Pattern

Chapter Eighteen

A day or so after Poldarn got back from the mountain, he was in his new smithy, now complete with a large and handsome brick forge and no less than three anvils. Curiously enough, he found himself drifting over to it more and more, whenever there was nothing obvious for him to do, or whenever he could manufacture a pretext. On this occasion all he had to do was straighten a handful of nails, salvaged from the Haldersness woodshed door-he could have done it easily enough on the mounting-block in the yard, with the back of an axe, but instead he'd gone to the trouble of lighting a fire and taking a heat on each one. Partly, he explained it to himself, it was the warmth he enjoyed; since he'd felt the heat of the volcano on his face as he hung over the ledge, he'd felt uncomfortably cold in the house or the fields, no matter how many layers of clothing he crammed himself into. A well-built fire in the forge, livened up by blasts of air from his magnificent new double-action bellows, was about the only thing that could stop him shivering.

Straightening the nails took him no time at all, so Poldarn cast about for something else to do otherwise it'd be a waste of all the good coal he'd shovelled onto the fire, and as a good householder he couldn't countenance that. Already he was beginning to accumulate his own personal scrap-pile (he hadn't had the heart to confiscate Asburn's collection when he left Haldersness, where Asburn had remained to teach Barn the trade); mostly nails and brackets and hinges too badly damaged in the move to be used again, but also a fair quantity of junk retrieved from the various houses-worn-out scythe blades, files, ploughshares, axles, kettles, stirrup-irons, hoes, harrows, steelyards, leg-vices, the history of the settlement at Haldersness told through the medium of broken and discarded artefacts. At the bottom of the pile lurked the two halves of a snapped backsabre, partially rusted through, that had hung in the porch of the main house for as long as anybody could remember. Who'd put them there, or why, or who the sword had originally belonged to, had long since corroded away, but the two bits of steel had still been there, because there hadn't been any reason to get rid of them when the time came to leave the house. Someone had taken them down as an afterthought and thrown them in a basket of oddments; someone else had unpacked the basket and, on the basis that all bits of rusty old metal belonged in the forge, had slung them on the scrap-pile to await purification and rebirth.

A little scrabbling turned them up, and Poldarn laid them on the table of the middle anvil, fitted the pieces together along the fracture, and stared at them thoughtfully. There hadn't been any call for Asburn to make anything of the kind while Poldarn had been hanging about in the forge at Haldersness. There was no demand for weapons, generally speaking; they were something you inherited, or borrowed from the big chest with the four padlocks at the back of the hall as and when you needed one for a cruise to the Empire, and there were always more than enough of the things floating around without the smith having to waste time and effort making new ones. This one, the broken one from the Haldersness porch, looked like it was very old indeed, to judge by the depth of the rust-pits and the shrunken contours of the cutting edge, gradually thinned down and eroded by many years of sharpening with coarse stones. Out of curiosity Poldarn took a medium-grit stone and rubbed it up and down the flat of the blade to shift the rust. Once he'd got it back to white metal, he thought he could just about make out the faint pattern of ripples and ridges that marked out an old-fashioned pattern-welded piece, made back in the days when hard steel was rare and precious and a large object like a sword had to be built up out of scraps interleaved with layers of hard iron.

The thought of all the work that must have gone into it made Poldarn wince. Back at Haldersness he'd helped Asburn with some pattern-welding, swinging the big hammer while Asburn did all the clever stuff; it had taken hours of hard, slow work to produce one small billet, and Asburn had told him later that all they'd done was a very simple, utilitarian pattern, not to be mentioned in the same breath with the wonderful constructs the old-timers used-the four-or six-core aligned twists and countertwists, the maiden's-hair pattern, the butterfly, the hugs-and-kisses, the pool and eye and the Polden's ladder. Compared to what the old-timers used to get up to, according to Asburn, the little blank they'd rushed out was just a shoddy piece of rubbish, a parody, a travesty.

Whatever this one had been, he reflected, it hadn't done it much good. The blade had snapped right on the shoulder, the place where the concave bend of the cutting edge was most extreme. Judging by the corresponding chip and roll in the edge, it seemed likely that it had broken in the act of bashing on something hard and solid, quite possibly somebody's armoured head. So much, Poldarn decided, for pattern-welding.

Still; the shape itself was an interesting one, and he stood for quite some time figuring out how a man would go about making such a thing. First he'd have to draw down a steep taper, both thickness and width; then lay in the bevel, probably, keeping the blade straight as he went so as to give himself a chance of keeping everything even; then gradually introduce the curve, just an inch or so per heat, with gentle tapping and nudging over the anvil's beak; then more straightening and truing up, hot and cold-hours of that, in all probability, since flattening out one kink or distortion tended to set up two or three new ones further up or down the piece, as he knew only too well. Finally draw down a tang and either shape a point with the hammer or cheat by using the hot chisel and the rasp; it could be done, in fact now that he'd thought about it he could see every stage of the operation simultaneously, laid out side by side in his mind like a collection of memories. But it'd mean days of work, even using a solid piece of stock rather than pattern-welding, and since nobody wanted such a thing, where the hell was the point?

