Pattern

Chapter Twenty-One

At first he assumed he was back in the peafield, and that the bodies lying out on the dry earth were the crows he'd killed. He could feel the pain in his knees-a pity I can't change the past, he thought, I'd get up and stretch my legs at this point, maybe save myself five days of misery-and the weary ache in his right shoulder. But then he realised that he wasn't alone in the ditch. It was full of men, in armour, clutching weapons and crouching low to keep their heads out of sight. Oh, he thought, I must be somewhere else.

He glanced sideways, doing his best not to be obvious about it. Whoever these people were, he had a feeling that they were under his command, and therefore had a right to feel confidence in their commander. It wouldn't do for him to start asking disconcerting questions, like Where are we? and What the hell's going on here? They might get the impression that he wasn't in complete control of the situation, and that would never do.

I must be dreaming again, he thought. In which case it's probably all right, nothing really bad can happen to me in the past, because if I'd died or lost an arm in this battle, I'd know it for sure back in the present. So that's all right, he added. This is just a holiday, a guided tour of some momentous event laid on for my benefit, as a reward for beating the volcano.

If he was dreaming, he rationalised, it seemed reasonable to suppose that he wasn't really here, and nothing he did could have a bad effect on the outcome; so he wriggled round to the point where he could put his weight on his feet and pushed up, just enough to let him see over the top of the ditch.

A column of soldiers was approaching. They looked remarkably like the soldiers next to him, as far as clothes, armour and equipment were concerned; the only difference he could see was that they were armed with straight-bladed swords, while in his own right hand he held a curved-bladed object that he recognised as an enemy backsabre (No, not enemy; at least, not as far as the present is concerned. The backsabre is our special design, unique to our people on the island. How he'd come by it, of course, he had no idea, but one of his men in the ditch seemed to have one, which suggested it was some kind of special trophy, an appropriate sidearm for a dashing and popular leader-)

There were, he realised an awful lot of soldiers drawing near, enough to make him very glad that he wasn't really there. Of course, he had no way of telling, crouched down there in the ditch, how many men he had on his side. For all he knew, there could be thousands of them, not just the couple of hundred in the ditch but other units hidden with equal skill and cunning, behind hedges, among the trees, maybe even hunkered down in cleverly disguised pits dug in the field. Since he had no idea just how wonderfully imaginative and inventive he was when it came to laying ambushes and conducting battles, all he could do was keep very still and hope for the best.

There didn't seem to be anything else he could glean from the approaching soldiers, so he turned his attention to the dead bodies. They weren't soldiers. Most of them weren't even men-there were a few old men, some boys, but the bodies were mostly those of women of various ages. All dead, of course, unless they were making a very good job of just shamming dead; but he didn't really think he was clever and imaginative enough to have staged that. Some of them at least were quite palpably dead: heads chopped off or necks slashed half through, ribcages opened, the sort of thing you couldn't really fake. The implication was that someone had massacred two or three hundred helpless civilians. He hoped very much that it hadn't been him, because the sight was pretty grim. The approaching soldiers didn't look too happy about it, for one thing, and they gave every indication of wanting to get their hands on whoever was responsible. That didn't bode well, particularly if he didn't have an extra thousand or so heavy infantry concealed about the place. He wasn't sure he cared much for this dream, after all.

The soldiers carried on advancing; they were no more than a couple of hundred yards away by now, rather too close for comfort. He wondered if he ought to be doing anything, or whether whatever was going to happen next could be left to take care of itself. Probably not. If he really was the leader of the men in the ditch, it'd be up to him; to give the order to attack-assuming that they were planning an ambush and not hiding, though if these few with him were all there were that could well be the case. Really, it was no better than being awake, the frustration of not knowing who he was or what he was meant to be doing. He could get as much of that as he wanted just by hanging round the farm, without having to travel back in time for it.

The man next to him budged him in the ribs. 'No offence,' he muttered, in a tone of voice that suggested the exact opposite, 'but you're cutting it bloody fine.'

'I know what I'm doing,' he replied, much to his own surprise (but that was the other man talking, the one who had a right to be here). 'Shut your face and wait for my mark.'

The man next to him froze, as if he'd just been hit across the face. He felt ashamed and embarrassed-the poor fellow had only been trying to help, and as far as he could see, the man had had a point, the enemy were getting closer all the time and it wasn't going to be easy getting out of this bloody ditch. By the time they'd scrambled up the bank and retrieved their weapons and kit, there wasn't going to be much in the way of an element of surprise. Still, he thought, there's no logical reason to believe that the momentous event I've come here to see is a victory. For all I know we're about to make a horrible mess of it and get slaughtered. He stole another look at the dead women and children scattered about the field like decoys, and added, Serve us right.

