taken to throwing them in return-not to mention kicking and elbow-slamming and various other over-effective techniques-that they'd hurt him at all, and that was purely self-defence on their part, though as it turned out his skill had been superior to theirs and their moves hadn't worked terribly well. By the time they'd got to the quarterstaff, they'd got wise to the change in rules and objectives, but all the same they'd only fought seriously because he'd started it and they didn't want to get hurt. Once again, it had so happened that he was better at bashing with a long pole than they were; and now here he was feeling all smug because he'd contrived to turn a cheerful burlesque into a ferocious battle. Magnificent, he thought, and me all over. But none of this would've happened if only they'd filled me in on the plot beforehand…

'So what should I do now?' Poldarn asked plaintively. 'Should I back off and let them beat me?'

Eyvind shook his head. 'Not if you want to come out of this alive,' he replied. 'For better or worse you've turned this into a real contest-also, you've shown them you're unnaturally good at anything to do with weapons and fighting. You can bet that they'll all be wanting to be the one to teach you a lesson, so you'd better watch yourself. Bloody hell,' he added, sighing deeply, 'you couldn't have made a worse mess of it if you'd tried. If you want my opinion, the only thing you can do is make absolutely sure you win; it'll be a sort of statement of intent that you mean to be-well, a different sort of head of house, leading from the front, the strong man, that sort of thing. It's not what they're used to, but at least they'll be able to understand what you're trying to do, instead of just standing there wondering why the hell you're beating shit out of your friends.'

'All right,' Poldarn replied. 'I'll give it a try-at least, that's assuming I can. What's left?'

'Single-stick and the home game,' Eyvind replied.

Poldarn shook his head. 'I don't know what that means,' he said.

Eyvind muttered something under his breath. 'Fine,' he said. 'Look, single-stick is like sword-fighting, but instead of a sword you've got a wooden rod, thick as your thumb, and the object is to land a blow that draws blood-just a little, mind, so for crying out loud don't go killing anybody. No hitting below the waist, no thrusting, and if the other man says "Hold", you stop. You got that?'

'I think so,' Poldarn replied. 'Put like that, it doesn't sound a bit like real swordfighting. I suppose you're all terribly good at it and practise all the time?'

Eyvind nodded. 'It's a very popular game,' he replied. 'Why do you think it's saved till the end of the show? Well, almost the end. And you're right, it's not in the least like real fighting with swords, it's all in the wrist and fingers. Oh God,' he added, glancing over his shoulder, 'they're ready for you. Just try and remember, this isn't a battle-don't go raving mad.'

'Right.'

'And make bloody sure you win,' Eyvind added, as Poldarn dragged himself unwillingly to his feet, 'or else they'll flay you alive. Got that?'

Poldarn's ankle was a little better, but he was painfully aware that he was limping, dragging his feet, and that anything like proper footwork was out of the question. A pity, that, because his instincts told him that mock swordfighting with bits of stick was probably more about footwork than anything else. As for Eyvind's parting advice, it seemed to boil down to beat them to a pulp but don't hurt anybody. And that, as Asburn would say, was all there was to it.

Piece of cake.

In the event, it came surprisingly easily to him, probably because his movements were so limited. As a result he was effectively limited to a solid but hostile defence; block three times, then counter just enough to drive his opponents back out of his space, his circle. (Now that was a familiar concept, something Poldarn knew he'd known a lot about once upon a time; he could remember having committed it to memory, but he couldn't remember it now.) Since there was no need for a proper attack, for moves that would give him scope to swing his arm hard and fast enough to slice meat and smash bone, there was nothing to be gained from taking the offensive; smart, stinging little backfoot ripostes, elegantly timed, were more likely to achieve the desired effect than big scything cuts and wraps, even if he'd been in any fit state to attempt them. Furthermore, his opponents were working on a new and to them unfamiliar agenda; they were more interested in hurting him than they were in winning, in a discipline where the techniques for causing real injury and those designed to produce formal victory were not only different but largely incompatible. The result was that they ended up fighting like they were expecting him to fight, while he quite effectively reinvented the gentle art of singlestick and performed it both elegantly and effectively. Accordingly he won all seven bouts quickly and without inflicting any damage beyond the required slight graze. Crazy, Poldarn thought; they're trying to be me and I'm succeeding at being them, making a rather better job of it than they are.

'How am I doing?' he muttered furtively to Eyvind, after the last challenger had retired in search of spider's web and a dock leaf. 'Look, I didn't kill anybody.'

