Pattern

Chapter Twenty-Two

'I don't understand,' Poldarn repeated.

Eyvind looked down at him, the smile fading. 'No,' he said, 'I don't suppose you do. All right,' he told the man with the spear, 'that'll do. Give me that, I'll deal with him.'

The stranger-Eyvind had mentioned his name but Poldarn hadn't taken note of it-handed over the spear and left the room. Eyvind lifted the point away from Poldarn's face, just enough to let him stand up but no more. He looked as though he'd be delighted to have a pretext for using the weapon.

'Stand up,' Eyvind told him. 'I will kill you if I have to, so don't make trouble.'

As soon as Poldarn was on his feet, Eyvind stepped behind him, and Poldarn felt the spear-point digging into the small of his back. 'You go on through,' Eyvind said, 'I'll be right behind you.'

The main hall was even more crowded than usual. Poldarn saw his people, the household, lined up against the west wall; they looked confused and scared, which was very unusual.

He didn't recognise any of the other men, but they were all holding weapons of various sorts-spears, backsabres or axes. He guessed they must be Eyvind's people.

Eyvind made Poldarn sit down on a stool in the middle of the floor, which had apparently been put there for the purpose, to give the impression of a trial of some sort-or at least the conclusion of a trial, after the verdict had been brought in.

'Now, then,' Eyvind said, leaning on his spear, 'I don't suppose you know what I'm doing here. Do you?'

'No,' Poldarn said.

'All right, I'll tell you.' Eyvind took a deep breath, and it occurred to Poldarn that he was having trouble figuring out how to say whatever it was that he had in mind. He could sympathise with that; quite plainly, his friend was having a hard time, for whatever reason, Poldarn could feel his nervousness, he could discern traces of it in the way he spoke and moved, a slight and uncharacteristic degree of awkwardness and physical ineptness that suggested Eyvind was under rather more stress than he was used to. Not quite enough, Poldarn decided, to be useful tactically; enough to slow Eyvind down, so that it ought to be possible to get past him, get the spear away from him, but not enough to guarantee a certainty if Poldarn were to try and take him hostage, as a way of getting past the men with weapons and out of the house. Poldarn made a quick, rough estimate of the odds and decided against anything of the sort, at least until he had more to go on as far as the cause of all this was concerned. For all he knew it could be a ludicrous misunderstanding, something that could be set right with a few calm words. Escalating it into bloodshed was uncalled for at this stage.

'About a fortnight ago,' Eyvind said quietly, 'you took it upon yourself to go up the mountain and divert the stream-damn it, I don't know what to call it, all the burning shit that's coming out of the side. I've heard how you did it. I'm impressed, it was no end clever, and it worked just fine. You must be very proud.'

'Not really,' Poldarn said. 'Some people got killed. I don't think it was worth it, for that.'

Eyvind breathed in sharply through his nose, as if Poldarn's words had taken him by surprise. 'Interesting you should say that,' he said, 'because I'd assumed you were just showing off. You're always trying to do that.'

'I don't mean to,' Poldarn murmured.

'Maybe.' Eyvind scowled. He was having problems with something. 'I guess you do a lot of things you never meant to do. Is that right?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I've got no idea,' he said. 'You know why.'

'Oh yes.' Eyvind nodded briskly. 'You lost your memory, you haven't got a clue who you are or what you've done, so we've all got to make allowances and forgive you. Well, that's fine, except that this time it isn't going to work, because you should have thought, you should have considered-' He paused, painfully aware that he wasn't expressing himself well. 'I'll tell you what you did, Ciartan. You diverted the stream. You turned it away from where it was going, and you sent it down the other side of the mountain. Is that right? I mean, I don't want to make any false accusations. You do agree with what I've said?'

'Of course. That's what happened.'

'Good, at least we haven't got to argue over the truth. So; did it occur to you to wonder where you were sending all that burning stuff? Did you even look to see where it was going to go?'

Poldarn frowned. 'Yes,' he said, 'I did. But it was just an empty valley. There was a farm, but a long way away, and the lie of the ground meant the fire-stream wouldn't go anywhere near it. There was a small, deep combe; I figured it'd flow into that, and no harm done. It wasn't even grazing land, just a bit of scrubby old woodland.'

Eyvind's face grew very tight, as if something was hurting him. 'Right,' he said. 'Just a bit of scrubby old woodland, so you decided-like a god or something, only gods are supposed to know things-you decided that the little combe didn't matter, you could just take it out, blot it out and there'd be no harm done. Is that what you thought?'

'Yes,' Poldarn said.