Then he realised what he'd been waiting for. The enemy, having come right down the field, within fifty yards of the ditch, were turning to the right, from column to file, with a view to marching off somewhere. You'd never try such an unwieldy manoeuvre on a battlefield in the face of the enemy; but they didn't know there was anybody in the ditch, so it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Obviously he'd foreseen that, his remarkably perceptive tactical brain allowing him to read the enemy commander's mind, right down to the minutiae of timing and procedure. He couldn't help admiring He was on his feet, clawing at the grass with his left hand to pull himself up the steep bank. On either side his men were doing the same thing, most of them rather more athletically than him. Already the first few dozen were up and on the move, hurling themselves against the enemy flank with a cold fury that argued a definite sense of purpose-probably they had a score to settle, some grievance that justified killing women and children, and prompted them to such a display of aggression. As for the other side, they didn't know what was happening. (By now he was out of the ditch, hands and knees filthy with mud, catching his breath and straightening his cramped back like an old man while all around him his soldiers were charging.) For one thing, it seemed, the other soldiers couldn't figure out why their own people were attacking them; they didn't seem to want to fight or use their weapons, not until they'd given away the advantage and lost all semblance of order and cohesion. Meanwhile, there was more movement going on in other parts of the field-he'd been right, there was a large contingent of his men tucked away behind the far hedge, another lot were rising up out of the ground like sprouting corn (another ditch, he assumed, or something of the sort) and it was soon pretty obvious that he had as many men as the other lot, if not more. That was a relief, at any rate. In fact, the result was already a foregone conclusion, if his instincts were anything to go by. He had the enemy in flank and rear, with another unit rushing up to block their front and complete the encirclement. His lot, the men from the ditch, were in the process of cutting the enemy column in two, which he was fairly sure was a very good thing in a battle. All things considered, the other lot didn't stand a chance, and all that remained was the tedious job of chopping them down where they stood. He was pleased to see that he, the leader of the winning side, was apparently content to leave the actual killing to his subordinates. It was turning into a very nasty business, and he didn't actually want to get involved, even if he wasn't really there and so couldn't come to any harm.

'Not bad.' Someone was talking to him; not the man he'd spoken to in the ditch, but presumably one of his officers, to judge by his manner and tone of voice. 'Not bad at all. I'll be honest with you, I thought it was a lousy idea and you were going to get us all killed. Glad I was wrong.'

He shrugged. 'Well,' he said. 'It's always worked for me before. No reason why you should know that, of course.'

The other man grinned. 'You're a ruthless bastard, though,' he said. 'I can't think of anybody else who'd knock off a whole village just to decoy a column into exactly the right spot. I thought it was just an excuse, because you like killing people.'

'What, me?' He was grinning, though he didn't know what was so funny. 'It's like I always say, you've got to set out the right pattern, let 'em see what they expect to see, otherwise they'll shy off and not drop in. We wanted them to think there were raiders in these parts, but they'd got no reason to believe that; so the obvious thing to do was make it look like the raiders had been through. Nothing does that like a couple of hundred dead bodies. Simple fieldcraft.'

'It's simple when you put it like that,' the other man said. 'Can't say I'd have thought of it myself, though. Still, you lot have always had a different way of going about things.'

'Sure,' he replied. 'We don't give a damn, it makes life much simpler.' He frowned. 'Your people take their time, don't they? We'd have been done and stripping their boots off by now'

'Maybe it's because my men don't need dead men's boots,' the other man said mildly. 'Anyway, it's a certainty now, so that's all right. The general is going to be very pleased.'

He nodded. 'Where is he, by the way? Wasn't he supposed to be with the Seventh, coming in from the wood?'

'That's what I thought, too,' the other man said. 'Still, Cronan never did have a wonderful sense of direction. Maybe he wandered off and got himself lost.'

He laughed, for some reason. 'That'd be right,' he said. 'Of course, this is going to be the crowning glory of his brilliant career, so I guess it's appropriate, the bloody fool not even being here. Meanwhile, we do all the work and don't get a damn thing for it.'

The other man looked offended. 'I wouldn't say that, exactly,' he said.

'Yes, well. The main thing is, the job's done. I think I'll leave you to it, if you don't mind. I've got a long day ahead of me tomorrow.'

'That's no lie,' the other man said, with a certain degree of distaste. 'Have fun; and for God's sake, don't miss any of them. If Cronan finds out what we've been up to-'

'Oh, for crying out loud, Tazencius,' he said, 'what do you take me for, an idiot? It's not like I'm new at this.'

'No,' the other man said. 'You're not.' He smiled offensively. 'But mistakes happen-you should know that better than anybody. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, would you?'

He could feel that that, for some reason, was a deadly insult; he was conscious of forcing down the urge to lash out, of filing it away among his grievances, to be paid for later. 'Point taken,' he said. 'Right, I'm off. Are you heading back to town when this lot's done?'

The other man nodded. 'Soon as I can,' he said. 'Cronan can do without me for a week or so.'

'I'm sure. When you get back, be sure to give Lysalis my love.'

The other man abruptly stopped grinning, and gave him a look of pure hatred. 'Yes, all right,' he said. 'I'll tell her-well, I'll tell her you've been making yourself useful.'

'Thanks. Tell her I'll be bringing her back something nice for her birthday. I don't know what it is yet, mind, but there's bound to be something she'll like at Josequin.'

The other man was about to say something, but he wasn't there to hear it; he was sitting on a stone bench in the middle of a beautifully tended lawn, surrounded on three sides by an elegant sandstone cloister. Behind him he could hear running water, and he knew without looking round that the source of the sound was a small, rather ornate fountain in the shape of a grotesque dolphin. There was a woman next to him on the bench, cradling a baby girl in her arms. Between them lay a painted wooden box, about the size of a house brick. The hinged lid was open, and inside it was a necklace: woven gold with pearls and coral beads.