Poldarn shivered, and realised that while he'd been lost in thought he'd let the fire go out. Well; no excuse for lighting it again, so he might as well take his beautifully straightened nails back out to the yard and give them to someone to knock into a few bits of wood.

Before he could leave the forge, however, the door opened and Raffen came in, reflexively ducking his head to avoid the low beams that had been a feature of the Haldersness smithy, though the Ciartanstead forge didn't have that problem. 'Thought you might be in here,' he said. 'We've got a visitor.'

He made it sound like an infestation of rats. 'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'Who's that, then?'

'Leith,' Raffen replied with ill-concealed distaste, 'from Leithscroft, over the far side of Corby Wood. Haven't seen him round here for years.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'What does he want?'

'Don't ask me,' Raffen answered, 'he didn't tell me. You should be able to guess better than I can. After all, he's your friend.'

Poldarn had, of course, no memory of anybody called Leith. 'Is he?' he asked.

'Course. You two were always hanging round the yard when you were kids. Pair of bloody tearaways.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' Poldarn answered gravely. 'Probably just as well I can't remember. Well, maybe he was passing and just wants to chat about old times. In which case,' he added, 'he probably won't be stopping long. Where did you leave him?'

'In the house, eating.' Raffen came a step or two closer. 'What's that you've got there, then?'

'Oh, that.' For some reason, Poldarn felt embarrassed. 'Just an old busted sword-blade. I was thinking of working it up into a pair of shears or something.'

Raffen squinted. 'Right, I remember it now. Used to hang in the porch-Halder's dad's old sword. I was wondering where that had got to, since the move.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'Nobody told me what it was. In that case, I'll find something else to use.'

'Really? Why?'

Poldarn frowned. 'Well, it's an heirloom. Bit of family history.'

'Oh.' Raffen frowned, as if he'd just found a fish bone. 'Up to you, I suppose. But it's only two bits of old scrap. Better off as something useful than just lying around rusting.'

Leith turned out to be a big, tall man with startlingly broad shoulders and almost no remaining teeth. Poldarn couldn't remember his face at all, but Leith seemed to recognise Poldarn as soon as he walked in through the door, because he stood up and said, 'Hello, Ciartan,' in a rather worried-sounding voice.

'Hello,' Poldarn replied. 'Look, this is probably going to sound strange, but I don't know who you are. You see-'

Leith nodded abruptly. 'You lost your memory back in the old country, I know. I heard it from one of the Lyatsbridge people, they were out our way scrounging lumber and stuff. Soon as I heard, I came straight over. It's true, then.'

Poldarn nodded. He couldn't guess why his loss of memory had affected this stranger so much, but he guessed it wasn't just sympathy for an old friend. 'Apparently we knew each other years ago,' he said. 'Maybe you could tell me about it.'

'Yes.' Leith sucked in a long breath, as if he was bracing himself for something painful, like having a bone set. 'That's why I'm here-there's a few things you really ought to know' But then he hesitated, as though he was having second thoughts, and a look passed over his face that Poldarn could only describe as sly. 'They also said you can't see anybody's thoughts now,' he said, rather too casually to be convincing. 'Is that right? Never heard anything like that before.'

'Perfectly true,' Poldarn said, trying not to be annoyed. 'And other people can't see mine, either. At least, that's what people have told me. I wouldn't know, of course.'

'Oh, that's true enough. It's like trying to see in through a shuttered window, you know there's something in there but the shutter's in the way. Damnedest thing I ever came across, actually.'

'Really.'

Leith scratched his chin and sat down again. There was a large empty bowl on the table next to him, with a few grains of drying porridge sticking to the side; also a jug and a horn cup, most likely empty now. 'Makes it a bit hard to talk to you, to be honest, but it doesn't bother me, really. So you don't remember anything at all?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Bits and pieces, but nothing connected. I can remember a few things I did as a boy-scaring birds in the fields, a trip I took with my grandfather, stuff like that. A few names and faces. No rhyme or reason to any of it, as far as I can make out.'

Leith nodded slowly. 'Didn't I hear somewhere that Halder had passed on?'

The euphemism sounded forced and awkward; Poldarn had got used to people saying things straight out. 'He died a few weeks back, yes,' he said. 'That's why we've moved house, of course.'

'Yes, of course, it stands to reason. I'm very sorry to hear that; he was a good man, for an old-timer.' That didn't sound right, either. 'So, did he tell you much about the old days?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Not a great deal, he didn't seem very comfortable with the subject. Anyway, we didn't talk much.'

'Right.' Leith seemed rather uncomfortable, like a man sitting in a wet ditch. 'Well, that's a pity. And old Scaptey, the field hand; didn't somebody tell me he bought the farm last raiding season? Killed in a battle or something.'

'So I gather.'

'Really,' Leith said, 'Scaptey too. I've known him since I was a little kid. You remember my brother Brin?'

'No.'