Eyvind took a moment before he replied. 'Fine,' he said. 'Do you happen to know who that little combe belongs to?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'No idea,' he replied.

'You're sure about that?'

'I'm sure.'

'I believe you. Well, you may be interested to know, it belongs to me. Not the farm; that belongs to my uncle. Just the wood. It was my wood. Do you understand what that means?'

Poldarn lifted his head and said nothing.

'I think you do,' Eyvind went on. 'I think you must understand; because this house we're in now, which I helped you build, this is your wood. Your grandfather planted it the day you were born, it was always here for you, for when it was time for you to build your house. It was your future. And that other one, that scrubby little bit of woodland, that was my wood. My future. And you destroyed it. Burned, flattened, filled in with rock so you can only tell where it used to be by seeing where the grass ends and the rock starts. Do you understand me?'

Poldarn didn't say anything.

'You took my house,' Eyvind shouted, suddenly ablaze with anger. 'You pointed your bloody fire at it and let it roll down the mountain right onto it, like it couldn't possibly matter, like nobody else could possibly matter. Because of you, I won't have a house of my own when my uncle dies, I'll never get to live in my own house. Killing me would've been so much kinder. You should've done it, that day when I tried to ambush your cart; then I wouldn't have brought you back here, and this would never have happened-my house, the mountain, everything. You know what? If you hadn't come back, I don't think the mountain would've burst, it never did anything like that until you came here, not in hundreds of years. You come here, ordering people about, closing your mind so we can't see, beating me up at your own wedding, and you take away my future. It's my fault for bringing you here, but it's your fault too. I ought to kill you right now.'

Poldarn relaxed a little, because the way Eyvind had said it made it clear that he wasn't prepared to do it. 'I'm sorry,' Poldarn said, 'it wasn't done on purpose. I was saving my house, it didn't occur to me that something like that would happen. I don't understand all your ways here, or I'd have known better.'

The anger in Eyvind's face swelled and halted, as the fire-stream had done when Poldarn had tapped it. 'I realise that,' he said, 'otherwise I'd have killed you and your people too. Obviously you didn't know, or you couldn't have done it. At least,' he added, 'a normal person couldn't have done it, not one of us. You I don't know about, maybe you'd be capable of something like that even if you did know, but I suppose I've got to give you the benefit of the doubt. We don't do things like that here, you see, we don't kill each other or beat each other up or order each other about. We couldn't, even if we wanted to. Maybe an outsider, someone who doesn't belong anywhere and just wanders about, like your friend Boarci, but not a normal person. We simply couldn't-our minds wouldn't let us.'

It occurred to Poldarn, in the abstract, that that was curious but probably true. Maybe it explained why they were so ruthless and brutal when they went raiding across the sea, because there was no outlet at home for all the violence and evil inside them, inside everybody. He could see where that made sense, if it was true.

'All right,' he said. 'So what are you going to do?'

Eyvind straightened up and looked away. 'Quite simple,' he said. 'You took away my house, so I'm going to take yours. I'll have this house, my uncle will have Haldersness, and you can have our place. That's fair, isn't it? I'm not stealing anything, it's a straightforward exchange. The only thing is, you don't have a choice, because you didn't give me one.'

It seemed like a ridiculous anticlimax, after the fear and the shock; a simple property transaction, an exchange of freeholds, no big deal at all somewhere else, where people chose where they lived and didn't automatically know every morning what they were going to do that day. 'I agree,' Poldarn said. 'It seems entirely fair. If only you'd come to me and suggested it-'

He'd said the wrong thing, of course; he knew it wasn't a sensible thing to say before the words were out of his mouth. For a moment, he thought Eyvind might be angry enough to attack him, but apparently not.

'Sure,' Eyvind said. 'We could've sat outside on the porch and talked it over, maybe haggled a little bit until we were both of the same mind, and then we'd have shaken hands on the trade and it'd all have been very pleasant and satisfactory, and you wouldn't have been punished. You'd have stood up in the hall that evening and told everybody what you'd agreed, and they'd never have known that you'd done anything wrong, burnt down my house, ruined my life. Well, that won't do, because everybody's got to know what you did, they've got to understand that you don't have any say in the matter, just for once you're the one who's being told what to do. I mean, you're quick enough to give orders, which is a shameful and disgusting way to behave towards your own people, so it's only fair you should be made to take orders. So this is what I decided to do, it was this or kill all your people, the ones I've got penned up back in my uncle's barn-your wife, people like that. Or had you forgotten about them? You and your memory.'