'Not bad,' Eyvind replied, though he was clearly not happy about something. 'Where the hell did you learn single-stick like that?'

'I was just asking myself the same question,' Poldarn admitted. 'Maybe I was good at it when I was a kid, before I went away.'

But Eyvind shook his head. 'You didn't learn any of that stuff round here,' he replied. 'I've been fighting sticks since I was five, and I know every move in the game. Never saw anything like it in my life.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'Then I guess I was just making it up as I went along.'

'Don't buy that, either,' Eyvind grumbled. 'You've obviously done this before, but Polden only knows where. Must've been over there, in the Empire. It's like a completely different game, only it works for how we do it, too. I figure you must've been pretty serious about it, though. Some of those moves looked like they took a lot of practice to get right.'

'I wouldn't know,' Poldarn replied. 'Look, when you feel like it, I can teach them to you if you like.'

'Thanks,' Eyvind replied, 'but I'd rather not. I don't think folks would take kindly to stuff like that.' He was frowning slightly, like a religious man who thinks he's just heard a blasphemy but can't quite work out what it was. 'I wouldn't go around pulling any more stunts like that if I were you, either. People can be very funny about things like that.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Well, all right,' he said. 'Actually, I can't say the game appeals to me very much. Anything where you're likely to get hit isn't really my idea of a good time.'

That didn't seem to carry much weight with Eyvind, who looked away and changed the subject.

'The last event shouldn't be a problem,' he said. 'There isn't really much scope for hurting anybody in the home game, unless you happen to let go of the stick. Make sure you dry your hands before you start. In fact, rubbing a bit of sawdust on your palms might be an idea.'

'I meant to ask you about that,' Poldarn interrupted. 'This home game. What is it, exactly?'

Maybe Eyvind sighed a little, or maybe it was just Poldarn's imagination. 'Oh, it's quite simple. You and the other man stand facing each other, and you're both wearing a sash-any bit of old cloth, really-with a wooden sword stuck through it. It's supposed to be a proper carved job, but we generally just use a bit of old roofing lath, something like that. Anyhow, the game is to see who can draw the fastest; there's a referee watching in case it's not immediately obvious, but usually you can tell. It's called the home game because it used to be really popular back in the old country, apparently, before we left the Empire and came here. Sound familiar?'

Poldarn didn't reply straight away. 'No,' he said, 'but it sounds to me a bit like the swordmonks.'

'Same sort of thing,' Eyvind said. 'That's probably where it came from originally. Anyway, it ought to be perfectly harmless. Just don't go mad, you don't have to win this one. And make sure the stick doesn't slip, like I told you. All right?'

Poldarn nodded. 'I should be able to manage that.'

For the first time since the games began, Eyvind smiled at him. 'Be particularly careful,' he said, 'when it's you against me. I can't speak for the others, of course, but if you let go the stick and it smacks me in the face, I'll break both your arms.'

'Well, of course,' Poldarn said. 'Look, are you sure you're all right to take part, with your hands all burnt like that?'

Eyvind laughed. 'Listen,' he said, 'I may not be good at much, but there's nobody in these parts who can touch me at the home game, even if I've got both hands tied behind my back. Not that I'm trying to put you off or anything,' he added innocently, 'just thought you ought to know that, is all.'

'We'll see about that,' Poldarn replied, grinning. 'You know, I won't be sorry when all this is over. I feel like I've just had a barn fall on me.'

'Really?' Eyvind said. 'Is that because of the fighting and stuff, or did you have a rough night?'

Poldarn sighed. 'If only,' he said. 'There, I think that means they're ready. Do I need to get something to use as a sash?'

He needn't have worried about that; Rannwey had one ready for him, a real sash rather than a strip of old sacking, with two silk tassels and a cord strap for a scabbard. Not made locally, that's for sure, he thought as he tied it on, I wonder how old it is? He was also given a proper wooden sword, remarkably similar in weight and feel to the steel version he'd been issued with during his time with Falx Roisin. It felt uncomfortably natural riding at his waist; he felt exposed by it, as if it was a dirty mark on a white shirt.

As Poldarn settled himself for the first bout, he thought about what Eyvind had said. No need to win this event in the interests of self-preservation; and it'd probably be smart to lose anyhow, so as not to leave the spectators with an impression of him as ferociously competitive. Anything like that, he felt sure, was probably frowned on in this community, and he'd done enough damage already on that score. Accordingly, he resolved to make a conscious effort to lose, assuming he wasn't hopelessly outclassed anyway.

