Pattern

Chapter Eight

'We can probably get along without you for a day or so,' Halder said suddenly. 'Why don't you go over to Colscegsford? You should go and see how they're getting on.'

Poldarn was so taken aback by this unexpected reprieve that he almost forgot to take the hot iron out of the fire. 'All right,' he said.

'Splendid. You might like to take the dun gelding, it could do with the exercise.'

Disconcerting; but so was everything at Haldersness, and the thought of getting out of the forge and not having to bash steel bars into ash rakes for a couple of days was almost intoxicating. 'I'll go first thing in the morning, then,' he said.

Halder shrugged. 'You could go now if you like. I'm sure Asburn can cope.'

'Sure,' Asburn confirmed, and there was just a faint hint of relief in his voice. That wasn't very flattering, but Poldarn could sympathise. They'd been cooped up together in the dark heat of the forge for five days while the rest of the household had been out in the fresh air raking ash, and what little they'd had to say to each other had been said a long time ago. He liked Asburn, of course-what was there not to like? Nevertheless.

He found the horse saddled, groomed and ready at the mounting block, with saddlebags packed with bread and cheese, a heavy riding coat rolled up and strapped to the back of the saddle, and a light hand-axe with a long, slender handle hanging from the pommel by its wrist-loop. Nobody offered to tell him what the axe was supposed to be for, and he didn't feel up to asking.

Another thing nobody told him was how to get to Colscegsford but that was all right, since Eyvind had pointed out the head of Colsceg's combe-you could just about see it from the Haldersness porch, on a clear day-and once he'd found that it'd be easy enough to find the house. 'I'm not sure when I'll be back,' he told Halder as he shortened his reins and crammed his broad-brimmed felt riding hat onto his head. 'Figure on a couple of days, at least.'

'You take your time and don't rush,' Halder replied with ambiguous enthusiasm. 'If they need you for anything over there, you stay as long as you like.'

Poldarn decided to assume that that was well meant and ineptly phrased. 'Thanks,' he said. Any message?'

Halder shook his head. 'Can't think of anything,' he replied. 'Well, you could mention to Colsceg that we could use another half-dozen cartloads of hazel loppings, but there's no rush for them, we've got enough to be going on with. And I expect he'll have more pressing things to do than go out cutting twigs for us right now.'

It was undeniably pleasant to go for a ride in the weak sunshine, even though the crunch of ash under the horse's hooves grated on Poldarn's nerves every step of the way; undeniably pleasant to be out in the fresh air, each moment taking him further away from Haldersness; undeniably, supremely pleasant to be alone. He had no great opinion of his own company, having had a great deal of it during his time in the Bohec valley, but he'd been working and eating and sleeping surrounded by other people ever since he'd arrived at Haldersness, and he had the feeling that he wasn't as naturally gregarious as all that. There were times when he felt as if he was getting swallowed up in the household, almost as if he was being diluted, to the point where he no longer existed as an individual; and yet not a single day passed when he didn't feel the enormous gulf separating him from the others. Probably it'd be no bad thing if he could lose himself in the common mind of the farm. In a way, it was the best thing that could happen to him-since he had so very little of himself-to fill up the empty spaces in his mind with other people's lives and thoughts and memories. Unfortunately, for all the others' assurances that it'd all come flooding back any day now, there didn't seem to be any reason to believe that it really would. In consequence, he was stuck halfway, a perpetual guest in his own house, never quite certain what he should be saying or doing, or where he was meant to be, or where anything was.

From the top of the valley Poldarn had a fine, clear view of the farm. There was the main house, with the red and white sail incongruously draping the roof; beside it, the barns and sheds and stores, a grouping as large as a small village; behind them the animal pens and the kitchen garden, a splash of browns and greens in the ocean of black ash. Beyond that, flashes of green testified to the tireless efforts of the household and the efficacy of Asburn's excellent cinder-rakes, while the river sparkled cheerfully in the sunlight, long and silvery as a childhood scar. Under other circumstances, he thought, you'd be hard put to it to find a better spot, and you'd have to be a prince or an earl or a wealthy man to have such a fine spread back in the Empire (-And it's all mine, or it will be some day, but it doesn't feel like it's mine. More the other way around, like it owns me.)

