Memory

Chapter Twelve

'Don't ask me,' the sergeant was saying, not for the first time, 'I don't know what to do, I'm not a bloody officer. Far as I'm concerned, I got my orders and I'm going to carry them out. Nothing to do with me, Falcata.'

'But that's so stupid,' someone else broke in. 'You can't just carry on as though nothing's happened. I mean, what if HQ doesn't know about it yet? What if nobody knows? What if the bastards attack somewhere else, and everybody's killed, just because you failed to raise the alarm?'

'Look.' The sergeant was getting angry. 'I don't remember anything in Standing Orders about having a vote every time a decision needs making. For all we know,' he went on, lowering his voice a little, 'getting this prisoner to Dui Chirra's more important to the Empire than saving half a dozen bloody cities. Besides,' he added, with the harsh enthusiasm of someone who'd just picked up on a previously overlooked good point, 'there aren't any more cities left round here they could burn, it's all poxy little villages and coach stops and charcoal burners.'

It wasn't a good enough argument to stay up for, so Poldarn lay down beside the fire and tried to go to sleep. They'd made hardly any progress all that day, what with the sergeant and his council of advisers bickering and the road in an even worse mess than usual; not that he was bothered, since the last place he wanted to go was Dui Chirra. If his people had really come here and destroyed Falcata, and if they knew there was a bronze foundry in the neighborhood, with enough raw material to supply the forges of a hundred farms for a century, he knew exactly where they'd be headed next. He was almost tempted to slip away-he didn't really want to meet a raiding party from home, which might include friends and relations of Eyvind or some other of his victims; or, worse still, relatives of his own, who'd probably want to take him back to Haldersness-but he didn't have the energy to play hide-and-seek in the dark and the mud with a platoon of already bad-tempered soldiers. The plain fact was, he didn't really care where he went, mostly because no matter where he ended up, he'd have no chance, outside of being killed, of getting away from himself, and the seething mess of memories, half-memories and suspicions he'd been collecting in his mind ever since the man calling himself Gain Aciava had turned up on the cart to Dui Chirra. Compared with sharing his own company, nothing that could happen to him on the Tulice levels was worth getting worked up about.

Eventually he did fall asleep, soothed by a lullaby of querulous voices, and by some miracle or merciful dispensation he didn't have a dream or it didn't stay with him when he woke up, cramped and drenched in dew, at first light the next morning.

Either the soldiers had sat up arguing all night or they'd resumed bright and early: the debate was still going on, though he didn't seem to have missed anything in the way of exciting new arguments. The sergeant, though, was now the only proponent of carrying on to Dui Chirra. The opposition was more or less equally divided between turning round and going back to camp, or heading into the forest and finding the nearest colliers' camp, in the hope of scrounging some food.

Mention of the colliers reminded Poldarn of something; and it occurred to him that, if his sense of direction wasn't completely skewed, he wasn't all that far from Basano's camp, where he'd gone to negotiate a supply of charcoal for the foundry. Had that carefree negotiator really been him? It seemed like a thousand years ago, back in the Age of Gold, before the human race lost its innocence, and there was nothing to worry about except deer ticks, stale beer and boredom. He couldn't help remembering what Basano had said, about how colliery workers came and went, how there was always a job for anybody who was prepared to hang around long enough. At the time, he couldn't get away from the place fast enough. Strange, how the world can change so much so quickly and still look pretty much the same on the outside.

That put a different complexion on all the relevant arguments. True, he'd still be whoever he was, as much so at a colliers' camp as on the road or back at Dui Chirra. The difference was that, during the days and weeks it took for a big pile of cordwood to cook itself into charcoal, the colliers' idea of work was to sit on the edge of the stack and drink their revolting home-brewed beer. Getting rid of himself by drowning his conscious mind in booze was an approach that Poldarn couldn't remember having tried; between intoxication and dysentery, he doubted whether he'd have much opportunity to brood. Ideal.

That was that, then. Unfortunately, it was now too late for him to sneak away in the dark without being noticed; another opportunity neglected. On the other hand, nobody showed the slightest interest in getting up and moving on. It looked as if they'd be perfectly capable of staying here arguing all day, until it was dark enough for him to sling his hook without being seen or missed. But that wasn't so good; waking up to find they'd lost their prisoner might just be enough to snap them out of their differences and bring them along after him. He could always join in the debate and add his support to the pro-food faction; much easier to fake his own disappearance once they were at the colliers' camp, whereupon the soldiers would light out into the forest looking for him, and he could stay behind and ask if there was any work going. He decided against that, however; in the mood the sergeant was in, he'd be certain to veto any suggestion coming from his human cargo. Poldarn gave the matter some more thought, and came to the conclusion that the deciding factor in the debate was bound to be the realisation that they had enough food left for one meal, just possibly two.