'It's lovely,' the woman said, with obvious pleasure. (He thought it looked flashy and vulgar, but he didn't say so.) 'Where on earth did you find it?'

'On a stall in the market at Boc,' he replied, knowing he was telling a little white lie. 'As soon as I saw it, I knew it was you all over.'

She beamed, as if the compliment mattered more than the gift. 'Thank you,' she said, and kissed him. Her lips were very soft and full. She was very pretty, and not more than nineteen, with masses of dark auburn hair piled up on top of her head in an over-elaborate coiffure. He noticed that the earrings she was wearing matched the necklace. Ah, he thought, that's probably why she likes it. How thoughtful of me.

'How long can you stay for this time?' she was saying, a little wistfully. She really was very attractive, and he awaited his reply with interest. 'Not long,' he heard himself say (he was disappointed), 'I've got to see some people and then get back. But I couldn't miss your birthday.'

She smiled. 'I think that's really sweet of you,' she said, 'coming all that way. We hardly seem to get any time together these days. Still, with all the wonderful help you've been giving Daddy I can't complain. I'm so glad you've decided to be friends at last.'

I remember you from somewhere, he thought, but of course he couldn't say anything like that. 'Well,' he said instead. 'The truth is, he's a bit out of his depth at the moment. It's this damned feud of his with General Cronan-it's going to cause a lot of trouble if something isn't done about it.'

'Oh.' The woman looked confused. 'But I thought that's what you'd been doing. Helping General Cronan, I mean.'

He laughed. 'That's exactly what we've been doing,' he said. 'That's the whole point. Only, our fool of an emperor assigned your father to Cronan's staff.' She looked even more confused, so he explained: 'That means he's working for Cronan, he's his subordinate. Well, you can imagine what he thinks about that. So nothing will do except he's got to steal all the glory; which is why he needed me, to pull off a really big coup, and beat General Allectus before Cronan could get to him. That was the idea, anyhow. Luckily for all of us it didn't turn out that way; your father rushed on ahead, trying to get to Allectus before Cronan could, and if he'd managed it, chances are Allectus would've had him for breakfast and there'd have been nothing I could do about it. But when your father did catch up with Allectus, he wasted two days dancing round him trying to get a good position, and by then Cronan was right behind him. So your father panics, tells me to think of something quickly-'

'Which you did, of course,' she interrupted, 'and it was brilliantly clever and you won the battle and everything worked out splendidly.'

'Well, sort of,' he replied, pulling a face. 'Actually, I hung around pretending to be clever until Cronan's men arrived, and then I managed to draw Allectus into an ambush. But for some reason Cronan wasn't there, he actually managed to lose his way in a forest on his way from the camp to the battlefield, of all the ridiculous things, and so he missed the whole thing. We had to go and look for him in the end. Of course, that pleased your father more than anything, far more than winning the battle. Silly, really. Still, it's over and done with now, and I don't suppose it'll make a blind bit of difference in the long run.'

She sighed. 'It does all sound rather childish,' she said. 'Still, I don't know anything at all about politics or war, so you mustn't pay any attention to me.' She reached out and gave his hand a quick, friendly squeeze. 'But if the war's over and horrid old General Allectus has been beaten, why've you got to go back again? And so soon, too.'

He shook his head. 'The rebellion wasn't really important,' he said. 'It'd have petered out of its own accord, probably. We only went after Allectus because the emperor wanted to make a point of crushing him immediately, Cronan wanted another victory for his collection, your father wanted to wipe Cronan's eye-all that sort of thing, you know what it's like. No, the real problem in the Bohec valley is the raiders, that's who we really have got to deal with, before they turn the whole province into a desert.'

She looked worried, frightened. 'Do they really need you to go?' she said. 'Oh, I know I'm being silly, but you hear such dreadful things about them. Couldn't they send somebody else instead?'

He put his arm around her shoulders. 'It's all right,' he said, 'nothing's going to happen to me, I promise. Trust me.' He grinned. 'I know for a fact that nothing's going to happen to me, because I can see into the future, remember?' That had to be some sort of private joke between them, he guessed. Anyway, it seemed to reassure her. 'Sorry,' she said, 'I'd forgotten about that. Silly of me.'

'You've got to stop saying you're silly,' he said, pretending to be stern and serious. 'No, I can see me coming home from the war without a scratch, raiders or no raiders.'

'No wonder you win all these battles,' she said, trying to sound bright and cheerful. 'Though really, I suppose it's cheating.'

'Well, of course. You wouldn't want me to play fair in a battle, would you? I might get hurt.'

'True.' She leant her head against his shoulder, winced, said 'Ow!' and lifted her head again. 'Sorry,' she said.

He smiled. 'Is your neck still hurting?'

'A bit. Silly old pulled muscle. It'll be better in a day or so.'

The baby opened its eyes and started to cry. 'It's getting chilly,' he said. 'Maybe we should go inside.'