Half an hour further on down the other side of the slope, the Haldersness valley was invisible-you'd never even know it was there unless you happened to know the country. That was a strange thought, that the whole of his new life could be so easily overlooked, when the farm and its people had become his whole, all-enveloping world. Remarkable; a stranger could ride on by, and never know any of it was there (except that there weren't any strangers in this country, of course, apart from himself).

The further he went, the less Poldarn enjoyed his day off. On every side there was nothing to be seen but black ash, masking the features of the landscape so that he found it hard to keep his bearings. It was as if someone had covered up the whole island with a dust sheet, like servants in a house to which the master isn't expected to return for a long time. True, he was heading towards the mountain rather than away from it, but seeing it like this brought home to him the full scope of the disaster. If the stuff dissolved in rain, the mudslides were likely to be terrifyingly destructive; and if it didn't, there'd be nothing for it but to pack up and go somewhere else, because it'd take a hundred years just to clean up the Haldersness grazing, assuming there wasn't more where that had come from. The sight of it made him feel uncomfortable. A fine inheritance this was turning out to be.

Three hours on, as Poldarn passed the hog's-back ridge that he'd been told to look out for-it marked the nominal boundary of the Haldersness pastures and the start of Colscegsford land, though from what he'd gathered, nobody really gave a damn-he decided he'd had enough. He dismounted, found the stone jug of strong beer he'd noticed in the saddlebag, and sat down under a scorched-looking thorn tree with the aim of drinking enough beer to restore his sense of perspective. That turned out to be harder to accomplish than he'd hoped; the beer was strong, but not that strong, and as soon as he sat down, a mob of crows formed in the air and circled over him, passing remarks he was delighted not to be able to understand.

It was undoubtedly the beer that put him to sleep. He was dreaming about something (but, as always, the dream left him, like someone else's wife at sunrise, before he was fully awake), and then he opened his eyes and realised he was looking straight at a large, unfriendly-looking black bear.

Not so good, Poldarn thought, though it did explain what the hand-axe was for. But the axe was hanging off the saddle of his horse, which was tugging on its reins hard enough to uproot the tree he was leaning against. Whether it was his horse or himself that the bear was taking such an unhealthy interest in he didn't know, but he guessed that this wasn't a guessing game in which it would do to win second prize.

Bears, he thought; according to Eyvind, they were so rare as not to pose a threat worth worrying about; they only came down out of the mountainside forests in atrociously bad winters, when there was nothing left for them to eat, and even then they confined their attention to sick sheep and elderly cows, being too cautious and timid to attack a man unless starvation had made them truly reckless. Of course, if you did happen to run into one in that condition, Polden help you; because when they were that desperate, you could rip their guts open and they'd still keep coming.

Indeed, Poldarn thought; I don't suppose there's much to eat in the forests right now, assuming the forests are still there. He watched the bear coming slowly towards him, weighing up the risks with each cautious stride, assessing the situation with all the scientific wisdom of a prosperous merchant figuring out the trends in malt futures. A dozen paces in, the bear must have reached the conclusion that it was on to a viable commercial proposition, because it started to run at him, unexpectedly fast, bounding in like a big friendly dog. When it was half a dozen paces away, it reared up onto its hind legs and roared, with an expression on its face so furious as to be almost comic.

Damn, Poldarn thought, and jumped to his feet. To his dismay, he realised that he had cramp in his left leg, from sleeping at a clumsy angle; even if a man is capable of outrunning a hungry bear-if Eyvind had briefed him on this aspect of the matter, he couldn't remember the important part-he can't do it with pins and needles in his left foot. That really only left the axe, and he'd left it rather late to go with that option. Getting the axe would mean turning his back on the bear for the best part of a second. He simply didn't have that long. Oh well, he thought; it's probably better to die trying, though by what criteria these matters are judged, he couldn't remember offhand.

He knew he'd made the wrong decision as soon as he tried to move, and felt his left leg buckle under him. That left him kneeling on the ground, the bear out of sight over his shoulder, and he couldn't be bothered to exert himself any further. The bloody thing'll just have to eat me, then, he thought, as his eyes closed instinctively.