So he waited until just after noon, when the soldiers had opened the ration sacks and been reminded of how very little they contained; then he wandered over to the fire, waited for the next tense, gloomy silence, and said in as conversational a tone as he could manage that as far as he could recall, there was a large and well-supplied colliers' camp just across the way from where they were, and maybe they could spare a bit of flour and a drop of beer. When the sergeant started to object, Poldarn added that when he'd been here the last time, the colliers had put him on a good worthwhile short cut back to Dui Chirra, which had shaved at least a day off his return journey That put paid to any further resistance from the sergeant, and Poldarn found himself promoted from high-security prisoner to navigator-in-chief. That was fine, the only drawback being that he didn't have more than a vague idea of the way to Basano's place, not without the annoying old man to guide him, and his sense of direction seemed to be allergic to trees in quantity. Annoyingly, the first major landmark he recognised was the filthy, muddy swamp that the old man had called Battle Slough; and he only realised he knew where he was once they'd blundered into it up over their knees.

For some reason, the soldiers didn't seem too pleased about that. Probably because of the rains, the swamp was even stickier and more treacherous than it had been the last time Poldarn had been out that way; and he couldn't help recalling the incident from which, according to his guide on that occasion (Corvolo: he dragged the name out of the back of his mind, with roughly the same level of effort as it was costing him to take one step forward), the place had derived its name. Fairly soon, if Corvolo hadn't been embellishing for dramatic effect, they could expect to come across the mildewed skeletons of the soldiers who'd got themselves hopelessly stuck here, and stayed put until they starved to death At least it took his mind off brooding over whether Gain Aciava had been telling the truth. Instead, Poldarn forced himself to concentrate on what he could remember of his first visit, with particular reference to such points as which direction the shadows had been pointing, the time of day, whether the slope had been with or against them. In the end he wasn't sure whether he found the way out of Battle Slough or whether it found him; in any event, by nightfall they were on the faint pattern of bent bracken stems and trampled leaf mould that was the best the forest could furnish them with by way of a road, and on their way to Basano's camp-assuming, of course, that it was still there.

As their circles collided, he drew and so did she.

There was a moment during which time was the circular room in which the examination was taking place. In the middle of the room he stood facing her: at his back was the past-Elaos, Cordo, Gain, the Earwig, the rest of his year, Father Tutor and the two external examiners, draped in heavy black robes like a crow's plumage; behind her was the future, but she was standing in the way and he couldn't see it clearly. But he saw her hand slip down onto the sword hilt, saw the blade sliding smoothly out over her sash, rising to meet him, until its bevelled side collided with its mirror image, his own sword, like the reflection of a face in a still, shallow pool.

There are no moments in religion; no present, only past and future waging war over a disputed frontier. As her hand dropped to her waist, he saw both of them draw, and then the blades smacked together, flat on flat.

A voice inside his head was telling him what to do; and he knew it was his own voice, calling to him from across the border, where he'd already watched the fight and knew what had happened. The voice directed his moves as he cut, parried, lunged, sidestepped-you tried a cut to her right temple but she anticipated and cut to your left knee-so he moved across and back as he slashed at her head, and when her counter-attack came, his knee wasn't there any more; and then you tried a draw cut across the inside of her elbow, but at the last moment you pulled it and turned it into a jab to her throat, but she dodged back and feinted at your chin, you fell for that and she swung at your wrist, so he dropped his wrist as he jabbed and her cut missed him by the thickness of a leaf. And then she recovered before you did and tried for a lunge straight at your neck He opened his eyes, but it was still dark. Something was pricking his throat.

'Easy,' said a voice behind and above him, very softly. 'Perfectly still or you'll do yourself a mischief.'

(But that wasn't right; because he'd woken up, so Xipho should've been left behind, in the dream. Or had she stayed behind just a moment too long, and the dream had left without her?)

'Now then,' Copis's voice whispered, 'nice and slow, I want you to stand up. I will kill you if you try anything.'

(But that was wrong too, because he remembered that term-end duel as if it had only finished a minute ago. She'd lunged at his neck, actually pricked him and drawn a single tiny drop of blood; but he'd expected it, that was the bait in his trap, and a split second later he'd kicked her legs out from under her and ended the fight, the first ever bloodless victory in a sixth-grade year-end duel in Deymeson's history-)

He did as he was told. The violation of his circle told him she was shifting, sidestepping carefully round him like a cat walking along the top of a door. The pressure behind whatever it was that was pricking his throat remained perfectly constant, very nearly hard enough to pierce the skin but not quite. You had to admire the control.