Eyvind was right; Poldarn had forgotten, or it hadn't occurred to him to wonder how Eyvind knew what he'd done. For the first time, he was genuinely frightened.

'You wouldn't have done that,' Poldarn said.

Eyvind scowled angrily. 'No, of course not,' he said. 'Not unless you refused to obey me, and you slipped past me and tried to make a fight of it. I'm insulted that you should think I could. This is the right way to do it, because now all your people can see me humiliating you, they can see you having to do as you're told, and how many of them do you think will stay with you after that? Well,' he added, spinning round to face the Ciartanstead household, 'what do you say about that? It goes without saying, any of you who want to stay here with me or go back to Haldersness, you're more than welcome. I know what I'd do.'

Nobody said anything; but it was one of those times when words weren't needed. Poldarn could see there and then who was going to stay and who'd be going with him, and there'd be precious few of the latter. In a way it was reassuring; because up till then, it had all struck him as too lenient, nothing that'd constitute the punishment Eyvind seemed set on inflicting on him, and so he'd been wondering what else Eyvind might have in mind that he hadn't seen fit to mention. But taking his people from him, he could see how that would be a fitting punishment as far as these people (his people) were concerned. Of course, Eyvind couldn't possibly hope to understand how Poldarn felt about the people of his household: that they bewildered him, made him feel uncomfortable, helpless and alone in a crowd of unfathomable strangers. It was almost funny.

Poldarn wondered if there was anything he could say to expedite such a mutually agreeable settlement; but anything he did say would most likely prove to be counter-productive.

As for the house; well, it was a nice enough house, but it would never be home, he'd never think of it as his, and the people who lived there would only ever be strangers who stared at him when he asked them perfectly reasonable questions, and wouldn't let him do anything. What he wanted most of all, he realised, was to be on his own again-well, to be with Elja, because she was different, she was his, and maybe his friend Boarci, who everybody else seemed to dislike so much for no apparent reason. Curious, that his idea of a happy life should be everybody else's notion of extreme punishment. It didn't seem right, somehow.

'Anyway,' Eyvind said, with an effort, 'that's how it's going to be. You can take a change of clothes but that's all, and if you ever come anywhere on this farm again, I'll kill you on sight, without saying a word. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' Poldarn said. 'I understand.'

'Good.' Eyvind breathed out; his whole body seemed to relax, shrink a little. Clearly he felt let down, frustrated, presumably because Poldarn didn't seem to be suffering at all, in spite of the fact that Eyvind had done everything he could do against him. That must be terrible, Poldarn thought, to do your very best to hurt your worst enemy, and see no sign of pain. It just goes to show, he told himself, I've got nothing at all in common with these people, after all. They can't even understand me enough to hurt me. That was disturbing too, in a way.

The departure from Ciartanstead was a comedy from start to finish. The spare cart had, of course, gone east with Hart the provider of salt beef, and the best cart turned out to have a bent rear axle, the result of a hidden pothole in the cart track down to Haldersness. Asburn (who was going with Poldarn) resolutely declined to straighten it, on the grounds that he didn't work for people who broke into other people's houses and threatened them with violence.

That was all very well, but the alternative was a long and miserable walk, so Poldarn volunteered to do the job. But Eyvind wouldn't let him, since blacksmithing was an honourable trade reserved for heads of households, and Poldarn no longer qualified. Someone suggested that in that case Eyvind had better do the work himself, since he was now the lord of Haldersness and Ciartanstead. Eyvind pointed out that he, being a younger son of the brother of the head of his house, who only stood to inherit because his cousin and elder brother had been killed in the last raid, had never learned the craft, and didn't know spit about hot metal. That left the trap, which would carry two people in comfort, three in discomfort and four in acute pain. Eyvind, who was rapidly losing patience with the whole business, declared that Poldarn and his party could take the trap, or they could walk, it was up to them. Someone else proposed a compromise: since there'd be no luggage to speak of, two (or three) of Poldarn's group could go in the trap, and the rest could ride. Eyvind objected most strongly to that, since his ideas of abject humiliation didn't include the loan of valuable riding horses. Someone else put forward the proposal that Poldarn's party (excluding the two, or three, who could fit in the trap) should be loaned something to ride on, but only something humiliating, such as donkeys or mules. That would be difficult, someone else said, because there weren't any at Ciartanstead; on the other hand, there were three elderly ploughhorses. After a mild tantrum, Eyvind agreed to that, but insisted that the horses would have to be returned. Poldarn replied that that would be fine by him, since he knew the three animals in question, they were no good for work any more and he'd be only too pleased not to be lumbered with them. That sent Eyvind into another rage, at the end of which he withdrew the offer of the trap; Poldarn and anybody misguided enough to go with him would have to walk, and that was his last word on the subject. At this point, the men assigned to escort duty objected that they were damned if they were going to walk all the way round the mountain just to satisfy Eyvind's lust for vengeance; and even if Eyvind issued them with horses, it'd still be a waste of time and a pain in the backside, since they'd have to ride at foot-walking pace, and the trip would take twice as long. They had other work they ought to be getting on with, they said, work that was rather more important than Eyvind's grand revenge.