Nothing happened, for a whole heartbeat. That was a long time, in this context; long enough to live a whole life in and get to be old enough to grow doddery and forgetful. Then Poldarn heard a sound he couldn't identify: a thick, solid, wet, chunky noise, like the sound of moist dough being slammed on the kneading block. It was followed by a roar from the bear, but with a completely different intonation-anger, mostly, a protest to the heavens that this wasn't fair, that someone was cheating. Then the wet-dough sound again, but culminating in a dull, reverberating thump that Poldarn recognised as an axe driven into cross-grained wood (and instead of splitting the log neatly down the flaw-line, you shudder as the shock reverberates back up your arms and straight into your temples). Then a bewildering silence, for nearly a full half-heartbeat; and finally a dead-weight flump, like a bale of straw tossed down from the hayloft.

He opened his eyes. No bear.

Instead of the bear, he saw a man, standing with his legs apart, knees slightly bent. The man was catching his breath and grinning at Poldarn, as what had clearly been an extreme case of terror gradually thawed. If Poldarn hadn't heard the sounds and known better, he could easily have believed that the bear had changed its shape and turned into this man, because the fellow was unnaturally tall and broad, and his face was completely swamped in a curly black beard.

'Talk about fucking close,' the man said.

Poldarn found the bear; it was lying on its side, its neck outstretched and its head right back, like a dog asleep in front of the fire. There was a sticky red mess on its right shoulder, extending diagonally downwards about a hand's span. Poldarn looked up at the man, and saw an axe, very like the one whose lack had nearly cost Poldarn his life, lying on the ground at the big fellow's feet.

'Would've served me right,' the man went on; his voice was unexpectedly high and thin. 'Missed, didn't I? Aimed for the bugger's head, bounced off the side and nipped him in the shoulder. Lucky the axe didn't stick, or I'd be dead.'

'You got him, though,' Poldarn whispered.

'Oh, I got him,' the man replied. 'He'll keep. But I'm getting too old for this caper, I'm telling you.'

Poldarn frowned. 'You were hunting it?'

The man nodded. 'It's my living,' he said. 'And a bloody stupid way of making one it is, too. Lucky for you, though. Well, for both of us. You kept him occupied, it's half the battle. I don't know you, do I?'

'I wouldn't have thought so,' Poldarn replied. 'I haven't been here long.'

The man scowled. 'Where'd you come from, then?'

'It's a long story. I was born here but I went away for twenty years. My name's-' He had to think. 'Ciartan.'

The man shook his head. 'Doesn't ring any bells. But that doesn't mean anything, I'm not from these parts myself. I'm Boarci, by the way. You won't have heard of me.'

Poldarn laughed. 'That's true,' he said. 'But it doesn't mean much. While I was away I lost my memory, all of it, and it hasn't really come back yet.'

'You don't say' Boarci shrugged. 'Heard of cases like that, never really believed them. Course, I don't believe in the marsh pixies either, and it's never seemed to bother them any.' He knelt down and wrestled the bear over onto its back; it took all his strength to do that. 'Fair-sized animal,' he said, 'now all I've got to do is dress the bugger out. I hate this job.' He paused, and then looked pointedly at Poldarn's horse. 'Mind you,' he added, 'dressing out's a piece of cake compared with lugging the meat to the nearest farm-a man can do himself a serious injury that way. Times like this, I really wish I had a horse.'

The hint was heavier than any bear that ever trod grass. 'Well,' Poldarn said, 'since you were kind enough to save my life, the least I can do is give you mine.'

'Oh.' Boarci looked slightly stunned. 'Actually, I wasn't meaning that. All I meant was, it'd be real handy if wherever you're going, you wouldn't mind walking and letting my bear ride.'

Poldarn smiled. 'I know that's what you meant,' he replied, 'but I think you've earned the horse. Besides,' he added, 'it isn't mine. Well, not really, it belongs to Haldersness, but everybody keeps telling me it amounts to the same thing, so you're welcome to it.'