'Ah. Well, he's dead too. We all used to go around together all the time, when we were young. Looks like there's just you and me left, out of the old gang. And you can't remember anything about it.'

'No.'

'There's a thought,' Leith muttered. 'So really it's just me, carrying round all those memories. I guess when I'm gone, it'll all be like it never happened. Not that it matters a damn,' he added. 'It's not as if we did anything much. Just a bunch of kids, really.'

Poldarn looked at him carefully. You came all this way just to tell me that, he thought, you must have way too much time on your hands. 'How are things out your way?' he asked. 'With the mountain blowing up, and everything?'

'Oh, could have been worse,' Leith replied, his attention clearly elsewhere. 'Could have been a lot worse. Trap-house caught fire, but no great loss. We had that filthy black ash over everything for a while, but the rain washed it all off, down into the valley. Buggered up all the fish-weirs, of course, but like I said, it could've been a whole lot worse. You seem to have got away with it all right out this way.'

'By and large,' Poldarn replied. 'Not like those poor devils at Lyatsbridge. They had it pretty rough, by all accounts.'

'Bloody tragedy,' Leith said blandly. 'Last I heard, they were packing up and moving on. We thought about it ourselves, to be honest with you, but we reckoned that on balance we might as well stay put, for now. No, it could have been a damn sight worse. A month later, and it'd have killed our crop stone dead in the ground.'

This was all very well, but hardly worth several days' gruelling ride. 'So,' Poldarn said, 'you mentioned there were some things I ought to know about.'

'That's right,' Leith said slowly. 'So, you're settling in here again, after being away so long. Making yourself at home, so to speak.'

'Well, yes,' Poldarn said. 'I suppose you could put it that way. At least, I've built this house, as you can see. I don't actually know why I needed to build a whole new house when the old one was perfectly good enough, but they told me I had to, so I did.'

'Nice place.'

'Thank you. I don't think it's so bad, for a first attempt. And what else? Oh yes, I got married.'

Leith looked up. 'You don't say.'

'That was another thing they told me I had to do. But it could have been worse, as you'd say. I reckon I've been very lucky there, as it happens.'

Leith forced a smile. 'Well, there's something,' he said. 'You married. That's like the old story about the wolf who became a sheepdog. Still, at our age you've got to settle down, haven't you?'

'Apparently,' Poldarn replied.

'And you've found yourself a nice little girl,' Leith went on. 'Well, you would, wouldn't you?'

Poldarn nodded. 'Colsceg's daughter. You know her?'

'No.' Leith looked away. His hands were spread out flat on the table, palms down, fingers splayed out wide. 'Since my time. Anyhow, that's only one of the places we went. I never liked it much out that way, anyhow. Bleak old place in winter, Colscegsford.' He stood up. 'I think it's about time I was hitting the road,' he said. 'If I start straight away I can make Elletswater by dark.'

'What was it you came here to tell me?' Poldarn asked.

'Look.' There was a suggestion of panic in Leith's voice. 'If it's stuff only you and me would know about, and you've forgotten it anyway, who the hell cares any more? Besides, we're different people now. Married, with responsibilities, we can't go dwelling on the past. Take me, for instance, I'm nothing like I used to be. If I caught my eldest boy doing some of the stuff I used to get up to at his age, I'd skin him alive. People change, it's part of life; but if you're going to change, you've got to get rid of some bits of the past, break the old habits, get out of the patterns, that kind of thing. Like, if you and I were meeting now for the first time ever-well, I guess that's what we are doing, far as you're concerned-I mean to say, would we be best friends now? 'Course not, we've grown apart, nothing in common except the obvious stuff-the farm and the weather and running a house. Do you really want to hear a lot of things about someone who's nothing but a stranger to you now? That's me-and you, of course, you as well.' Leith shook his head. 'I'll bet you anything you like, if it was the old you, like you were when we were kids, the old you stood here instead of me-do you think you'd recognise him, or have anything in common with him? I don't think so. You probably wouldn't like him, even. So why burden yourself with stuff that a perfect stranger did, twenty years ago? Makes no sense. I'm the only one who remembers now, and I won't tell anybody, for sure. So; it never happened. It's like a log of wood you put on the fire, it burns up and it's gone for ever.'

Or a book, Poldarn thought, the last copy of a book in a big old library; and I can remember burning the library down, but God only knows what was in the books. 'Looks like you've had a pretty pointless journey, then,' he said.

'Oh, that's all right,' Leith replied. 'Doesn't bother me. And it's done me a favour, when you think about it. Like, there's only so much room in a man's head for memories. Means I can clear out a lot of old stuff I won't ever need again. So that's that, then. And remember, if ever you're out our way, make sure to drop by. Always glad to see you, any time.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn said. 'And if ever you get one of those sudden urges to dash off somewhere a long way away for a bowl of porridge and a quick chat about the weather… you know where we are.'

'That's right,' Leith said. 'Though I don't get out much as a rule these days, I don't go raiding or stuff like that. I'm very quiet these days. It's better that way.'