They stood up; and they must have startled the old black crow that had been perched on the top of the fountain, because it screamed angrily at them and spread its wings noisily. The woman shrieked and shrank away, squeezing the baby against her chest as the crow flapped slowly upwards, exerting itself to gain lift in the still air. For some reason he felt extremely angry, as if the crow had no right to be there, let alone startle his wife; he stooped down and picked something up off the grass, a chess piece that someone had left there. The crow was rising steadily, just about to turn, but he anticipated the move (he knew exactly what it was planning to do) and threw the chess piece so hard that he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. It was a good throw; the crow folded up in the air, wings tight to its body, and fell dead with a thump on the cloister roof.

He turned back and looked at her. She was upset, unhappy at the sight of killing, but she did her very best not to show it; still, he could see her thoughts quite clearly. 'Horrid thing,' she said. 'That was very clever of you,' she added.

He pulled a face. 'A friend of mine showed me how to do it,' he said, 'back when I was with the sword-monks. I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. I guess I just don't like crows very much.'

'I hate them,' she replied quickly. 'Horrible gloomy creatures. And that one's been hanging around here for days, I keep shooing it away and it keeps coming back, like it was laughing at me or something. Well done,' she added firmly, convincing herself that he'd done a good deed.

He didn't reply; he was thinking of something his friend had told him, about the time he'd killed a crow in a blacksmith's forge, and never had a day's good luck since. He tried to remember the friend's name, but all he could recall was a nickname, Monach, which was just 'monk' in the Morevich dialect. Then he remembered that his friend was dead; killed by the raiders at Deymeson, possibly-most of the monks had died that day. But that was wrong, he wasn't even sure that had happened yet. He shrugged the thought away, and reminded himself that this was just a dream, and he wasn't really here.

The baby was howling, which made it impossible to think straight, anyway. 'You go on in,' he said, 'I'll join you in a minute or so.' She went, walking under an old carved arch he hadn't really taken any notice of before. He stood for a moment looking at it, until he saw what it was supposed to be: the divine Poldarn, standing up in his cart, bringing the end of the world to Torcea. Rather a gloomy subject for a carving, he thought; but of course, this house had once been a monastery, and the monks had a taste for the miserable and depressing in the decorative arts. He followed her, but as soon as he stepped under the arch he realised he wasn't in the cloister garden any more; he was home, in his own house at Ciartanstead, alone in the bed he shared with his wife.

He tried to close his hands on the dream, bring it down as it opened its wings and flapped screeching away; but this time his aim was bad, and the dream dwindled into a speck in the distance. He sat up.

Well, he thought, at least the house is still here. Of course, even if he'd failed, it would take the fire-stream a long time to get here; days, even weeks, depending on whether it gained or lost speed coming down the slopes. Someone would have woken him if the molten rock was lapping round the front porch, or if the roof was on fire. Even in the worst possible outcome, he wasn't likely to be burned alive in his bed. That was a comfort, he felt.

Nevertheless. The shutters were down and latched, but little blades of light were forcing their way through. It was time he was up and about, organising things, getting some work done. Assuming, of course, that there was anything for him to do.

By the time he'd dressed and got his boots on (a painful process; he'd escaped without anything he could properly describe as a burn, but his skin was horribly sensitive; like sunburn, only worse), the household was about its business, the tables were out and laid for breakfast, people were bustling in and out of the doors in pursuit of their appointed tasks. There didn't seem to be as many of them as there should have been, and Poldarn remembered the casualties before he remembered the mistake at the breach; the missing numbers weren't dead, just stranded somewhere in the valley on the other side of the mountain. He felt better after he'd realised that.

'You're up, then.' Rannwey was in charge of catering today. Usually it was Elja's job, but she wasn't there, of course, and wouldn't be back for days. 'We let you sleep in, you were dead beat when you got home last night.'

'Thanks,' Poldarn muttered, wondering how they'd managed to wake up before he did; that was supposed to be impossible, wasn't it? Well, maybe things had changed, either because half the household was away or for some other reason nobody had seen fit to tell him about. Better that way, needless to say. He was pretty sure he wasn't really a morning person at the best of times.

'You sit down,' Rannwey continued briskly, not looking at him. She never looked at him; always over his head or just past his shoulder, as if he wasn't there. 'Porridge and leeks again,' she added. 'Same as usual.'

He nodded. 'We're going to have to do something about that,' he said. 'We can't go on eating that muck for ever.'

Rannwey looked at him. 'Why not?' she said. 'It's good, wholesome food. Also, it's all we've got.'

'Yes, I know. But we must be able to get something different from somewhere. Trade for it with another house, something like that.'

'Really? Where? You don't suppose anybody else is going to be any better off, do you? Worse off, most of 'em, I shouldn't wonder. You want to count your blessings, before you go turning your nose up at good food.'

Well, that was him told; so he sat down and tried to look hungry. He wasn't. Thirsty, yes, but he had no appetite for food just then. But he got porridge and leeks anyway, and did his best to eat it. When breakfast was finally over, he jumped up and headed outside.

The red glow over the mountain was as bright as ever, and there had been a light sprinkling of black ash; nothing to worry about, though, just a slight film of dust, such as you'd find in a neglected house. The good news was that the fire-stream hadn't moved at all in their direction, and where it had been glowing red the last time he'd seen it from down in the valley, now it was just a black smudge on the mountainside. Beyond the mountain, over its shoulder, so to speak, Poldarn could see a column of black smoke rising straight up into the air-no wind to speak of, which was good, since it meant there wasn't anything to blow ash out their way. Nobody else was looking at the mountain, he noticed. That job was over and done with, evidently, as far as they were concerned.