'Haldersness,' Boarci repeated. 'Can't say as I know it. Close?'

Poldarn jerked his head back. 'Not far that way. But I was planning on going that way, to Colscegsford.'

Boarci shrugged. 'Broad as it's long to me, provided they can use some fresh meat at where you said. Doesn't bother me where I go.'

Poldarn nodded. 'Fine,' he said. 'Look, excuse me if this sounds ignorant, but am I right in thinking you're a professional hunter?'

'Yeah.' Boarci laughed; a deep, grumbling noise that seemed to happen somewhere around his navel. 'That's what I am, a professional hunter. More like, when I can find a bear or a wild ox or something worth eating that's dumb enough to hold still, I bang it on the head and take it on. Folks aren't quite so quick to show you the door if you bring dinner.'

'I see,' Poldarn exaggerated. 'So what else do you do apart from hunting, if you don't mind me asking?'

'I move around a lot,' Boarci replied, pulling a big knife out of the top of his boot and prodding the bear's stomach with a carrot-thick forefinger. 'If there's any work needs doing, I do it, until my face stops fitting and it's time to move on. I'll be straight with you, most folks don't seem to take to me, they worry when I'm around. Because I'm not settled, see, I don't belong anywhere. This thing with the mountain catching fire's been a godsend, actually; I got a week's work at some farm down the valley digging ditches to carry off flood water, and two days at another place shovelling this black shit out of their yard, and now a bear. I reckon it got pushed out of the forest, they don't hardly ever come up so far as this.'

Poldarn frowned. 'And when you get to the next farm, you sell the meat, right? Do people actually eat the stuff?'

Another laugh. 'Now I believe you about the memory thing,' Boarci said. 'Because if you'd ever had roast bear steaks, you wouldn't have forgotten it in a hurry. Best eating there is, barring spring beef and maybe wine-cooked venison.'

'Really' Poldarn shrugged. 'Well, there's certainly plenty of it there.'

'You bet. And no, I don't sell it, that's not how it's done. I give the farmer the bear, he's more likely to let me stick around a while, find me some work to do. Not always, though. I've had 'em take a bear or a deer, thank you very much, and please close the door on the way out. Bastards,' he added dolefully.

'It does seem a bit ungrateful,' Poldarn said.

Apparently Boarci had found what he'd been looking for, because he slid the knife in and started sawing. 'Can't blame 'em, actually. Hell, if I was them, I'd probably set the dogs on me. How're they supposed to know I'm not a whole load of trouble-like, if I'm all right, what'm I doing straggling round all over instead of having a good place on a farm somewhere, like regular people?' He suddenly jerked the knife sideways, putting all his weight behind it. There was a terrific crack, like a branch snapping. 'Truth is, most of us you come across wandering around, it's because we did something bad or we can't get along with folks, so what do you expect? Course,' he added, wiping blood out of his eyes, 'I'm not like that. I'm out here on my own because of an unfortunate run of bad luck.'

'That's what I'd assumed,' said Poldarn mildly.

Boarci rolled up his sleeves and plunged his arms inside the bear's ribcage, right up to the elbows. 'It was all circumstances beyond my control,' he said sadly. 'That and a parcel of miserable neighbours who took against me for no reason, and saw fit to believe the worst of me on the strength of hardly any evidence at all. If it hadn't been for that, I'd be back in Ayrichsstead right now, with a nice house of my own and a herd of fat cows. Instead of which,' he added, hauling out a nauseating-smelling armful of bear guts, 'here I am, crawling up dead animals for a living and sleeping in shepherds' huts. Life can be a real arsehole sometimes.'

'So I believe,' Poldarn agreed. 'Well, if you want, you can come and stay with us at Haldersness for as long as you like. If you don't mind working, that is.'

Boarci looked at him over the mound of steaming guts. 'That's mighty generous of you,' he said, 'but I won't hold you to it, you not being used to people's ways and all. Thing is, farmers don't take kindly to the hands fetching in strangers off the hill. No offence, but I figure it wouldn't take long for this Halder to pitch me out in the straw, and then I'm back where I started. Thanks all the same,' he added, lifting his horrible burden and staggering a few yards with it before dumping it on the ash.