'I think so too,' Poldarn said. 'There's always so much work that needs doing, for one thing. Some days, I hardly know what to do with myself.'

'Oh, same here,' Leith said emphatically. 'If it's not one thing it's another. Anyhow, take care, and my regards to your wife. I'd have brought her some flowers or a bottle of wine, only I left in such a hurry.'

'Of course. And besides, I only just told you I'm married.'

'Yes.' Leith took a step backwards. 'I really had better be going,' he said, 'it's a long way. We'll see each other again, I'm sure of it.'

'It's a small world,' Poldarn replied.

When Leith had gone, chivvying his horse into a canter as soon as he was out of the yard, Poldarn went and found Raffen, who was splitting kindling.

'Who was that?' he asked.

Raffen put down the hatchet and looked up. 'How do you mean?' he asked.

'That man who was here just now. You told me you knew him.'

'Of course I know him. Him and his brother, they lived here for years, when you and he were kids. You two went everywhere together.'

'So you said. But I don't remember, and he wouldn't tell me anything. In fact, he was acting like he was crazy or something. What else do you know about him?'

Raffen shrugged. 'Not a great deal,' he said. 'Really, you want to ask Colsceg, not me.'

'Colsceg.'

'That's right. They're related.'

'Oh.' Poldarn frowned. 'He didn't say anything about that.'

'Probably thought you already knew.' Raffen put a piece of wood on the chopping block and tapped it smartly with the hatchet, dividing it neatly into two. 'His uncle married Colsceg's sister, but she died young. And Colsceg married his other uncle's sister, that's his uncle on his father's side, of course. That was his first wife, Barn's mother. She died young, too, when she had Egil. Then Colsceg married Sterley's eldest daughter-Sterley was Leith's mother's brother, or at least properly speaking he was her half-brother, because their mother was married twice, once up north, which is where Sterley came from, and then again when she moved back here. There was some sort of trouble with a stranger, apparently, and she left her husband up there. Anyway, her second husband was Halder's uncle Crim; so when they both died, Leith and his brother-what was his name, now?'

'Brin,' Poldarn said.

'That's right, Brin. And there was an older sister, too-Essel, she married Suart, Lyat's dad, back when they lived at Suartsdale. I think she stayed there when Lyat moved on to Lyatsbridge. Leith and Brin, they came over here to live, till their dad died and it was time for them to go back and build their house. So you see, they're all family, one way or another.'

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'Well, I think I'll go and do some work. Is there any work I can be doing?'

Raffen frowned; then his face relaxed into a grin. 'So happens there is,' he said. 'Just the job for you, if you feel like it. You know the three-cornered field just below the old house, where we put in the peas, just before we left there?'

'Of course I do, I live here. What about it?'

'Bloody crows are tearing it all to pieces,' Raffen said, with a touch of anger he couldn't help. 'I was going to go up there later on and put up some bells, but that won't do any good. Waste of time, soon as my back's turned they'll be in there again. Where's the point of planting stuff if those bastards pull it all up, anyway?'

'I can see that,' Poldarn replied. 'And I used to be good at scaring birds, when I was a kid. Isn't that right?'

Raffen nodded eagerly. 'You really took to it,' he said. 'Made a good job, too. It isn't as easy as it looks, you know.'

'Then maybe it'll come back to me,' Poldarn replied. 'It'd be nice to find something I'm actually good at around here, even if it's just clapping my hands and shouting.'

Raffen pulled a face. 'There's a bit more to it than that,' he said. 'Just scaring the buggers off won't do any good. You've got to sort 'em out, once and for all.'

'Whatever,' Poldarn said.

The three-cornered field lay under a long, low, crescent-shaped hill topped with a knot of spindly fir trees. Along the western edge ran a ditch backed by an overgrown thorn hedge, with a thick mass of nettles and cow-parsley on the field side. The other two boundaries were open, marked only by a low drystone wall on the side facing the house, and a hump on the southern side where a bank had been grubbed out at some point, twenty or thirty years ago.

When Poldarn arrived, carrying a billhook, a leather bottle of weak cider and an old wooden bucket, the field was black with crows. They didn't get up as soon as he came into view, which annoyed him rather. About a third of them spread their wings and lifted off the ground in a spiral, the way dust blows up in a high wind; they swirled round in a tight circle and pitched a little further up the field, in good order. He stopped and studied them for a moment-careful reconnaissance is never wasted-taking note of the patterns they made on the ground, the way they aligned themselves to the wind, their spacing, the distances between groups, the gaps they left so that newcomers could pitch without overflying a contingent and spooking them into the air. Observing them, he couldn't help being impressed at the perfection of their society-their orderly conduct, unselfishness, consideration for others, flawless cooperation, unblemished unity of purpose. Against the grey of the turned soil they stood out like the shadow of a low cloud on a bright day, or the black ash that the volcano had dumped there, not so long ago.