Well, that was good too. Everybody was extremely busy, naturally enough-with half the household absent, everyone had at least two jobs to do. Almost everyone. However busy and rushed off their feet they might be, they didn't appear to need Poldarn's help with anything. It was all right, they assured him, they could manage just fine, nothing needed doing that they weren't able to handle, or that couldn't wait. He must have far more important things to do than scrape down yards or chop firewood, and they wouldn't dream of keeping him from them.

After spending the whole morning unsuccessfully touting for work-this must be what it was like for Boarci, he realised-Poldarn took a brush-hook and a small axe, and set off to cut back the greenery that was sprouting up all round the bridge over the river. It wasn't really a job that needed doing, the vegetation wasn't nearly tall or thick enough to clog the flow of the river or anything like that, but it was something that would have to be done sooner or later. He arrived only to find that Reed, Carey's eldest boy, had got there first and nearly finished one whole side. He sighed, and trudged back to the house.

'There you are.' Poldarn recognised the face of the man who'd spoken to him but couldn't put a name to it. 'They said you were around the place somewhere-I've been looking all over for you. Got a minute?'

Did he have a minute? Yes, he probably did. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but who are you?'

The man looked confused, then laughed. 'Of course,' he said, 'they did tell me about your memory loss but I'd forgotten. My name's Hart. From Hartsriver, over the south ridge. Actually, I don't think I've seen you since you got back. You stayed over my place one summer, just before you went off.'

'Ah,' Poldarn said, 'I thought I recognised you. Anyway, what can I do for you?'

Hart was looking at him oddly, but he knew what that meant; it was that bemused look they gave him when they first realised they couldn't read his mind. He was used to that by now, of course. No need to say anything. They generally got the message soon enough.

'Really,' Hart said, 'it's more what I can do for you, though actually you'd be doing me a favour as well. Truth is, I was on my way to Eylphsness with twenty-six barrels of salt beef when the wheel came off my cart, just by your southern boundary there. I was wondering if you could run me up a new linchpin and weld my tyre.'

Poldarn frowned. 'Sure,' he said. 'At least, I think I should be able to. Or you can use our forge, if you prefer. I'm still rather new to blacksmith work, you see.'

Hart laughed. 'Well, you're better at it than me, that's for sure. My brother's the smith in our house. Anything you can do will be fine, I'm sure. Also,' he went on, 'how would you feel about a trade? You see, I owe Eylph fifteen barrels of beef, and I was going to trade him the some other stuff we need-hay and oats, mostly, and some apples if he'd got any. But like I said, what I mostly need is hay and oats. Since I'm here-'

'I'm sure we can work something out,' Poldarn said smoothly, trying not to show his emotions. 'All our stock's away at the moment,' he went on, 'till the mountain's stopped playing up, you understand. So we've got plenty of hay in hand, and oats-' He smiled. 'Oats won't be a problem. Can't help you with apples, I'm afraid, but if you could use a few leeks-'

Hart thought for a moment. 'So happens I could,' he said. 'Bloody ash wiped out half our crop. Yes, that sounds like a good deal as far as I'm concerned. And it'll save me trying to haul my stuff all the way to Eylphsness on a dodgy axle. I could take the fifteen barrels of beef up there, and then stop off for the hay and the rest of the stuff on my way back.'

Hart was a big man, very straight-backed and with broad shoulders, his hair thinning on top but compensated for by a dense bush of grey fur under the chin and swarming up both cheeks. He had the biggest hands Poldarn could remember having seen, and a pair of very watery pale blue eyes. 'Sounds ideal,' Poldarn said. 'In fact, if you like you can take one of our carts over to wherever it is you're going, and we can have yours spruced up and properly fixed by the time you get back.'

Hart seemed to think that was an excellent idea. 'All I need is a little two-wheeler trap,' he said. 'Tell you what; we can use it to run your barrels back here, along with my busted wheel; then once we've unloaded I'll run the trap over to Eylph's. How does that sound?'

It sounded just fine when compared with the alternative (mooching around the farm all day with nothing to do) so Poldarn smiled brightly and led the way to the trap-house. Disconcertingly, the ostlers had already backed the steady grey gelding into the shafts. He thought about that, and came to the conclusion that they must have seen it in Hart's mind, and taken his agreement for granted.

The trap badly needed new springs and a new axle; every bump and dip in the ground shot them out of their seats straight up in the air. 'It won't be so bad coming back,' Hart pointed out, 'the barrels'll weight it down a bit, damp most of this out. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the big chunks of ash still lying around.'

Two bone-rattling hours later, they reached Hart's derelict wagon. The wheel looked to be quite some way past repair. Five spokes were cracked, the tyre was nearly worn through in two places as well as being buckled, and the hub was three parts split. 'Don't worry about it,' Poldarn sighed. 'We can make you a whole new one. Horn down at the Colsceg house is a pretty fair wheelwright, and I can probably find a tyre to fit in the scrap-there's a whole bunch of 'em, hardly worn.'