'I don't think that'll be a problem,' Poldarn said. 'You see, Halder's my grandfather, and my father's dead, so I'm sort of next in line. And when I tell him you saved me from a hungry bear, I don't think he'll be in any hurry to turn you away.'

'Well.' Boarci frowned. 'If you reckon there might be work going over your place-'

'Positive,' Poldarn interrupted. 'If you don't mind raking ash all day long. I think they'd be glad of the help.'

'You don't say,' Boarci muttered pensively. 'So, if there's all this needing doing at your place, can I ask what you think you're doing out here?'

'Visiting my future in-laws,' Poldarn answered. 'Which is just a polite way of saying they're so sick to the teeth of me having to have everything explained a dozen times, and getting under their feet when they're working, they bundled me off to be in the way somewhere else. Besides,' he added, 'they're much closer to the mountain, so I expect Grandfather was worried about how they're coping.'

'Right,' Boarci said, as he teased a bloody pink leg out of its skin. 'You're basically no bloody good round the farm, so when their best neighbour's in trouble, they send you. Guess I must've missed something basic along the way.'

Poldarn hadn't thought of it in those terms. 'I don't know,' he said. 'You'll just have to figure it out for yourself,' he went on. 'And besides, it doesn't matter what prompted them to send me. All that matters in the long run is what I actually do while I'm there.'

Boarci nodded. 'Can't argue with that,' he said. A moment later he stood up, bending his back and drawing away as he did so. The bear's pelt came off like a tight wet shirt. 'Not so bad,' he gasped, as he paused to let his lungs catch up with the rest of him. 'Look, about the horse.'

'Yours,' Poldarn said firmly. 'I said that and I meant it. There's plenty more where that came from. If you do come and stay with us, mind you, I can promise you you'll earn it twice over. Raking ash is a back-breaking job, so they tell me.'

Boarci was spreading out the bearskin. 'You don't know from first hand, then.'

'They wouldn't have me,' Poldarn told him. 'I'd just be in the way, slow everyone up. It's because-well, you don't need me to tell you.'

'Don't I?'

'Apparently you do. It's because they can't read my mind. Goes the other way about, too. But surely you can see this for yourself, can't you?'

Boarci shook his head slowly. 'Can't do that so well myself,' he said. 'Leastways, not with folks from these parts. Back where I came from, of course; but that's a long way from here, and also, most of 'em are dead now. Look,' he said, manhandling rather than changing the subject, 'I don't want to hurry you but it's not smart to hang around in bear country when you've just dressed out, the smell of blood and guts draws 'em in like crazy. If you could see your way to giving me a hand with this lot, we can get out of here. Where was it you said you were making for?'

Poldarn got up. His legs felt weak, but that was just the aftermath of fear. 'Colscegsford,' he said. 'I'm engaged to Colsceg's daughter. Apparently,' he added.

'Fine.' Boarci had folded the bearskin, neat as a rug except that it had a bear's head and paws dangling off it, and laid it carefully over the saddle. 'You grab the front quarters, I'll get his arse. Now, on three-'

Even severely edited, it was a very heavy bear. 'You know,' Boarci said, while Poldarn was catching his breath, 'I'd have thought that just now, when you woke up and saw this old bear coming at you-Well, it should've solved this memory thing, right?'

Poldarn frowned. 'What, you mean I'd have been dead and it wouldn't have mattered any more?'

Boarci shook his head. 'No, you're missing the point. What I meant was, folks do say that when you're just about to die, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes. So, didn't it?'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'No,' he said.

'Shit,' Boarci commiserated. 'And I always reckoned that old story. Still,' he went on, brightening up, 'maybe it only works when you're really about to die, not just when you think that's what's going to happen. And you're still alive, see.'

'Possibly.' Instinctively, Poldarn went to wipe his bloody hands on the grass, but there wasn't any, just black cinders. 'Except that if only people who actually die get to see it, how would anybody know that's what happens? Nobody would live to tell them.'

Boarci sighed. 'Damn shame,' he said. 'Though as far as I'm concerned it's no bad thing. Wouldn't want to see my life again, it'd just make me cranky. This way, you said?'