Poldarn knew or remembered enough to keep perfectly still; but as the sun moved through the scattered clouds, the light changed, brightening up enough to flash a slight reflection off his pale face. At once, four or five crows got up from the edges and wheeled over him, slow, high and screaming; he froze, but they were aware of him now, and the whole flock lifted in a jarring explosion of harsh voices-you didn't need to know their language to get the gist of what they were saying. For a few heartbeats they hung in the air like smoke on a calm day; then they began to swirl and circle, winding broad, lazy hoops of concerted movement, boldly overstated brush strokes against the grey sky.

Poldarn had been expecting that, relying on it. On his way he'd picked up half a bucketful of flints from the headlands of the neighbouring fields, where generations of field hands had tossed them as they'd harrowed and mashed the clods. As the flock billowed over his head-they always made this mistake, just once, it was almost an arrogantly chivalrous gesture, allowing him one clear chance to take a few easy shots, satisfy his honour-he stooped down, grabbed a flint from the bucket, marked a point in the sky where the press of bodies was so thick he couldn't miss, and let fly. The first stone somehow managed to thread a way through the crowd without hitting anything, but the next five stones knocked down four birds-one dead in the air, two with broken wings landing indignant but in good order, and one pitching messily on its back, skipping and hopping in a dance of murderous rage until Poldarn got his foot behind its head and crushed it into the hard soil. The two broken-winged runners were harder to catch, they waddled with furious determination towards the hedge side, jinking and tacking out of the way every time he came within arm's length, so that in the end he had to resort to a desperate, flamboyant tackle to bring them down. Once he had his hand over their backs, it was a different matter-thumb pressed against the neck-bone, two forefingers to lever back the head until the neck snapped. Four crows had changed sides; not nearly as many as he'd have liked, but enough to make a start.

Next, Poldarn chose his place. That was a simple enough decision; all he had to do was look at the pattern of the green haze of pea-sprouts just starting to show above the ground, and mark out the biggest bare patch, where the core of the flock had been feeding. The size of it made him very angry; almost a quarter of the crop was already ruined, an act of war against him and his household that he would have to make good against them, one way or another. Life was hard enough without this sort of thing, the sudden advent of a horde of merciless raiders who didn't care if the Ciartanstead house starved. Something had to be done, and it was already way past diplomacy or settlement.

Next, he built his hide. Again, he didn't need to think hard about that. The bare patch was tight in to the middle point of the hedge and ditch side; that was where they wanted to be, so that was where he'd have to go. Fortunately, it was the place he'd have chosen anyway; there was even a young oak standing up out of the hedge, to mask him from above. With that, the ditch to hunker down in, and the screen of weeds and nettles out front, he was practically invisible until he chose to show himself. Admittedly, it wasn't going to be comfortable crouching in the bottom of the ditch. The mud (silt from the recent rains, the last of the black ash filtered and ground small by the water) came oozing up round his ankles, and he had to sit on his heels with his back braced against the trunk of the oak, his head and neck craned forward so he could look out through a narrow gap in the weed-curtain. If he stayed here any length of time he'd be crippled the next day. As if that mattered.

Having marked his place in the ditch, Poldarn scrambled out and set up his decoys. From the thorn hedge he cut four straight sticks, each as long as his hand from fingertip to wrist. He sharpened these on the thin end and dug the points in under the dead crows' lower jaw, up through the brains until they stopped against the roofs of the skulls. That was enough to hold the dead birds' weights as he pegged them out, as realistically as he could manage, standing them upright with the heads raised and the beaks jutting out like spears at port arms, proud sentries at their posts. With only four of them to play with he couldn't suggest a convincing pattern, so they would have to be scouts, marking out the limits of the safe zone in advance of the main body. Accordingly he posted them at the extreme corners of his killing field, fifteen paces from his hide. The idea was that the crows would come in along the obvious flight-line from their castle, the knot of thin trees on the hilltop. Once they'd marked the position of the scouts and been made aware of the safe zone, they'd slow down by turning into the breeze, bank, and glide down to pitch in the centre of the approved space, gradually filling it from the middle outwards until there was no more room; whereupon another platoon of scouts would establish further safe zones in suitable adjoining areas, and so on until the field was carpeted with crows like black snow.

Before going back to his hide, he skirmished the headland for a few more handfuls of stones, just in case it turned into a good day (nothing worse than having to disrupt a fluent spell to go scrabbling out in the open for ammunition). Then he folded himself into the hide as best he could, wriggled his back into the closest approximation of comfort that he could find, and waited to see what would happen.