By this point, Eyvind was close to tears from sheer frustration. He calmed himself down with an obvious effort, and called on Asburn to be reasonable; if only he'd agree to fix the bent axle, he and Poldarn and the rest of them could ride in comfort and reach their new home in half the time. Asburn relented and said he'd straighten the axle (under protest) provided he could take the best of his tools-his favourite hammers, tongs, swages, hardies and setts, and the smaller of his two anvils-with him. Eyvind refused outright. In that case, Asburn said, Eyvind could fix the damned axle himself. Once again, Poldarn offered his services, and was promptly told to shut up.

Then someone said that he'd just nipped out and taken a look at the axle, and in his opinion it didn't actually need straightening, at that. Eyvind said that, in that case, it might be a good idea to get the cart out and loaded straight away, before he did anything he'd regret later. They got the cart out of the shed, yoked up a couple of horses and brought it up towards the house. It hadn't gone ten yards when the rear axle snapped in half, like a carrot.

Asburn said that he thought there might be a spare axle down at the Haldersness forge. Almost certainly it'd be too long, but it wouldn't be too much of a job to cut it down; if it was too thick, however, it'd have to be heated up and swaged to the right diameter, assuming he had a swage the right size. If he didn't he could make one, but that'd be half a day's work. Alternatively, he added as an afterthought, there was always the Haldersness wagon.

Eyvind asked, what Haldersness wagon? Asburn replied, the Haldersness wagon, the old one that'd been there since he was a kid, probably longer than that; a high-sided back-sprung four-in-hand with a busted front rail, otherwise perfectly serviceable. Eyvind, totally confused, said that he thought that was the Ciartanstead spare cart; Asburn said no, the Ciartanstead spare cart was the old Haldersness hay wagon. He was talking about the Haldersness carrier's cart-they called it a cart, but it was bigger than a cart, being a four-in-hand. Eyvind said that he couldn't give a damn what it was so long as it was big enough to take Ciartan and his people round the mountain, or at any rate out of his sight, before he had them all cut into bits and thrown down the well. Two of his men got up without a word and left the hall.

They came back some time later and announced that there was indeed a backsprung four-in-hand at Haldersness, but someone had stripped off the back wheels, which were nowhere to be found. There was, however, a perfectly sound trap that would take two people in comfort, three or maybe four at a pinch. When Eyvind asked if they'd brought this trap back with them they answered no, they hadn't, because the only suitable horses down there were out of action on account of thrown shoes, but if he wanted they could take a couple of the Ciartanstead horses down and use those. Eyvind told them to do what the hell they liked.

By the time the two traps were ready to go-there was some problem about not being able to find the right harness-it was beginning to get dark, and the escort party said they didn't fancy the mountain track at night because of all the loose shale and big lumps of black cinder; so Poldarn was marched off to the rat-house along with the loyal remnants of his household-Asburn, Raffen and two men whose faces he recognised but whose names escaped him for the moment. When the door had been shut and barred behind them they sat in the dark and didn't speak to each other. Fairly soon, one of them started to snore, but Poldarn couldn't figure out who it was.

Just before first light they were hauled out. The traps were ready and waiting, with fine fresh horses in the shafts; one of them, a skewbald with a cropped mane, Poldarn recognised as Eyvind's own riding horse. He and Asburn got into the Ciartanstead trap, which was smaller and more rickety after its service as a salt-beef transporter. Raffen and the two unknowns squeezed into the other one. Eyvind's escort, six men armed with spears and axes, bracketed them-two in front, two behind and one on either side, in case anybody tried jumping out of the trap and making a run for it. They seemed to be in a bad mood and didn't say a word for the rest of the day.