'Walk forward,' the voice went on. 'Keep going till I say stop. Then turn sixty degrees left.'

Once he'd performed the manoeuvre, the pressure lightened a little, enough so that he wouldn't kill himself if he moved his throat muscles sufficiently to speak. 'Are you going to kill me?' he asked. No answer. He carried on walking, one slow step at a time.

Fifteen paces; and then Copis's voice said, 'Not yet. Not unless you make me, like by stopping unexpectedly or turning round. Keep going.'

By his reckoning, another two dozen paces would take him outside the circle of firelight, out of the clearing where they'd pitched tents for the night, and back into the forest. If he tripped along the way-too many tree roots and fallen branches for blind dead reckoning-the sharp thing pressing into his neck would be the death of him. All the more reason, then, to go nice and steady.

His eyes were getting used to the dark, which meant he could make out the larger obstacles under his feet (a big brown and grey flint, a fungus-covered tree trunk, a single deep rut in the path). 'Copis,' he said, statement rather than question. 'Is that you?'

'Yes.'

At the edge of the clearing, just as he'd anticipated, the pricking under his chin stopped. But his spy from the future had either gone off duty or looked the other way, because he wasn't expecting the bash on the back of his head with something thick and heavy He woke up and opened his eyes.

He wasn't quite sure what he'd been expecting to see, being uncertain whether the episode where he'd felt a knife at his throat and thought he'd heard Copis's voice was just a coda to the dream about some school fencing-match, or whether it had actually happened. In the event, what he saw was a man standing over him, holding a spear.

(Another dream? Eyvind had stood over him with a spear, that time when he turned them all out of Ciartanstead. And there were crows, two of them, sitting in the high branches of a rowan tree on his right-)

'Quiet,' the man said, and he definitely wasn't Eyvind. Who he was Poldarn had no idea, but he looked vaguely military-boots, long tatty coat over a mail shirt. 'Don't try shouting for your mates or I'll skewer you.'

They're no friends of mine, I haven't got any friends… He nodded instead. Above the canopy of leaves and branches he could see the pale blue of dawn. Whoever this man was, he wasn't alone, and the people with him were about to kill the sergeant and the rest of Poldarn's escort. He wished that didn't have to happen, but presumably it was necessary-for all he knew, the man with the spear and his colleagues might be the good guys. He wanted to ask if Copis had really been there, but he decided not to.

After what seemed like a very long time, the snap of a twig told him that someone was coming, someone who didn't care if the man with the spear heard him. 'All right?' the man called out without taking his eyes off Poldarn's face.

'Job done,' someone replied, sounding weary.

'Get them all?' the spearman asked.

'Think so.'

The spearman frowned. 'Did you or didn't you? How many?'

'Fourteen.'

(Poldarn tried to remember how many there'd been in the party, but he'd never counted them. It wasn't something you did when you met new people, count them so you'd know later if they'd all been killed.)

But the spearman seemed relieved. 'Right,' he said. 'You, on your feet. Easy,' he added, quite unnecessarily; Poldarn knew the drill by this stage without having to be told.

His legs felt weak and cramped, and his head (he noticed) was hurting a lot. Men had appeared out of the darkness, scaring the crows away. They were also wearing greatcoats over mail shirts; but they were altogether too scruffy to be regular army, not like the neatly modular units that had made up Brigadier Muno's command at Dui Chirra. So: not government soldiers, definitely not raiders. Of the armed forces he knew to be operating in these parts, that meant they were either the Mad Monk's outfit, or the Amathy house.

Someone he couldn't see grabbed his hands, pulled them behind his back and tied them tightly with rope. A shove in the small of his back suggested that he should start walking; at the same time, the spearman turned his back and moved on ahead, leading the way. Absolutely no point whatsoever asking where they were taking him.

At some point, someone in front of him started to sing-quietly, badly, maybe without even realising that he was doing it. He sang: Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Along comes the Dodger, and he makes it three. When they stopped walking, the sun was directly overhead, call it seven hours at a fairly slow march, so something the order of fifteen miles (but since he had no idea where he'd started from and hadn't recognised any of the places they'd been, meaningless). A hand on his shoulder pushed him down on his knees; the rest of the party sat down. Some of them took off their boots and shook out grit and small stones, or gulped water from canteens (didn't offer him any; hadn't expected them to). It was dry underfoot, soft leaf mould. They'd been following a shallow path, wider than a deer track, narrower than a cart road and not rutted up by the passage of wheels or horses. Someone seemed to know where they were supposed to be going. This time, he made a point of counting them: twenty-eight.