Poldarn knew, or remembered, that it was no good expecting birds to come in for at least half an hour after set-up-it was set down in the rules as a fundamental principle, unshakeable as the orientation of the rising and the setting sun. During that time, it was absolutely essential to keep perfectly still; you could just about get away with blinking so long as you had a first-rate hide, but anything more energetic than that and you might as well go home. After that, if you were really lucky, you'd hear the screams and squawks of the advance scouts, gliding slowly over at double-treetop height. You wouldn't see them, of course, because one thing you had not to do when the scouts were overhead was lift your head, or even raise your eyes; the flicker of the whites of your eyes would be enough to send the scouts into a scrambled, flustered turn, followed by a fast and noisy retreat, after which you might as well go to sleep for an hour for all the good you were likely to do He'd only just got himself into position when he felt a patch of darkness flicker across his forehead, the shadow of a crow hanging between himself and the sun. He caught sight of it a few heartbeats later as it crossed the bare patch in his line of sight; a T-shaped pattern of dark grey, unnaturally elongated, distorting as it dragged over humps and dips in the dirt. The first scout was over him already-impossible, unheard of, but there it was. A mere twenty years, and already they'd forgotten even the most elementary basics of their craft. He'd have to set them straight on a few points.

He held his breath until the shadow passed. First there'd be the singleton scouts, two or three of them flying high, cautious solo runs over the decoys. Next would come the corps of observers, describing two circuits at extreme range before closing in and pitching. They had to be spared, at all costs; they would be the unwitting traitors, his best friends and most valuable collaborators, because once they'd dropped in and walked up and down for a minute or so, the first detachment of foot soldiers would follow them up, and the battle could start. At that point, he knew or remembered, the crucial thing was not to miss… A crow rapped on the head with a stone as it drifted in to pitch would drop the last foot or so and land, quite dead, but looking to the rest of the army as though it was snuggling in to feed, and the sight of it would draw in another in its place, and so on. A crow missed, squirming round in the air and thrashing its wings in terror, would clear the air for a mile in every direction, leaving him with the whole miserable job to start again.

When the moment came and the first target presented itself, he found himself on his feet before he knew what he was doing. Is this right? he wondered helplessly as his throwing arm brushed his ear; then the crow's wings clamped against its sides as it died, and it bounced just a little as it hit the ground, and he knew it was going to be all right.

Don't be greedy, he told himself as he reached for the next stone; one at a time, let each one take its proper place, even if there's a dozen others in range to shy at, keep good order at all times. Sure enough, the fall of the first bird drew in another like a pawl lifting a gear in clockwork. He threw again-how very good he was at throwing stones, he realised, but he knew better than to stop and think about how he was doing it-and number two hit the ground, six yards to the left of number one. Number three was further out and for a heartbeat he thought he'd missed; the stone caught the back of the wing, shattering it, and the crow dropped on its feet and hopped about (excellent; live, moving decoys on the ground were the best sort) as number four spread its wings into the breeze and slid down into the path of a stone. By the time he missed, and the sky was suddenly empty and quiet again, he'd brought down nine birds; seven dead, one runner and one flapper.

Poldarn flopped against the tree-trunk, exhausted by the tension and the effort. His right shoulder was savagely painful and his knees were weak, but he hardly spared them a thought, so angry was he with himself for missing an easy mark. But when he looked up a moment or so later, he saw two more crows, one already on the ground, the other just pitching. With a heart full of love he thanked them for their kind forbearance, and picked a stone out of the bucket. Almost immediately a third crow began its glide, and he hit it beautifully on the side of the head, an exemplary throw at a full ten yards, but he knew before he let fly that he couldn't miss. The dead body plumped down and the machine started again, feeding crows into the slot as fast as he could pick up stones, until his tally reached fifteen. At that point there was a lull, for no cause that he could see (but he knew or remembered that such disruptions were in fact quite normal; there was probably a perfectly good reason, and maybe one day he'd figure out what it was). Without moving his body he craned his neck to see if there was anything in the air. Nothing coming in; so he stood up, being careful to keep his head down below the level of the weeds in front of him, and took stock of the field, with special reference to the pattern that was beginning to build. This would be a good time to consolidate-stake out the dead, tidy up the killing zone, do a little general housekeeping; but the pattern turned out to be good, the flapper had died of its injuries, the runner was still in play, there wasn't really anything that needed to be done. That was a slice of luck. If he left the hide now and walked about, it'd be half an hour at least before business could resume. He sat down again (his knees and thighs were hurting badly now) and chose a good smooth flint for his next throw, whenever it came.

He didn't have long to wait. Two scouts, then a dozen, a full echelon gliding straight at him from the trees, unheard-of confidence, ludicrous arrogance-If I was a crow you'd never catch me being so bloody stupid. The stone was digging uncomfortably into the palm of his hand, but he decided to let the dozen come all the way. If they were prepared to come in so boldly, it could only be because the pattern was just right, so that the crows were seeing exactly what they wanted to see. Very well, then; indulge them, let them make their appalling mistake. The dozen pitched and started waddling around, brushing past their dead brethren and pecking vainly at the already-plundered earth. Excellent, Poldarn thought; and he was right, because the flow that started after that lasted him another ten kills before he fumbled a shot and spoilt everything. The sky cleared, the trees in the distance flushed out the reserves and the general staff, and he was left alone with his dead.