'That's right,' Poldarn confirmed. 'Just head for the middle spur. Over there, look, where those trees are.'

Walking on the cinders was slow, difficult and exhausting, like wading through coal. Boarci didn't seem to have much trouble, but Poldarn guessed he'd had more time to get used to it. Unfortunately, Boarci was the one leading both the horse and the way. 'Slow down, will you?' Poldarn panted eventually. 'What's the tearing hurry, anyway?'

'I wasn't hurrying,' Boarci replied. 'Sorry, it's been a while since I went any place in company. So, you been to this farm before? Guess you must have, if you're going to marry their girl.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'It was all sorted out by her father and my grandfather,' he replied. 'I've only seen her once, come to that.'

'Cute?'

'I guess you could say that, yes.'

'That's good. They're all as tricksy as snakes and bad-tempered, but if you've got to marry one, cute's better than ugly. Course, cute don't last, and then all you've got is the tricksiness and the bad temper. Still, better than nothing, I reckon.'

Poldarn grinned. 'You're not married, then.'

'Was married, once. She was cute, if you don't mind 'em small. But her folks turned her against me. They never liked me anyhow.'

For some reason, Poldarn wasn't surprised. But it was a pleasant change to have someone to talk to-talk in an almost normal way, as opposed to the strange bouts of communication he went through back at the farm, with people for whom speech wasn't the usual method. 'It was very impressive,' he said, 'the way you were able to get up close to the bear without being noticed. You must be good at stalking.'

Boarci laughed. 'And even if I was,' he said, 'it'd be a joke with all this black shit all over the ground, crunching under your feet like a thousand men eating celery. Truth is, if you hadn't gotten his attention, I wouldn't have had a prayer of getting that close, in daylight and in the open like that.'

'Glad I could help,' Poldarn muttered.

Boarci chuckled. 'You weren't planning on helping me,' he said, 'and I wasn't planning on saving you. Just kind of turned out that way, like a happy accident. Which is good. But don't go getting the idea I'm the sort of man who'd pick a fight with a fucking big bear just to stop some stranger from getting all chewed up. That's not my style, I'm afraid.'

'I've only got your word for that,' Poldarn said politely. 'For all I know, you could spend your whole life going round helping people, and just pretending to be a homeless drifter because you can't stand being made a fuss of.'

'Sure.' Boarci laughed again. 'That's me exactly, how did you guess?'

'Good judge of character, presumably.'

It was hard enough at the best of times to find the valley in which Colscegsford nestled. With nothing to see except black ash, the job proved to be too hard for Poldarn, distracted as he was by the unaccustomed luxury of talking to someone. It was only when they stopped to look down into the next valley along and found no house or buildings there that Poldarn paused to think and get his bearings.

'Of course,' said Boarci, 'the house not being there could be because it burned down or got buried, and the ruins are just under the cinders somewhere.'

They turned back and retraced their steps. Still no sign of Colsceg's farm. 'We could spend our lives doing this,' Poldarn grumbled. 'Damn it, the miserable place must be somewhere, whole farms don't just melt into the ash or vanish.'

'They do if it's the end of the world,' Boarci pointed out. 'Leastways, that's what my grandmother taught me. Didn't say anything about fire-breathing mountains, but the rest of it, the old lady wasn't so far off the mark.'

In the end, they found what they were looking for, after they'd walked past it three times. It was only a thin ribbon of light blue smoke briefly visible against the skyline that betrayed the farm's secret.

From the head of the combe, there was nothing much to see apart from a few chimney pots and the central ridge of one roof (and you had to be looking for them specifically). A river ran down the middle of the combe, fast and quite deep as it gathered momentum from the steepening gradient. They followed its course-Boarci pointing out that if the place was called Colscegsford, there was probably a ford there, so the river might be a good place to start their search-until they came to a sharp bend, almost a right angle, where the valley suddenly saw fit to drop away at an alarming angle. The river, though, switched over to the side of the combe, forced to follow the rather less precipitous western slope by a long knife-backed ridge that pulled it away like a deliberately built dam. The ridge petered out into a flat plain at the bottom of the combe, where the river slumped into a series of lazy S-bends, in the angle of one of which they found the farm. It wouldn't take much, Poldarn could see, to flood the plain completely; but the farm itself was built on a steeply banked platform between the river bank and the soaring bare rock of the western escarpment. If the river did slip out of its channel, the farm would be an island; but it would take a sea to fill up the valley enough to threaten its inhabitants.