He was probably going to get thumped for asking, but it was worth a try. 'Excuse me,' he said to nobody in particular, 'but who are you?'

Silence, lasting long enough that he was on the point of repeating the question. Then someone said, 'Fuck me, it's true.'

The man who'd spoken shifted round to face him. 'It's true, isn't it?' he said. 'You don't know who we are. Do you?'

'No,' Poldarn said.

'Amazing.' The man grinned. 'He doesn't know.'

'I lost my memory, a year or so back,' Poldarn ventured. 'A few bits and pieces have come back since then, but I'm afraid I don't remember any of you.' He tried for an educated guess. 'Are you the Amathy house?'

Someone thought that was highly amusing. 'Wouldn't have credited it,' someone said. 'I mean, you hear about stuff like that, people get a bash on the head and they can't remember their own names, but-well, it's a bit bloody far-fetched.'

'Unless it's just an act,' someone else said.

'On your feet,' the spearman announced abruptly, and they all stood up. Poldarn did the same, and nobody seemed to mind. The spearman led the way, as before. It was nearly dark by the time they stopped again.

At least they had food with them: small round barley cakes, stale and hard as crab shells, and cheese you could've used to wedge axe heads. As an afterthought, when they'd all eaten something and complained about how revolting it was, someone got up and brought Poldarn two of the cakes-no cheese, Poldarn rationalised, because if it was as hard as they said it was, he might've used the edge to saw through his ropes. The man laid the two cakes on a flat stone a couple of feet away from where Poldarn was sitting, then used another stone to smash them into fragments. Then he went back to his place. After sitting for a while staring at the bits of cake shrapnel, Poldarn shuffled forward, leaned down from the waist and gobbled up a mouthful like a dog feeding from a bowl. His escort found this performance mildly entertaining, which was more than could be said for the cakes.

'Better give him something to drink as well,' he heard someone say, as he bent down for another mouthful. 'Don't want him croaking on us, when all's said and done.'

So someone brought him a canteen and allowed him four swallows of warm, muddy-tasting water. Poldarn said thank you very politely; the man didn't seem to hear.

They were talking quietly among themselves now, keeping their voices down, and Poldarn could only make out a few unenlightening words, though at least one of them mentioned Falcata, Dui Chirra and Brigadier Muno. Then someone said something that the rest appeared to find extremely funny, and one of them got up and sat down next to Poldarn, six inches or so outside his circle.

'Straight up,' he said. 'Is that right, you really can't remember back past a year or so?'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied.

The man turned to smile over his shoulder at his mates; he was medium height, unusually broad across the shoulders, with a grey stubble of hair sprouting on his shaved head. He had burn scars on his left cheek, old and probably as close to being healed as they were ever going to get. 'So,' he went on, 'you're telling me you don't know who I am, either.'

Poldarn looked at him. 'We've met before?'

Everyone, the burned man included, burst out laughing. Poldarn waited for them to stop, then said: 'I guess that means you know me.'

'You could say that,' the burned man answered, grinning.

'Don't suppose you'd care to-'

'No.'

Well, he'd expected as much; he'd already got the impression that they didn't seem very well disposed towards him. 'Do you know a man called Gain Aciava?' he asked.

This time the burned man looked blank. He shook his head.

'Xipho Dorunoxy? Copis?'

'Doesn't ring any bells. All right, my turn,' the burned man said. 'How about Dorf Bofor? Recognise the name? Sergeant Dorf Bofor?'

Poldarn shook his head slowly. 'Doesn't mean anything to me, I'm afraid. Sorry, is that your name?'

This time, everyone laughed except the burned man, who looked as if he was about to kick Poldarn in the face. 'No, it bloody well isn't,' he replied. 'But I got this here'-and he pointed to the burn-'fishing you out of a burning library when you went back in after him, the useless fat bastard; and there's others, good friends of mine, died that day because of you wanting to be a fucking hero. And you don't remember that.'

'No,' Poldarn replied and braced himself for the attack; it was a kick aimed at his chin, but the burned man missed and connected with his collarbone instead. On balance, the chin would've been better. 'I'm very sorry,' he said, as soon as he could speak again. 'But I can't remember anything, not for certain, and that's just a fact. There's no malice in it.'