Bloody ridiculous mistake. He was mortally ashamed; still, he had two dozen on the ground now, a big enough pattern to draw them back in spite of themselves. He didn't deserve another chance, but he was probably going to get one all the same. He wasn't wrong, at that; an hour later they were back, and only the barest going-through-the-motions flight of scouts before they started pouring in, pitching in twos and threes instead of singly. That should have been a problem; too many birds in play at any one time increases the risk of detection. But they didn't seem to care, and before long he was knocking down two, three, four in a row without breaking the rhythm. Somewhere around four dozen he lost count; they were drifting in like snow, and for all the notice they were taking of him, he might as well not have been there.

It was at this point that Poldarn became aware of someone sitting next to him in the hide. For a while he was too busy to do more than register the presence; whoever it was, he or she was sitting quite still, observing hide discipline, making no trouble. He guessed it was someone from the farm who'd come to see how he was getting on. It occurred to him to wonder how anybody could have got to the hide without showing himself and spooking the crows, but he only had enough spare attention to pose the question, not answer it. But then the tap turned off, as it had done two or three times already; the sun was too bright, or the wind had changed, or he'd killed all the birds in that particular detachment, and the reserves hadn't arrived yet. He turned his head to see who was crouching next to him.

'Hello,' he said (noise didn't bother the crows the way movement did, so it was all right to speak). 'Who are you? I'm sorry, but I don't know you.'

The boy smiled politely. 'My name's Ciartan,' he replied. 'I live at the farm up there on the hill. Do you mind if I just sit here and watch for a bit?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Sure,' he said, 'so long as you don't move when there's birds in the air.'

'Oh, I know better than that,' the boy assured him gravely. 'I do a lot of crow-scaring myself, every chance I can get. But I've never had a day like this. You're really good at it.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn replied. 'It's just practice, that's all.'

The boy nodded. 'You've been doing it for a long time, then?'

'All my life,' Poldarn said, 'since I was your age. It's all about experience, really; that and keeping your eyes open, thinking about what you're looking at. That-and learning how to think like a crow, of course.'

'Exactly,' the boy said. 'You've got to be able to get inside their minds, really, otherwise you don't stand a chance. That's where I go wrong, of course. I can't seem to manage it.'

Before Poldarn could say anything, a big old crow with a ragged left wing appeared out of nowhere directly overhead. Poldarn froze, holding his breath, watching the bird's shadow on the ground as it flapped slowly away. 'He'll be back,' Poldarn whispered, 'you wait and see. He's just taking a look.'

'Scout?' the boy asked.

'Don't think so. Just occasionally you get a loner, out of touch with the rest of 'em. Look, he's on the turn. Keep still, he'll come back in straight at us.'

Sure enough, the crow executed a long, wide, sweeping turn, dropped low and came in with languorous, easy wing-beats, three feet or so above the ground. Poldarn let it come, knowing that if he could manage to drop it cleanly in the right place, its fall would bring in a new wave of scouts and the brief drought would be over. He could only just see the line it made in the air through his curtain of nettles, but he'd gauged its speed pretty well. When he reckoned it had reached the right spot, he straightened his protesting knees and threw at where the crow ought to be. Sure enough it was there, and the stone cracked it on the forehead. It dropped flat, wings tight in to its body.

'Shot,' the boy said, deeply impressed. 'I didn't even see it.'

Poldarn grinned. 'Nor me, I figured out where it was going to be. Now we should be in for some action.'

He wasn't wrong. Three scouts came over high, shrieking harshly, and slowly drew off; shortly afterwards, four more birds hobbled in on the line the singleton had taken. More or less at the point where Poldarn had killed the loner, they put their wings back and pitched.

'We leave them alone,' Poldarn said. 'Remember, for every one you can see, there's a couple of dozen that can see you.'

'I know,' the boy said. 'Right, here we go. Incoming on the left.'

Poldarn frowned; they hadn't come from that quarter before, or he hadn't seen them (he had a blind spot there). 'How many?'

'Two,' the boy replied immediately. 'One's on the glide, the other one's thinking about it.'

'Fine. We let the front one pitch and take the other one.'

He didn't see the second bird until it was a bare foot off the ground, but it was in the right place at the right time, so he killed it quickly and dropped back down as fast as. he could. The first bird lifted, but spread its wings straight away and tacked into the wind to brake its airspeed. As it sailed over a gap he bobbed up and killed it. There was another bird in the air before he sat down.

'That's amazing,' the boy said. 'I can never get them to do that.'

'Watch and learn,' Poldarn replied smugly. 'The key to this lark is patterns. Get the patterns right and all you've got to be able to do is throw a stone straight.'

No time for idle chatter for several minutes after that. They came in thick, almost too many of them, so that Poldarn had to keep throwing and killing just to keep the picture tight. 'You know,' the boy said during the next slight pause, 'it's starting to make sense to me now. It's like I can actually read the patterns and know what they're going to do. I can't explain it, though.'

'That's good, you're starting to think like them. They don't think in words, see; so you've got to be like them, think with your eyes.'