Colsceg was the referee. Poldarn was expecting him to say something or give a signal for the start, but apparently that wasn't how the game worked, because his opponent drew quite unexpectedly, while Colsceg was busy talking to someone on the edge of the group. Even so, he'd have had trouble at all beating the draw, if he hadn't made a conscious effort not to. It felt quite extraordinary to miss the beat like that, and his hand shook so much he was sure that the spectators must have seen.

(Besides, he told himself, even if they hadn't been watching his hands, they'd surely noticed him shake all over, as his instincts tried their very best to override the conscious decision he'd made, like a dog pulling hard against its chain as a cat or a rabbit goes by. But, if they saw, nobody hissed or threw anything, so he could at least assure himself, without being rudely contradicted, that he'd managed to get away with it. Just as well they couldn't read his mind, though; otherwise he'd be wasting his time trying to deceive them.)

Poldarn managed to lose seven bouts. Once he'd got the hang of it, he found it relatively simple, mainly because his opponents were so slow and obvious about it that they didn't register in his mind as a threat. He was relieved to see that the eighth competitor was Eyvind, with his bandaged hands. Losing convincingly to someone who had to have his sash tied for him would be something of a challenge, but he reckoned he could handle it; after all, it looked as though he'd have plenty of time.

'Remember,' Eyvind hissed at him as they walked into the middle together, 'don't go raving mad. You're doing all right.'

'Thanks,' Poldarn replied. 'At least it's nearly over.'

Eyvind too had a proper sash, presumably his own-interesting, that he'd brought it with him from home, along with a finely carved oak dummy sword; presumably he practised every day, to keep his hand in, even when he was away from home. 'Leave it to me,' Eyvind added, as they reached the centre of the ring. 'You won't have to fake it, just follow me. All right?'

Poldarn nodded, and took a step back. Eyvind took a moment to settle himself: three deep breaths while he adjusted the position of the sword in the sash, blade uppermost, handle diagonally across his body. No scabbard, of course, for a wooden foil, so he hooked his left thumb in the cloth and gently gripped the sword through it, simulating the scabbard's grip on the blade. Poldarn found it rather fascinating to watch; there was always something rather fine about a skilled practitioner of any art going about his business, and Eyvind's calm, solemn preparations were the antithesis of Poldarn's own experiences in sword-drawing-everything so deliberate, so carefully controlled. He made a mental note to ask Eyvind to run through his routine some time when his hands were better. As he watched, he almost believed he could see a circle in the air around his friend, fitting neatly into the circle of the fenced-off ring and the surrounding crowd of spectators, like ripples in a pool after a stone had been thrown in. Each circle, it seemed to him, bore on the circle next to it, so that disturbing one would disturb them all, as the ripples spread out. Where the circles ended, of course, he had no idea.

Then Eyvind drew. He was quick; extraordinarily so, there was almost nothing to see, only a palpable physical shock as his own circle was broken into (-And he was suddenly in a different place, though still inside the concentric rings; he was standing on the white sand of an arena ringed by raked stone benches, on which sat hundreds of men in the black robes of the sword-monks, all watching him and someone else, although which of them was which he couldn't quite make out. It was as if the rings spread out between them, as if he was looking through the ripples at his own reflection in the water just as it broke up, ruined by the sudden violence of the draw. He knew-he remembered-that the other man's name was Monach, that they were best friends, and that the swords in their hands were the finest grade watered steel, and sharp-)

The shock of contact brought Poldarn out of the memory. The first thing he saw was that real-but-imaginary circle, his circle, but once more whole; then the tip of his wooden sword, held out (arms straight, elbows locked) in the rest position, to which it must return after the draw and the cut have been completed. He looked past it and saw Eyvind stretched out on the ground, lying on his face with his arms under his body. At first Poldarn thought Eyvind was dead, but then he realised that he was remembering somebody else who'd lain exactly that way, at some unspecified point in the past. Eyvind wasn't dead, because he was twitching slightly and groaning softly. There was blood on the bevelled side of his foil.

Damn, Poldarn thought; and then, Serves him right for being so quick. It was all Eyvind's fault, he had no doubts on that score. His draw had been a hostile act, regardless of the intentions behind it, and an act is an act, speaking for itself. Poldarn realised that he was going through the closing moves of the drill-flicking the blood off his blade with a quick snap of the wrists, then sliding the sword back into the sash, resetting the sear for the next draw, whenever it came. Meanwhile, both households were staring at him in complete silence, and nobody was moving. What's the matter? Poldarn thought. Haven't you ever seen a swordfight before?