'Yeah, right,' the burned man said. 'No malice. Coming from you, that's a bloody laugh.'

Going to get kicked again, but that can't be helped. 'What did I do?' he asked.

The laughter had an edge to it this time. 'What did you do?' the burned man repeated. 'You want to know, then.'

'Yes.'

'Sorry,' the burned man said with mock contrition, 'but we only got till dawn; what's that, ten hours?' A small ripple of brittle laughter. 'Couldn't tell you the half of it in ten hours.'

'Never mind, then,' Poldarn said. 'Just pick a few bits at random.'

This time the burned man caught him on the elbow. Not quite as painful, but enough to be going on with. 'All right, then,' he said. 'There was Vail Bohec. Mean anything to you?'

Poldarn shook his head.

'Twenty thousand people, all killed in a day. Ackery: fifteen thousand. Berenna Priory-boarded up the monks in the chapter house and burned them all to death. Josequin: you weren't there, but you planned it all out, right down to the last detail. General Allectus: stabbed him in the back, eighteen thousand of his men cut down where they stood. You don't remember that, of course.'

'No, I don't.'

'Course not. How bloody convenient. Weal Huon: thirteen thousand. Morannel. Deymeson. And whose fault is it we've got that arsehole Tazencius sitting in the palace at Torcea pretending he's the Emperor? Or Caen Daras: the river got so blocked with dead bodies it flooded right up through the Rookwood valley. Who'd want to remember something like that if they didn't have to?'

'That's all just names, though,' Poldarn said. 'Why won't you tell me what actually happened? Why it was my fault. I mean, I can't have killed all those people with my own hands.'

Third time lucky, as far as the burned man was concerned; and Poldarn had been wrong, the chin was far worse than the collarbone. 'You want to know who I am?' the burned man was shouting. 'Sergeant Illimo Velzen, that's my name. You think you can remember that, you bastard, or do you need something to help remind you?'

'All right, that's enough,' said a voice that sounded a long way off-the man with the spear who'd been there when Poldarn woke up. 'It's my arse on the line if he's dead on arrival. Sit down and save your strength, we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.'

It took the burned man a minute or so to get a grip on himself, with the spearman and various others telling him to calm down, leave it, Poldarn wasn't worth it and so forth; then he turned his back and sat down, leaving Poldarn crumpled up where he'd fallen. It could've been worse, he eventually decided, nothing broken as far as he could tell (though he'd learned one thing about himself: he had exceptionally tough, strong bones). He wriggled about until he was as comfortable as he could make himself, and tried to clear his mind of what he'd heard-which was impossible, of course.

A pity, though. All that information the burned man had given him, and he still didn't know whether they were the Mad Monk or the Amathy house. On balance, he reckoned, probably the latter; but he had to admit he was mostly guessing. He tried closing his eyes, but that just made things worse; without really wanting to, he started on the mental arithmetic: twenty thousand plus fifteen thousand plus eighteen plus thirteen, that made fifty-six thousand, no, sixty-six, he'd forgotten to carry the one-ten thousand people, snuffed out of memory by a simple mathematical error. Not that it mattered, because the data was incomplete in any event. And almost certainly the burned man didn't even know about Eyvind, or Egil Colscegson, or the two gods in the cart, or the troopers he'd killed on the way to Cric. He grinned suddenly. A new cure for insomnia: why count sheep when you can count dead people-?

As he stood up, three crows lifted out of a tall tree and beat an undignified retreat, screaming at him as they flew away. The sound alerted them, and they turned round to see who was there.

'Over here,' he said quietly; and he noticed with amusement that he was speaking his own language with a distinct foreign accent. Been away far too long; but whose fault was that?

A moment of tense silence; then a voice he recognised. 'Ciartan?'

'Over here,' he repeated. 'You're late.'

'No, you're early.' Scaptey's voice; it was absurd, hearing it here, on the other side of the world, on this alien continent. 'Where are you, Ciartan? I can't see you.'

He smiled to himself and started to walk towards them. 'Now can you see me, you blind old fool?'

'Not so much of the old.' There was Scaptey, the familiar shape of his head and shoulders, a memory coming together out of the dark. 'Bloody hell, boy, it's good to see you again. How've you been?'

Scaptey's bear-hug crushed most of the breath out of his lungs; still, he managed to say, 'Don't tell me I've grown, or I'll smash your face in. How's the old man? Is he all right?'

Close enough to see his face. 'Halder's just fine,' Scaptey said. 'He sends his love.'

'And the farm?'