'That's right, think with your eyes. Like drawing a sword, really' The boy stopped talking while Poldarn nailed a couple more crows. 'It all makes sense when you're doing it,' he went on, 'definitely what you said, patterns. You know exactly what's going to happen; it's almost like you've been here before and you're remembering it all, so you can remember exactly where each bird's come from and where it's going to be. Either that, or you're reading their minds. Or both.'

They came in again while the boy was still talking; but he must have seen Poldarn stiffen, because he abruptly fell silent and held still. Poldarn killed another three; then he reached into the bucket for a stone and found it was empty.

'Fuck,' he said, 'that's a bloody nuisance. Do me a favour, will you; nip out and get a few stones, the headland's covered with them.'

But the boy wasn't there any more; he must have slipped away while Poldarn was busy. Annoying; he was too stiff and cramped to want to get up. No choice in the matter, though; so he straightened his knees with an effort and clambered up the side of the ditch.

He hadn't seen the field, of course, not since he'd got down and worked himself in. It was an extraordinary sight.

There were dead crows everywhere, a black mat of wings and bodies; some on their backs with their claws curled in the air, some on their sides with a wing frozen in death, some flat on the ground with their wings spread. One or two were still twitching, straining their necks like athletes striving to lift weights. As he hauled himself out of the ditch, something thrashed frantically in the tall nettles. He stood and stared for a long time, remembering various things he had seen-the ground littered with dead monks at Deymeson, the aftermath of the battle in the river, when the old women in their black shawls had come out to rob the dead, and a host of other pictures from the back of his mind that were equally vivid, though he couldn't fit a story to them. But they all conformed to one pattern, in the alignment of the corpses, their spacing, the gaps between them. They lay just as they'd been when he'd arrived, when they were still alive and feeding (it was the picture he'd been trying to achieve, the pattern he'd held in his mind as he worked) and they covered the sprouting peas like the mountain's black ejecta, the only difference being that he'd put them there, and he'd been doing good.

Stones, he thought; but he didn't move. Instead, he looked towards the volcano, Polden's Forge, and saw a thick column of black smoke billowing out of the summit, exactly like a flock of crows put up out of a knot of tall, thin trees, their castle. He could almost believe that the smoke was crows, all the crows he'd killed that day and on other good days, when he'd blackened the fields with his mess. It reminded him of one day in particular, a turning point in his career as the death of crows-he'd forgotten all about it until now, but suddenly it appeared in his mind's sky, swooped and pitched in the killing zone of his memory, the day when a young boy called Ciartan had gone out to kill crows on a field of sprouting peas, only to find that a man he couldn't remember having seen before had got there first and built his hide in this very ditch, under this very oak tree. The offcomer (a strange and rather frightening man with a sad face) was having a very good day, the field was covered in dead bodies, and he'd sat with him in his hide for a while and watched him at work, learning ever so much about decoying and tracking the birds in night and building and maintaining patterns-the foundations on which he'd based all his subsequent triumphs, from that day to this. It was the sheer number of the dead that had impressed him then-after the man had gone he counted them, one hundred and seventy-two-and (he guessed) it was the similarity of that picture of slaughter to this that had jarred his mind back into the groove.

He let go of the bucket and went out to count the dead birds. There were a hundred and seventy-two of them. As he turned them over with his foot and reckoned up the total, he was singing: Old crow lying on the cold brown clay, Old crow lying on the cold brown clay, Old crow lying on the cold brown clayBut there'll always be another for another day.

He remembered that he'd left the billhook in the bottom of the ditch. For a moment he was tempted to leave it there-he was too tired and aching to go scrambling about in ditches, it'd be easier to go home, fire up the forge and make a new one-but he put that unworthy thought behind him and slithered back down the slope into the mud (much deeper now, where he'd churned it up.) The hook had managed to burrow its way into the bed of the ditch and he had to scrabble for it with his fingertips. The mud felt cold and rather disgusting, it was like paunching a rabbit you'd killed yesterday and forgotten to dress out; he found the hook eventually, but while he was groping for it he came across something else. At first it looked like just another stone (could've done with that a few minutes ago, when the crows were coming in) but something prompted him to scour away the surface mud with the ball of his thumb, and he realised that it was iron or steel, remarkably well preserved under the coating of mud, except that it had turned a stony grey colour. A knob of mud in the middle gave way under his finger and proved to be the eye of a small axe. Once he'd found the billhook he spent a few minutes scraping off the mud and rust coating, and was pleased to see that it was salvageable; all it'd need would be a touch or two on the grindstone and a new handle, and he'd have a perfectly usable tool. He tucked it into his belt, wondering how it had come to be there, sunk in the mud and deprived of its history. But there were no clues to be found just by looking at it; its memory had long since rotted away, along with its handle. Not to worry; whoever it had belonged to and whatever it had been, it was still a perfectly good axe, and so long as it could be made to remember how to cut, that, surely, was all that mattered.

By the time he'd hauled himself out of the ditch and trudged back across the field, the crows were already starting to drop in and pitch again, as if nothing had happened and he hadn't been there. That should have annoyed him, but this time he only shrugged and turned his back on them. There would, after all, be another day tomorrow.