It took a long time and a lot of effort to shift the barrels, but Poldarn didn't mind that. They were bigger than he'd expected, and a bigger barrel holds more. His bargain was looking more and more promising every minute. 'The trap ought to take it as far as the house,' he said, 'but you might as well borrow the hay cart for the rest of your trip. I don't think this old heap's up to going that far.'

'If you're sure it's no bother,' Hart replied. 'That's very kind of you.'

'Don't worry about it,' Poldarn replied, imagining the look on his people's faces when they got meat with their dinners instead of porridge and leeks. 'If a man can't help out a neighbour, it's a pretty poor show.'

Laden down with barrels and the dead body of Hart's wheel, the trap was far more demure on the way home, though it creaked rather alarmingly. Poldarn took it more slowly on the way back, partly to save wear on the trap, partly because he wasn't in any great hurry to get home and resume doing nothing. 'It's interesting that you recognised me straight off after all those years,' he said. 'Sounds like I can't have changed much.'

Hart laughed. 'You've changed plenty,' he said. 'Truth is, I know all the Haldersness mob by sight. I didn't actually recognise you when I saw you, so it stood to reason you had to be Ciartan.'

'Oh.' Poldarn clicked his tongue. 'Oh, well,' he said. 'Changed in what sort of way?'

'Well.' Hart hesitated, and Poldarn could see he was getting ready to be tactful. 'You know how it is, twenty-odd years is a long time. I don't suppose I look much like I did twenty years ago.'

'As bad as that?'

'Oh, I don't know, in some respects you've improved. Not so skinny, for one thing.' Hart nodded gravely. 'All knees and neck and elbows,' he said, 'I've seen healthier-looking skeletons. My wife, rest her soul, she was convinced you were starving to death, she used to shovel food into you like stoking a furnace, but it never seemed to do a bit of good. Took a real shine to you, she did,' he added innocently. 'Mind, you always did have the knack of appealing to other men's wives.'

Poldarn looked up sharply. 'What's that supposed to mean?' he said.

'Just seeing how much you really do remember,' Hart replied, with a grin. 'No offence intended.'

'None taken,' Poldarn replied, drawing the trap to an abrupt halt. 'But you're going to explain what you just said, or we aren't moving from this spot.'

Hart sighed. 'Another thing about you that's changed, you always used to be able to take a joke. I'm sorry, I really didn't mean anything by it.'

Poldarn grunted impatiently. 'I'm not upset,' he said, 'just curious. Really, I don't mind jokes so long as I'm let in on them. What's all this about other men's wives?'

'It was just the one time,' Hart said sullenly, 'or at least, just the one time I know about. That's how you came to be spending time over at my place, because you were having some kind of fling with a married woman. And before you ask,' he went on, 'no, I don't know who it was. I didn't want to know then, and I don't want to know now. That sort of thing doesn't happen very much in these parts-well, think about it, one thing you can't do is keep a secret. But you could. You had this knack you've got now, of closing off your mind so nobody can see what's going on inside it. They tell me you've pretty much stuck like it since you've been back, but in the old days you could turn it on and off whenever you wanted to, and I guess the woman, whoever she was, she could do the same. It's more common than we like to think, actually.'

Poldarn nodded. 'All right.' he said, 'but it seems a bit unlikely to me. I can't have been old enough to interest married women, back then.'

'Apparently you were,' Hart said, looking away. 'Your grandfather-he was the only one who knew about it, except for you and me-he said it was an old fool who'd married a young girl, which is usually a mistake, of course.'

'Quite,' Poldarn said coldly. 'And somebody local, presumably.'

'I guess so,' Hart said. 'Otherwise it'd have been a bit obvious, you'd have been spending too much time away from home.'

'Well,' Poldarn said thoughtfully, 'that must narrow it down a bit; one of the farms within a day or so's ride of Haldersness. Can you think of anybody who fits the bill?'

'No,' Hart said, a little too quickly. 'It was a long time ago, and my place is a long way from yours. I didn't get out this way often enough to know all the families round here. Look, all I know is this. I was over your place, on my way back from visiting my uncle's family on the coast. I stopped off at Haldersness just to be polite, say hello, and one evening Halder called me outside and asked if I'd do him a favour, put you up for a month or two until you'd got over this thing with some other man's wife. I didn't like the sound of it much, because-well, put yourself in my shoes, will you? I knew Halder, sure, always got on pretty well with him, but we weren't close friends or anything. Would you want some love-struck kid mooning about your place, with maybe a jealous husband turning up on the doorstep with an axe one morning? But Halder told me it was all right, it hadn't gotten very far and if you could be got out of the way for a while it'd all blow over sure enough. So I agreed, and you rode back with me-it was your idea, you knew this thing was trouble waiting to happen-and as it turned out you settled in, made yourself useful, no trouble to anyone. Most of the time you spent out on the barley, scaring off the birds. Then one day you came to me and said it wasn't working and you'd decided to go abroad for a while, completely out of harm's way, where you couldn't make trouble for anybody. Seemed a bit over the top to me-I mean, going to live abroad, it's practically unheard of-but you'd set your heart on it. Halder agreed, apparently he'd thought up something you could be doing while you were over there, and so when the raiding season came on, off you went, and that was the last I saw of you till today. And that's it,' he concluded, 'that's all I know. Sorry I can't tell you any more, but there you are.'