'Just how you left it,' Scaptey said; then he grinned as he added, 'Except for the fucking crows. They got in on the winter wheat where it got flattened in the spring rains, hardly worth cutting after they were done with it. We need you back home, I reckon, teach them buggers a lesson.'

'And there was me thinking I'd killed them all.' He laughed. 'Who else is with you? Anyone from the valley?'

Scaptey shook his head. 'Green River folk, mostly,' he said, 'Halder couldn't spare a crew this year. Fences need doing all up the north side, and we're building three new barns. Just Raffen and me this time; Halder reckoned we weren't no good for anything, so we wouldn't be missed. Rannwey sends her love too,' he added. It was the first time he'd ever heard someone from back home tell a deliberate lie. 'And you have grown too, you bugger. Must suit you, over here.'

'Three new barns,' he said. 'That sounds pretty good. Sounds like you were able to manage without me after all.'

Scaptey grinned. 'Well, we're getting along somehow,' he said. 'Except, we need you over at the forge. That kid Asburn, he does his best, but of course he was never bred to it like you were. He's all right for simple things but when it comes to anything a bit clever he hasn't got a clue.'

'Well.' For some reason, what Scaptey had just said made him want to smirk with pride. And there was something else besides: he was jealous. It wasn't right that Asburn the odd-job boy should be working in his forge, using his tools, taking his place. 'Maybe I'll be back sooner than you think,' he said, though he had no call to be saying anything of the sort. 'Anyhow, that's enough about home. I think I've got all the information you'll need.' And he launched into his report, like a small child reciting a carefully learned lesson: the location, topography and defences of Caen Daras, the number and disposition of its garrison, the little-known road across the hog's-back ridge that would bring them unseen to within half a mile of the east gate. He explained the plan of campaign, stressing how vital it was that there should be no survivors. He told Scaptey where the carts would be waiting to carry the raiders' share of the plunder back to the ships, and where to leave the gold and silver hidden so that the Prince's men would be able to find it. When he'd been through everything he'd been briefed about, along with all his own observations that were likely to prove useful, and answered questions about various points that Scaptey wasn't sure about, the first red stains were already starting to seep through into the eastern sky. 'Time I wasn't here,' he said. 'Remember what I told you, and good luck. Though it ought to be easy as shelling peas.'

Scaptey nodded. 'With all you've told me,' he said, 'we should be able to get there and do the job with our eyes shut.'

'You could,' he agreed, 'but it'll be easier with 'em open. See you next year, then.'

His horse was where he'd left it, with Sergeant Velzen standing guard, wide awake and obviously terrified. He smiled. As far as Velzen was concerned, the creature he'd just been talking to was as strange and unnatural as a werewolf, and twenty times more dangerous; but Scaptey was just the old dairyman, who'd taught him how to race sticks down the home paddock stream when he was six. 'All done,' he said. 'We can go back now.'

The relief in Velzen's face was comical to see. 'Have to get a move on,' he muttered, 'if you want to be back in camp by reveille.' He pronounced it rev'lly, in the approved manner for old sweats. 'You said you'd only be an hour.'

'Time flies when you're having fun,' he replied, and had the pleasure of watching Velzen's skin crawl. They mounted up and made good time, once they were on the post road. As soon as they reached the camp, he went straight to the staff tent and made his report, leaving out a few bits and pieces that weren't important, and some other things that were nobody's business but his own. It was awkward and wearing, always having to be so careful about what he said and didn't say, always needing to remember who he was being at any give time. Still, as Cordo would've said, it was better than drawing swords for a living He woke up suddenly, to find that two crows were perched on his knees, taking a professional interest in the raw wounds he'd been left with after his one-sided fight with the burned man, the one who'd called himself Illimo Velzen. He tried to grab them but they were too quick, and drew themselves into the air with their wings like men rowing a boat against the current.