They camped out on the lower slopes of the mountain, at the point where the largest and most boisterous of the western mountain streams cut the road. There had been a ford there when they came up that way the previous day, the escort leader said, but it didn't seem to be there any more. By the looks of it, there'd been a landslip or something of the sort, and the ford bed was now full of large rocks. Poldarn said that that didn't sound so good. Acknowledging his existence for the first time, the escort leader said no, it wasn't good; the nearest ford was half a day to the west, on Sceldsbrook land, and he wasn't minded to go there since the Sceldsbrook people could be very funny about other people going on their land without getting permission first. Getting permission would involve following the steam down into the valley to the farm, which was a good two days away, more like three. Raffen said that if the farm was that far away, it'd be highly unlikely for any of Sceld's people to be out in that direction, so maybe they should chance it. But the escort leader wasn't keen on that idea, pointing out that if they were caught out and it led to trouble between Sceld and Eyvind, he'd be the one who got all the blame. They argued about that until well into the night, until the escorts (who'd been up well before dawn the previous day, in order to launch their attack at first light) couldn't keep their eyes open any longer and fell asleep.

'Well,' Raffen announced in a loud whisper, 'now's our chance. We could make a run for it, and it'd be dawn before they could get after us.'

'True,' Poldarn replied with a yawn, 'but where in hell do you suggest we go?'

Nobody had an answer to that, so they went to sleep.

They were up again early the next day, still debating what best to do about the lost ford. Clearing it was out of the question-the rocks were far too big. In the end it came down to two possible choices: to press on to the next ford, or to turn round and head back to Ciartanstead. Neither option was in the least bit attractive. Taking liberties with the Sceldsbrook people was far too dangerous, the escort argued. True; but traipsing back to Ciartanstead and getting shouted at wasn't likely to solve anything. The ford would still be blocked when Eyvind sent them out again, and they'd have had a long and dreary ride for nothing.

'There's another way,' Poldarn said quietly. 'We could go up the mountain.'

The escort weren't at all keen about that. By now, however, they'd more or less forgotten that they were guards in charge of dangerous criminals, and when nobody else could come up with a better suggestion, they politely asked Poldarn what would be involved. He told them: they'd have to send back the cart and the horses and walk, but of course it would be a far shorter distance, as the crow flew, and there shouldn't be any danger from the volcano. They'd follow his original trail up the mountain, and when they reached the place where he'd diverted the fire-stream, all they'd have to do would be to follow it down into the valley, take a detour round the remains of Eyvind's wood and get to the farm that way. True, he admitted, if they were prepared to ditch the horses and the wagon they could probably get across the ford, using the fallen boulders as stepping stones, but then they'd have a very long walk round the edge of the mountain instead of a short one up and down it. It was up to them, Poldarn said; whereupon the escort said that they'd prefer to leave it up to him, since he seemed to be the man with the ideas.

So up the mountain they went. Poldarn set them a crisp pace, and they were able to reach the point where the fire-stream had been breached just before nightfall. The stream itself was grey now instead of cherry red, but it was still viciously hot, and the only water they had with them was in a couple of two-gallon leather bottles, carried by Asburn and Raffen. Only three of the escort were with them by this stage, the others having left to take back the horses and the wagon.

'And you actually smashed a hole in that?' one of the three asked in amazement, as the heat forced him to step back rapidly. 'Bloody hell.'

Poldarn grinned. 'It was a damn sight worse when we were working up here,' he said. 'Wasn't it, Asburn?'

'Much worse,' the blacksmith agreed. 'If we'd been standing as close as this, we'd be dead by now.'

The guard shook his head. 'Rather you than me, then,' he said. 'Even thinking about it gives me the horrors. Mind you, I've always been scared stiff of fire and stuff like that.'

'Oh, it's not so bad once you're used to it,' Poldarn said blandly. 'You've just got to treat it with a bit of respect, that's all. I learned that in the smithy.'

'Yes, well,' the guard mumbled. 'You wouldn't catch me doing that job, either.'

They were tired enough to be able to fall asleep immediately, in spite of their acutely uncomfortable surroundings, and they slept through till shortly after dawn, at which point they were woken up by a brisk shower of rain. At first, they couldn't figure out what was going on; it seemed as if they were being wrapped up in a small, predatory cloud that hissed at them like a small but fierce animal.

'It's the rain,' Poldarn realised. 'The rocks are so hot, it's turning to steam before it lands.'