Poldarn was silent for a while. 'Well,' he said eventually, with an effort, 'thanks for telling me, anyway. You can see why I'm a bit concerned about this. For a start, what's going to happen if I run into this woman at some point? It could get very difficult.'

'No danger of that,' Hart replied. 'She's dead.'

'Oh. You didn't mention anything about that. I thought you'd told me everything.'

'I forgot,' Hart said lamely. 'So happens I ran into Halder a few years later. I asked after you, how were you getting on, when were you coming back, that sort of thing. He said he didn't know, he'd more or less lost touch; but it'd be all right for you to come back at that point, because the woman had died. Like I said, I really didn't want to know the details, so I left it at that and changed the subject quick. And that really is everything, I promise you.'

'Fine,' Poldarn said abruptly. 'And you're positive that you and Halder were the only other people who knew?'

'That's what he told me. Come to think of it, he reckoned he only found out because you'd told him-told him out loud, he didn't see it in your mind or anything like that. And if it'd been common knowledge at any point, I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about it. You can't keep stuff like that quiet for very long in these parts, once word gets out.'

Poldarn drew a long sigh. 'That's all right, then,' he said. 'It's just worrying, that's all. You can imagine, I'm sure-not knowing what you've done in the past, what secrets you might have been hiding, all that. At times, I feel like there's this other person who looks like me who's following me around, just waiting to cut my throat as soon as he figures I'm not looking. I'm getting a bit sick of him, to tell you the truth. I only came here to get away from him, but it seems like he's followed me. I wish to God he'd pack up and go away.'

Hart smiled. 'You should count yourself lucky,' he said. 'I've never been what you'd call a tearaway, but there's still nights when I wake up sweating, thinking about some of the really stupid things I've done over the years. I guess everybody does that. Except you, of course, because you've forgotten it all. That's a pretty good trick, if you ask me. I wouldn't complain about it if I were you.'

That seemed to be all that was fit to be said about the subject, and neither of them mentioned it again as they creaked back to Ciartanstead, unloaded the trap and stowed the rest of the freight in the hay cart. Once Hart was safely on his way, Poldarn took the damaged wheel down to the old house for Horn the wheelwright to look at. As he'd expected, the prognosis wasn't good; it'd be far easier and quicker to scrap it, salvage the unbroken spokes and make a new wheel. Fortuitously, both Horn and Asburn weren't too busy, and they reckoned they could get the job done before Hart came back; especially, they hinted, if they had prime salt beef to sustain them instead of the same old porridge and mouldy leeks, which didn't comprise the sort of diet a man needed if he was expected to exert himself over a rush job. Poldarn could see the sense in that; in fact, he'd anticipated it, because one of Hart's barrels had travelled down to the old house along with the wheel.

Back at Ciartanstead, the advent of the beef barrels was greeted with the closest thing to enthusiasm that Poldarn could remember having seen since he'd first landed on the island. People actually smiled at him, and even Rannwey made a point of saying that he'd made a good bargain. In fact, he got the impression that the beef coup had done more to raise him in the estimation of his household than taming the volcano. He could understand why they should see it that way; after all, they'd been making do with porridge and leeks for a very long time, and at least his latest exploit hadn't cost any lives. That was one trend he'd be delighted to see continued.

Needless to say, after the first gluttonous beef feast, the barrels were spirited away to a secret hiding place known only to Rannwey and her most trusted lieutenants, from which their contents emerged slowly and in very small quantities. But that was all to the good, Poldarn decided, because he wanted some to be left for when Elja got home; she was an enthusiastic carnivore, and the porridge-and-leek regime had affected her more than most. Indeed, that might have been at the back of his mind when he squirrelled away the extra barrel he'd extorted out of Hart as payment for the use of the hay cart.

Poldarn tried to figure out how long it would be before Elja could be expected back; but the days passed, refuting his calculations, and he had to make a conscious effort not to worry. Left to himself, he'd have taken a spare horse and gone out to meet her, but he got the impression that that wouldn't be proper. There weren't enough horses or places in carts for the whole party, and giving someone special treatment simply because she happened to be someone's wife was sure to be against the rules. To take his mind off her absence, he decided to throw himself heart and soul into his work; then, when he couldn't find any to do, he went back to aimless mooching and threw himself heart and soul into that, instead. Ten days dragged by; he did nothing all day and slept badly at night, chafing at his own company like an old married couple who discover, in the leisured evening of their lives, that they never really liked each other very much.