He watched them circle a couple of times before they pitched in a high, spindly ash tree. For some reason, probably the associations of the dream, he found himself thinking about home. No woods and forests like this one there-what wouldn't they give for a few dozen loads of this tall, straight lumber; and how horrified they'd be at the thought of the colliers' camps, where so much precious timber was chopped up into cords and logs and wantonly burned into black cinders. No wonder Asburn had never let him use charcoal to get the forge fire started; it would've been an unspeakable crime, like wasting water in the desert. He looked across and saw that they were all still asleep: Velzen and the man with the spear, and twenty-six others. Then he noticed something; or rather, a perception that had been troubling his unconscious mind for some time slid into focus, so that he knew what it was. He could smell woodsmoke-not the campfire, because it was cold, must've gone out during the night; so there was another fire nearby, probably a large one if he could smell it further than he could see or hear the men who'd lit it. He cursed impatiently at his rotten sense of direction. They'd just wandered clear of the swamp where the battle had been when he'd been abducted, and after that they'd marched him a whole day, but in which direction he had no idea. Was it possible that the smoke was coming from Basano's charcoal-burning? The wind, what little there was of it, seemed to be drifting in from the north. How far did smoke carry? Probably they taught you useful stuff like that at Deymeson, but of course he couldn't remember. In any event, it wasn't worth thinking about; even if he did manage to sneak away without waking up the soldiers, and even if by some miracle he managed to find his way to Basano's camp, it was idiotic to suppose that the colliers would be prepared to protect him against twenty-eight armed and angry Amathy house men, even if they were capable of it. Besides, he still wasn't sure whether he'd been captured or rescued, though the aches and pains from Velzen's boot inclined him to favour the former. All right, then; from Basano's camp, would he be able to find his way back up to the main road, in time to make a dash for it and get to the safety of Dui Chirra and Brigadier Muno's regulars before the Amathy house caught up with him? Highly unlikely, and it'd depend very much on how far he'd be able to get before Velzen and his lads noticed he'd gone and figured out which way he was headed.

Even so; it was an alternative, an option, and it'd been a while since he'd had the luxury of one of them. And not to forget the adjustment in the odds that stealing a sword or a halberd on his way out would make; it wasn't something he was proud of or liked to dwell on, but he'd confidently back himself against two, three, maybe four of these men at a time, if it came to a running battle in dense cover. Assuming, of course, that he really wanted to go back to Dui Chirra and carry on where he'd left off shovelling wet clay. That was yet another unwarranted assumption. There was the matter of a voice in the darkness, Copis (no, Xipho; Copis had never truly existed). If it really had been her, and she hadn't cut his throat while he slept, as she could so easily have done-another perfectly good option spoiled by indecision and the faint blemish of memory.

Come on, he urged himself, get real: what possible good could come of running into Xipho again? Even if he survived the encounter and it didn't result in a slow and painful death, the best he stood to gain was more slices of his past, maybe confirming what Gain had told him, or the dreams. Dui Chirra, on the other hand, was the only place he knew of where he stood any chance of being safe from further unwanted revelations, at least until the Poldarn's Flute project finished and the gates were opened and the stockade came down. He couldn't help smiling at his own obtuseness; how, when he'd been there, he'd foolishly assumed that the defences and guards were to keep him in, when all the time they'd been put there expressly to keep the other him out-Besides, he told himself, the food's better at Dui Chirra; and if he got into another orgy of reminscences with Sergeant Velzen, one or other of them wasn't going to survive it, so better all round to make sure it didn't happen.

He took another look at the camp and the sleepers. He could see the man who was supposed to be keeping watch; he was sitting apart from the others, on slightly higher ground, with his back to the trunk of an old, fat copper beech. Maybe he wasn't used to marching all day in difficult terrain; he'd fallen asleep at his post, his halberd lying on the ground beside him where it had slipped through his fingers. Getting past him wouldn't be hard, and neither would taking his weapon; but the rest of them'd be waking up any time now-it was well on the way to getting light. If he was going to go, he had to go now.

Well, he thought, why not? If they caught him before he reached Dui Chirra, they had orders not to kill him. And on general principles, it was better to do something, even something that turned out to be bloody stupid, than hold still and allow things to be done to you.

Painfully and cautiously, he stood up. Dui Chirra it was, then. But first, he had to get out of this clearing.

Something else they almost certainly taught at Deymeson: how to walk about in a forest without making an unspeakable noise. Unfortunately, unlike drawing a sword and killing people, he didn't seem to have learned it well enough for it to have become second nature to him. Maybe it had been something you could only do as an extra, outside regular hours, along with pottery and classical Thurmian literature, and he hadn't bothered with it.

But the sentry turned out to be one of those happy people who can sleep through anything, including an escaping prisoner standing on his hand; so, in spite of forgetting to steal the halberd and having to go back for it, Poldarn made the edge of the clearing and set off into the forest, heading (he hoped) north. All he had to guide himself by was a very hazy recollection of the orientation of the stars-assuming the little white cluster he thought was the Chain wasn't in fact the Seven Sleepers-and a faint taste of woodsmoke on the gentle breeze.