'Good place to build,' Boarci said. 'Only it must get bloody tiresome having to carry all your water up that steep slope every day.'

Poldarn wasn't surprised to find a welcoming party waiting for them as they struggled up the hillside. He recognised Colsceg and Egil (who looked at him with a mixture of hatred and terror that must surely have rattled the brains of all the mind-readers in the district) and the gatepost-stolid Barn; Elja wasn't there, but what business was it of hers? She was only the girl he was engaged to, after all. Also included in the party were five or six chunky-looking men with expressionless faces poking out through impressive beards.

'Hello,' Colsceg said to him; then he turned slightly to face Boarci. 'We could certainly use the meat,' he said, 'but there's no work for you here. I'm sorry.'

Can mind-readers lie? Poldarn asked himself. Apparently they could-the yard was two-thirds buried in cinders, and one of the barns had only a few charred rafters for a roof-but not convincingly. It didn't take a mind-reader to see that Colsceg knew perfectly well that Boarci didn't believe him, and furthermore wasn't too bothered about it.

'This is Boarci,' Poldarn said. 'He saved my life by killing the bear, just as it was about to kill me. He's coming back with me to Haldersness as soon as I'm through here. I hope you don't mind if he stays here in the meanwhile.'

'That'll be fine,' Colsceg replied. 'Any friend of Haldersness is always welcome here.'

Definitely not convincingly, Poldarn thought. Still, that's their business. In any event, Boarci didn't seem unduly put out; he just grinned and kept his face shut.

'Thanks,' he said. 'Is Elja at home? I'd like to see her, if that's all right.'

The request seemed to puzzle Colsceg, but he nodded, and one of the bushy-faced men walked away, presumably to fetch her. The others started to unload the bear. 'That'll do nicely for tonight's dinner,' Colsceg said, and somehow Poldarn got the impression that dinner would've been considerably more sparse if they hadn't shown up when they did. The burned-out barn probably had something to do with that.

'You lost a building, then,' he said.

Colsceg nodded. 'The main storehouse,' he grunted. 'Flour, bacon, dried fish, apples, onions-couldn't save any of it. Won't be long before we're slaughtering the stock just to put food on the table. Not that we can pasture them anyhow; they're eating this winter's hay already, and God only knows what we'll do when that's gone. Terrible business, and we haven't got a clue what needs to be done. How about at your place?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'We're not much better off,' he said, 'except we've still got our stores, of course. But we decided to send our stock away up country; at least there's grazing for them there. Meanwhile, we're trying to scrape the ash off the ploughed land so the crop won't rot. There's a difference of opinion about whether that's a good idea or not; some of us reckon that as soon as there's any heavy rain, it'll wash all this stuff away for us, save us the bother.'

'We were wondering that,' Barn interrupted. 'They had rain over at Lyatsbridge.'

Poldarn nodded. 'From what I gather, getting rid of the ash was the least of their problems.'

'That's true,' Colsceg said. 'But we're all right on that score-we're high up, so mudslides won't be a problem.'

'Unless they come straight down off the mountainside at you,' Poldarn pointed out. 'But I expect you've considered that.'

Colsceg frowned. 'We're trying not to scare ourselves to death thinking of every bloody thing,' he replied. 'It's bad enough as it is without dreaming up new ways we could all get killed.'

That seemed to close that topic of discussion. 'I'm sure Halder will want to send you anything we can spare,' Poldarn said. 'I'll talk to him about it when I get home.'

Nobody seemed very impressed by what Poldarn reckoned was a very generous offer, not to mention a distinctly reckless one. He had a feeling that as far as the Haldersness people were concerned, charity began at home and stayed there. In fact, he wished he'd kept his mouth shut.