On the eleventh night, after lying on his back staring at the still unrectified mistake in the rafters (it was too dark to see it, but he knew it was there) he drifted into sleep and found himself in command of a wing of cavalry, drawing up outside a lonely farmhouse in the first dull glow of morning. He slid from the saddle, handed his reins to a trooper, and walked quickly up to the main door. There he paused, waiting for his men to take their pre-arranged positions: two to each shuttered window, two on the back door, six scrambling up onto the low roof, in case anybody tried to break out through the thatch and escape that way. He was impressed at his own thoroughness, though he had an uneasy feeling that it was born of a series of embarrassing failures resulting from carelessness and inattention to detail. When everyone was in position and ready-they'd been quick about it, knowing what they had to do without needing to be told-he stepped back from the door and gave it the hardest kick he could manage. The grey oak panels flexed but didn't give way. He was ready for that-the two men standing next to him stepped up and laid into the door with long-handled felling axes that smashed and splintered as much as they cut. He heard noises inside, shouting and scuffling, the sound of benches being dragged across a planked floor. His axemen quickened their strokes, striking alternately like well-trained hammermen in a smithy, concentrating on the middle panels where the bar ran across on the inside. A few heartbeats later they'd cleared away the panels and their axe blades were chewing on the bar itself; it was straight-grained seasoned oak, but they went about the job in the approved fashion, each cut slanting in diagonally opposite its predecessor and clearing out its chips. In no time at all the bar cracked downwards, denting on the axes and then falling away. 'Right,' he said, and kicked the lower panels of the door again. This time it budged, only to come up against a blockage; benches, probably, or tables, thrust against it on the inside. He was ready for that, too. His reserve, half a dozen men plus the axemen and himself, slammed their shoulders against the side of the door and pushed, forcing the blockage back until the crack between door and frame was just wide enough for a man to wriggle through. He stepped back, and one of the axemen went ahead. He vanished into the house, but immediately they heard a grunt, and the sound of a dead weight slumping against the door. The rest of them shoved again, until the door flew open and they stumbled into the house. He saw a spearhead darting out at him like a snake's tongue; he didn't have time to react, but fortunately as he fell forward the spear passed over his bent neck. Now he could see the man behind it, just enough of him to constitute a target for a backhanded rising cut with the backsabre. His stroke connected with the spearman's wrist and sliced deep into the bone; he gave the blade a sharp twist to free it, and followed up with the point into the spearman's ribs. There too he encountered bone, but the smooth curve of the sword-point rode over it and into a gap. The dead man's own weight as he slumped pulled him off the swords blade.

By now they were inside. The only light was the sullen red glow of the embers in the long hearth, but it was enough to show him the situation. Four sleepy-looking men were backing away from him, hiding behind halberds and bardisches. One look at them told him they weren't going to fight. Behind them was a short, white-haired man in a long nightshirt; it was patched at the knees, he noticed, and the collar and cuffs were frayed. The man was holding a sword with an etched blade and was standing in front of a piece of gilded furniture, but almost immediately he dropped the weapon on the floor, flinging it away as if it was still hot from the forge.

'Let them go,' the man said. It took him a moment to realise the man was talking about the four halberdiers. 'They're just conscripts, they haven't done anything.'

He nodded, and the four guards knelt down, carefully laying their weapons on the floor. He snapped his fingers, and his men went forward and pushed them down flat on the floor. When it was obvious they weren't capable of posing a threat, he walked past them and grabbed the old man by the hair on the back of his neck, jerking him off balance so that he slipped and fell onto his hands and knees.

'Get up,' he said.

The man obeyed, moving stiffly and painfully-arthritis, he guessed, bad enough to make him shake a little. Quite suddenly the man's name floated up from the bottom of his memory. He was called General Allectus.

Not that that signified; he wasn't going to start a conversation, he was there to arrest the traitor and bring him back to General Cronan's camp, near the village of Cric. He tightened his grip on the old man's hair and bundled him out roughly.

'Do you want us to set fire to the house?' one of his men asked.

He shook his head. 'We haven't got time to waste on that,' he said. 'Besides, there's no need. I don't know whose house this is, but I don't think he's ever done me any harm.'

The soldier shrugged. 'What about these?' he asked, meaning the four halberdiers.

'Them?' He frowned. 'They're rebels. Kill them.'

He didn't wait to see if his order was obeyed. A soldier helped him sling General Allectus over the back of the spare horse; he took the leading rein himself, looping it twice around his wrist to make sure. All in all, he thought, a pretty neat operation: the old bastard ought to be grateful, since I'm clearing up his mess. He won't be, but who gives a damn?

Apparently the soldiers had decided to burn the house down after all. He charitably assumed that they had a good reason for disobeying a direct order; there wasn't time to ask them what it was. With the red glow of dawn and burning thatch behind him, he spurred his horse into a canter.

He opened his eyes.

It was still dark, though there were traces of red seeping in past the shutters. Someone was standing over him; he shifted, intending to sit up, but something pricked his throat. He stayed exactly where he was, his weight uncomfortably on his wrists.

'He's in here,' the man called out. He could just make out a black line running up from under his chin into the man's hands. It was almost certainly a spear. It would make better sense, he thought, if he was still dreaming, but he was fairly sure he wasn't.

'What's going on?' he asked.

The man didn't answer; in fact, he didn't seem to have heard. So Poldarn stayed where he was. By this point he was certain he was awake, which made the situation he found himself in rather alarming.

The door opened, letting in a bit more light-enough, at any rate, to allow him to recognise the man who came in and stood next to the stranger with the spear. 'Eyvind?' Poldarn said. 'What's happening?'

It was Eyvind, no question about that. 'Hello, Ciartan,' he said. 'Don't move, or Elbran here'll kill you. I'd rather that didn't happen, but it wouldn't break my heart.'

'Please,' Poldarn said, 'for pity's sake, tell me what this is all about. I don't understand.'

Eyvind smiled, rather bleakly. 'It's quite simple,' he said. 'I'm taking your house.'