Accordingly, he was as surprised as he was pleased when, about three hours after sunrise, he walked out of a thick curtain of holly and found himself standing on the edge of a broad rutted road. It wasn't where he'd expected to find himself, needless to say, since he'd been heading for the colliers' camp. But there was only one road that this could possibly be: the main post road from Falcata to Dui Chirra. Somehow he'd contrived to cut a day's march off his journey.

Amazing, Poldarn thought. I really should get lost more often.

By now, he had the sun to steer by, so he didn't hesitate before turning left, due west, up a gently rising slope. There were no fresh footprints or wheel tracks in the mud, and the ruts were full of dirty brown water, knee-deep. Obviously not the busiest road in the Empire, and that was reassuring; the destroyers of Falcata hadn't come this way, and he wasn't likely to catch them up round the next bend.

That evening, after a thoroughly exhausting day of picking his way between the ruts, he was eventually forced off the road by a shower of heavy rain, which drove him into the shelter of the trees. He didn't want to lose any time, since there was no knowing if Velzen and the soldiers were on his trail or how far behind they were, but blundering into a pothole in the dark and damaging himself would slow him up even more than stopping for a few hours. He found another patch of dense, scrubby holly and crawled into it to shelter from the rain, not that he could get any wetter than he was already. The thought of his dry shack inside the foundry stockade seemed almost unbearably luxurious. All he had to do was get to Dui Chirra and he'd practically be in paradise, because what more could anybody possibly want out of life than food, a change of clothes and a warm fire?

Poldarn must have fallen asleep; it was light again, though the rain was still falling as briskly as it had been when he'd closed his eyes. But there was another sound beside the patter of falling water on leaves and branches: the creak of wheels and the spattering noise of hooves in mud. Cautiously he peered through the holly branches and saw a small cart with an oiled-leather canopy.

Joy. Whoever they were, they must be going to Dui Chirra, or at least passing by it; and they'd have to have hearts of stone to refuse him a lift. He pushed out through the holly, hardly noticing the scatches on his face and hands, and charged across to meet the cart. Through the curtain of rain he could just make out two faces under the canopy.

'Hey,' he shouted, 'wait up. Are you going to Dui Chirra?'

'Yes,' someone called back. 'Want a lift?'

'You bet,' Poldarn yelled, splashing through the mud at a run. The cart stopped, and he hauled himself up onto the box as the two people sitting there budged up to give him room. The driver was a woman, though he couldn't see her face past the shoulder of the man next to her who was all muffled up in a hooded coat and a blanket. 'Thanks,' he added, as he sat down.

'No problem.' The man turned his face towards him, and grinned. 'You've saved us the job of looking for you. Hello, Ciartan.'

Before he could move, the man leaned forward and grabbed his collar. 'It is you, isn't it?' he said. 'Yes, thought so. Well, this is a happy coincidence.'

Looking at the man's face was like looking at his own reflection: the same white, melted, hairless skin. 'Gain,' Poldarn said.

'Like I said,' replied Gain Aciava, 'we were just on our way to look for you. What're you doing out of the camp? You aren't supposed to leave.'

Gain let go of Poldarn's collar. 'I ran away,' Poldarn replied. 'But then I sort of got into trouble, so I'm heading back. But what're you doing here? They said you were arrested by soldiers.'

'That's right.' Gain was smiling. 'Poor buggers,' he said. 'They're dead now, and it wasn't even their mistake. Just unlucky.'

'I don't understand,' Poldarn said. 'What happened?'

'They arrested the wrong man,' Gain said. 'It was you they were after; but that clown Muno gave them me instead. He'll say it was just a case of mistaken identity, but my guess is he was trying to save your life, repaying the family debt. His nephew,' Gain explained, as Poldarn stared at him blankly. 'One good turn deserving another, and all that. But anyway, it's all been sorted out now, and here we are. Good to see you again.'

No, it isn't, Poldarn thought; and then the driver reached up with her left hand and pushed aside the cowl of her hood, so that he could see her face. 'Hello, Ciartan,' she said.

For a moment he couldn't decide what to do. If he tried to jump off the cart, Gain would grab hold of him, and there'd be a fight; he suddenly remembered that he'd left the halberd behind in the holly bushes, not that it'd have done him any good at such close quarters. Besides, he had no idea whether he wanted to escape or not-it was precisely the sort of useful knowledge that he'd been having to do without ever since he'd woken up in the mud beside the Bohec river three years ago.

He took a deep breath and let it go slowly. At the most fundamental level, it was a choice between walking in the rain or riding in a covered cart. No contest.

'Hello, Copis,' he replied.