As soon as they started walking through it, they discovered that the cloud was rather wetter than the rain would have been. They were soaked to the skin by the time they began the rather nerve-racking scramble down the steep incline that led straight towards Eyvind's ill-fated wood. The further down they went, the thicker the cloud became-presumably, Poldarn decided, because the surface of the fire-stream was hotter down below than up here, where its skin had thickened into a stout insulating wall-and finding their way without sliding or falling became a difficult and challenging pastime. Fortunately, the three escorts knew their own side of the mountain as well or better than the Haldersness people knew theirs; they were practically capable of navigating with their eyes shut. As was the way with terrifying experiences, the climb down to the relatively level plain seemed to take for ever, and then was suddenly over. Just when the ground started to level out under his feet, however, and the cloud seemed to be dispersing, Poldarn found that he was on his own. He couldn't see the rest of the party, not even as dim grey shapes at the edges of clarity, and he couldn't hear their footsteps or the sound of their voices. Also, he was looking at a very fine house, newly built and extremely smart, its pale yellow thatch not yet weathered to grey. That was very strange, since by his calculations he should be standing on the lip of the wooded combe, or the place where it used to be. He went a few yards further and realised that he could see the ground behind the house falling sharply away; that was the combe all right, no doubt about it, though there weren't any trees any more. He was wondering where he'd wandered off to when a cheerful shout made him jump.

He turned his head in the direction the voice had come from, and saw a shape taking form through the curtain of mist. He recognised it at once.

'Eyvind,' he said.

'There you are!' He sounded much happier than he had the last time they'd spoken to each other. 'I was starting to wonder where in hell you'd got to.'

'We got held up,' Poldarn said. 'The ford was blocked.'

'What, again?' Eyvind clicked his tongue and shook his head. 'I'm going to have to talk to Sceld about that. If he can't keep his damned cows from treading in the cutting, he'll have to find some other grazing for them. It's getting beyond a joke.'

For some reason, Poldarn felt prompted to look round at the mountain behind him. Its profile was entirely different, back the way it used to be before the volcano tore it apart, and it was capped with an elegant crown of pure white snow.

'Anyway,' Eyvind said, clapping an arm round his shoulders, 'you're here now, that's the main thing. Bersa'll be pleased. She's been hovering round the porch all day, looking to see if you were coming. She won't admit that, of course.'

Eyvind was frogmarching Poldarn along, giving him no choice but to walk with him towards the house. He had an idea that it wouldn't be advisable to go in there, but he didn't see how he could break away without giving offence. Then a crow lifted off the ground in front of them. Eyvind let him go and stooped to pick up a stone; he threw, and missed, and suddenly the cloud came down again. It lifted almost immediately, and Poldarn found he was looking at a very different landscape. There was no house, and no combe. Instead, the fire-stream marched straight as an army road towards a glowing red circle on the ground. On the edges, Poldarn could see the blackened stumps of trees. On either side, for about a hundred yards, the turf was burned down to ash and bare black soil. Boulders, dragged along by the stream and discarded at random, stuck out like a flock of feeding birds. The rain had stopped.

He looked round for the others and saw them, seven little dots in the distance, on the far edge of the red circle. The crow Eyvind had walked up swung in a wide circle overhead, screamed something offensive, and waddled across the sky towards the horizon.

The others were waiting for him.

'Where the hell did you get to?' demanded one of the escorts.

'I'm sorry,' he replied. 'I think I must've lost my way in the fog.'

They seemed to accept that, though they weren't happy. 'We thought you'd run out on us,' one of them said. 'We weren't looking forward to telling Eyvind when we got back home.'

'Sorry,' Poldarn repeated. 'Still, I'm here now. We might as well press on to the farm.'

Eyvind's uncle's house-Bollesknap, another member of the escort told him-was smaller than Haldersness or Ciartanstead, with fewer outbuildings. Its grey thatch was green with moss, and a broad, slow stream ran through the yard. 'That's new,' the man said. 'It must've changed course when you diverted the fire-stream. You'll want to watch that come the autumn, or you'll get flooded out.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'So long as it's only water, I'm not worried,' he replied.

The home fields were a reassuring sight: a promising crop of winter wheat just starting to stand up, a good show of cabbages and peas, some rather battered-looking leeks in a flat strip beside the house. Once that lot came in, there'd be plenty to eat, as well as seed for next year. No sign of any livestock, but he hadn't expected to see any; presumably they were on their way to Ciartanstead or Haldersness. He didn't imagine they'd like it there; the grazing wasn't nearly as good.

Waiting for them on the porch was a small group of people. Poldarn saw Elja there, and a great weight fell away from him; also Boarci, sitting in a chair with two men he didn't know standing over him, looking nervous, and four of the Haldersness hands, including Rook. The others were all strangers; Eyvind's people, presumably.

One of them stood up and came out to meet them. He ignored Poldarn and spoke to one of the escorts.

'So you got here at last, Tren,' he said sourly. 'What did you do, stop off to go fishing?'

The man he'd called Tren shook his head. 'Long story,' he said. 'Sceld's ford was blocked, so we had to go up the mountain and round; had to send the horses back, of course. Still, we're here now. Anything to eat inside?'

The stranger laughed. 'You'll be lucky,' he said, 'all the food's gone off in the carts to the new place, apart from a scrap or two for us for the journey. What do you mean, the ford's blocked? How are we supposed to get to the new place if we can't get across?'

Tren shrugged. 'Have to go back the way we've just come, I guess. Bloody hard slog it is, too, so you'd better have got your walking boots with you.'

The stranger frowned. 'What about the horses?' he said. 'We can't leave 'em here-Eyvind said we can't leave anything.'

'Well, you won't get 'em over the mountain, that's for sure. We'll just have to come back for them later, when the ford's clear.'

'Are you crazy?' The stranger jerked his head in the direction of the people on the porch. 'What the hell makes you think this lot'll give 'em back?'

Tren didn't seem to understand that at first; then he remembered that Poldarn and his people were their prisoners and enemies. The thought couldn't have bothered him much, because he said, 'I don't think you need worry too much on that score. Anyway, unless you've got another route I don't know about, it's not like we've got much choice.'

'Damn.' The stranger didn't know what to do. 'Oh well,' he said eventually, 'if we do have to come back for them, I don't see this lot giving us much trouble. As you can see, most of 'em decided to go to the new place.'

'So it would seem,' Tren said, and his tone of voice implied that he didn't think much of them for that. 'Well, that's their decision, none of our business.' The other man frowned, and Poldarn guessed there was more in Tren's mind than showed in what he'd said out loud. 'We'd better be on our way,' Tren continued. 'It's going to be a long walk, and the sooner we start the sooner we get there.' He turned to Poldarn. 'If we leave our horses here, you won't make trouble, will you?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I don't pick fights,' he said. 'Particularly when I don't stand a chance. Besides, we aren't going anywhere, so we won't be needing horses. If Eyvind's taken all the feed we'll have to graze them outside, that's all.'

'I don't suppose they'll come to any harm like that,' Tren said, and his conciliatory tone suggested more than a touch of guilt. 'Soon as the ford's clear we'll take them off your hands, and then we'll leave you alone.'

'That'd be best,' Poldarn said.

He and his people watched them in silence till they were out of sight. Only when they'd vanished into a dip of dead ground did anybody speak.

'Father and Egil are going to move out west,' Elja said quietly. 'They said they'd feel uncomfortable at Ciartanstead, and they didn't want to stay here if the rest of the household went. I think that's probably the most sensible thing all round.'

Poldarn looked at her. 'You aren't going with them,' he said.

'No.' She looked away. 'I thought I'd stay here.'

'Good,' Poldarn said. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold on to her as hard as he could, but he felt she wouldn't like that. 'What about the rest of you?' he said. 'You don't have to stay if you don't want to. It's not going to be easy, just the twelve of us on a place this size.'

Nobody said anything for a while; then Rook said; 'It's not so bad. I had a look round; they've taken most of their stuff but they've left more than they meant to. The standing crops, for one thing.'

'They took all the tools,' said one of the men whose names Poldarn couldn't remember. 'I watched them loading up the carts.'

'The furniture, too,' Elja said sadly. 'No benches, no tables, no blankets even. We've got four walls and a roof, and that's it.'

Boarci laughed. 'No big deal,' he said. 'You've got a few trees still, and I think I saw what looked like a nice seam of potters' clay in the yard, where the stream's washed off the topsoil. We can make stuff; it's not exactly difficult.'

'Make stuff with what?' Raffen objected. 'They took all the tools.'

But Boarci shook his head. 'They think they took all the tools,' he replied. 'But in a place like this, you never take everything, there's always something left-a broken knife or a rusty old axe head in the corner of the barn.'

Asburn stood up and walked away; only Poldarn noticed him leave. 'That's all very well,' Raffen went on, 'but even if we can make a few things, that's not the most important thing. What really matters is, there isn't anything to eat.'

Boarci shook his head. 'Don't you believe it,' he said. 'It all depends on what you mean by food. When you've had to live rough as long as I have, you learn to get by on what you can find. There's five apple trees out back, for a start, just coming up nicely.'

One of the nameless men coughed. 'Actually,' he said, 'they're cider apples, not eaters.'

'Big deal.' Boarci grinned. 'They may taste like shit, but so what? And if it's meat you're after, they've left us half a dozen big, tall horses. After all those dinners of porridge and leeks, a nice red steak'll go down pretty sweet.'

But Poldarn shook his head. 'We won't do that,' he said. 'The last thing we need to do is give Eyvind a pretext. They're to be left alone till Eyvind's people come for them, understood?'

Boarci shrugged. 'Up to you,' he said. 'It's all right, though, we can do without. The mountain blowing its top means that all the deer and bears and wild goats and stuff have been pushed down into the valley, without even a wood to hide in. They'll tide us over for a month or so, easy, even if we don't find anything else. And there's plenty of other things you can eat, if you know what to look for. Anyone here ever tried earwigs? I have. They're not bad, if you just swallow and don't think about it.'

'It's not like we've got much choice,' Elja put in abruptly. 'At least, some of you can go to Ciartanstead, but I can't, I've got to stay here whether I like it or not. So yes, I'll eat anything that's edible, and be grateful. Anybody who doesn't think that way had better push off now, before Eyvind decides to shut the door on you.'

That killed the debate stone dead. Raffen sat down on the stoop, took off his left boot and examined the sole. Boarci got up and went into the house. The two unidentified men who'd come with Poldarn started talking to each other very quietly, apparently about a completely unrelated subject. For his part, Poldarn stared out in the direction of the fire-stream, thinking about what he'd seen when he came down off the mountain. They stayed like that until Asburn came bounding back, in apparently high spirits.

'I've just been to look at the smithy,' he said. 'They've taken all the tools but they've left a good anvil-it's bolted down to a big stump set in the floor, and I guess they couldn't get it out in time to take it on. And there's a decent enough vice mounted on the wall, and the forge and the bellows are all still there. And they've left most of the scrap, and,' he added with a big smile, 'I found this under the bench.' He held out a rusty lump of metal for them to see; it turned out to be a hammer head, a four-pound straight-peen with a nicely crowned face and the handle broken off flush in the eye. 'There's even coal in the bunker,' he went on. 'All I've got to do is put a new stem on this and we're in business. We can make all the tools we need.'

Everybody looked at him, as though he'd started telling jokes at a funeral. But Poldarn turned his back on the view and said, 'He's right. With a hammer and an anvil and a fire and some material, we can make any bloody thing we like. We can make axes and saws and chisels, we can make hoes and scythes and rakes and a plough.' He laughed suddenly. 'At least it'll be something to do,' he said. It looked like nobody else understood what he meant by that, but he didn't care. 'It won't be all that different from moving out to Ciartanstead; we'll have to make all the little things, but the house is here already, we don't have to build that. Oh, cheer up, for God's sake. At least we're still alive, not like Barn and those other poor bastards. I got up out of that river bed with nothing, not even any memories, and I've come this far. And just for once, I'll know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing.'

Asburn found a smashed-up wagon wheel in a ditch; he and Poldarn wrenched out one of the spokes, and Poldarn cracked a flint with the hammer head to make a sharp edge. While Asburn was fussing round his new forge, checking the bellows-leather for tears and sorting through the scrap pile, Poldarn patiently whittled down the spoke until it fitted into the eye of the hammer head; then he made a wedge out of a scrap of oak he found on the woodshed floor, split the top of the handle, slid in the wedge and slammed it down on the anvil a few times to drive it home. The weight and balance of his new hammer felt just about right, unlike the hammers he'd used back at the old place, which had never sat comfortably in his hand. By the time Poldarn had got that far, Asburn had lit the fire and found a couple of thick stakes that'd do for the makings of a pair of tongs. With tongs they could hold their work; they could make another hammer, another set of tongs, a set and a hardie and a punch, and with those they could make anything they chose, from an earring to a warship. Suddenly, there was nothing in the world they couldn't make or do.

'What do you think of the name?' Asburn asked, as they waited for the metal to get hot.

'What name?'

'Bollesknap,' Asburn replied. 'That's what they said this place is called.'

'I think it sucks,' Poldarn replied. 'I think we need a new name, don't you?'

Asburn nodded. 'How about Ciartansdale?' he suggested.

But Poldarn shook his head. 'Too confusing,' he said. 'Ciartanstead and Ciartansdale. Besides, I never liked that name much.'

'Fair enough.' Asburn drew the bar out of the nest of red coals; it was orange going on yellow, almost hot enough but not quite. He reached up for the bellows handle. 'You got anything in mind?'

'I have, as a matter of fact,' Poldarn said, lifting the hammer. 'I was thinking of Poldarn's Forge.'

Asburn looked at him. 'Funny choice,' he said. 'That's the old name for the mountain.' He drew the bar away from the fire, tapped it on the horn to shake off the scale, and laid it on the anvil. Poldarn fixed his gaze on the place where he wanted to strike.

'I know,' he said.